Ginger's Forum
Welcome back to Ginger's Forum!
Okay I will dip my toe in the water first with this story from my archives. As you will see this missive was written some time back because both Space Invaders and Pokemon are pretty low-tech and very old hat technology by todays standards.
I was present at the birth of Liverpool's microchip revolution. Actually, I was in the Masonic pub in Berry Street at the time, having a pint. I used to go there because I was guaranteed a great game of Pool as the majority of the players were Liverpool born Afro-Caribbean’s and they were all hot shots. There was always a line waiting to play and so the guys tried every shot in the book to stay at the table because to lose meant waiting hours for another chance.
My game improved enormously and I even learned how to counter the braggadocio of my competitors who confidently sashayed around the table like Paul Newman in “The Hustler”. Whenever it looked like I was about to lose I would ostentatiously lay down my cue and affect deep resignation. The effect was often dramatic as my puzzled opponent, faced with my abject surrender and therefore his certain victory, would often muff the final shot. That was my cue (pardon the pun) to step up to the green baize and deliver the coup de grace.
One evening I went to the pub with expectations of the usual Friday night thriller and instead found myself watching in bemusement as my erstwhile opponents were impatiently waiting in line for a shot at the latest addition to the place, Space Invaders. Well, they had certainly invaded my space because I couldn't find a single opponent all evening. The one-time Pool wizards were all playing Space Invaders and were bringing to bear all of their skills as they attacked the alien craft with a vengeance.
For me it was a new and expensive learning curve as I lost game after game to the pixelated battle cruisers. The speed of the Galactic conquest was staggering. One day Pool was king, the next it was just a poor pretender.
Now nobody would ever describe Pool as a sport, any more than they would call knitting erotic, but at least the players got a bit of exercise stomping around the table. Computer games heralded the day when overweight young men would no longer be isolated or ridiculed by their soccer playing peers. Instead, couch potatoes, by sheer weight of numbers, would become main-stream. I know whole crops of them, most of them so young that they can only be called new or early potatoes.
It isn't just children who are caught up in the microchip maelstrom. In my own household the only person not in thrall of the silicon revolutionaries is my wife. Ostensibly that is, because she needs her calculator to add up and balance her household accounts, the mobile phone, to which she is at times welded, and last but not least, the digital television.
I myself spend so much time on my PC that my relative’s kids have drawn a most unflattering cartoon depicting me as simply a rear view of a head and a monitor. I say unflattering because it is reminiscent of the view I get when the barber insists on holding up his mirror to present me with an unsolicited view of my balding crown. It doesn't matter how much I tip him he still forces me to confront the unpalatable truth;, that I will never be offered the job of being a Roger Daltrey look-alike. Before you suggest Elton John, I can't play the piano.
At this very moment my youngest child-minding charge is engrossed in his Gameboy and the arcane mysteries of Pokemon. He is also conducting a running commentary concerning the 'evolution' of his Pokemon characters. If I hear how 'Hoothoot' evolved in 'Noctowl' one more time I think I'll go mad.
Saved by the bell, the microwave has just pinged, announcing the evolution of my Madras curry from 'Frozano' to 'Volcano'! Thank God for technology!
Peter 
Where are you from? England
