Britpop Survivor

I write to you from our new headquarters, which I am slowly coming to terms with. On the plus side the offices are littered with an assortment of zany furniture – the stuff of a madman’s dreams. And there is a nice chill-out area directly behind my seat, where the website boffins tend to come for their multiplayer Mario Kart DS battles. I get to join in, and lose horrendously.

I have a panoramic view of the arse end of King’s Cross station, dreamlike in the winter light, farting trains out towards the north.

The main thing I can’t handle is the lack of kettles. Instead we have fancy stainless steel taps of the future, that provide boiling water immediately, at any time of day or night, for this ‘24/7′ media age. I can’t help but mourn the loss of the kettle-boiling time, a sacred time for us tea drinkers – a time to be spent lost in highly proactive daydreaming and cosmic reflection.

Anyway. At number 6 we find Yoko Ono, who haunted my childhood with this dreamy number. It reminds me of being a kid in Nottingham, playing my Plastic Ono Band 7inch over and over again, while running around the record player room (ie the room we never worked out what to do with. The room was encircled by carpet tacks that attract 8-year-old feet) throwing a tennis ball against the wall. It reminds me of going to the supermarket in a raging blizzard, using my plastic sled to drag the shopping back home. It’s school finishing early, and having snowball fights in graveyards on the way home.

This song has been covered by assorted reprobates, but the original will always be where it’s at for me.