What You Would Have Won

The Fourth of September Two Thousand and Fourteen. Thursday.

Hallo. I know that you've been feeling tired. I bring you love and deeper understanding.

Hi Gang. So many things to tell you. I really should write stuff down. But instead I'll let them percolate inside my noggin and maybe they'll find their own way out over the years.

I've just watched that Kate Bush documentary that was on BBC4 a bit ago. I'm not a big fan, but I had a copy of The Whole Story, listened to my sister's copy of Hounds of Love regularly and caught up a little bit last year with Director's Cut. Consequently, I didn't make much of an effort when the tickets for Before the Dawn, her current live concerts were released (not that I would have had much of a chance considering how quickly they sold out). I have always had issues with pursuing things that might give me pleasure, something that seems to have become more acute in later years.

Then I heard that she performed The Ninth Wave, the haunting, basically all-round fabulous b-side (Hah! b-side!) of Hounds of Love, in its entirety and my constantly clicking regret counter spun round a few more times.

I haven't written a blog for a while now, so I turned to my colleague, top photographer and Boost bar afficianado, Jeves, to suggest a possible topic to get the ball rolling. This he did, quide liderally by suggesting I give my thoughts on Scarborough Athletic's eight-goal (plus pens) FA Cup thriller vs North Shields last night. However, he quickly revised that choice when he realised I wouldn't treat the beautiful game with the respect it deserves and would instead harp on about the Tyne and Wear Metro station at North Shields (here it is, by the way).

It's due to be refurbished, apparently, and have ticket barriers installed (it's a fare-dodging hotspot, you'll be intersted to know). I think he was also concerned that I might just go on about the Shields Ferry that takes you across the Tyne to South Shields instead of giving in-depth analysis of a match that saw both sides reduced to nine men and five penalties awarded (four successful, one missed) even before the deciding shoot-out took place. So he suggested I should talk about game shows instead.

Which made me think of Bullseye's famous, often-mocked, climactic tease where losing contestants were shown what prize they would have won if they'd been just a bit better with the arrows. Which, naturally, led me to be thankful that the technology doesn't yet exist to enable us to look into all those parallel worlds where we could see all the results of all the better decisions we didn't make. Bowen cruelly pointing out the version of myself that got off its arse and got Kate Bush tickets. Or was kinder, or cleverer, or both. And yet, as diffuse as my own moral code is, the central tenets of fairness and justice that I observe are inspired by game shows. When William G Stewart used to allow an answer even if it was given just after the buzzer went I thought 'it's important to have rules, and even more important to know when to ignore them'. And when Leslie Crowther let one of the tenants of Contestant's Row have the prize despite guessing wrong because the thing dropped down to reveal the price as if they'd won even though they hadn't I knew that doing right is better than being right.

And hey! Look! I was talking about Kate Bush and game shows three years ago! That's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it?

More soonliest.