Credit: Instagram
When I was about thirteen or fourteen, I remember that having a digital watch with LED display was suddenly de rigeur amongst my classmates. Lee Flavell, Neil Attree, and Greg Mason, all sported these clunky, futuristic, hi-tec timepieces on their wrists, as if they'd stepped straight off the set of Tomorrow's World.
It was about the same time that electronic calculators became must haves and school-children everywhere discovered to their delight what an amusing number 80085 was. Indeed, if I remember correctly, you could even get a digital watch that included a calculator ...
However, being full of punk scorn for any attempt by straight people to try and look cool - and contemptuous of anything deemed trendy - I obviously despised digital watches and, in order to demonstrate my implacable opposition, I cut a picture of one out from an ad in the newspaper and sellotaped it to my wrist.
Why do I think of this now, over forty years on? Because I read in the press recently of the anti-rich kids who have taken to Instagram to mock those who post photos in order to flaunt their privileged lifestyles and display their designer wardrobes.
How do they do this? They fake things - including expensive watches. Pranksters from around the world have shared images, under the hashtags #NotARichKidOfInstagram and #BudgetLife, of their amusing attempts to both replicate and ridicule the good life as conceived within consumer society.
Whilst I obviously can't claim to have inspired this, I do like to think I anticipated it with my own actions back in the day (and demonstrated an early dislike for the digital age about to dawn).
