SWEGWAYS (AND OTHER VILLAINOUS ALIEN SPECIES)

It’s a few days before Christmas and I’m alone in the garage giggling like an idiot. Because I’ve just tested the youngest’s swegway before wrapping it up.  It works, and it turns out I can do it.  

Being able to ride a swegway - or hover board  - depends on your ability to do nothing.  It’s a state of mind.  If you get on and try to do things - like making all those involuntary muscular adjustments that have kept the human race upright and moving in the right direction since we first took our knuckles off the ground - then you’re stuffed.  The swegway takes care of all that. 

It’s the automotive equivalent of the smart phone.  But without the need to wiggle your thumbs.  All it takes is a vague, half-formed inkling that you might quite fancy moving in some kind of direction at some point, followed by the slightest really-can't-be-bothered semi-twitch in a hitherto dormant portion of the underside of your foot and you’re away, a whole world of motionless travel opened up to you.

I saw one on a London street a while ago.  It’s hard to look nonchalant when you’re doing nothing at 5mph along a crowded pavement, but the rider was giving it her best shot.  If ‘rider’ is the right word.  More like ‘person who happened to be standing around on it when it started moving and couldn’t be arsed to get off’.

It turns out I have a special aptitude for doing nothing which doesn’t seem to surprise the woman I call my wife when I drag her round to the garage to demonstrate.  We look down on the alien object with wonder:

“What do you do?”

“Just get on.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing!”

She tried, and she failed.  The swegway offered her freedom from the perpetual bondage of bipedal locomotion and she demurred.  She just couldn’t let go of that tired old concept that to go places you have to do something.

The first thing that strikes you when you lift a swegway out of the box is its weight.  But then this is classed as a vehicle which is why it’s illegal to ride it on a pavement.  The next thing is its other-worldliness.  Two foot pads connected by a swivelling joint and a wheel on each end.  It’s like a piece of something bigger that dropped off.  It’s as though it evolved in a different galaxy, according to a different set of evolutionary rules.  I wouldn’t be surprised if its blood was concentrated sulphuric acid.

Given all this, it’s hardly surprising that swegways are almost impossible to buy. Despite the bewildering array of forms they assume they’re basically all the same and spawn in a mysterious mother ship in low orbit over China.  If you order one online it will make its way to you at its top speed of roughly 10 kmph.  When it finally arrives and you plug it in it is likely to do what any self-respecting alien life form would do and melt your house.

Which is why I went to the only good old fashioned, truly terrestrial high street name stocking swegways this Christmas: Argos.  No interminable wait.  No melted house.  Just instant gratification.

And what a gratification.  Remember how good it felt when you first learned to ride a bike? No?  Me neither.  But I’m guessing it was something like this.  A sudden broadening of horizons.  A realisation that moving moderately quickly doesn't have to be hard work.  In fact, in the case of the swegway, any kind of work at all.  The controlling movements are so instinctive that within minutes you hardly notice you’re doing them.  It’s man and swegway in perfect harmony. Legs suddenly feel very old hat.

But alas, it soon came time to surrender the device to the youngest via the proxy of Santa. Within minutes he was gliding round the house like a well-lubricated chess piece; smooth, silent, effortless.  Deadly too, when you added a glow-in-the-dark Kylo Ren light sabre with sound effects.  People outside the window stared in, struggling to come to terms with the improbable movement of his upper body, and wondering how we came to own a child on wheels.

The swegway was exactly what Christmas should be, and once was.  A superpower in a box.  A pair of wings.  I felt it again.

A few days later Argos recalled its swegways.  Apparently they were melting houses, so I took it off the youngest and watched him melt down too.

The staff in Argos took the swegway off me and gave me back my money.  And that, as far as they were concerned, was that.  No compensation.  Not even an apology.  It was really very simple you see: in the beginning, there was some money, and there was a swegway. The money was mine, the swegway was theirs.  Then, for a short period, the swegway was mine, and the money was theirs.  Now the money is mine once again and they have the swegway.  What could the problem possibly be?  How were they to know that, at some point, the swegway was his?  And made promises it couldn’t keep.

The shop assistant hadn’t been trained to apologize and the manager was not authorized to show signs of remorse.  He ripped a page out of the catalogue with the customer service number and handed it to me.  I called it.  The operator jokingly asked if the swegway had blown up yet and had a good chortle.  But unfortunately, being complained at wasn't part of his job description either.  So he gave me an email address. I wrote to it, it bounced back.  I called again and was given another.  24 hours later an automated message came back asking for an order number so it could process my email.  I don’t have one.

On reflection I think swegways do belong on this planet.  What’s the odd melted house between friends.  Argos on the other hand? I’m not so sure.

Other Christmas overthoughts: Primary 1 Nails It


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