The Thoughts of Captain Autumn

A couple of years ago eBay, in one of their characteristically arbitrary and peremptory decisions, deleted my seller account. (The details behind it are too dull to go into, but it was all Madonna’s fault.) In order to bypass this unjust ban I was forced to register on eBay under my mother’s name, and since that time she has, through me, established a healthy reputation with 100% feedback without ever actually visiting the site.

Whilst communicating with people as my mother has occasionally been slightly psychologically unsettling, it has also been illuminating to see the different way buyers will approach a seller they believe to be female. There is a level of trust and goodwill that I never got when I was simple old male me. And I in kind have responded in a more amenable, less cynical manner. In a small way, it’s been like my very own ‘Tootsie’. In a purely electronic sense, naturally. ‘Tootsie’, not ‘Psycho’.

Recently this completely harmless piece of subterfuge reached bizarre new levels in a negotiation over an item I was selling. Shortly after I listed it for sale, a prospective buyer contacted me – my Mum – hoping to buy it directly from me/her to bypass the auction process. As she didn’t think the offer was high enough she declined. The following day the interested party came back with a higher bid. My mother is not a hard-nosed auction type and (now clearly fully committed to my ‘method’ performance) she was uncomfortable simply refusing again. Instead, she said she would check with her husband and see what he thought. Being of stronger resolve regarding matters fiscal he said to decline – for a man who’s been dead over 11 years he certainly drives a hard bargain. But he knew what he was doing because the outcome of my machiavellian fictitious dialogue between my parents was an offer that was higher still. Marvellous.

At this point though it took a turn for the slightly surreal as the buyer came to my house to collect the item. Not wishing at this advanced stage to reveal the deception to which he’d been party – I didn’t think he’d appreciate it, nor was I convinced he’d want to conclude a deal with a seller revealed as a Freudian schizophrenic – it made sense to alert my wife that should the situation arise, she was to pretend to be my mother. (I mean, to go by my mother’s name, not to actually be my mother. I may look young for 38 but I doubt I could pass for her son.) By extension therefore, I completed this transaction in the guise of my late father.

Greek tragedies had nothing on my attempts to make ends meet.

I saw a hearse with a personalised number plate yesterday - a good one as well, JO32. I always thought the point of personalised number plates was a) to accentuate the inherent impressiveness of your vehicle, b) to illustrate the scale of your disposable income and c) to pull. With that in mind, I'm not sure that a hearse is really the best place to display such an item.

In the first place, I don't recall anyone ever being impressed by a hearse. That's not really what they're about. Not once have I seen a funeral cortege pass by and heard teenage boys exclaim "Look at the curves on that". Nor do I recall 'Top Gear' road-testing them (never mind the mileage, give me the figures for 0 to 20). And when it comes to being spacious and practical, I'm sure one hearse is pretty much the same as the next. Functional, you'd call them. Room for one in the back.

Using your hearse for braggadocio is also debatable. I suppose it might serve as a form of advertising - maybe Jo has a whole fleet of hearses, instantly identifiable by their registration number. "Check out the plate - you know when it's Jo". "Time to go? Go with Jo." Even so, it's hard to imagine anybody requesting a specific undertaker on their deathbed. "I came as soon as I heard you wanted me father - you have something to tell me before you depart this mortal coil...?" "Son, my son... Make sure it's JO27."

As far as pulling goes, it hardly seems appropriate. What next, furry dice hanging off the mirror? One of those coloured strips across the top of the windscreen with "Jo & Corpse" written on it? On the other hand, maybe there's a market out there for the hearse which doubles as a limo. I can see that your Marilyn Manson couple might like the idea of a "His'n'Hearse" evening, as they head out for an evening of metal and mayhem.

Note to self: stop thinking so hard about number plates.

