mostly david ephgrave

The most exciting moment today was when I stood with my wife to give her moral support while the man from the RAC recharged her car battery. We discovered the car wouldn’t start yesterday when I was about to get a lift to the station to catch the train to Brighton. Even the manual override to the keyless ignition wouldn’t work, which was ominous, if suggestive that the battery had died. I had to leave my wife with it yesterday while I took the bus to the station; I wanted to stay behind, but the people of Brighton needed their entertainment. Thankfully, the problem didn’t take long to fix today, but it made me wish I knew more about simple mechanics myself. What skills do I have that apply to the day-to-day? I can juggle three balls and pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, but neither of these is much use in an emergency. The only other task I’m adept at is opening jars, but why bother using me when you could use an...

Don’t you hate it when a car drives past you with Beat It blaring from the radio and you try not to match the tempo with your feet? This sort of thing may not happen to you, but it certainly happens to me. Yesterday, in fact. There I was, innocently walking down the street at 139bpm when a Rover-driving Jacko fan appeared alongside me with his window wound down and his bass turned up. Try as I might, I couldn’t break from the rhythm. Thank God he wasn't listening to Billie Jean, or he would have expected the paving slabs beneath me to start lighting up. The speed of the traffic was such that he was next to me for ages. The awkwardness went on far longer that it should. It felt like my own personal mash up of Motown’s 25 th Anniverary special and Saturday Night Fever’s opening credits. I should have been wearing flares or white socks. I was relieved when he eventually pulled away. The next track on Thriller is Human Nature which is in half-time, and I don’t think I’d...