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So, I turn on the TV and settle with BBC 1. Ah yes, so now we’re a nation at war, eh? Crikey. Well, I say WE are at war, but of course I’m not really at all, am I? I mean, here am I, relaxing in my front room with a plate of warm food on my knee looking forward to an evening of guitar rock… safe as houses; that’s what I am. No bombs gonna be crashing through my roof. No anthrax being sprayed around in sunny ol’ Matlock. If he even tries – that Saddam bloke, I can rest assured that Bush’ll nuke his whole country, and maybe a few nearby too; just to be safe. It doesn’t really affect me at all. Hey, I don’t even know anyone in the army who’s out there doing the fighting!
Anyway, I put my feet up and watch the news special ‘cause there’s nothing else on. It’s quite impressive really, from the comfort of my favourite armchair I get to watch live coverage of what’s happening in Iraq. All the bombs ‘n’ stuff. It’s well good. The bottom corner of the screen boasts the word ‘Live’, it’s even highlighted in red to make sure I notice it, and I marvel at the technology of it all. ‘Cause the BBC are so good to me, I get to watch Iraq being bombed LIVE VIA SATELLITE. I’m impressed. It’s almost as good as when those two sky scraper things in New York got knocked over. That was amazing; I got to watch people jumping out of 15th floor windows and bouncing their way down to the ground below. Dropping like lemmings they were. It was a bit like that bit in Titanic where the ship split in half and started sinking and all the people were dropping off, only that wasn’t as good because it wasn’t real, was it?
The thing that annoys me about the BBC’s coverage of the bombing is that you only get the one camera view. I mean, it’s quite good but you get a bit bored of looking at the same thing for ages, don’t you? They should have it like they do for the Salon and Big Brother, so you can press the red button and choose different views; get a few close-ups of the action – people in pain and everything. They never show any of that. They must be worried about getting too close incase the Journalist’s end up getting bombed. They don’t deserve to die ‘cause, y’know, they’re innocent!
And then, they cut to some boring American politician bloke making some speech or something so I go to get a drink. When I sit down again they’re showing some people in London who’ve been wasting their day wandering around in the freezing cold flapping banners around at the cameras and shouting a lot, and they interview some of them who look about the same age as me. I wonder why they’re bothering – no one cares what they think. And anyway, it’s not like it makes much difference to them if a few bombs are dropped on some random place. They’d probably never even heard of Iraq before all this started. Bet they still don’t know where it is, I know I don’t. In fact, I bet they’re only there in the first place to impress some guys they fancy, and ‘cause it’s fashionable at the moment to pretend to care about this stuff.
So I finish eating my lasagne, get changed, put some make up on and go to the gig. It’s not until the singer dude from Span starts going on about ‘Peace and Cake’ that thoughts of the war even enter my mind again – why would they? I watch him onstage babbling on about how bad war is and all that, I’ve heard it all a hundred times before; I’m bored of it now. I wish everyone would stop overreacting and going on about it all the time.
I mean, it’s not the end of the world, is it?