My sympathies are extended this morning to the fans of Altrincham Town, whose 18 point penalty for fielding an ineligible player has caused them to be relegated from the Conference. As asinine, by-the-book administrative decisions go, this has to stand as one of the more exemplary. Altrincham selected one player who did not have international clearance and played him in 13 matches, and for this they have lost all 18 points accrued during those games. Without meaning any disrespect to James Robinson, unless he has Ronaldinhesque abilities to turn a game it's hard to see how he can single-handedly be held accountable for all points earned in matches in which he plays. But so it has been judged, and down they go. This, of course, brings with it the double tragedy that Altrincham fans will now be missing out on the glamour fixture against Oxford Utd which they'd all been craving. Is there no end to the torment?

Elton John is playing at Oxford's Kassam Stadium in a few weeks. I'll leave you to make up your own punchlines.

My apologies to my largely female and, er, mature readership for writing once again about football. Look at it this way, it could be another rant about mobile phones. And if I start trying to write what I think will appeal to people, well, that way lies madness.

I am giving very serious consideration to attending Richard Herring's gig in Oxford this evening, if for no other reason than to berate him for getting me hooked on Consecutive Number Plate Spotting. However, I notice from his website that there is an offer of a free beer with every ticket. Since I don't drink beer, or indeed alcohol of any description, I'm wondering whether this is likely to be more liberally interpreted as a free drink, thereby entitling me to a Coke; or whether it is strictly beer or nothing. Or indeed, whether the arrangement is so rigid - not so much an offer as a condition - that I will be forced to take my free beer with my ticket whether I want it or not. Given that I will be on my own I will therefore be constrained to drink said beer myself and, after 17 years without a drink, will collapse in a degenerate heap inside about 20 minutes. This is not the evening I have in mind for myself.

Also, after steering clear of Herring's Warming Up section on his website for the last couple of months because I knew it would make me look at this weblog and wonder what I think I'm doing pretending I can write, I have just read three or four of his entries and find myself wondering what I think I'm doing pretending I can write. Funny sod.

I had this on a quiz machine yesterday – "Which TV presenter had a famous encounter with a high-class prostitute in 2002?" Begs a question, doesn't it? Namely, quite how high-class can a prostitute be?

"Hey sonny, fancy a good time?"

"Er... maybe... how much for a quickie?"

"Fifty quid and circle seats for La Boheme."

Anyway, I digress before I've even started. It occurred to me the other day how hard it must be for English teachers these days to teach '1984'. "Right kids, this is a classic of modern English literature, about a man who lives in a nightmare world where his every waking move is followed on camera by Big Brother." "Sir, does he end up in Heat magazine giving his diet tips?" All of which is by way of bemoaning the return to our screens of what is – and this may be my age, or my sex, or the last vestiges of my intellect talking - Television For Morons.

I'll accept, at a push, that you don't actually have to be a moron to watch 'Big Brother'. But watching it is a knowing act of moronhood of which any guilty non-morons should be ashamed. The television companies get regularly slated for dumbing down, but it's not their fault when people willingly accept this celebration of the mediocre, the banal and the downright dumb. I want people on my TV who can actually do stuff. I want famous people to be capable of something, anything, to which it's worth aspiring. This parade of freaks just says that enough self-abasement and humiliation and you too can be famous for just being famous.

What I really hate about 'Big Brother' is that it takes popular culture down to the lowest common denominator. To be dismissive of it is to invite accusations of snobbery and pseudo-intellectualism, but why should it be that populist programming has to be aimed at the level of a retarded teenager? It never used to be. I don't care how unfashionable it is, Lord Reith had it right.

The burdens of raising children are numerous and onerous (after Numerus and Onerus, twin Roman gods of last-minute tax returns). You have to feed them, clothe them, instil in them an ethical and moral framework - there are so many crucial elements to be addressed. But amongst these, there is one area of responsibility that stands at the forefront of my consciousness.

Make sure they like good music.

I'm sure there are other parents out there who consider this a fairly minor concern, but it's of utmost importance to me. Nothing will bring shame and ignominy on the family name quicker than my children becoming devotees of inferior, simplistic pap. I can picture it now. "Dad, I've got something to tell you." "Don't be nervous son - whatever it is, I'll always love you." "Dad, I... I... I like Keane." The tears will flow, I can tell you.

