Dead Air

Having just handed a job application into Life FM this afternoon, I was heading up Queen Street to resume my live Christian music show on Hope City Radio, when I was accosted by someone with a microphone.

And a TV camera.

“Sir, can we ask you a question?”

“Sure - what question do you want to ask?”

“Where do you go when you die?”

It’s moments like this when I realise just how ill-prepared I am to share my faith. My bonhomie tends to respect whatever conclusion about God that the other person has already come to, and the implication that they should give that up to believe something different just because I’ve said so, really strikes me as disrespectful. I mean I could make up any old thing.

“You’re wrong. God is a fish. He’s very unhappy with Captain Birdseye.”

As I think I’ve mentioned before – it’s very hard to tell an unprovable truth when you’re afraid of being branded a liar. Or a fool. Or mad.

But this guy was asking me what I thought.

In retrospect I wish I’d turned the question around and asked him why he assumed that souls went anywhere. I mean, if you don’t have a belief on this subject, then on the basis of known evidence, you must assume that your soul just stays where it is, in your broken, rotting, decomposing corpse forever. Why assume that without your body, your soul even can move?

Anyways, I didn’t think of saying that. Instead, I swallowed the temptation to retreat into humour and said… in fact, that fish answer probably would have been a lot better than the lame-o thing I actually did say.

“Well I think you either go to Heaven or Hell actually.”

Big shock. I mean BIG shock. Without any warning this guy’s face was utterly gobsmacked at my response. (really wish I’d given him the “eternity in your desuetude corpse” answer now)

The only person more surprised than him I think was me, as my mind raced to fathom just how it was possible for a TV interviewer to come out on the street, specifically to ask people about life after death, and not expect the Heaven/Hell answer as a standard.

I’ll repeat that last line – how can you not anticipate that answer?

So, since I had now ruined everything by making us both lost for words, he somewhat heroically managed to save the interview with “Why do you think that?”

So, thinking very poorly on my feet, I gave him probably the worst, most anti-evangelistic answer composable, which was of course “Well - because I’m a Christian, and I believe the Bible.”

Oh, very hortatory. Elsewhere in the world, Joyce Meyer, Franklin Graham and the Pope were all quitting outreach to avoid being associated with me.

Then, just to make matters worse, I decided to get my Bible out of my trouser-pocket to offer it to him on-camera.

Then, just to make matters even worse, the flap on my pocket got stuck.

As a seasoned film actor, I was well-used to visualising how I looked on-camera as I spoke, and right now I knew I was leaning unnaturally to the right with my hand fumbling an off-screen area somewhere below my waist.

“Erm…” I stammered, “…but don’t take my word for it…erm…” Eventually my hand came up into the picture area again with my pocket-Bible, and placed it in the interviewer’s spare hand. “Don’t listen to anything I say, read it for yourself, in your own time, and make your own decision.”

“Well,” he concluded, looking around a bit for help, “that’s a good answer.”

After I’d left, I realised that I really should have told him what a good question he’d asked.

What's The Collective Word For A Group Of Reunions?

Captain Kang, the uniformed Korean in charge, shielded his eyes from the light, and singled me out hiding in the shadows at the back of the hall.

Then, in English, he announced to everyone “I can see Stephen is here today.”

Feeling thoroughly conspicuous, I smiled and stood-up, proud simply to be back in what was, for me, a very expensive church to be attending.

The Salvation Army’s Korean Corps. was the first of a whistle-stop recap of my social life in Auckland, founded as usual on my faith that God would provide me with a way to get home afterwards. (no buses home after 6pm)


Many old Sally Army friends greeted me with a mixture of pleasure and surprise, so I dutifully showed them all my hard-won Work Permit, and as usual glossed-over any pretence that I knew what their names were.

There were two things they all seemed to agree upon:

1. That they were pleased to see me, and

2. That I had put on weight. I mean forget that myth about how Asians hide what they think, these guys were actually pointing at me. And they weren’t even pointing at my stomach, but up at my cheeks.

I quickly developed a stock gag to compensate: "This is what happens when you move back in with your mum for 2½ months."

Having downed my first Korean meal for ages, and been presented with 16 biscuits to take away, I headed off down Queen Street for my second gatecrash of the day.

Back in the UK, I had looked through my pictures of this area and recalled actually being here. Now that I actually was here again, I felt as though I was walking inside my giant photographs.

They were very expensive enlargements. What on Earth had I been thinking? How could God possibly have wanted me to waste so much money on coming here again?

And there it was - my daily underlying question of whether, despite my life’s implications to the contrary, God really does direct our steps.

From my friends’ perspectives however, I knew that today I would be met with either open arms, or quizzical bafflement at why on Earth I had come all this way back.


"Gobleator!" yelled Freakazoid as I emerged from the youth hostel lift.

She always calls me "The Gobleator", particularly appropriate since I always leave her with the Arnie-esque promise "I’ll be baaack."

(According to the Koreans of course, this is the only way in which I resemble Arnie.)

Anyway, as I went through my post, I caught up with her, Leni and Sue, and continued to dish out the Tesco sweets that I’d brought from the UK for everyone.

I was also particularly shocked to hear that Lionel, the hostel’s token old guy, had had a stroke and was currently lying in a bed somewhere up at Auckland Hospital. I quickly got the details of where and made a mental note to go see him after church that evening.

In the kitchen, I checked the free food shelf, caught up with Hui and got myself a glass of water, at which point Andy skidded through the doors to gape at me in utter disbelief.

Oh good, now this was the sort of reaction that I had been hoping for.

What I hadn’t anticipated however, was his reason.

Yesterday Andy had gone to visit Lionel in hospital, and upon reaching the ward had been met by a nurse who’d surreally asked him "Are you Steve Goble?"

Maybe it was delirium, but Lionel had wanted to talk to me. Not, I gauge, to confess to murdering his cook, reveal where his stolen millions were buried, or send me with his dying breath on a quest to Tunisia to find the lost ark of the covenant (disappointed about that one), but… I think he had just wanted to talk. About anything. Like we had used to.

Of course Andy had told him "No no no, Steve Goble’s gone back to England, he’s been there for months, he’s not coming back," so Andy’s amazement at seeing me in the flesh the following day, some 10,000 miles away from England, was understandable.

