Living in a box

It was an early spring day in 1987... In a semi-semi (really a terrace with gaps) in rural Cambridgeshire a 14 year-old me sat at my desk doing my homework... *sigh*... my DT project was going particularly badly... Whilst others were building robots that were alive like Number 5, and could sense and turn away from the edge of a table, my unicycle was still looking suspiciously like a collection of bent tubes and a saddle shaped like an upturned Petri dish.

Of the wheel or pedals, there was - as yet - no sign...

The sun coming through the window lit up a halo of craaaayzy hair and cast a bouffant shadow on the wardrobe behind me... sunlight shone from the rims of my oversized spectacles onto my adolescent acne... outside the trees were just coming on green... and I longed to be anywhere but there... (or at least there... but not doing homework any more)On the radio, the sounds of Mr Maaaad (it was a decade of long vowels) gave way to Steve Wright's DJ tones...

"This is a new single from a British Band... a band with a grooovy name... who live in a straaange place... They're 'Living in a box' "



Suddenly... as the initial clacking of the track poured from the speaker... the world seemed a happier place... the words seemed to capture my frustration at life... at being stuck inside... at being stuck in a machine not of my own making... at, well, living in a box.

"am I living in a box...?
... am I living in a cardboard box?" (hey... it was the 80s!)

I stood, I jived (sick bag please), I sang into my hairbrush... I faded away with the final 'living in a box box box box box box box'...

I vowed, at that moment, not to live in a box any more...

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I think it went something like that... time has rather faded the memory in line with the smell of hair gel (thank goodness)... However, the sentiment remains...

And it's a sentiment that returned this morning as, on my way to work, I saw a Scania truck with - on the side - the words "Scania driving simulator".

Why, I wondered, would you want a truck with a truck-driving simulator in the back... surely it would be more real to just drive the truck...? Or would that actually be too frightening?

And then I wondered whether we really live Church... or do we simply attend a Church simulator... a micro example of what Church could be... without the risk that Pop was talking about in response to my last post?

Are we ready to drive for real and risk a potential crash... but really drive or are we more happy living in a box box box box box box box?