Marc Nobbs: Trying to grab moments when I can

You know, these days, I find myself trying to snatch precious moments whenever I can in all sorts of circumstances. Take my wife for instance. We’re both so busy that we have to snatch private moments in-between the thousand other things we have to do day-to-day. A quick cuddle here, a stolen kiss there. Add this to the fact that Jr is now three and is going through that “She’s MY Maman” stage and is constantly telling me off for so much as looking at her, and you can see that those moments are indeed precious.

Then there’s reading. I am sorry top say that I do very little reading these days. When I do read, it’s in the stolen moments when I’m sitting with Jr before he goes to bed and we read Thomas the Tank Engine or something similar.

Then there’s my writing. Writing is supposed to be my way to wind down, to relax at the end of the day. It should be something I make time for to stop myself from going insane. Except these day’s I find myself trying to snatch a few moments during the working day to write because I know full well that when I get home, it get’s late and I fire up the laptop, I’m not going to be writing. What am I doing instead? Surfing the web? Trapped on MySpace? Tweeting? Watching porn?

It’s none of the above (well, maybe a little sometimes). No, it’s bloody Football Manager. When I bought my new laptop (cause the old one died) I re-installed FM2005 for some reason. (Yes, I’m still on version 2005 – my old laptop could only just cope with it and there was no point in buying ‘updates’. Plus, I’m a tight-arse.) And when it was installed, I started a new season. Naturally, I modified the database first so that' my chosen team would be much better than it would otherwise have been. I gave a few other of my favourite teams a boost too, so that made up for it.

But now I can’t stop playing the damn thing. I started in the lowest league, gain promotion with an unbeaten season in my first year and am now on my way to securing a 100% league season and my second promotion in a row. And winning is addictive. i really should play the game properly and struggle on a tight budget, but it’s far more fun to persuade fully fledged internationals come come and play in the English third division.

So, damn you Sports Interactive and Sega. Damn you I say. how dare you steal my precious writing time with the insufferable addictiveness of your game. Just so you know, I am considering a law suit.