I asked him at what time yesterday he and Lionel had had this conversation – about 3pm. Near as I could make out, this had been about the time when I had been lying on my bed wondering if coming back had been a mistake.

Andy remarked what a huge coincidence this whole thing was.

So I got an Indiana Jones line in anyway: "Happens to me all the time."

Anyway first my English-speaking church beckoned, so I walked the familiar trek with my backpack up to Ponsonby, where as usual the service was already in progress.

As I approached the near-deserted car park outside however, I spotted another friendly face – it was Mr Hippy the ice cream salesman! We agreed to rendezvous at the hospital later for him to shout me a sandwich from Subway, and give me a lift home.


Inside not much had changed. Greg was enthusing away at the front as usual, and afterwards I got to see Jamie, Chris Riding, Neville, Kylie, Jack’s family, Janine, Ben and Shane, who gave me a lift to the hospital.

Hospitals. Having, in recent years, repeatedly visited relatives and friends at them back in the UK, these places were becoming too familiar territory.

It was therefore with my customary apprehension that I took a deep breath and walked into Lionel's ward. What would I find? A body with a million tubes coming out of it? A confused old man who didn't remember me today? Perhaps he didn’t want anyone seeing him in whatever his current state was? Perhaps… the bed would be empty, and made-up for someone new. Oh dear.

It turned out Lionel was going with what seems to be the factory-setting position for hospital patients - slouched forward in bed asleep.

I sat down, and looked at him. I have a worse-than-most memory for faces, (and names unfortunately) but that was Lionel all right. Looking very serious. And unconscious.

Presently, he wearily opened his eyes and squinted at me.

Oh boy, I really wanted to take advantage of this. "Hi Lionel, I’m still in England, because this is just a dream. Woo-oo-ooh!!! Well, I must be off – Mr Hippy and I are going to eat a Subway."

Well, that’s what I wanted to say. In actual fact I was too afraid of giving him a coronary, so I quickly told him that I’d got back from the UK yesterday, and deliberately avoided mentioning any knowledge of his having asked for me. That would have been awkward for both of us.

He weakly managed to grate a few words, finishing with a consonantly-challenged corruption of "So – I suppose you’re gonna gnaff orf now, are ya?"

Oh yes, that was definitely still Lionel in there.

He dropped off again, and after much effort with a phone-card that I’d found many months ago, I made contact with Mr Hippy.

The following night Lionel seemed to have taken a turn for the worse – he was flat-out. Although he wasn’t a Christian (which raises ethical questions about what I did, but it’s never stopped me before) I prayed over him.

The next day I found him sitting in a chair, but still apparently comatose. The nurse told me he’d been awake earlier, and eaten, but now there was no response.

If you’ve ever visited someone in hospital, you’ll be familiar with the dilemma of whether to try to wake them up or not. I took his shoulder and had a go, but Lionel wasn’t even stirring.

I examined his face. I watched his breathing. It occurred to me that, although not reacting to me, he didn’t actually seem to be asleep. I thought of all those stories of coma patients who’d heard every word that had been said to them, and realised this was one of those opportunities.

So, looking like a complete idiot, I started talking to this apparently asleep guy, regardless of whether he actually just wanted some quiet to rest. I told him about England, about my sister’s graduation day, about my family and lots of other things, until I ran out of stuff. It actually hadn’t taken me long, but there was still no change, so I made my excuses and left.

Then, as I was walking away, with a tremendous effort Lionel heaved his head slowly upwards, and forced from his mouth a question about my sister.

As I sat down to continue talking to him again, I knew with 100% certainty, that I was in exactly the place where God wanted me to be.

Touch Down

“AUCKLAND AIRPORT.”

The red sign was exactly where I had left it.

So was the duty-free area, the corridor where they play birdsong over the tannoy, and the free coffees.

The first time I had arrived here last year, after 26 hours in the air, I had quite literally been too tired to even string a sentence together.

This time I was a bit more used to it, but still on auto-pilot.

As I queued up, my thoughts were partly influenced by the pigeons I’d seen perched above me back in Richmond last week. The ones that seemed to suggest that there were unpleasant forces trying to keep me away from NZ.

A year ago, upon entering New Zealand, Auckland Customs had taken me to one side, and without explanation searched my entire belongings. Eventually the guy had stood there, utterly defeated by his own misplaced determination.

“You don’t have enough clothes,” he’d given-in out loud. “I had hoped to do you for illegally emigrating here… but you don’t have enough clothes.”

I think his puzzlement was not so much at the number of clothes that I’d had, as at where he’d got the idea from that there could be so many of them in just one backpack.

Where indeed.

Was Satan trying to keep me out of New Zealand? Or was that just a very negative way of looking at things? Shouldn’t I be more positive-minded, and expect this morning to go without a glitch, like it no doubt would for the hundreds of other travellers in front of and behind me?

Put on all the armour that God gives you, so that you will be able to stand up against the Devil’s evil tricks. (Ephesians 6:11 Good News)

So I prayed.

Sure enough, the girl I got at customs managed to query my official NZ-originated paperwork. So I spent a good 10 minutes taking her through the application that I’d already gone through when I’d made it 3 months ago, until she agreed that it was indeed okay.

Then, after the x-ray machine, a policewoman singled me out and quite literally asked me every question she could think of. “Do you have any other passports? Where are you staying? Why are you here? Was this trip a last-minute decision?” So I repeated the whole explanation that I’d just gone through with the customs girl all over again.

After a good 10 minutes she paused, apparently trying to think of some more questions to ask. Eventually I asked her “Have I done something wrong?” to which a huge smile suddenly rushed across her face as she quickly assured me “no, you haven’t”, explained that she had just picked me out “at random”, and then proceeded to spend several further minutes re-asking many of the same questions again, only this time in relation to my previous trip here.

Several minutes after she had admitted my innocence, it seemed she just couldn’t think of anything else to ask me, and had to let me go.

Too bad she didn’t spend all that time and effort on all the people who didn’t have official approval on paper from NZ Immigration, eh? (like, nearly everyone else there)

Again, where did she get such an illogical idea from?

For we are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age. (Ephesians 6:12 Good News)

Having phoned flatmates David and Neil, I refused to pay the extortionate cab fare being quoted for Howick, and instead paid the extortionate one for the shuttle to the bus station on Queen Street.

