This T O T A L L Y private, elite, select club is so
unbelievably exclusive that it will, I guarantee, be tongue-hanging-out-fashionable
by Friday. The jet set will be splitting their face-lifts to get membership.
However, it is
so devastatingly rarefied that yours will be the only name on the roll call.
There is no on-line join up because it is so de-rigueur. Nor is there a sign-in or
membership fee. You don’t need an enigma-level password or to remember your
mother’s maiden name. You don’t need to search in your memory for the place you
used to go on holiday back in the day when holidays meant going to the beach
and not being herded worse than cattle through barriers, into holding pens, hauling
coffin-sized trolley suitcases full of rubbish you could do without for a
fortnight – or half full so that you can return with holiday junk.
No no.
The Crap Gap Club exists in your mind and permeates
your life and involves only you but you will be the epitome of infra-dig if you
don’t join. You will be a social reject within a month like someone with an
out-of-date mobile phone that can’t remotely control the fridge (woops that’s
me). You don’t need to tell people about it every ten minutes (like on twitter) you don’t need to post photos of
it (like facebook) No one will collate your private but freely given details
and flog the resulting data to firms who will target you with their own special
brands of shite. It’s not ‘secret little clubs of the invited and the chosen’
like LinkedIn. It’s just YOU and an absence of clutter – physical or mental.
There are rules of course.
- · You must not put up with abysmal so-called customer service from profiteering energy companies.
- · Clear STUFF out of your house/place of work (ornaments, keepsakes, paperwork which will never be looked at by you or anyone else).
- · Get angry (but not aggressive) when you hear people talking nonsense (racism, homophobia, misogyny, fracking).
- · Clear rubbish in all its forms from your life – be ever vigilant against its incursion (especially watch out for the effects of all fuzzy-edged TV advertising).
There are also levels of membership.
For example – Exclusive
membership – let’s say tea and toast
level - would be reserved for those who don’t know the names of more than two
brands of cars and have never bought a handbag for any reason other than
essential stuff fits in it.
Pinnacle
membership – shall we call it – fresh
homemade cake level – would be someone who can’t summarise the plot twists
of more than two soap operas and is totally ignorant of the relationship scenarios
in The Archers
Supersonic
membership - I would like to name – freshly
ground Colombian coffee level. Coffee that you made yourself though, not
stuff you parade around the street in a corporate logo'd cup putting other
citizens at risk of serious scalding. This membership level would be for those
capable of sitting n a room without any electronic communication device on for
– ooh let’s say 10 minutes.
There will be rewards too.
You are allowed at least one mean thought per month
with absolutely no guilt. So for example I might treat myself to a fantasy in
which Tony Blair is stuck in a sky scraper lift. The only other occupants of
this small lift are three grown men who were children in 2003 and whose
families were wiped out in the Iraq invasion and who are affected by powerful
psychotic episodes as a result.
There must be a complementary physical clear out too
(no I don’t mean with laxatives). Chuck out all the detritus from your house.
Start with ornaments, then move on to knickknacks, clothes that don’t suit you/fit
you, games your kids never wanted, kitchen equipment that actually make jobs
harder or take too long to clean (electric carving knives) and things that
never should have been invented (melon ballers). If your TV screen can be seen
from the moon it’s too big, it has more influence on your family than you do –
get rid.
There are little membership behaviours and tics –
like the Masonic handshake - that will single you out. You may indulge these once you are properly affiliated
to this non-affiliate non-organisation. For example, next time you are on a bus
and someone is wearing so much make-up, hair spray and perfume or aftershave
that your eyeballs start to dissolve and you find it hard to breathe – vomit on
them.
Avoid the yap, clear the crap, zap the pap, shun the
clap trap, join the CRAP GAP CLUB.
If you have a nervous breakdown and end up running
down Princes Street naked but for a Tam O’ Shanter with your bagpipes swinging
in the breeze because you suddenly found yourself alone with time to have a
coherent thought - DON’T BLAME ME
This week’s recommended blog from the archives,
blog 12 Armageddon will not be televised