Bucko's World

T minus 2 days…….

I suspect that someday this week I will come home to a pile of smouldering cinders and a Fireman, soot stained and wide eyed, will tell me the only thing they could save from the detritus was my pussy.  Which would be great, except I don’t own a cat, in fact, I hate cats.  All my Les Pauls are gone, my record collection too, and all that was saved was a neighbour’s cat who was no doubt taking a shit in my garden at the time.

The cause of this conflagration will be immediately obvious to me.  You see, it’s that time of year when suitcases come down, shorts are removed from the darkest recesses of the cupboard and sunglasses get the chance to be used for their original purpose not just as a fashion statement.  Yes folks, it’s holiday time again.

And as is the wont these days, this mean that every single socket in my house is currently (pun intended) occupied in charging some gadget or other up ahead of our trip.  There’s the obvious iPads, iPhones and Kindles taking up the sockets in one room.  In another there are three different sorts of camera batteries being juiced up.  The kitchen is housing the power cell for my headphones, the spare power cell for my headphones and the same for Lisa’s headphones too.  And we haven’t even got to the Bluetooth keyboard for my iPad, Seagate Go-Flex housing all my films, Fiio headphone amp for the noisy plane and Pebble portable power storage battery in case all the above should fail to suck up enough juice for the flight.

Then we have to pack it all!!  And guess what, no two gadgets share the same type of charger.  We need both old and new style chargers for the iPads and iPhones as they are a mixture of legacy and lightning connectors.  Kindle is a law to itself.  Everything else has it’s own custom wall wart with non-standard voltages and connectors to keep you coming back for more every time one of them burns out.  And fuck me the cables!  It’s like the Swedish Chef let loose in a spaghetti factory.  There’s so much shit in fact, it requires a whole suitcase just to hold all the shit that keeps all the shit running.  Our hotel room will look like an explosion in Dixons within minutes of our getting there, lest our precious phones, tablets, cameras etc run out of gas and we end up actually having to talk to each other for a bit!  God forbid.

It’s proving to be mind numbing.  I remember when all I had to take on holiday was a couple of rolls of ASA 100 and some factor 4.  Add a pair of SAS trunks and an “I’m with stupid” T-Shirt and you were good to go.   Now it’s the whole contents of John Lewis Technology department, Factor 50 and body suits for the beach are de rigueur, and woe betide you if you’re seen in £5 Boots sunglasses and not £500 Oakley’s.  I’m writing this as the wife packs the holiday clothes into one small case, and there’s still two tons of “essentials” that are never going to fit in the other case, even if I sit on it.  I ask you.  Perhaps coming home to that smouldering pile would simplify things no end…..