I got my first computer, a purple iMac, in 1999 and have been a Mac fan since - I’m writing this on a small but beautifully formed iBook. For years I resisted the lure of the iPod, for 3 main reasons: 1) The expense – with 3 kids in the house, 2 under the age of 3, I have to negotiate spending that kind of cash & a personnel MP3 player was never going to get priority over a drier/ shed/ new bedroom wardrobes…etc. 2) The technology changes so fast – my iBook has been superseded umpteen times since it emerged from its box, and 3) What do I need a posh walkman for anyway? It would have been handy during my globe trotting days but now, I don’t use a walkman!

So when my brother Ste got me a 40GB iPod for my 40th birthday – I was chuft to bits but still thought it an extravagance I didn’t need…..how wrong I was……It’s now my constant companion in the car on shuffle mode where you never know what’s going to come on next, but you know you’ll like it.

The weird thing is, it has somehow tuned into my neural network in Borg-like fashion. The first time it happened I was driving along in my CBGBs T-shirt when on comes Blondie ‘Pretty Bay’. “Ah” thinks I “wouldn’t it have been great to be at CBGBs in the late 70’s. The fantastic bands that grew in that environment, The Ramones, Talking Heads…” on comes ‘Cities’ by Talking Heads…..spooky!

I was driving to Sheffield & just as I got off the Motorway an entered the city limits ‘Hard Times’ by the Human League came on followed by Cabaret Voltaires ‘Nag Nag Nag’……Hmmmmm

My other half has thought this notion ridiculous until……we were driving form my mums in Swinton near Manchester, to my mates in Chorlton, chatting about our impending wedding when ‘My Bride to Be’ by Winston Samuels comes on (I’d never heard it before - it’s from one of those Trojan 3 disc box sets that I loaded up and hadn’t got round to hearing) but odder than that, we then drive past Old Trafford and ‘Manchester United Calypso’ by Edrich Connor* comes on!!!! Sideways glances to each other with raises eyebrows.

I remember talking to a friend Matt who lectures in philosophy about million to one occurrences

“How many millions of people are there in the world?”

“About 5 billion?

“Well million to one events should be happening to 5 million people all the time”

Which kind of takes the mystery out of life……

Bob the Chiropodist

*For the record, I’m a Man City fan but I still love this track. My folks are from Salford and we’re Roman Catholics and so should, by rights, be United fans. My Dad + Grandad (Jim) used to take my older brothers Ste and later Dave when they were old enough to the football on a Saturday (after they finished work at 12). Somewhere in the mists of time, United put up their prices and Grandad decided we would support City instead (thanks Jim!). By the time I started going we were a true blue family and “I hate that more than United” is still a family saying. Being a City fan was great in the 70’s, not bad in the 80’s, a joke in the 90’s and thanks to Keegan and Psycho, becoming respectable again in the naughties. As the game’s become obsessed by money I’ve become less and less interested it (even Blackburn could win the championship with enough cash). I hate to say it, but I even like to see Man U do well, except on Derby day of course……