Bleeping Tamagochi

My McFriend has got me looking after a tamagochi – I found the thing and picked it up so it wasn’t just hanging about to be run over by cars. I pressed various buttons which did nothing until McFriend came to visit and found the reset button. I watched it for a week, just an egg, bobbing up and down and in honesty – was unimpressed – the damn thing wouldn’t hatch.

So last night I find myself lounging on the sofa (after a run – which allows all sorts of lounging, I’ll have you know, before you go telling me to get up off my fat arse) and Monday’s are terrible for telly. So at the stage where I am ready to throw the tamagochi out (again), I decide to press a few buttons and discover that the reason it has been bobbing about for the last week is that I haven’t given it a name or told it the date, etc. So twenty seconds after I’ve done so, it’s hatched. Now I am beginning to regret my actions as it is constantly beeping at me wanting attention.

Within half an hour or so, the thing has grown bigger and keeps going to the toilet and I am having to do the virtual equivalent of wiping its bum. Possibly I’m over-feeding it – so I give it a bit of exercise – when it becomes hungry again. By 10.45pm I am beginning to worry that this thing is going to keep me up all night – particularly as I have promised my McFriend that I will not mercilessly ignore its high-pitched cries.

Of course it has been welcomed with open arms here at work, where my colleagues cannot get enough of its incessant beeping and need for food and the toilet. I tried to encourage it to go and play with a friend until lunch time to give me some peace. It’s having none of it.