I’m sometimes told that I don’t live in the real world (I’m the first to admit, this is absolutely true). Or people tell me that so-and-so doesn’t live in the real life. I’ve always had a problem with the concept ‘real world’ like there's only one real world and it’s a pretty dull one at that. Their concept of the real world usually involves drudgery, no money and no fun. I imagine the real world as 1970s England: black and white, unemployment, rainy Sundays with no shops or pubs open. Or working at a job you hate for years and years, being paid badly, then losing your job and getting dumped by your girlfriend. That’s real world scenario.

But some people’s real world consist of yachts and hot chicks and noodle salads*. And good luck to them. There’s not one ‘real world’, it’s a relative concept I reckon. Maybe even every one of us has their own real world, and why should someones world in a shanty town in Brazil be any more ‘real’ than someone’s world in a $2m house in Bel Air?

Anyway, I like my world, it feels pretty real to me and I wouldn’t want to live in anyone else’s.

(*I’m not entirely sure if I know what a noodle salad is, but I like the speech by Jack Nicolson in As Good As It Gets where he mentions it:
Carol: OK, we all have these terrible stories to get over, and you—
Melvin: It’s not true. Some of us have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car. But, a lot of people, that’s their story. Good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you’re that pissed that so many others had it good.)

Listen to: Living In the Real World by Blondie or I’m Not Living In The Real World by Belle and Sebastian