Imagine you’ve just moved house: suddenly you realise you don’t know where the stopcock is and panic that your kids are going to flood the bathroom while you run around fruitlessly yelling “WHERE IS IT”.
The first time you greet your new next door neighbour, they call you Mark instead of Matt, and you pause a fraction of a second too long while debating correcting them. Too late: you’ll need to answer to a different name for the rest of your time there.
The parking situation is new and mildly challenging: suddenly you have to parallel park on the street again for the first time in years while your new neighbours watch through their living room blinds. One of them sarcastically shouts “good job, Mark!” when you eventually nail it.
My name is Matt and I’m addicted to stacking pigs on top of steel barrels.
Let me explain.
If you haven’t seen “Styscraper” before, prepare to be… confused.
I’ve never been a big video game fan. When I was a kid growing up in rural Nottingham, my family was never on top of the cutting-edge: we didn’t get cable TV until years after it became passé, and any games consoles I had were hand-me-downs from family friends who’d already moved on to something several generations newer. I was still playing Sonic on my Mega Drive when everyone else got their Playstation 2s.
“Ted, come and look at the monkeys!”, I yell for the third time, unconvincingly. My five year old son remains unmoved, his attention transfixed by a Lego model of a snow leopard. “This one’s from Asia”, I half-heartedly add as he boggles at the plastic model of an animal whose flesh-and-blood inspiration is currently situated in an enclosure less than fifty metres away from where we’re standing. I sigh and put the paper map of the zoo back in my pocket. This is going to be a long half-term.
“Dad, this gorilla looks like you”, said every kid in the zoo. Get some better material, you little amateurs.
As previously documented, I’m currently between jobs. School is closed all week, and therefore it falls to me to provide this week’s entertainment for my high-energy son. I began with earnest plans of BBC-esque public service: educate, inform, entertain. But now it’s midway through day two and I’m happy to just shovel flapjacks into my kid’s face until my partner finishes work at 5pm.
I thought the zoo would be sure-fire: we took him here once when he was three and didn’t make it past the soft play area at the entrance. Now he’s nearly six, I reasoned, we’d be able to explore the various flora and fauna of Twycross Zoo together, marvelling at the incredible gifts bestowed upon us by Mother Nature. Instead, I’m trying to persuade a child to come and look at a tired flamingo because I’ve paid £37 each for the privilege of being here.
Clean, straight lines of green frog tape demarcate the areas to shield from the paint. A bucket of sugar soap solution sits primed and ready to wash the walls clean. Neatly arranged dust sheets are in place to protect the carpet from unexpected blobs of emulsion. Your rollers and brushes lie clean and pristine in their trays, ready to, well, roll.
I’m sitting in an unfamiliar car with my foot glued to the brake pedal, dashboard beeping angrily at me as cars whiz past. I try—for the third time—to put the vehicle into reverse, moving the gearstick to the clearly-indicated “R” position. I gingerly take my foot off the brake again, and the car inches forward, even closer to the parked vehicle in front. I swear in frustration.
You join me as I collect a courtesy car while mine is being repaired (many thanks to my friend of last year who reversed his van into it while it was parked). The hire place took so long to supply me with the keys to the car, and all of the communication from the disinterested young employee has been so vague, unclear and rushed, that I dismissed him with an “I’ll figure it out” as he tried to explain how the automatic handbrake worked. I am now somewhat regretting my choices.
My own car is a decade old, and it’s cheerfully basic. I’ve barely driven another vehicle since learning to drive in 2019, and I’ve just been handed the keys to a brand-new car with less than 5000 miles on the clock. In fact, even the keys are alien and new: there’s no ignition and the key fob sits in my pocket. Why am I still inserting my key into a lock like some kind of peasant?
