Uncle Bulgaria

Behind the Times, that's me, just like good old Uncle Bulgaria.

I thought I'd finally caught up with them, back in the late nineties - I had a (borrowed) television, my own (donated) computer and had paid BT nearly a hundred pounds to get a landline pulled in to the flat at Wychanger. I was part of the Real World at last.  Someone had even lent me a television ... pity there was no reception.

Then the clock struck midnight and it all went wrong.  For one thing it was a wind-up alarm clock (my dear little Baby Ben) and it was bloody well slow so I missed the bongs of the incoming Millenium and that seems to have imprinted the waxen seal on the scroll of my life ever since.

The World shot forward into the 21st Century, but somehow I got left behind. In some ways I hadn't even hit the 20th.  I still used a paraffin lamp to light me to the fields at night to check on the horses after a Late Shift in Casualty (at the old Hospital, see below). I still put on More Clothes to keep warm in winter - no central heating - and I still checked the sky for a rough idea of the time of day when Out And About.
Someone told me kindly that my Walkman was an antique. 
Someone else told me that if I wore a watch I might just know what time it was to within two hours of reality.
Someone else again wondered if I'd like a radio in my car. No, it wasn't a Morris Traveller it was a perfectly respectable if ancient Metro.

Well I've moved on since then, so there.  It's 2011 now and I've got a watch.  I never wear it, but I've got one. 

I've had - and now have not, (since I moved house yet again) central heating so I know about that, too. And I wish I didn't cos it's cold here and I now know what I'm missing. Log fires are all very well but they take hours to warm the place.

I've got a mobile phone but it doesn't play ball and keeps telling me I've run out of funds.  (It's lying, I put £10 on the card last year and haven't used it since: when I needed it last Saturday to summon MrVetMan to poor Hoss who had colic again, it bloody wouldn't work and I'll never forgive it).

I've got an Internet Connected computer - back to an old one though, cos the new one is once more at the PutaDoktaMan's shop cos it kept telling me its Input Wasn't Supported.

But all these things are not up to date because as I've stepped forward, so has the World and it's still a long way in front.  I can't keep pace and wonder how everyone else does. I fear it comes of being middle-aged, especially between the ears and below the Empire Line, but some folk a lot older are more technosavvy than I ...

The answer must simply be: I'm just naturally Behind the Times and Out of Step. My drummer beats a different tattoo from the one who marks time for the rest of the world. I blame him. I  reckon he's called Great Uncle Bulgaria.