Treat her like a lady.
By Swith
Assuming I’ve not made a grave error in not bothering to pre-order, in a month and a bit I’ll be the owner of an Xbox 360.
The living room as it is has already breached the quota of consoles that is acceptable in reasonable company. The 5 console mark has been shamelessly exceeded, and with it the probability of entertaining a woman in there without the ‘are all those yours?’ potential horn extinguisher.
I had to put one of these precious bundles into the attic for good. One had to be relegated, the relationship put on hold perhaps indefinitely. Unfortunately for my Commodore Amiga 1200, its times of active service would have to finally come to an end.
But before I said goodbye, I just wanted to pay tribute to its years of faithful devotion by treating it to one last, wistful day out.
My sweet, tired old Amiga. The unrivalled joy she brought me. She kept my foot warm on those nippy winter nights with its fusion powered power adapter. She let me make terrible music on her with Octamed without ever complaining or crashing. She would struggle and grind her way through the most pretentious of teenage animations I could muster without ever once passing judgment. And there has never been a program I have loved so much before or since as Deluxe Paint III.
I did my GCSE art on my Amiga. She got me an A. At the end of the course, as I went on to do more scientific subjects I sold her to the Art department. 2 years later at the end of my A-Levels I stole her back. I couldn’t leave her behind, despite the possible criminal connotations.
I used to get copied games of a guy called Sadhu. His mum was an active eco-warrior, and in order to procure the newest releases, a night in a squat in Southampton was sometimes necessary. One of those weekends I went along with them both to Jonathan Porrit speaking at a by-pass demonstration. I can’t remember what he was on about, I had a copy of Nuclear War and Parasol Stars in my pocket and thus bigger things on my mind.
As we gazed across the waters of the Thames, I remarked how different the world is now compared to when she and I started out. Jolly Roger’s Anarchists CookBook, a floppy with some rather eye opening exaggerations in it, was hot property to most kids at the time. It’s tall tales of making LSD from ingredients you’d never find, and how simple house-hold ingredients can make you plastic explosives and napalm kept me and my mates fruitlessly entertained for a couple of summers. Now, such a disk would have you up on terrorist charges.
As my Amiga won the jackpot on a coin rolling game, I resigned that it was mainly about the games for me, though. The arcade conversions in particular. Two of the first games I ever played on the Amiga were being played on it up until its last days; Buggy Boy and the New Zealand Story. Countless others like Rodland, Smash TV, Toki and Pac Land came closer than the vast majority of home computer arcade at claiming that much revered ‘Arcade Perfect’ badge. The Amiga was capable of achieving an awesome array of challenges, and succeeded in being an invaluable tool for both creativity and gaming.
We went to a nearby bar with music and dancing, and I bought her a drink. They were playing Bjork and we were reminded of some of the jaw dropping demos that came out which pushed my Amiga to her limits. Big Time Sensuality, Jesus on E’s, some of the music and images that those demo artists coaxed out of the Amiga were breathtaking and undeniably cool, even to girls. I remembered a time when I got my first disk of rudey pictures and found that you could import them into DPaint III and make amusing animations with them. Some of those were truly, truly, unspeakably vile. I don’t recall my Amiga batting an eyelid though - filthy tart.
The memories all made fresh again, the time had come to close the chapter. She’d understand. Time moves on, and you have to make spaces in your life. Once, she was the successor, kicking sand in the face of my beautiful little Atari 65XE and pressing her full 16 bit chest in my face. But she’s a hardy girl. She should know that if anyone leaves someone for you, you should always expect them to do it again.
I’ll see her again I’m sure, but I was glad of the day we spent remembering the good days.
November 2005
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