I’m nostalgic for a car wash.

Of all the things to drag me free from the fug of a self-destructive whingegasm, a car wash is at once the most and least surprising.

When I was even littler than I am now, I used to drag my mother across the street, so I could hold her hand whilst we watched the mechanical behemoth. Its brushes span wildly, chucking water into the air, and spraying my beaming little face. It was the best thing in the world, with its giant blue foam rotary brushes and fading red metal frame.

And with each passing summer, new wonders were bolted to it; the wheel scrubbers, the wax hoses, and the air dryer that came down and miraculously followed the shape of the car trapped within.

But then I got a little older, and the wonder faded. I even began to resent it somewhat, especially if it sprayed me on my chocolate run to the shop.

It’s never as fun from the inside

A few years ago, I wandered past the car wash and saw a boy. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t quite a teenager – maybe about eleven or twelve. But he was stood by the car wash, alone, grinning wildly as it swished and swooshed around a nondescript Ford. And each and every time he was sprayed with the fine cloud of water, he bounced up and down, and clapped his hands with a loud laugh.

I kept seeing him there for the next few days, and his excitement and joy always made me grin.

That’s when a group of three boys, who couldn’t have been much older than him, maybe just a year, wandered by and saw him too. They jeered at him. It was upsetting to realise that I saw more of myself in their cynical sneering, than in his giddy wonderment. That feeling was only made worse as I watched his head drop in embarrassment, and his shoulders slump with a realisation that perhaps he was a little too old to be enjoying himself like this.

The surly teens slouched away, dragging his final throes of childhood with them.

It was horrible.

And then the car wash drenched him once more.

It would have been a fitting metaphor.

Except that the water shook him from his own fug, and once again he bounced and clapped and giggled.

The teens turned back and sneered.

He ignored them.

He stood and played there every day for the rest of the summer.

Good for him.

I’m getting quite militant in my anti-alcohol stance, and it’s not helped by the time of the year. Perfectly nice get-togethers are going to be plagued with Sloshologues and Slurrysations.

You know the thing; a half-baked ill-informed observation is bandied about by someone who can barely talk in a coherent manner, while people of equal disequilibrium respond without thought.

So far, so boring.

But Pissedmitribes don’t end there. With all three facts on the subject ejaculated from the frothed mouths of be-whiskied dicks, the original beered-ballbag makes his original observation again, this time slightly more vociferously, as if the extra volume lends added credence.

This is usually my cue to go home; but that’s not always possible.

Shanta

So instead, the drunkomoans drone on, reiterating each of their one salient points with increasingly less articulacy, but more fervent vigour. It’s usually at this point I’m accosted by a clamping embrace, unable to make an escape from the alcoholic verbiage, trapped under the weight of a vodka-breathed man twat.

My sarcastic retorts to observations that immigrants are eating our children go unheard in the melee of the shittergasms.

Anyway, Christmas would be so much nicer if Santa wasn’t an alcoholic.

I shaid, Crishmuss wld be sho mush nicsher if …

I’m pretty sure someone just phoned me by accident.

My mobile is plugged into the wall, and cannot be moved more than a metre from where it sits, thus negating its entire purpose. This, combined with the fact that the electronic noises that emanate from it drive my eyeballs insane, and I have to have them all switched off, means that I was unaware that it rang.

It just sat there, flashing gently like an overly polite pelican crossing, mumbling something to me about there being a missed call and a voicemail message. Without wishing to anthropomorphise a piece of circuitry, this is exactly what I would be like were I a Nokia 5800 whose owner was a dribbling twat. And all my well-mannered understatement would be for nothing when I was finally noticed and the owner cursed me for not doing my job.

Yup, I’d hate to be my mobile phone, not least because I’d have to sit alone in dusty pockets and dangle far too close to my own balls.

Having tutted passive-aggressively at my Finnish ear block, I then tugged out the charger and it decided enough was enough and retorted with an equally passive-aggressive heckle.

“Now unplug the charger from the wall. It wastes electricity,” it huffed snootily.

Before long my kettle will be scoffing, “there’s too much water inside me you cock munch,” and lights will just turn themselves off whenever they want, leaving me to type in the dark, lit only from a monitor that is moaning about how I don’t look at it enough. “You’re more interested in that keyboard than me,” it will pout, then slip into a sulky hibernation.

So anyway, I called my voicemail, and Julia Sawalha* reminded me how to navigate my way around, but tonight I detected a slight air of annoyance in her voice, irked that she had to tell me all this AGAIN.

Finally, having traversed the disapproving tone of all my technology, I heard the message, and I suspect the person had meant to phone someone else instead.

I don’t mind real people dismissing me, but I’m starting to resent that my phone, who I pay 30 odd quid a month to keep me company, is now starting to despise my existence. Maybe it doesn’t like me checking Twitter when I’m in the toilet.

*After some research, it turns out it’s Ruth Gibson, not Saffy.

I’ve been doing something all day that I realised my Dad would never do. I keep darting looks at my phone, convinced that I can hear it vibrating. He would also never stop in the middle of a supermarket and dive into his pocket wondering if his phone was buzzing. For some reason he’s never paranoid about having his keys either.

It got me wondering about all the little things I do in my life that my Dad would never find himself doing:

Staring at the back of a DVD in a certain light checking for scratches.

Seeing a pile of discarded coins and feeling compelled to stack them in denominations.

Wondering if he should combine all his email accounts into a single GMail.

Staring at a monitor trying to think of an interesting Tweet.

Weighing up whether Twat Wagon is an appropriate term in a script for Radio 4.

Swearing at Mini Coopers.

Using a toothbrush to clean his Playstation controller.

Contemplating a walk to the shops to buy a Wispa Gold.

Going up the stairs on all fours pretending to be a tiger.

Watching Rocky Balboa.

Getting paranoid that Facebook is still showing him ads for Russian brides.

Berating people who use headsets in Call of Duty Team Deathmatches.

Arguing with his spell checker.

Swearing at people who use exclamation marks as full stops.

Wondering if he would like to hug William Shatner.

Not checking the oil level in the car for months.

Pretending a marker pen is a Cuban cigar and imagining he is David Letterman.

Writing pointless missives on the internet.