(New Zealand has a low population, so the airport has no rail-link, and only one actual bus-service that I am aware of)

At the Britomart bus station, I realised that it was Saturday, and I had the best part of an hour to wait until the bus to Howick.

Not good news for a weary traveller.

My old friends at the youth hostel were, for the first time in months, a mere 10 minutes walk away, but my backpack suggested I should rather just slouch here and wait it out.

It was one of those moments when it felt as though no time at all had passed since I was last here. How many times now had I sat in this spot waiting for a bus to come? This was normal. The New Zealand sky. The complete stranger talking to me. The giant ‘X’ of the sign opposite that advertised ‘MAXX’ - Auckland’s mistifyingly renamed ‘Rideline’ helpline.

Where were John, Alistair and Herschel now? It was like I had nodded-off and just dreamt my sojourn back to the UK.

The bus came, I caught it, I travelled through places with familiar names like Symonds Street, Newmarket, Ellerslie, Panmure, Pakuranga and all stations to Howick, where I climbed off and trudged back to my flat, where David and Neil were now out.

Tim Downstairs was just outside though, together with his cat Smokey, so I apologised to him for my anti-social lack of conversation, walked back through my waiting flat, and tried to stretch-out on my patiently-waiting mattress.

I looked around my room.


David's running-machine.


Mr Hippy's cassette-radio.


The lamp above my bed that looks disturbingly like a small version of the one above Number 6’s bed in The Prisoner.

That picture on the wall! That was the one I had tried to recall back in England:


A couple with bags on a station platform eerily similar, and yet impossibly different, to my local Station back home.


Oh yeah, and that other picture of a cat sprawled out on its back.

...and that other one that looks like our old family cat Phantom as a kitten.

And there were the two bags that I had left behind still sitting on the sammon carpet – if for some reason I hadn’t returned, one was to be shipped to me and the other thrown out.

And I was hungry too, but that meant going out again and buying something. And that meant breaking my decision not to dip into my UK money at all on this trip. I’d already bent that rule once today to exchange a traveller’s cheque for my bus fares.

What I really wanted to do though was crawl into bed and crash, but there was another problem. No sheets. I’d have to get up, search the house for some, and then make the bed. Too difficult. Maybe I could just sleep here? No, I needed some blankets to blot out the daylight.

It was a bit of an irony. In returning again I had philosophically made my own bed, but I actually couldn’t lie in it.

So instead I looked up at the window, saw the kiwi branches outside, heard the kiwi traffic and kiwi children’s voices and wondered yet again if coming back had all been a tremendous mistake.

Meanwhile, a few miles away, an old man in a hospital ward asked where I was.

(tomorrow's post here)

THE GUEST HOST

Hello. As regular readers will be aware, I’m actually not on Earth right now, so for this post only, Krusty The Klown is here to offer his own unique brand of observational philosophy. It has nothing to do with ratings.

THE VORSPRUNG DURCH TEKNIK

It seems to be that if you're taking a five year mission, if you're exploring strange new worlds and new civilisations, if you are boldly going where no man has gone before, the first thing you're going to want to think about is carrying a lot of spare parts.

I mean, you get a brand new car, drive it off the forecourt on the day it's delivered, five will get you ten you're back there within a month because there's a dink in the wheel arch or the oil light is flickering or something. And, no matter how little you drive it, no matter how careful you are, you're back at the garage after two years for an MOT to prove the vehicle's still roadworthy.


Now, the Starship Enterprise - this isn't a pony and trap, friend. This here is a multi-billion dollar spaceship. If something goes wrong on that baby, you're not going to fix it with an elastic band and a strategically placed hairnet. But, Captain Kirk and crew are going where no man has gone before.

... It seems unlikely to me that they have Enterprise dealerships where no man has gone before. It's all foreign spaceships out there - Klingon Birds of Prey, Nebuchadnezzars and TIE fighters. You take the Enterprise to a local dealer out there, they don't even know how to open the hood.

I figure most of the Enterprise is taken up by spare parts. There's, like, three whole floors dedicated to "just in case". That's where they're storing all the crew members in the red shirts that you've never seen before tonight's episode of Star Trek. One dies on an alien planet thanks to a wrathful Greek god, a psychic child or a robot Gestapo agent, they just wheel out another red shirt guy from deep freeze. They keep them next to the jack and the spare tyre.

This may sound harsh, but it's all about being practical, and, when you're thousands of light-years from home, practicality is the only thing keeping you alive, buddy. You hook up a Romulan FTL drive in an Enterprise ship, the whole system overheats - they just don't get along. It's what technicians call a "tech wha...?!"

You can read the continuing blog of Krusty The Klown at http://www.klownkrusty.blogspot.com, or just click on the picture of the petrifying klown above.

Dream Ship Surprise: Period 1

It is a well-known and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.

True. Despite the presence of a great many performing dolphins, together with the implied suggestion that this was an understanding film adaptation of Douglas Adams’ great radio series The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, I knew that what I was actually watching was in fact nothing more interesting than the back of someone else’s chair.

Flicking through Singapore Airlines’ in-flight magazine, it became obvious that someone somewhere had anticipated my sitting here today, and had become determined not to show my kind of movie on this flight. No Marx Brothers, no King Of The Rocket Men, no Nurses Reunion - just who picks these shows out anyway? I mean come on Singapore Airlines, instead of just rerunning old stuff, you should be funding new programmes.


After 20 years in hiding, Wolfie grits his teeth and returns to Tooting. But Ronnie Lynch has a long memory…

But, no, instead we get a rerun of Frasier...

Then, beneath the blurb on Hitchhiker, I suddenly found myself affected by a rare piece of effective cross-placement advertising.

It said something like “Hey – if you like rubbish apathetically-scripted comedy science-fiction movies, then you should watch Dream Ship Surprise – Period 1 over on Channel 33⅓!”

Waaiitaaaminnnuttte… was this that German Star Trek parody that I saw so derided in Starburst (or some such sf mag) a while back? The one the reviewer had said only had one joke, which was (chortle) that in it Kirk and Spock (snigger snigger) were gay?

Oh, dear. It was a long flight. I didn't really have much choice.


And, it must be said, if you can forgive this crippling central premise, and ignore all the smut, and commit yourself to this film in that way which it is only possible to do on a 26-hour flight, then, allowing for the subtitles, the story is in fact still quite poor.

