IdioC's Fifth Dimension

Ok, so I let the website lapse for a bit. Just a wee bit. It showed the vital signs of an intoxicated tramp in a coma and was probably fit for a binary burial. However, the old beast is up and rising to return from its Valley of Death with a new update.

Which is appropriate considering I’ve ended up returning to mine.

I grew up in a valley where nothing happens. Some of you of suburban backgrounds might think nothing happens where you are, but you can get into the town quickly to do something about it. Some of you of remote backgrounds might think nothing happens where you are, but you’re probably right. You’re in the arse end of nowhere and probably think I’m moaning over nothing. Sucks to be you.

This village doesn’t know what a decent pub is, letting them turn into houses, ruins or ritual mating grounds for chavs. In a current situation where a village is lucky to have one pub still standing, we’ve almost offensively gone from five to three. Three that are all pants.

So what do I do when I come back? Sod all. A populace enslaved by television, saying nothing that might interrupt the repeats of the repeats of the repeats, oblivious to any memory of the original viewings. The family maintain their usual routines. The friends have mostly all left, short of interest in kicking footballs around as in old times, bereft of the time to play computer games all day any more but thankfully not desperate enough to indulge in the evidently most popular local pasttime of accidental breeding.

This presents the question of venturing out. Being nestled between two towns should present opportunities to do something more interesting; see a film, go to a half-decent pub and stop watching paint dry semi-professionally. If you haven’t learned to drive because you’ve not had the time, motivation or vast reserves of cash for petrol duty, you’re relying on the buses that stop after 6pm. If you’re dying to get out you have to wait an hour to get in. If you have all the local villages forced to get out to the major towns without certain hours… you get an inundation of idiots in the same place at the same time.

All of which explains why the self-imposed habitual isolation of the villagers in front of their television or the games consoles is so attractive. Why they rarely venture out and wrap themselves in their own affairs. Why the valley, outside of the inhabitants’ own houses, is dead.

Why I’m grateful that come Monday, I’m getting the hell out.