Andrew Kay: Face Up

Face it – Facebook is a captivating and distracting beast – and fun if you take it for what it is

I use Facebook. I know it can be a time swallowing distraction and I am sure, like me, lots of you spend silly amounts of time on there too.
In essence I use it as a means of keeping in touch. I like that I can chat to friends, reconnect with people that I have lost touch with and, as I have already written, play Scrabble. It is the Scrabble that gobbles up my time and I have at least 13 games on the go at any given time. That’s my choice – and not such a bad way of whiling away the hours when there are so many more distractions of a less satisfying nature.

My worst vice, and I hazard a guess that I am not alone in this, is the tendency to be drawn in to the silly profile quizzes. You know the kind; What kind of dog would you be?, In a past life I was… – silliness on the whole but undeniably funny, especially the ones that claim to make assesments of you character by analysing your profile or by asking a few silly questions.
I’m not alone in this either, friends who I believe are rather sensible do them too, even the most serious minded of my friends – and that puts a smile on my face.
Recent quizzes, the online version of those hilarious magazine quizzes of old, have declared that I was, in a previous life, a king, that I have masterly recall, a soaring intellect and a staggering IQ. They also declared that I look 31 which is hilarious as I am rapidly approaching 60.

How they do this is of course utter nonsense, of course I do not look 31, far from it, I look my age and this is not something that worries me. In fact if I did look 31 I would be terribly worried. I should of course say that I tend not to dress my age, and I know this because I look at people that I know who are my age, but not living in the Neverland that is Brighton & Hove, and quite frankly they have gone to wine coloured corduroy and anorak land. I’m not there yet thank heavens.
Last weekend I had cause to go into the Vodafone shop to upgrade my phone. It was a blisteringly hot day and as a consequence the shop was really quiet. I was seen immediately by a charming young woman who dealt with my needs and in an open and un-pushy way, unlike the online sales person who was to say the least aggressive, so much so that I abandoned my attempt to do the deal that way.
We had fun sorting things and I came away with a smarter new phone and a reduced bill – result!
Towards the end of the transaction though I could see that she was somewhat distracted, slightly giggly. In the end she confessed that she thought I looked remarkably like a famous person. Not for the first time in my life has this happened but this certainly was a first.
She explained in a roundabout way, saying that her younger sister, 13, was something of a geek, a maths genius already studying for a degree. I listened with interest, and with no idea where this was going.

It turns out that she thought that I looked like Albert Einstein and that he was her kid sister’s hero. I didn’t need to look in a mirror to see where she was coming from. I do indeed have that mad professor look at the best of times, the new glasses from the boys at Specky Wren add to this and the fact that, due to a four week cold, I have failed to go my favourite hairdresser Andrew at BaDu.
Of course once it was out of the bag all the other Vodafone staff had a good look and agreed that I really do look like Albert Einstein. How sad then that it is only a look and not his capacity for genius. I offered to let her take a selfie of the two of us to send to the sister but in the excitement of ‘Einstein’ being in the shop this was forgotten and I left without taking the snap.
So Facebook thinks that I am a 31 year old former king, and my Vodafone pal thinks I look like a mathematical genius and my mum thinks that I look like I need a bloody good haircut. I think mum, as always, is probably closest to the truth.