The opening flash-forward is never repeated when we catch up, the gay love-story is so ill-conceived (I can't believe I just typed that) that a second heterosexual one has to be included too, and as is common in Hollywood science-fiction - no-one realises that a time-machine can be used twice.

On the plus side, as comedy it’s very well directed, the cast were clearly enjoying themselves, and some of the musical numbers are quite catchy, notably Space Taxi To The Sky.

In short, it all looks like it’s a lot more fun than it actually is.

A bit like the Hitchhiker movie.

(available here)
Join us next time, when guest-host Krusty The Klown drops in to tell why he hates Star Trek so much, and reveals the real reason why NASA’s space-exploration program has stalled even worse than his own kareer.

Yes, And The Music Was Even Worse

Some people come to Singapore for a fortnight. Others for a lifetime. Me - I was here for 3 hours.

Alas, according to the lady behind the train counter, it didn’t sound as though I would have enough time to go into the city and get back again, so once more I had to make do with just a stroll around outside the airport.

Making my way upstairs, I discovered a… what’s it called… monorail joining terminal 2 to 1, so I went on that. Then, just for good measure, I went back on it too.

It’s the law of the monorail.

And you have to wonder why they bothered – it’s just about the shortest monorail journey I’ve ever been on. I really had walked far farther just to board it. You’ve been to airports – you know just how much walking they ironically involve.

In fact, Singapore Changi International Airport is so large, that I even came across one desk organising tours around the terminal! Boy, they sure have tourism down to a science here. I bet they even have showgirls, kids’ clubs and watersports. How they must laugh every time the air traffic controllers go on strike.

Anyway, the light was fading, and I was anxious to get at least one photo of Singapore outdoors, but it was proving a challenge. Everywhere I looked was just… so… boring.

That’s right – the picture below was the single most interesting angle I could find:


Thank God there was at least a car coming past.

After that it was back indoors again, to walk another mile to flight SQ 285, and wonder how long it would be before I passed this way again…

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

I am a slow reader. I can usually only cope with one chapter at a time, transforming an otherwise forgettable quick-read into a much-weightier life-or-death experience. The characters have time to grow in my mind. I ponder what will happen next. It becomes a part of my daily life, and therefore a part of real life.

It becomes real.

A good example of this would be Douglas Adams’ Mostly Harmless, each chapter of which contains so many ideas that it needs regular breaks in which to absorb them all.

Today however, with 26 hours to kill until I would touch-down again in Auckland, it was time to plunge completely in and immerse myself for as many hours as it took, so I opened the same author’s oft-condemned Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.


I say oft-condemned because it was Adams’ first novel outside of his 5-book Hitchhiker trilogy. As a result, many were disappointed that it only contained some of Adams’ familiar ingredients.

Alternatively, my friend Rich gave-up reading it half-way through, protesting “It just knew how incredibly funny it all was.”

Sooo – too funny for Rich eh? This I must read.

High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse.

He’s good at first lines, is Adams.

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly ominous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.

Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random.

The Monk currently believed that the valley and everything in the valley and around it, including the Monk itself and the Monk’s horse, was a uniform shade of pale pink. This made for a certain difficulty in distinguishing any one thing from any other thing, and therefore made doing anything or going anywhere impossible, or at least difficult and dangerous. Hence the immobility of the Monk and the boredom of the horse, which had had to put up with a lot of silly things in its time but was secretly of the opinion that this was one of the silliest.

It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them.

On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.

The Monk had first gone wrong when it was simply given too much to believe in one day. It was, by mistake, cross-connected to a video recorder that was watching eleven TV channels simultaneously, and this caused it to blow a bank of illogic circuits.

So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk started to believe that thirty-five per cent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. The man from the Monk shop said that it needed a whole new motherboard, but then pointed out that the new improved Monk Plus models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multi-tasking Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any system errors, were twice as fast and at least three times as glib, and you could have a whole new one for less than the cost of replacing the motherboard of the old model.

That was it. Done.

The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.

For a number of days and nights, which it variously believed to be three, forty-three, and five hundred and ninety-eight thousand seven hundred and three, it roamed the desert, putting its simple Electric trust in rocks, birds, clouds and a form of non-existent elephant-asparagus, until at last it fetched up here, on this high rock, overlooking a valley that was not, despite the deep fervour of the Monk’s belief, pink. Not even a little bit.

Time passed.

Dirk Gently, as the book’s title suggests, runs a holistic detective agency. Holistic means to deal with the whole problem. He doesn’t just find a missing cat. He solves the whole mystery of why the cat went missing in the first place. He also believes that everything in the universe is connected. To Dirk, therefore, everything is a very big problem indeed, but with an infinite number of, very expensive, leads.

“I’m very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term ‘holistic’ refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson.”

He also doesn’t believe a good deal of what he says. Unfortunate, as whatever he disbelieves usually turns out to be true. Like the time back at college when, to make a fast buck, he’d pretended to know the correct answers to an exam paper ahead of time. And unwittingly predicted every answer correctly.

“I am not a clairvoyant.”

“Really,” said Richard. “Then what about the exam papers?”

The eyes of Dirk Gently darkened at the mention of this subject.

“A coincidence,” he said, in a low, savage voice, “a strange and chilling coincidence, but none the less a coincidence. One, I might add, which caused me to spend a considerable time in prison. Coincidences can be frightening and dangerous things.”

An unfortunate perspective, as Dirk is a man plagued by them.

It has to be said that reading it all in one sitting was actually an extremely good idea, as Adams’ plots are characteristically complex, and there’s just no way I would have kept track of all the threads over a longer period of time.

Several of this book’s elements were familiar to me, as many years ago Adams had been the subject of an edition of LWT’s The South Bank Show, in which several of his characters, including the Electric Monk, had shown up at his home to help him finish writing the fifth Hitchhiker book.

But this book’s biggest joy was a complete surprise. No-one had told me about this.

In the late 70s, Adams had been script-editor of my favourite TV show Doctor Who, and had written several classic episodes, including one my favourite stories City Of Death.

Pretty well every Doctor Who script at some stage got adapted into book form, but not Adams’, who refused to adapt his scripts for such a low fee (he was an award-winning novelist after all), and didn’t trust another author to adapt his work either.

So basically, Douglas Adams never wrote a Doctor Who book.

Except for this one.

