Boss Radio

Vast eons ago I wrote a song called 'Life on Venus'. The first time we played it, which turned out to be the only time we played it, a guy came up to me and accused me of ripping of David Bowie's 'Life on Mars'.

This kinda displeased me since this was the first time I'd realised it. I wrote the song after seeing the first photographs of the surface of Venus, the music bore no resemblance to Bowie's tune, neither did the lyrics, and the rhythm was completely different. Apparently I was being accused of two-thirds-of-a-title theft, or maybe just writing a song about life on another planet, after all, no one's ever done that before.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of the situation it seems that Bowie has more clout with NASA than I have because they've just bunged off a rocket with a payload that's even now checking for life on Mars.

I just think that they're going an awful long way about it. This machine is digging into the surface of the planet looking for water crystals that may hold signs of life, then it's transferring them to a little laboratory on its back from whence it will attempt to divine signs of life, or former life.

I have a better idea. Find a dump somewhere and dredge up a couple of tons of food waste. Drop it onto the surface of Mars. Follow that with a couple of dozen cockroaches. One of two things will happen. Either the roaches will eat the trash and then go off in search of other kitchen waste and if they find any then there must be life on Mars, or the Martians will come tearing out to see who's tossing trash into their yard.

I did have a third theory that maybe the waste would come to life and colonise the planet, thus becoming life on Mars.

But that would just be ridiculous.

Yesterday I forgot to do the washing up. We came down this morning and there was a pile of dishes in the sink. To be honest I couldn't face doing them until I'd had a cup of tea, so I fished a couple of cups out of the mound and washed them individually.

Then I decided that tea wasn't enough. I needed breakfast, so I shoved a slice of bread under the grill and went back to the dish-pile and pulled out a small plate and a knife, and I washed them individually. by then the bread was toasted and I made myself a Marmite toastie and shoved the resulting empty plate back into the dish-pile, followed by the knife.

That left me wanting more, so I fished a dish and a spoon out of the dish-pile and washed them individually, filled the dish with cornflakes, added the milk (Actually milk substitute made from oats. I prefer the taste...) and shoveled them down in front of the TV which my mother had very obligingly turned on.

Having then watched a repeat of a repeat of a revised repeat of a repeat of a programme about buying property at auction and still knowing next to nothing about the subject other than the fact that some of the properties looked like much better bargains than they did the first time I watched it, I went and pushed the bowl and spoon back into the dish-pile then set to work cleaning up the cat-hairs that always magically appear on the floor each night, then I chased the spiders (Yep, they're out all ready) back into the corners of the room, realised that I hadn't unlocked the outside doors yet and went to do that.

I heard a cuckoo. At this time of year? Surely that's a bit ridiculous? Nevertheless it's the third time I've heard it starting from last Friday, and I'm now certain that it's the real thing. Glad it's not just me that's getting confused by the unseasonal movement of the seasons.

The postie had left a couple of parcels outside the door. Yay! One of them was my St. Elsewhere video (Why do I still insist on calling them videos when they're actually DVDs nowadays?) and the other one was...

...a Paul Weller CD that I hadn't ordered from a company I'd never heard of before. Right. Must check that one out on the interweb at some point.

Not to put too fine a point on it, by this time breakfast was starting to work its way through me and I needed to take a trip upstairs. While I was there I read a computer magazine and wondered for the millionth time why anyone would want to upgrade to Vista when it's already been surpassed by several other operating systems, a couple of which are almost indistinguishable from Windows anyway except that they're a whole lot cheaper. Let's face it, Microsoft has just got around to floaty, fuzzy eye candy with clever shadows behind it. That's old hat to OS-X, Linux, and BSD users who've had the option of floating cubes and transparent docs for over a year now. Heck, we've got Matisse now. Vista's become last year's thing even faster than dual-core CPUs.

Good grief is that the time?

I potter back downstairs, rescue another couple of mugs from the dish-pile, and wash them individually. Then I make a couple of cups of coffee. I'm trying 'Instant capuccino' at the moment because it was on special offer. My mother never takes sugar, and now that I'm diabetic I'm having to get used to it thataway too, so I'd bought the'Unsweetened' variety. I was therefore a little miffed to discover that one cup contains nearly 10% of my daily RDA of sugar. I hate to think what the sweetened variety must be like.

I go in to complain to mum but one of her soaps is on and despite my best efforts I find myself watching it. Right, so that girl's having her second affair with the brother of her first husband, which was why they broke up in the first place, and her daughter is trying to deny her attraction to the son of the brother that she's having the affair with because she's promised herself to a nice kid who's on holiday at the moment, but his sister is going out with the kid who is currently under investigation by the brother who also happens to be a cop for killing a guy that he was intending to kill, but didn't?

For some reason about this time I fell asleep.

Mum woke me up complaining she was hungry. Hmmm, time does rather seem to be pressing on, better start getting the dinner ready. I pull a pan out of the dish-pile and wash it individually, fill it with water, and put it on the gas, then I pull the colander out of the dish pile and wash that individually as well. Then I peel the potatoes. Before I know it I've pulled two dinner plates, two sets of eatin' irons, and another pan out fo the dish pile and washed them all individually.

Dinner is served. And just in time to watch a rerun of a repeat of a second chance to see Diagnosis Murder. British daytime TV is rubbish... And to add insult to injury I get the murderer wrong even though I've seen that episode at least twice before.

Dinner over I shove all the dishes back into the dish-pile but I'm now feeling bloated and can't face washing up just now, so I go and settle down in front of the computer and relax in the presence of a smiley penguin who needs my help to shoot down an infinite number of coloured balloons.

Suddenly it's 6 o'clock and I'd better be thinking about teatime. So I pullacoupleofplates outofthedishpile and washthemindividually...

To cut a long story short I still haven't done the washing up and I'm just about to turn into bed. I don't think I've ever done so much washing in one day. It's not easy being a slob and having to wash everything you need individually every time you need it. Tomorrow I am washing up for sure...

Meanwhile I have a newfound respect for the guy in the soap who never bothers to do the washing up because his wife always used to do it even though she was as busy as him because she was a schoolteacher and he was a doctor, but now he's not a doctor any more so he has time to do the household chores, only when he finally does do them they suddenly realise that they have to mess the place up again so that the lawyer who's staying with them and pining over a lost love won't feel out of place except that he has, of course, just got a new girlfriend (Or has he?...) and is going out for the night...

Confused? You won't be after I return with another thrilling installment tomorrow.