Faking It

The clocks have gone forward, it’s time for spring cleaning – and I know just where to start: your social feed.

Nevermind metaphors about virtual reality, Kid A declared Samsung’s Gear VR to be “a bit bobbins”.

Our friend A was visiting us from the UK a few weeks ago. I couldn’t have imagined the path the conversation would take when I casually asked her if she had given anything up for Lent.

The answer was yes; but instead of chocolate, or gin, or swearing, she was forsaking Facebook instead.

Specifically, she’d had enough of endless posts from people of their stage-managed, genetically modified, Photoshopped lives (I may be paraphrasing, but you get the gist.)

And you know what? I think she’s onto something.

Lying Cars

In which October 2015 finally arrives, sans flying cars

Yeah, right, like that’ll happen

“Roads?” spluttered the notorious time travelling liar Dr Emmett Brown. “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

Well, I’ve got news for you, Dr Brown, if that is even your real name. ‘Where we’re going’ turns out to have been October 2015 – and 30 years after you first sold me that thrilling vision of the future, it’s finally here.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed with the arrival of a new month.

Not only are our cars not flying yet, we’re still so beholden to the ancient formula of tyres-on-ground + internal combustion engine that manufacturers have been lying about their efficiency to sell more of them. (“Staff acted criminally,” reveals VW board member, and 2015’s nominative determinism champion, Olaf Lies.)

Basically, it’s about the worst possible time to buy a car, ever. Enter Family Little City, looking to buy two.