Oi Polloi

No.259

Published: Fri Dec 12 2014

But then you bought a purple tracksuit…

Life was drab. You lived alone in a windowless bedsit with only a Playstation 1 for company. Your copy of Gran Turismo had been scratched by the neighbour’s cat meaning the only car you could select was a 1988 Nissan Micra in Burnt Orange.

With no memory card you were left with no choice but to leave the console turned on at all times or risk losing your lap-time statistics. The sound of the scratched disk struggling to rotate in the small grey box all day every day was getting louder and louder in your head, to the point that it blocked out all other sounds. You didn’t have a phone, but if you did, you wouldn’t have been able to hear it ring.

But then you bought a purple tracksuit, and as if by magic, everything changed. Women loved you… men loved you… a stranger in the street gave you a used-but-still-in-pretty-decent-condition Playstation 2. Life was good.