The last thirty years have delivered some marvellous advances in the world we live in. Indeed for a child of the seventies like me it can all seem a bit baffling. Surfboards now come with three fins and a marvellous restraining device known as a ‘leash’. Mobile phones no longer come with a small suitcase you tow behind you full of batteries. The cassette walkman has mutated into the ultra loseable ipod which can hold many C90’s.
Records, tapes and those new fangled CD’s are all on the way out, replaced by an invisible beast known as an mp3; it’s a bit like electricity, you can’t see it but you know its there. Typewriters now come with a television attached, but you can’t receive telly on it, which seems like a bit of a waste; these are known as computers.
According to those in the know ‘surfing’, is now done on these devices.
Surfing. The noble art. The trinity of man, board and wave. Has lent its name, somehow, to the art of sitting on your fat arse staring at a gogglebox that doesn’t even pick up Desperate Housewives. Which is a shame on so many levels.
One of the many advancements ‘surfing’ on these computers has bought is the advent of the biggest flea market on the planet. It is called eBay and lives in a place known as the t’internet. Which I’m led to believe is in cyberspace. It’s where your money lives and where the stock market happens. It is nowhere, and yet everywhere at the same time. You can’t physically visit cyberspace, even if you’re an astronaut, but you can ‘cruise’ it on the t’internet. This is probably better than wandering around a rainy field in Redruth looking at tables full of stolen goods, dryer any way.
eBay is where you can sell anything to anyone. Anything. Someone tried to sell their virginity, but got told off. Another person tried to sell photos of their kids in the bath and didn’t think anything was wrong with that; they also got a telling off. One chap tried to sell his soul. I think it went for £2.99. Plus postage. To a Mr S. Atan.
For most people it works well. Sell crap, use that money to buy more crap and so on; or if you are a dude in a electronics shop in Hong Kong you sell shiny pretty things to people in the UK for 60% of UK prices and laugh all the way to the bank.
But what about surfin’ for some surfing? Are surfers, a normally technophobic bunch, making use of this gizmo? Indeed they are. Surfboards and surf paraphernalia is abundant. So I thought, in the name of research, I’d give it a go, and put a board up for sale. Of course in this modern age you take pictures with a camera with no film, which makes it easy to get the photos onto the computer thing, you just plug cables together and ‘Hey Presto!’ there it is. Right fancy all this digital malarkey.
The board went up on the site with little stress. I sat back and waited for the riches to pour in. And waited. The three-day online auction is a slow affair. Bugger all happens for two days, twenty-three hours and fifty five minutes. Then it all goes batshit for the last five minutes as everyone goes into a rabid bid frenzy.
The sale price swells like a TV telethon and you chuckle to yourself at the ease of it all. Then comes the spooky bit, this detached, just you and your computer world is shattered as the person what bought the thing communicates with you. They want to meet to pick it up. Human interaction? Eeugh. The whole point of the modern age with its computers, mobiles, broadbands and 3Gs is we have more ways of communicating than ever before but nothing to say and no one to say it to.
So you agree to meet and do the trade, better than giving a board to the savages at the post office, you just know they’d be standing on it in the warehouse doing that awful, genetically programmed ‘look at me I’m waving my arms and arse around and think this is what surfing looks like’ idiot dance.
You then wonder what will they be like? This stranger that’s bought your Chops shaped 6’6”. Will he be an over-reaching kook? Or a good surfer that’s got a bargain? Who knows? All you have is the knowledge he can use a computer, has a company email address, hence a job and write clear English without any typos.
So sub-literate moron they ain’t.
Turns out the person that gets out of the car at the services you agreed to meet at is a stunning young woman in a business suit. Buying the board to move up in the world from the mini-mal that is now holding her surfing back. You give her the board, you fumble your words as you never expected a sparkling, witty, beautiful woman (and her dad for security) to be on the end of the GeekBox. You say you goodbyes and watch her drive off into the sunset…
Who’d a thought? Women surf these days? Now there’s a modern fad I do approve of…
Gwendol and Soapie HellYeah! Two of them modern surfin' ladies...
Surfing. The noble art. The trinity of man, board and wave. Has lent its name, somehow, to the art of sitting on your fat arse staring at a gogglebox that doesn’t even pick up Desperate Housewives. Which is a shame on so many levels.
One of the many advancements ‘surfing’ on these computers has bought is the advent of the biggest flea market on the planet. It is called eBay and lives in a place known as the t’internet. Which I’m led to believe is in cyberspace. It’s where your money lives and where the stock market happens. It is nowhere, and yet everywhere at the same time. You can’t physically visit cyberspace, even if you’re an astronaut, but you can ‘cruise’ it on the t’internet. This is probably better than wandering around a rainy field in Redruth looking at tables full of stolen goods, dryer any way.
eBay is where you can sell anything to anyone. Anything. Someone tried to sell their virginity, but got told off. Another person tried to sell photos of their kids in the bath and didn’t think anything was wrong with that; they also got a telling off. One chap tried to sell his soul. I think it went for £2.99. Plus postage. To a Mr S. Atan.
For most people it works well. Sell crap, use that money to buy more crap and so on; or if you are a dude in a electronics shop in Hong Kong you sell shiny pretty things to people in the UK for 60% of UK prices and laugh all the way to the bank.
But what about surfin’ for some surfing? Are surfers, a normally technophobic bunch, making use of this gizmo? Indeed they are. Surfboards and surf paraphernalia is abundant. So I thought, in the name of research, I’d give it a go, and put a board up for sale. Of course in this modern age you take pictures with a camera with no film, which makes it easy to get the photos onto the computer thing, you just plug cables together and ‘Hey Presto!’ there it is. Right fancy all this digital malarkey.
The board went up on the site with little stress. I sat back and waited for the riches to pour in. And waited. The three-day online auction is a slow affair. Bugger all happens for two days, twenty-three hours and fifty five minutes. Then it all goes batshit for the last five minutes as everyone goes into a rabid bid frenzy.
The sale price swells like a TV telethon and you chuckle to yourself at the ease of it all. Then comes the spooky bit, this detached, just you and your computer world is shattered as the person what bought the thing communicates with you. They want to meet to pick it up. Human interaction? Eeugh. The whole point of the modern age with its computers, mobiles, broadbands and 3Gs is we have more ways of communicating than ever before but nothing to say and no one to say it to.
So you agree to meet and do the trade, better than giving a board to the savages at the post office, you just know they’d be standing on it in the warehouse doing that awful, genetically programmed ‘look at me I’m waving my arms and arse around and think this is what surfing looks like’ idiot dance.
You then wonder what will they be like? This stranger that’s bought your Chops shaped 6’6”. Will he be an over-reaching kook? Or a good surfer that’s got a bargain? Who knows? All you have is the knowledge he can use a computer, has a company email address, hence a job and write clear English without any typos.
So sub-literate moron they ain’t.
Turns out the person that gets out of the car at the services you agreed to meet at is a stunning young woman in a business suit. Buying the board to move up in the world from the mini-mal that is now holding her surfing back. You give her the board, you fumble your words as you never expected a sparkling, witty, beautiful woman (and her dad for security) to be on the end of the GeekBox. You say you goodbyes and watch her drive off into the sunset…
Who’d a thought? Women surf these days? Now there’s a modern fad I do approve of…
Gwendol and Soapie HellYeah! Two of them modern surfin' ladies...
