The End: Biffo Bids Goodbye
"If there were such a place as Synchroni City, I'd be there now. At 8.01pm on Thursday March 6, 2003, 10 years and a few months after the first edition of Digitiser hit the air, my modem died.
I went broadband some time back, but was forced to keep this old steam-driven jeremy because I needed it to access the Teletext server.
What was particularly eerie was that it died just as I sat down to write this: mine, and Digitiser's Teletext obituary. I was so freaked out that I literally guffed myself unconscious.
The death of my special Digitiser modem was the final suggestion that the forces of fate have conspired to stress that an era really is at an end.
Last December, I was offered a six-month position as first-mate on a merchant seaman's vessel, ferrying cow hormones around the Philippines.
Then, tragically, in Januray my entire family was killed by a kestrel, while walking in the Cotswolds. Bizarrely, police later found that the bird of prey was out of its mind on cow hormones...
I'd always known that Digitiser had a sell-by-date embroidered on its larynx. There's only so much you can say about games before your brain starts to leak.
Just ask Stuart Campbell - he's spent the last 12 months thinking he's a type of salamander, and now lives underneath a rock in a big glass tank.
It hasn't been an easy habit to break. I've been well aware of my gilded role. How many other occupations include "windbaggery" and “nude giraffe rides" in their job descriptions?
Ironically, it was only during those dark, humourless months last year, when I became aware of the special place that Digitiser seemed to hold in the heart of its viewers' bottoms.
When Mr Hairs and myself began the section 10 years ago, it was primarily to amuse ourselves and get free games.
But in the past six months I've been privy to, nay, on the receiving end of a, love that is frankly stupid considering it's targeted at some poxy Teletext video games section. Hello?
It's safe to say that if it weren't for Digitiser's viewers, we wouldn't have lasted this long.
Even when the forces of darkness, the suits, the squares, wanted to crush it, there was an undoubted vibe, a magic, a sense of community that kept it going.
Without getting mawkish, or over-sentimental, it's fair to say that Digitiser would've died 10 times over without the unwavering support of its audience. You stuck with it, and because of that Digi stuck with you.
But, as George Harrison discovered not so long ago, all things must pass. Flowers bloom and wilt. Puerile imagery gets scrubbed off school lockers.
Dogs get run over, and you have to bury them. And then you feel really guilty for driving around the cul-de-sac waving a string of sausages from the window, shouting "Here, boy!"
And like all of those things, Digi's time has finally come. It's time to move on. Grow up. Stand alone and proud. It's over, but it's been a lewd ride.
So, anyway. That's that. Ain't no sunshine till it rains, and everything. It's over. Gone. No more. Get outta here, kid, before I blub.
There'll be another bus along on Monday, but it will be a yellow bus, and it will smell like a wet priest.
And hey - just because the Digi omnibus has crashed through a bakery, killing everyone on board, it doesn't mean you shouldn't hop aboard. In fact, we demand that you do. Or we'll be round to do a quiet pump on your ice-creams.
It feels like I should end this sort of farewell thing with something apt. But how to sum up 10 gut-stuffed years, in a few short words?
It's impossible, and thus the only way to explain such feelings is with an image. Press reveal to see what it is:"
Do you know of any important moments from the annals of Digi history that have been omitted? If so, then mail me (superpage58@gmail.com) right now, man. Credit will be duly given for anything that gets put up.
