Dick Emery, German Poo Porn and the Bearable Unlikeliness of Being

Ooh he was awful

It’s not quite a mid-life crisis. To date, I’ve had about six of those and having one more some nine weeks shy of being 49 seems a little presumptuous to say the least. It’s more a growing sense of fragile mortality, in part occasioned by the reluctant realization that I probably need glasses for the first time in my life. Only though, as the old gag has it, for reading and seeing things fortunately.

The other factor is a reluctant acceptance that I really can’t and shouldn't drink these days. Having cut back hugely over recent years, apart from on trips to the UK, my tolerance is akin to that of a  curious 15-year-old babysitter who finds the key to the drinks cabinet. One who has skipped his tea. Years of overdoing it, missing meals, eating a what’s what of those foods designed to fuck your gut and almost willfully seeking out stressful situations, with all the gusto of anxiety junkie with a martyrdom complex have made me Reflux Sufferer of the Year for four concurrent terms. There’s no gala dinner to mark this achievement  you just get given two boxes of Nexium and are allowed to have a bit of a lie down.

The other, less predictable, sign of your own impending demiserie is that you suddenly realise everyone you watched on the telly as a kid is dead. From Dick Emery to Arthur Lowe, from Harold Wilson to Doctor Who’s Brigadier. Even the Beatles have suffered 50 per cent fatalities and, worse, still neither of them was Ringo.

Suddenly, the prospect of being unalive one day seems much more than just the rumour it was 20 years ago. It’s now that religion suddenly has a fleeting appeal. “Christ,” you think, “if only it wasn’t such obvious bollocks…”

It even triggers the forlorn belief that if, well, smart people believe in it, then perhaps believe in it, then perhaps you’re missing something. Sadly, despite – or, likely because – having the whole of my education in Catholic institutions of various hue up to the age of 22, my cynicism trumps my forlorn hope in heavenly gradparental reunions and the persistence of consciousness every time. Bugger.

Only my fundamental belief in the huge unlikeliness of anything existing at all ever in the first place gives me a sliver of doubt as to the certainty of absolute oblivion within the next two and a half decades.

By current reckoning, I will miss having my consciousness digitally downloaded to a PC by at least half a century. Then that might not by a bad thing. I expect I’d only end up getting over-written by some 22^nd century German coprophilia porn. Besides who would bother to access you?

They''ll hate you, Butler

Would some still corporeal descendant boot you up and ask how you were today? What would you reply? “Slightly fragmented?” or “I think I’ve got a bit of a virus coming on…” Would anybody really be interested in a digital you reminiscing  about the days when On the Buses was the funniest programme in Britain or hearing about that bird you probably could have shagged had you played it slightly differently? Chances are, being evicted from your hard-disk home by Teutonic poo porn would be no accident.

80 minutes away, my arse...

Anyway, as antidote to being a trifle miz, I’ve decided to have a bit of an adventure. This has seen me temporarily abandon the high rises of Hong Kong and head to Koh Yah Noi, an island some hour and 20 minutes from Phuket by speedboat and one lacking so much as an ATM. Here, for the next 12 days, I will contemplate the nature of mortality and watch the whole of 24 on DVD.

The Mrs has used all her holiday on a three-week viisit to her folks in Hanzhong, so this is a solo trip.

Expect blinding insights, revealing revelations and the answer to the question that preoccupies many of us – was season six of Kiefer Sutherland’s real-time thriller really all that bad?