Purists have criticised him for re-using elements from the two Doctor Who stories mentioned here, but in fact this simply qualifies it as a sequel. Professor Chronotis is a lead character, still resides quietly at college, has a shakier memory in his old age, and even repeats many of his jokes from Shada. Not a contradiction – a continuation.

So here was Douglas Adams writing my favourite TV show one last time, and Doctor Who never enjoyed better scripts than his.

(review of the sequel here)

Gate Of Many Returns

How many times now had I stood by this departure gate?

The same luggage shop, the same signposts to the crash-matted multi-faith airport chapel, the same World News where I’d bought a Cherry Coke to cheer myself up, the same group of Asians on the same sofas by the same huge windows under the same TV set, where I must therefore presume they live. (After all, the only thing more unlikely than those people still waiting there years later, was surely that I was)

The journey to the airport this time had been matter-of-fact. I hugged my mum goodbye again, she said “You know I want the best for you, don’t you?” to which I had replied “I don’t really want to go, but if you had the chance to spend six weeks in another country, you’d take it, wouldn’t you?”

I recalled how, the first time I had flown the 26 hours to New Zealand, they had screened The Matrix Revolutions to try to make the journey go a bit slower. In those circumstances, as with all mediocre in-flight movies, I’d welcomed it like a good friend.

Now it was hard to forget. All that pesky social relevance that films are so keen on nowadays, kept flashing into my mind offering advice and a commentary on my life.

Oracle: "Now, since the real test for any choice is having to make the same choice again, knowing full well what it might cost - I guess I feel pretty good about that choice, 'cause here I am, at it again."

Oh there was a lot of other stuff about the Trainman, and the Frenchman, and the Icecreamman etc., but that was all a bit highbrow for me.

Anyway, it was all up to God, so through the gate I went…

…and blow me if God didn’t take me all the way around the world straight back to New Zealand again.

Time For My Bus

Today I was rushing around W H Smith in Richmond, buying some souvenirs of my trip… err… home to take… err… away with me to give to my friends… err… as far away from home as it’s possible to get.

Yes, yes that’s all the right way around.

I looked at the DVD case on the end of an aisle – I think 4 of the movies on display were My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Bruce Almighty, The Passion Of The Christ and Wimbledon.

Unfortunately I was looking for Bagpuss.

If you’ve been paying attention, then you’ll have concluded that if I was rushing around buying gifts for my New Zealand friends, then I must be flying back tonight.

I hate being in a rush.

To prove the point, I raced and just caught the bus. I had to get home and finish packing. I got out my money – I had no change – only a tenner. The driver looked at it from behind his reinforced plastic barricade and shook his head at me. “Nah,” he said in a monotone. “Nah, I can’t take that.”

Funnily enough, neither could I.

“Okay FINE!” I said to him. “You don’t know where I have to get to, by what time, or what I have to do tonight, but that’s fine, I’ll just WALK!”

I got off and headed for the back of the bus, hoping to catch another one.

There was a beeping sound. A honking. He was honking his horn.

After a moment I wondered if he was actually honking at me.

I walked back to the front of the bus. He was smiling and gesturing for me to come back. Refusing to let my frownish guard down I got on.

He said “I wasn’t refusing to take you, I was going to take you for free.”

…

Typical. Absolutely typical. Other people seem allowed to get stroppy, but not me. Oooooh noooooo, not even allowed to once.

So I did the only thing I could do, I thanked him, in front of everyone, apologisied, in front of everyone, and sat down.

During the sluggish journey that I probably might as well have walked, I realised that I had to make things right. I mean he may well have simply been lying about his intentions in order to save face, but I shouldn’t have tailored a crime to fit his measurements.

Before I got off, I said to him that I’d had no right to presume the worst of him, he chuckled and reiterated his claim, we both smiled and went our separate ways in peace.

As I walked up to my street, I reflected on the three things that had just happened.

1. God had taught me a lesson.

2. Hopefully God had taught him a lesson too, if only about communicating clearly.

3. God had given me a free bus ride home.

It was all oddly familiar.

Never-Never Land

I’m in an episode of Blackadder.

I’m in the episode Blackadder’s Christmas Carol - in the Prince Regent sequence.


Edmund (or whatever he was called at that point) emerges from the Regent’s chambers, closes the doors behind him, and has a quick exchange with Baldrick. In the audience, someone coughs. It’s me.

Actually, a lot of people coughed, because it was the final take of the evening, and our last chance to make sure we got heard.

Another thing I remember about that night was co-author Richard Curtis telling us about all the abandoned ideas they’d had for the Christmas special.

One plan had been to set it 10 years in the future in 1997 (ho ho) with Blackadder as a superhero. One of the other superheros was to be called “Alwayslate”, and his superpower was to be – you guessed it – that he was always late.

The final climactic scene was to feature Miranda Richardson as a villain holding everyone hostage, at which point Alwayslate would burst in with his heroic cry of "Sorry I’m Late!” and accidentally knock her unconscious with the door.

Anyway, ever since that evening with my oldest friend Alistair at TVC, I’ve been acutely aware that a great deal of my life runs late.

I basically can’t get anything done until there isn’t enough time left. I need deadlines. Quite frankly this blog entry is dated 22/09/2005, but I’m typing it on 12/03/2006, and expecting to post it in April. Of the same year.

It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s just that time doesn’t quite run in a straight line for me. I tend to look at today within the context of my whole life (conception to death), which means something that happened 20 years ago will often be more real to me than something that happened this morning.

I’m not alone. Recently I helped one of my friends - Bicentennial Man - to move house. It was the first time we’d spoken for over 10 years. I made no mention of this, and neither did he. After all, what difference did it make?

I think I have this attitude because when I say something, I always try to stick to my word. I try to keep my promises, even if it takes a long time to, and I expect others to as well.

Despite having been made 2,000 years ago, we still expect Jesus’ promises to be kept. The passage of time doesn’t make truth less true.

So this blog is 6 months behind – to me that’s the same as it being a week behind – I’ll catch up. Watch - I actually will.

So, does that make me a procrastinator, or just very patient? Is it actually my fault that everything in my life takes forever? (e.g. the films that I’ve spent over 15 years making)

Last July I returned to England to visit my family and friends for a month. This became 1½ months. Then that became 2 months. It’s now been 2½ months, and understandably we’ve all been wondering whether I’ll ever return to New Zealand.

