Outward

You know what it’s like, sometimes just getting it off your chest is all that matters.  Having parked my tendency to over-analyze, assess and worry at the last ‘dong’ of 2022 I am beginning to find that the bottomless well* of angst from which I have been able to draw these past few years has started to silt up a little, meaning that the bucket has less distance to fall before it hits paydirt, and when I haul it up, is far more likely to bring with it the kind of flotsam and jetsam to which only a well that is nothing like as deep as once it was is prone to hold.  The crap in my literary pail is both more plentiful and more varied than once it was.

Now, I hear what you are thinking: ‘O.K. we’ve given you a full paragraph leeway now.  You are a good distance into today’s tract and you still haven’t scratched the surface of ‘comprehensible’.  What the hell are you talking about?’  Well, give me a minute.  I’m sure it will come to me…

I have tried very hard to no longer worry about all those poor souls who do not read my blog – some people are beyond help – and concentrate instead on writing anything that piques my fancy and which will in turn, I hope, entertain you discerning few who do.  If things have changed a little of late, that is why.  The sunnier me is looking outward, but what I’m looking out at is not always great and, if I’m honest, I wonder how long Mr Sunny will continue to exist before the pre-Christmas gloomy-pants me reappears.  Real life is already beginning to chip at my cheery façade, pigeons have started to roost in my greying locks and the vein that writhes across my forehead like a lugworm on heat has started to squirm.  It is obvious through the news that the current ‘cost of living crisis’ is having a far greater impact on the population than two world wars, Covid 19 and Krakatoa combined.  If Putin gets his way and World War Three erupts, I will be well cheesed off!

This is the way it works.  We bought a new TV this week having burned a hole in the back of the old one with a lamp that was obviously much hotter than any earthly lamp should be.  (Don’t ask!)  Aware of our duty towards due-diligence, we thoroughly researched, and read reviews until we understood the exact nuances of what pushes a five star rating down into the nether-lands of four and a half.  We were prepared and we thus made the right and proper choice.  The TV arrived and I set aside the usual long weekend to set it up.  Amazingly, all went without hitch.  We turned it on and it was really pants.  We contacted the retailer who said, ‘Are you sure?  It’s a really good TV.  Have you seen the reviews?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the reviews are indeed superlative.  The TV is not.  I’ve sent you photos.’  They viewed them and agreed that it was, indeed pants, but that the photograph from a position directly in front of the screen was very good.  It was.  Unfortunately, as I showed them, it took no more than half a step in either direction to render the screen unviewable.  So, long story short, they were very good, no complaints at all, I had retained, and used, all the original packing, the TV was picked up and will very shortly be refunded except…  You know the panic that sets in within ten seconds of everything going exactly to plan?  As part of the setup I was encouraged to put in a PIN and I never took it off.  They will want to turn it on, won’t they, to test it.  I presume if they consider it to be the kind of TV that is perfectly saleable to the kind of viewer with a single chair in the middle of the room, they will do so and should he/she decide he wants to change anything…  Oh dear…

Now, I am perfectly aware that such a situation would be of absolutely no concern to 99.999% of the human race, but to a handwringer such as myself, it has the potential to turn my whole life upside down.  I have already considered the probable course of events that will inevitably lead to me being either locked away in Strangeways for Fraud or, should plod not come a-knocking on my door, finding myself nostril-deep in concrete footings as a result of the secondary purchaser of the errant TV being the kind of person with whom you do not mess, particularly if they cannot watch Eastenders at one degree west of ideal.  Do I ring the retailer and give them the new PIN, even though I know that panic will then set in and I will have to reset every other unassociated PIN on everything I know and use – even though I, myself, can’t remember any of them?  At least if GCHQ is planning on looking in on me, there’s a good chance they’ll get somebody else I suppose.

So, that’s how it works.  Trashing a relatively new TV has disturbed my newly found equilibrium barely at all, but putting a random four number sequence into its bastard replacement as I set it up, has every potential of throwing me back down that bloody well which is quite suddenly getting deeper by the second.  I’m sure the bucket will no longer reach…

Ah well, airheads always float I think.  I’ll just bob around here for a while, waiting for New Year’s Day 2024 and another New Rosier Year ahead.  I’ll unburden myself by posting the odd missive, and as for those who don’t want to read them, well, they’ll never know will they, and I’ll be smiling on…

*My depth of ‘subterranean reservoir’ knowledge is not all it might be, but I have a feeling that ‘bottomless well’ may well be a total oxymoron**, as such a hole – like a politician’s excuse – would never hold water.  Oh well, too late now.

**As opposed to ‘total moron’ e.g. me.