The significance of this came home to me when I listened to a Level 42 CD sent to me by a generous benefactor yesterday. Level 42 were the first band I truly loved, and to this day their first album can send me to a blissful, ethereal place I inhabited before the rigours of growing up had turned me into the embittered soul I am today. Even by the time I was 16 I'd realised that they were half the band I thought they were, but it didn't matter, because in the same way as your football team grabs you and stays with you until you die, so it is with that first album which possesses your every waking moment. I'll mount rigorous intellectual defences of other albums from my youth ('Pelican West' springs to mind as one which often elicits mirth), but there's no point in me trying to justify the first Level 42 album because it's hardwired into my emotional core. It's as much a part of me as fussy eating and needlessly elaborate vocabulary. I can't possibly be objective about it - it would be like trying to say definitively how beautiful my daughter is. (More beautiful than yours, since you ask, but that's another matter.)

My point being that looking at it from this vantage point, I might choose to have another album to occupy this place in my life. One of the Stevie Wonder or Steely Dan ones which followed a year or two later, perhaps. But no, I have 'Level 42' and that is my lot. And it is my duty as a parent to make sure my own children enter adulthood with an album equipped to serve them in later life as well as 'Level 42' has served me.

In other news, another friend joins us today in this curious cranny of cyberland. I seem to have cornered the market in women of a certain age (actually according to her profile this one seems to be something over 500, but still.) Maybe I should start writing stuff to appeal more to a youth market. Er, "bluetooth".

I was looking at David Newton's website earlier (www.davidnewton.net for those of you with a taste for sublime jazz piano), and an anecdote he recalled about being asked to alter his choice of material took me back to a similar incident in my own distant youth. I'd been to see a film at the Phoenix, uncharacteristically with a friend, and on leaving the cinema we stopped for a drink just down the street at Freud's. At that time Freud's had a grand piano, and given that it was late and there were few people in I asked whether they'd mind if I played for a while, and they obliged. So I merrily tinkled away for ten or fifteen minutes, until one of the bar staff approached me. "We're fine with you playing" she said, "but, could you play something with a bit more... momentum?" It was a particularly odd request, since the tune she'd interrupted was my hell-for-leather, abandon-subtlety-all-ye-who-listen-here take on 'I Got Rhythm', and left both me and my friend Jon rather bemused. "How much more momentum do they want?" I asked him. "Tell you what" he replied, "you play it and I'll push it".

In another throwback to a former life, I see the Daily Mail is advertising its giveaway of Linguaphone CDs which will have you speaking Spanish in a week. Nice to know that something that took me the best part of ten years is apparently achievable by Britain's Thatcherite, Diana-obsessed community in roughly 0.02% of that time. Don't bother anyway, that's my advice. English is only going to get stronger and stronger. I can't remember the last time I spoke Spanish to someone who didn't answer me in English.

Finally, what's going on with the statistics on this weblog? Occasionally I take a glance at them and am vaguely comforted that I always have between 1 and 4 visitors a day, managing about half a dozen page views between them. That is, until yesterday, when 16 visitors notched up 46. Curious enough, but today it's got even stranger - 8 people, 238 views. 238?! That's about 30 each. There aren't even 30 different pages to look at. I have a disturbing image of some obsessive reading and re-reading the same article in a 'Shining' way. Alternatively, it could be a lawyer from Mars, Coke or Pepsi fine-toothcombing the entries to put the finishing touches to their lawsuit. Well, do your worst, suits.

Actually, don't.

The World Cup overkill has begun in earnest, and with still a month to go. At this rate even those of us who like football are going to be sick of the damn thing before it arrives, so goodness knows how all those people who don't like it in the first place must feel. (Probably like I do every time I go into the kitchen at work and see a copy of Heat magazine, blaring its tedious insights into the tiny minds of people famous only for being featured in Heat magazine. But I digress.)

