What do you consider an emergency? For my family, for many years it was that Sky had stopped working and they would ring me – the eldest and only son in the family. Now, this is no longer an issue as they have normal terrestrial TV through an aerial but like most households the majority of their viewing is streamed from the interweb. Therefore the emergency would probably be if the broadband went down but then it has become like any other utility. In that case, I would be even more limited on what I could offer as advice over the telephone, some twenty miles across the county border of Berkshire.

Firstly, it was not my plan to drive into Bracknell town centre on a Sunday morning, weeks before Christmas and more so on my birthday, just for fun. However, I had errands to complete on behalf of the ‘boss’. If I had not collected a couple of items in particular, they would have been sent back to their distribution centres or depots and caused me a world of pain in the future. Companies must build a complete infrastructure system around this to allow for automatic refunds to customers’ accounts. Cost of Living crisis? What cost-of-living crisis? There was a long queue to even get into the Princess Square Car Park. Where do people have all this disposable income from? (Perhaps they were splashing the cash prior to the Budget from the Chancellor a mere three days later!) All the shops were heaving. There was a long queue for Santa’s Grotto, which I believe had only opened days before, within this ‘older’ part of The Lexicon complex. Fun fact – the centres were named after Prince (now King) Charles and Princess Diana (but her name was not used for whatever reason, so we got Charles Square and Princess Square). I completed my trips, first Dunelm, then TKMaxx, then Waitrose (for a John Lewis Partnership item), before rushing back to my car to head back home. It was at this point that I hit the code red emergency.

However, let me rewind a minute. As I was driving into the car park, the song The Mack by Fetty Wap started playing. Itself sampling from the megahit from 1996 by Leicester’s very own Mark Morrison – “Return Of The Mack“. The funniest coincidence in all of this is the white Audi A1, I followed into the car park and it’s licence plate, ending in some random three letters. I assume (with some strong confidence) it was a vanity plate.

In any case, in recent months, I have exclusively listened to Spotify in the car, thanks to my UGreen Bluetooth dongle connected to my AUX port. The device battery lasts for several weeks. However, on the journey home, it slowly started the audible warning of “battery low”. In another life, I would have had a USB-C cable and cigarette lighter adaptor to charge it up but alas, not this time around. In fact, they are both sitting in the kitchen and as ever, as I needed them at that exact moment, I knew EXACTLY where in the house they have been sitting idle for months. Thankfully, I had my CaseLogic (acquired in 2007 by Thule Group) CD case (sitting on the backseat, behind me) and was able to pop in an MP3-CD (a CD-R with mp3 files written to the root folder – although I believe the factory VWAG audio system also recognises folders). So, I was able to listen to an album I had burned in 2002-3 – during my Placement Year – when I considered myself at the peak of my music knowledge. My finger (back then) was very much on the pulse of popular music, and I could even still get away (just about) to listening BBC Radio 1. I can pinpoint the exact moment when I became a fan of boy bands – it was when the Backstreet Boys released I Want It That Way from their award-winning album Millennium in 1999.

Update: Logan was smiling in the back of the car on Monday morning (approximately 8:24 am) as we listened to Magic FM. I had not had time to connect my smartphone via Bluetooth to the Ford C-Max SYNC 2 system. After Gok Wan introduced the song, I had to put up the volume and sing along. My eldest son, just smiled from the backseat, enjoying my poor example of carpool karaoke, but I noticed a glimmer of a smile. I tried (and failed) to explain how important this song was to me. It had come out when I was in college, as I was coming of age. If I could go back to that time just for a day, I would take it.