By Aliya Whiteley

On The Way Out

Neighbours fascinate the Blue Pootle. I’m not talking about the kind of neighbours who live next door. I’m talking about the kind who live in my TV set and suffer all manner of mishaps in an attempt to entertain me.

As I write this, Harold the Sally Army regular has developed homicidal tendencies against one-legged ex-convict millionaire Paul, who has shacked up with ex drug-addict, blackmailer and hit-man employer Izzy, who has just offered her sympathies to Steph, who is riddled with cancer but refusing treatment because an ex-boyfriend who died in a freak horse-riding accident popped up in a dream and told her to. I don’t think I’ve ever used so many hyphens in one sentence before.

I admit it. I’m entertained. Who would have thought life could be so complicated, or so much fun?

But it only happens on TV, I’m afraid. The reason we watch these programmes (and yes, I can see you there, shaking your head in a lofty fashion and proclaiming, ‘Good Golly, BP, you wouldn’t catch me watching Australian soap operas!’ Well, you, Snobbie the Snobster, I’m counting all TV programmes here, from Morse to House, from Corrie to Celebrity, it’s all much of a muchness and fulfilling the same purpose) is to have time taken up for us. Because we have time to spare, and the actors on the goggle-box are portraying people who don’t.

I think we’d all secretly like to not have the time. Time to ponder about that incident seven years ago when you farted in the middle of that job interview, or brood on why nobody is emailing you this afternoon. Time not to dissect your last rejection letter, if you’re the writing type. Basically, we’d like to become the Neighbours – blessed with time to do, and absolutely no time to think: rushing from one calamity to the next, never looking back at the mess we’ve made, and enjoying ourselves enormously along the way.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos puts forward a strong case for humanity having evolved a useless trait that should be bred out if the species is to survive. That trait is higher thought. Wouldn’t we all be better off if these honkingly large brains downsized a bit? Think of all the unhelpful accoutrements of modern life that we might very well leave behind if we didn’t spend all day brooding and overanalysing stuff: religion, love, phobias, overeating, the fashion and cosmetic industries, insurance policies, war, gossip columns and Radiohead, just to name a few.

And suicide. Suicide would become a thing of the past. Who would spend time working out how to end their personal stock of time when there’s no more spare time dragging them down? Life would become too short for suicide.

This line of thinking reminds me of a device I recently came across in the London Science Museum. It was a suicide enabler; basically, a small white box wired up to a lethal injection. You set up the needle near a vein of your choice (your own, although it does offer some intriguing opportunities for foul play, I think you’ll agree) and then the box begins. It asks you a question:

Are you sure you want to die?

There are two buttons on the box. One reads YES and one reads NO. Let’s assume that you weren’t blessed with a small brain at birth and you press the YES button.

The box says:

Are you ready to die today?

Mmm… this is a slightly different question. A bit more immediate in tone. The box is asking you to do something that leads to no end of trouble – it’s asking you to think. Let’s say you decide on a YES response.

The box says:

This is the final question. Do you want to die in the next ten seconds?

So you’re having a really bad day. Say your other half just got implicated in a massive scandal involving the Italian Head of State, you’ve been forced to kick him out (the other half, not the Italian Head of State), and you just spent your last five grand on a suicide enabler. Right now, your white elephant of a brain is telling you that nothing is worth living for. So you press YES. After all, pressing buttons is never quite real, is it?

The manufacturers of the box see this form of suicide as a step forward for the human race because it takes away pain. This can lead to only one conclusion. Vonnegut is right – our brains are an evolutionary cul-de-sac. Those big grey wobbly organs situated on top of our heads have found a way to bypass the one most effective survival trait we’ve ever evolved. We may not like it, but pain keeps us alive. And being alive is kind of really the point.

Anyway, I look forward to the day when every Barratt home comes with its own suicide kit. I get the feeling that it’ll become an awful lot easier to snatch the comfy leather sofa in Starbucks and get a seat on the bus on the way home afterwards. I just hope the cast of Neighbours doesn’t vanish overnight. I get the feeling a lot of those actors are harbouring thoughts of worthlessness as they compare themselves to other luvvies on stage and screen. And you know, I really do enjoy Neighbours.

It’s the only thing that stops me thinking for a while.

Word of the Day: Anfractuosity. A channel, crevice or passage full of windings and turnings.

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