Pass me the quill, wind up the gramaphone and get out the instamatic
Disaster has struck the Martin Family household. The mother board on the family PC has gone into meltdown and we faced the prospect of losing all the photos from Eve’s birth onwards, all our documents and all our downloaded music. It’s too horrible to even contemplate, so for a couple of days whilst the computer was in intensive care at Northern Peripherals we were in a bit of denial of what this actually could mean. Every holiday, every Christmas, my kids growing up, every one of John’s bizarre hair/facial hair phases- four years of your life sucked into the vortex that is the PC blackhole.
Incidentally, this is also the blackhole populated with that unsaved dissertation you spent hours writing for your finals, the latest copy of the edit you did with that really fiddly bit that took bloody ages that you forgot to save, the e-tickets you downloaded for your flights that have gone awol and you can’t get onboard without. Oh, and it’s also where all the biros and hairbands end up. Fact. “It’ll be fine, these things can always be recovered,” we fooled ourselves into believing. To an extent, we were right. These things could be recovered, but at a cost of over £200 for man hours involving a bloke doing god knows what to our flux capacitor , transducer, transponder, and megadrive. I don’t pretend to understand. I’m more of the run around and panic type of person when technology goes wrong.
When people talk to me of these things, I look like I’m listening but really I’m playing a favourite movie in my head or I go into screensaver mode with tropical fish going round and round in my head. The technicians in college have already cottoned onto this and have been known to roll their eyes in anticipation as I approach. But as I’m annoyingly fond of saying “I’m a producer, I don’t need to know what buttons do, I have boys to do that for me”, or simply “Can you make porn come on my telly?”
But don’t get me wrong, I like using technology. It’s just when it goes wrong that I get panicky and confused like a spooked horse. Maybe some whispering will do the trick, “Shhh! Shhh! It’s ok girl,calm down and switch it on and off again. Have you tried plugging it in? Easy now girl, it’s aaaaalllll going to be ok, let’s just see if we can reboot. Easy! Easy! Whoa there!”. That kind of thing.Anyway, the panic is sort of over; our photos have been recovered and we can relax. Of all the things to lose these would be the worst so they are now safely backed up. But even though I am eternally grateful to the Megadeath T-shirt wearing Poindexter that saved our family memories, I am a bit pissed off that I’ve lost all my music. Luckily, I have about 200 tracks saved on other media, like phones, laptops, CDs etc and I am currently ripping them back into my PC (see, I said “Rip”, I do know some stuff!). Only problem is that Bastard Itunes and Goddamn Windows Media Player don’t recognise any of the track artists and titles so I’m having to play a tedious version of Tom O’Connor’s “Name that Tune” to get them all catalogued again. It’s like a music version of Trivial Pursuit that will never end. If only I lived with Paul Gambaccini. Actually, on second thoughts, no, I think I’ll just do it myself.
So, if you’re round my house, don’t be surprised if I involve you in the music quiz too. Like there’s this one track that goes, “Da Da nanana nana nan naaa!” and for the life of me I can’t remember what it is. C’mon you know the one, it goes “Da Da nanana nana nan naaa!” for god-sake. It’s by that guy that used to be in that other band with whatsis name…..grrr……