You see, it’s a bit hard to get enthusiastic about doing anything, when your long-term recall proves that none of your plans have ever worked out.

Did God want me to get a computer? Because both my computers and every CD-ROM I have ever bought have, upon arriving home, not worked properly. Yes, even Norton Anti-virus.

Did God want me to get my computer/cameras/projectors repaired? Because everything that I have had repaired, has subsequently turned out not to have been. All of them - several times.

Does God want me to drive? Because so far, I have had to apply for my LEARNER’S licence THREE TIMES, despite having been SUCCESSFUL on each occasion.

And then yesterday, when I was sold flight tickets to New Zealand that today turned out to only be valid for 3 months – not 12. I don’t know who got it wrong, I just know that once again it was.

The most basic easy ordinary things that magically happen in most people’s lives become a mindlessly complex bureaucratic spiral in mine.

Oh I know, you feel that way too, in your house with your wife and your 2.4 kids and your job and your car.

How many dates have you been on?

Whenever I get along well with a girl, the same recognisable premeditated cruelty towards me always comes along and takes her over.

From my perspective, it’s all too extreme to be coincidence.

I feel as though my life is fought over. On the one hand God repeatedly comes through for me at the very last moment, but on the other, to get there is all so blasted impossible.

And we’re only talking about a child’s essentials here, like food, a roof and a very low income.

You can forget anything adult like a permanent job, a car or someone to love.

Must… stop… Steve… having… a… life...

But I also know that:

a) Our battle is against principalities and powers, not people, and

b) [God] disarmed the principalities and powers that were ranged against us and made a bold display and public example of them, in triumphing over them in Him and in it [the cross].

– Colossians 2:15 Amplified Bible

So if bureaucracy is trying to drive me away from New Zealand, then I guess that’s the direction I should head in.

After all, the alternative is to give up New Zealand, my computer, my film-making, my driving, and all the other basic yet impossible things that I haven't listed here, and do nothing ever.

Instead, I think I'll trust God, press on and try to be a bit more patient.

PS. Today I also bought 2 DVDs… they both failed to play, for different people, on different machines, in different ways. (one of them actually broke the player)(and yes, they were 2 different releases…) But we'll find a way!

Leave It Aaat, Del Boyyyyy…

As you may have noticed, since I got back to the UK 2½ months ago, I’ve been catching-up on alot of missed TV shows.

One such show dates back to 2003 – it’s the final episode of Only Fools And Horses. (OFAH)

I always thought that Only Fools And Horses had a fascinating history, not least because author John Sullivan simply cared about his work so much.

As well as 7 seasons over 20+ years, there were a whacking 16 Christmas specials, 2 mini-episodes within other programmes (The Funny Side Of Christmas and Breakfast Time), 4 sketches (within The Royal Variety Performance, Red Nose Day and Only Fools And Horses Selection Box), and 1½ episodes that were completed but never transmitted. (White Mice to be shown in schools, and The Robin Flies At Dawn to entertain British soldiers fighting the Gulf war)

Oh, and now there’s the obligatory spin-off series too.

For me, there are 3 reasons why this show appeals:

1. It ran for a long time. (very very rare for this to happen at the BBC nowadays)

2. It was funny. (very very rare for this to happen… oh it’s all too easy)

3. As far as I’m aware, it’s all canon.

As I’ve always believed – good continuity is the mark of a well-written and believable show.

A few years ago they introduced Raquel as a love-interest for Del. Many consider this to be the point at which the show jumped the shark (too many characters, too many feelings suffocating the story), but the thing I will always remember about Raquel’s introduction is this: when I later rewatched an episode from several years earlier, buried away in the script I actually found Slater making a reference to her.

And this sort of strong script integrity happens again and again in Only Fools And Horses.

It therefore came as a great pleasure when, while watching the latest “last episode ever” recently, (Sleepless In Peckham) I found it to indeed harken back to earlier shows from years gone by, and remain completely (I presume) loyal to them.

Freddie The Frog – I remember that episode. About 1992 wasn’t it?

And there was none of this dumbed-dumb attitute of hitting the viewer over the head with clunkily written recollections or in-your-face black-and-white flashbacks.

Author John Sullivan, unlike so many careless shows that sneer at their audience’s memory, was simply true to his word. Which makes it alot easier to believe in the episode that I’m watching now.

What also impressed me was how much more satisfactorily this episode wrapped-up the show's run than the last forced ending Time On Our Hands.

But of course, it wasn’t the end.


Two Fridays ago the BBC gave us the first episode of spin-off series The Green Green Grass - focussing on Del’s mates Boycie and Marlene.

And simply from the script’s mellow laid-back attitude, you can tell this show’s got pedigree. Its principle characters are not the usual desperate-to-offend sex-symbols that pretty well all sitcoms now launch with. Boycie and Marlene actually come across as being… err… well believable by comparison. Surely a new sitcom featuring such a dull unspectacular family would never have been green-lit from scratch.

And there was no inexperienced fear of alienating the audience by referring to the original series either. Several fine references were made to Del Boy, and Denzil even appeared both in studio and on location, albeit as an obvious cypher.

But alas, I can’t shake from my mind what tired TV professional Herschel said without even watching it:

“This is a sitcom about 2 characters from Only Fools And Horses, neither one of which is ever going to be Del Boy.”

And I can’t argue with him there – the set up (Boycie and Marlene are on the run from the mob) seems so ill-conceived, because we know they won’t return to Peckham until whenever the series ends. Just as well that, as far as the BBC is concerned, the UK really only has one region.

Coincidentally, recently the Daily Mail have been giving away free BBC comedy DVDs, including an early Only Fools And Horses.


Watching it one morning I discovered that it appeared to be Boycie’s very first episode A Losing Streak. (although I later discovered he’d also appeared earlier)


Boycie was a card shark in those early days, and Marlene was merely referred to off-camera as a running joke.

And as with so many of John Sullivan’s scripts, the final payoff depended wholly upon the viewer making a basic presumption earlier on.

I miss Only Fools And Horses, I myself hope that they keep bringing it back again and again, regardless of whether the episodes are as good as they used to be.

Why? Because with John Sullivan writing it, whether it’s good or bad, I always feel as though I’m watching a sitcom again.

