TOM JACKSON
We got playing that old classic at work the
other day: “What would you do if you had a
bit more money?” Not a massive amount more
money, not “buy an island in the Caribbean”
more money, just enough to afford a treat that
you can’t quite justify at present income levels.
The game arose because, at home for
Christmas in Derbyshire with her parents, one
of our number had said to her mum how great
it’d be to have someone deliver her all the
papers in bed. (Much as we’re all onlinely and
new media and digi-tastic here on my desk,
we like the old-school feel of newsprint too.)
Paperboys and girls are a thing of the past
in much of the capital. I guess parental fear,
traffic, newsagent density, crappy wages and
now the internet have done for that one-time
rite-of-passage staple of adolescent slave labour.
My colleague’s mum replied that she’d
like a meal-planner. A modest and yet noble
ambition, I thought, although I’m not entirely
sure what a meal-planner is or does. My
brother-in-law Colin has a little blackboard in
the kitchen that says things like, “Wednesday:
lamb tagine”, which looks terribly grown-up.
Mind you, he’s also got a long-term to-do list
that says, “Tell Covid to f*** off”, so maybe he’s
not that mature after all. Under “Tell Covid
to f*** off” it says, “Get an onion”. Excellent
attention to both the big strategic picture and
the small tactical details, I thought.
Other people chipped in with massages
and spas and weekly haircuts to maintain that
tonsorial sweet spot when the length is bang
on. Somebody else wanted a chef, which
I thought was a bit cheeky. Mind you, I made
a bid for a manservant – batman, major domo,
valet, secretary, call it what you will – which
I suppose was getting uppity as well.
Whenever, in novels, films and military
histories, I come across the concept of the
“batman” I always think how convenient
having one must have been. I don’t mean
having a superhero keen on optically challenged
flying mammals – I mean having an orderly,
as in the interwar British Army. But instead of
pressing my No 1 uniform and brushing down
my polo pony, he’d get my kit ready for the gym
and make sure the Oyster card was topped up.
Maybe a bit of light chauffeuring,
gardening, handyman repairs, dishwashing
loading, cooking once or twice a week,
bill-paying... Stuff I don’t do much of at the
moment but which would be a great help to
my wife. She always says we can’t afford to
pay for other people to do all that stuff andI reluctantly have to concur, which is the
whole basis for fantasising about having more
cash. Another 30 grand a year would do it. Or- Or maybe 100 so we could bank a chunk,
seeing as in the not so distant future we’re
going to have to stop loading debt onto the
mortgage and actually pay it off.
After the discussion at work, I went home
and got involved in a similar load of nonsense
about superpowers. For most people, this
debate comes down to flying versus invisibility,
although I’ve noticed in recent years invisibility
is dropping in popularity, no doubt due to
its association with acts of voyeurism newly
unacceptable under changed cultural mores.
My son Sam chose fire-starting, or
pyrokinesis, but then he’s always been a
potential arsonist. He went through an
alarming phase of melting plastic toys with
matches when he was about eight.
Rachel argued for teleportation, which is a
good shout, although fantastically complicated
and dangerous I would have thought, getting
all those molecules to reassemble instantly in
precisely the same configuration. She eventually
accepted my preference for trans-temporal
travel on the basis that it covers teleportation
anyway, while allowing for movement across
time as well as space. Time travel is even more
complex to master, I imagine... But that’s why
it’s called a superpower.
Obviously, I’d be tempted to go back to
kill Hitler, and yet I find myself persuaded
by Ricky Gervais’ argument against doing so.
Gervais reckons it would be better to arrange
Adolf’s successful admission to the Academy
of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1907 instead. Also, as
Doc Brown repeatedly warns so passionately
in Back to the Future (and I believe the other
Doctor, Who, mentions it as well) you’ve got to
be ultra-careful about messing with rips in the
space-time continuum.
I think I’d content myself with finding
out once and for all what happened to
the mid-Seventies to mid-Eighties singles
collection I stupidly left in storage at my mum
and dad’s house when I left for university, and
never saw again.
I categorically did not sign off on selling
or binning them, yet when I scoured the loft
before we sold the house, they had vanished.
Gone. Disparu-ed. It might seem a trivial use
of such a breathtaking scientific breakthrough,
but it matters to me. n
[email protected]‘What would I do
if I had a bit more
money? Get a valet
to sort my gym kit’
Beta male
Robert Crampton
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