I'll Explain Later

So I was in Borders reading the indicia on the latest issue of Jackie Chan Adventures, when this guy comes up to me and exclaims how old Jackie Chan is these days. I look at the cover. Since he's a cartoon these days, I'd say he's aged pretty well actually. Or maybe he was referring the actual "Jackie Chan" issue that I held, which thanks to shipping delays from the UK is actually about 4 months old. Anyway this leads, somehow, probably through a headline on another magazine, to his asserting "Isn't it incredible that some people still don't believe that there is life on other planets."

Sitting cross-legged on the floor to give him my full attention, I listen patiently as he treads the well-worn probability theory - that the universe is so big, that ours cannot possibly be the only planet to sustain life. I was going to ask him just how he knew how big space was, when he suddenly declares himself to believe the Biblical account of creation, and quotes that somewhere in the first 3 chapters of Genesis is the line "and his sons rejoiced." As Adam was the only "son" of God at the time, God must have simultaneously created life on other planets as well. It was only at this point that I, as unthreateningly as possible, got my Bible out of my pocket and offered it to him to show me.

Alas, he couldn't find it in my Good News translation. I asked him to email it to me, but alas he wasn't on email. It was very nice to meet him, we shook hands, and I hope we bump into each other again.

Anyway, one of the last things he said to me was "You do meet some Christians in strange places." Yes, I suppose meeting someone scrutinising the contributors' names in tiny print down the bottom of the contents page of a 4-months-old Jackie Chan Adventures in Borders is a bit of an unusual place to find anyone. Anyway, unsatisfied with the contributors' names, I left that issue and went around the aisle to where I bought the store's last remaining issue of Doctor Who Magazine #351. (from December last year)

Then the guy at the counter eyeballed me. I recognised the same expression from the guy on the counter 10,000 miles away in W H Smith in Kingston. I knew what was about to follow. He was going to ask me if I'd seen the new series. Or if I'd heard any Big Finish CDs. Or whether I'd read The Infinity Doctors yet.

"Sooo," he opened. "Have you seen The Curse Of The Fatal Death?"

"Yeees." I answered, before gently crushing him with "Unfortunately."


1 out of 10, and that's only for using the correct Dalek voices.