or at least made me pay more attention….
I never really payed much attention to the news, and it suited me fine.
I like to think that I’m an intelligent person who isn’t entirely ignorant (though in the grand scheme of things you could probably argue that I am), and that my lack of news consumption was more down my lifestyle than a lack of interest in world events.
After all, I usually wake up around six, six-thirty in the morning, dress, eat breakfast and generally stumble around in a haze for half an hour willing my mind to kick start itself and actually function.
Then I’m off to the train station down the road, on the train and into the office usually, providing everything runs as it should, within twenty minutes of locking my front door.
Once in work, I sit at my desk writing all day and spend twenty minutes or so on the train home. After that, there follows a blissful few hours between me opening my front door and my girlfriend walking through it in which I spend my time working on my various and sundry ’side projects’ .
Once I’m done with that, I don’t mind admitting it, my mind is knackered and wants a break. So usually I slob out on the sofa with my pants undone and my gut exposed, cuddling my girlfriend and watching some silly lighthearted comedy show on TV.
Like I say, I’m not ashamed to admit that. It doesn’t make me a bad, or rather stupid person, it just means that I spend most of my day working and when I do get home, I’m rightly pooped and want a break and it suits me just fine.
Or at least it did, until one day last week, when something happened.
That something was Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d known for some considerable time that Tony Blair would eventually be leaving Number Ten, and also that Big Ears Brown had been tipped to take over for him, but when the deed was actually done, it pretty much passed me by without a trace.
I shit you not. The person in charge of the country where I live changed, probably whilst I was eating my lunch and reading up on all kinds of bollocks on Wikipedia, and I had no idea that it had happened!
I eventually found out later that night, but it was simply by chance. How? I went to check my e-mail on mail.com, and it was mentioned, almost as an after thought of sorts, in their little news box.
This is totally unacceptable. That I can go a full day without realising the Prime Minister was a different person is just wrong on so many levels. Which is why, as a sort of New Half-Year’s resolution, I’m making sure that I check up on the news at least once a day.
After all, it doesn’t log on to BBC News or something similiar and just read up on what’s going on, and what might happen if I don’t? Elvis and Jesus win Pop Idol and the first I hear of it is when they make a cameo on Corination Street?
We can’t have that now, can we?