Prior to today, topping my list of loathsome appropriations of the event was MasterCard with their "priceless" advert. (Why do ruthless corporations insist on pretending they have a heart? We're not stupid, we know you're only in it for the money!) But Mastercard have been usurped for the time being by Mars, with their Believe bar. This is one of those 'limited edition' comestibles, rather like I recall the apple and blackcurrant J2O being until it sold a shedload and suddenly became a fully-fledged member of the gang (that's the last time I bulk buy a fruit-based drink to flood the black market after its withdrawal). Anyway, I'd already gone off Mars since they changed their Kingsize bar into two mini ones. I understand the health rationale behind this - supposedly all the lardy folk who would previously have scoffed a Kingsize on their own will now feel compelled to give one half to a friend - but I hate the denial of another solitary pleasure. Society is hell bent on telling us that unless we are part of a couple we are not truly gratified, and I hate that. (I realise this is slightly ironic from the country's most married man, but prior to this weird other man's life into which I stumbled at 26 I was also the country's most single man.) There is nothing wrong with wanting to be on your own. There is nothing wrong with going to the cinema on your own, going to gigs on your own, eating in a restaurant on your own. And, people of Mars (that's the company you understand, as opposed to the planet) there is nothing wrong with eating a disproportionately large item of confectionery on your own! Get out of the social engineering business and back into the caramel and nougat one!

It is possible I am reading too much into Mars' decision to split their Kingsize bar into two. But I think not.

Anyway, the Mars Believe bar. This is a completely spurious tie-in to the World Cup. It even has its own website, I'm astonished to discover - www.marsbelieve.com. I can't believe I'm actually promoting it here - now it will get as many as two hits it wouldn't have otherwise. Anyway, according to the display in Somerfield (purveyors of sub-standard biscuits), for every Believe bar sold Mars will donate some piddling percentage to a local hospice. Not content with latching on to the World Cup to dry and draw in gullible saps who are swayed by anything bearing the cross of St George, they turn the screw with the charity guilt-trip!

If it weren't my absolute favourite bar of chocolate I'd be giving it up altogether.

In other Multinational Provisions Promotions news, long-time readers might get a chuckle out of the fact that Oxford United got a runner-up award in the Coca Cola Win A Player competition. £50,000 no less - in the Conference that should be good for three or four players. Good old Coke. They really care about grass roots football. Not like those Mars "it's internationals or nothing" posers.

Loath as I've been to discuss football in any great detail (aware as I am that it's a topic that alienates a certain type of person very easily - a reaction I understand), the sheer euphoria of Middlesbrough's second extraordinary comeback in as many weeks, and its juxtaposition with my own Oxford's imminent disappearance from the Football League, have pushed me to broach the subject.

The psychology of sports fanaticism is fascinating to me. I am thoroughly unqualified to make the following statement, but I like to think that those of us who enjoy watching sport do so because it allows us to exercise all our most basic, raw emotions - joy, despair, competitiveness, tribalism - with a suppressed knowledge that when the dust has settled, none of it really matters. Just as we surrender ourselves to the cinematic experience, allowing our intellectual recognition of the illusion to recede and our emotional engagement to come to the fore, so sport takes us to a slightly surreal place where everything feels as if it matters intensely, while our subconscious retains the safety net of reality for later. We will give our teams our passion, our tears, our money, and they in turn will take us on the proverbial rollercoaster and we will come out the other end unscathed.

But, my own team seem to have lost the script. Because this actually hurts. I never thought it would get this bad. Even when things seemed particularly hopeless there was a warmth in the back of my mind saying there was a limit to how far it could go. But now there's a sense of empty desolation regarding what is about to befall us, and that's not part of the deal I made.

I write this in the knowledge that to people who don't feel this way, it seems preposterous. More than that, I know that it IS preposterous. But it doesn't feel like it is, and that's my point.