(review of Rock & Chips here)

One Hit Wonderland by Tony Hawks

I was rappin’ in my club the other night,
When nothing I said was coming out right,
The crowd got angry,
And this one man,
He was gonna throw a bottle,
He was gonna chuck a can…
…chuck a can…
…chuck a…
…chuck a…

- Stutter Rap
- by Morris Minor And The Majors (1987)

Tony Hawks is fast becoming my second favourite author, after Douglas Adams. I know not whether he actually wrote the above lyrics, but he was one of the song’s three performers, and therefore a bit saddened when his first hit record, in 1987, also turned out to be his last.

Fifteen years later he climbed out of his musical box and read the label on the outside – far from being a well-remembered pop legend, Tony was in fact just another forgotten one hit wonder.

But Tony Hawks is a man who believes in the impossible.

In recent years he has optimistically taken on bets to beat the whole Moldovan football team at tennis, and to hitchhike around the entire Irish coastline with a fridge.

So could he, 15 years after the first one, become a TWO hit wonder?


In his latest book One Hit Wonderland, Tony accepts the challenge to have a second top 20 hit anywhere in the world… but within a 2 year time-limit.

To a certain extent, this time-frame is the book’s downfall. We all know that if he does succeed, it’s not going to happen until the end of the book. But Tony knows from his previous books that the joy of his ambition lies in the journey.

And this time ‘journey’ is definitely the correct word.

Nashville, Amsterdam, Sudan, Romania and Albania all play host to his relentless optimism that, in an industry of fierce competition and disappointment, he can still somehow make it all come together in the end.

The book’s slowest section is in Sudan, mainly because, while fascinating, the bet is just not the reason for his presence there. However, by the time Tony reaches Albania, the clock is ticking faster, and it’s become an all-or-nothing scenario.

For me, Tony Hawks’ books hit the mark for 2 reasons:

First, his honed understanding of comedy is an absolute breath of fresh air.

Second, he’s always far away from home attempting the impossible.

To that end I find his books highly encouraging.

But the final reason why I enjoyed One Hit Wonderland so much, is because at one stage he actually gets together to record a song with Norman Wisdom.


I mean - Norman. Wisdom.

He may be older these days, tireder, and less exact with his delivery, but he’s still producing new material, and I wish that more people would recognise the value in that.

Think of a sprightly old person that you know. They’re great, aren’t they? So why does everyone say that Harrison Ford, The Rolling Stones, and the original cast of Star Trek are now “too old” to appeal?

Available here.

Here Are The People You Could Meet

God is dumb.

Seriously – when does he ever speak?

Again and again today, I hear and read of people saying stuff like “and then this morning the Lord said to me such-and-such.” I have to presume that most of these instances are just a realisation they’ve had, which they have paraphrased as a sentence from God.

Of course, you also meet people who say that they have actually heard an audible voice from God, but that’s something else isn’t it? No matter how apprehensive we might be of believing them, it still comes across as a slightly more honest description of what happened.

The Bible is littered with instances of God actually speaking, but again, how much of this was actually spoken words? And how much of it was someone putting God’s revelation into words?

At a Christian prophecy conference in Auckland a few years ago, I remember telling new friend Courtney that I wished I could get an email from God each day, telling me what to do. That’d be a lot easier, I thought. But then, a lot of what He could say would be subject to whatever context I read it in.

“1. Eat breakfast.”

I’m in a bit of a hurry this morning. I know – I’ll buy breakfast.

“2. Go to work.”

Sure – but eating breakfast is my top priority, so I might be a bit late.

“3. Pray.”

I’ll pray after breakfast while I’m on my way to work. No I won’t, I’ll quickly recite The Lord’s Prayer now, then that’ll be done.

Of course, God could be more precise:

“1. Eat a whole healthy breakfast, using your own resources, be finished by 8:20, then wash-up, dry, put everything away and brush your teeth by 8:25, so that you can catch your bus. Make sure you have nothing else outstanding to do at home beforehand, as you won’t have time afterwards to make your bed, pack your bag, go to the toilet, the bank or anywhere else.

The term ‘breakfast’ refers to your first meal of the day, and should include a bowl of healthy cereal, plenty of your oldest full-fat cows’ milk, one spoon of sugar (the term “spoon” refers to the one in the sugar-bowl), a cup (that’s your big mug filled to within 1cm of the rim) of 100% fruit juice (not a “fruit drink” as defined on the label), 2 slices of toast (toasted for between 60 and 96 seconds) (don’t drop crumbs anywhere except on the plate) with a medium spread of full-fat margerine and nothing else.

This list is in English, current Oxford-published dictionary definitions apply, and by attempting to carry out these instructions you hereby agree to completely absolve me from any personal opinions you may have (including, but not limited to, sickness, health and/or indifference) regarding these actions’ consequences.”

Quite frankly, if I had an email from God like that, I might just feed my breakfast to the cat. After all, He never said that I had to eat it.

Anyway, the point I’m… hang on a second, he did used to send us instructions like that.

3 "This is how Aaron is to enter the sanctuary area: with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. 4 He is to put on the sacred linen tunic, with linen undergarments next to his body; he is to tie the linen sash around him and put on the linen turban. These are sacred garments; so he must bathe himself with water before he puts them on. 5 From the Israelite community he is to take two male goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering.
6 "Aaron is to offer the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household. 7 Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 8 He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat. [a] 9 Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the LORD and sacrifice it for a sin offering. 10 But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat.
11 "Aaron shall bring the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household, and he is to slaughter the bull for his own sin offering. 12 He is to take a censer full of burning coals from the altar before the LORD and two handfuls of finely ground fragrant incense and take them behind the curtain. 13 He is to put the incense on the fire before the LORD, and the smoke of the incense will conceal the atonement cover above the Testimony, so that he will not die. 14 He is to take some of the bull's blood and with his finger sprinkle it on the front of the atonement cover; then he shall sprinkle some of it with his finger seven times before the atonement cover.
15 "He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bull's blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. 16 In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been. He is to do the same for the Tent of Meeting, which is among them in the midst of their uncleanness. 17 No one is to be in the Tent of Meeting from the time Aaron goes in to make atonement in the Most Holy Place until he comes out, having made atonement for himself, his household and the whole community of Israel.
18 "Then he shall come out to the altar that is before the LORD and make atonement for it. He shall take some of the bull's blood and some of the goat's blood and put it on all the horns of the altar. 19 He shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times to cleanse it and to consecrate it from the uncleanness of the Israelites.
20 "When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. 21 He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat's head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. 22 The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert.
23 "Then Aaron is to go into the Tent of Meeting and take off the linen garments he put on before he entered the Most Holy Place, and he is to leave them there. 24 He shall bathe himself with water in a holy place and put on his regular garments. Then he shall come out and sacrifice the burnt offering for himself and the burnt offering for the people, to make atonement for himself and for the people. 25 He shall also burn the fat of the sin offering on the altar.
26 "The man who releases the goat as a scapegoat must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water; afterward he may come into the camp. 27 The bull and the goat for the sin offerings, whose blood was brought into the Most Holy Place to make atonement, must be taken outside the camp; their hides, flesh and offal are to be burned up. 28 The man who burns them must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water; afterward he may come into the camp. (Leviticus 16:3-28 NIV)

I wonder – was Aaron allowed to strut around like a chicken while he did all this? You know – just for a laugh? Because God never actually said that he couldn’t.

At a corporate training session in 1996, I was told that communication was in fact only 10% words, and 90% body-language.

I’ve concluded that, generally speaking, communication is actually 10% words, and 90% context. (which includes body-language)

“Yes.”

Oh dear, I appear to have typed the word “yes.” Without a context, “yes” could mean literally anything.

There are 2 lessons that I’ve learnt about words:

1. You can always add more words to them.

2. Therefore words can’t convey the whole truth. Ever.

(do you like the way I added the word ‘ever’?)

Even the Bible is endlessly debated over, because, being only words, it’s just not specific enough for us. Any argument that this is a failing on our part to understand it correctly, is really an agreement with my central point here about the dominant power of context - what we already know and believe.

Having long-since abandoned giving us long-winded wordy instructions, and with the words of the Bible now frozen, God seems to send most of his remaining communications to us via the silent context of our lives. Even when we learn something new from the Bible, it's not the words that have changed, but the context in which we read them.

Even the teaching of the Holy Spirit changes the context of our reading.

Over a year ago I spent quite a lot of time lying on the grass on Richmond’s Riverside Development, weighing up whether or not to return to New Zealand. Eventually I’d figured that there was little point in him actually telling me anything if I was going to do what He wanted anyway, so I resolved to head back to NZ, and gave him a week to change my mind.

Today (by which I mean now generally) (and 'now' means the date of this post, not necessarily the date on which I am typing this) (sigh, all right) about a year later not much has changed.

I was lying on the same grassy knoll asking God for another clear direction on whether to return to New Zealand yet again.

I looked up, and remembered why I had stopped lying on this patch a year ago, and moved to Richmond Green.

Pigeons. Perched in the sprawling branches of the tree above me. Picture a pigeon seen from underneath. Now picture lots of them. Yep, that’s the hail of bullets I was facing.

It occurred to me that there were probably a lot of people and powers who didn’t want me back in New Zealand. Who were waiting there for me, ready to do their damnest to go all over me again until I left.

It struck me that said antagonists were opposing God’s ways. I probably shouldn't follow them.

It’s certainly not as definite as the words “Return to New Zealand next week”, but weighing the idea up within the context of everything else in my life, I certainly can’t ignore it.

And to influence thoughts through a flock of pigeons, if that’s what was indeed happening, would certainly take a god.

The Creaking Door: Don’t Take My Blood

Who knows what evil lurks in listening to an old recording of a 50 year-old radio drama?

Well, at 5:30 this morning, I found out. And now... you will, too.

MUSIC: CHEERY VIOLINS.

HEROIC-SOUNDING ANNOUNCER:
I have flown, I have sailed, I have moved about this world of ours, and ever in search of the finest of its kind, we bring you the tops in spine-chillers…

FX: SOUND OF HEAVY DOOR SLOWLY CREAKING.

MENACING ANNOUNCER (WITH ECHO):…”The CREAKING…DOOR…!”

MUSIC: SHIVERING CELLO FOR A BIT.

HEROIC ANNOUNCER: The manufacturers of State Express 3-5 Filter Kings Cigarettes take pleasure in presenting…

MENACING ANNOUNCER (WITH ECHO):…”The CREAKING…DOOR…!”

SLOW PSYCHOLOGICALLY DISTURBED-SOUNDING NARRATOR: Good evening, friends of The Creaking Door. The Creaking Door is…opening…

(SOUND OF HEAVY DOOR CREAKING SLOWLY OPEN AGAIN)

…so DO come in!

Do you subscribe to the view that some of us have power over the life and death of someone else? John does. He knows when people are going to die. And THAT… can be MOST upsetting… for ALL concerned! Mm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm!

HEROIC ANNOUNCER: Smooth and world-class! Get the taste of new smooth State Express 3-5s today! We promise you – it’s the smoothest cigarette you can get. It’s a blend that has been perfected after years of constant research by our master blenders, and the recent development of an entirely new process, which gives you an even smoother 3-5 smoke! We promise you – it’s the smoothest cigarette you can get. Smooth and world-class! Get the taste, of new smooth State express 3-5s today!

SLOW PSYCHOLOGICALLY DISTURBED-SOUNDING NARRATOR: John… is not a usual sort of man… although he has a very ordinary sort of name. John Smith. What could be more ordinary than that? But he is a most UNusual sort of man… really. Take his blood group… for instance. His blood group… is group AB. VERY rare… indeed. As the doctor is pointing out to him…

DOCTOR: Only 2 percent of people belong to group AB, Mr Smith…

JOHN SMITH (VERY TROUBLED): I KNOW my group is very rare…

DOCTOR: And this young girl is dying. She must have a transfusion as soon as possible otherwise she WILL die. There’s absolutely no doubt about that.

JOHN SMITH (MORE TROUBLED): But surely I’m not the ONLY person with this type of blood in the area?

DOCTOR: Oh, no doubt there ARE other people but, we don’t know everyone’s blood-group off-hand, just like that. We depend, as you know, on blood donors. You’re the only registered donor in this area.

JOHN SMITH (SUICIDAL): But - but there MUST be someone else!

DOCTOR: Believe me, Mr Smith, there isn’t! Anyway, giving a transfusion isn’t anything to worry about – there’s nothing to it!

JOHN SMITH (UNTROUBLED): I’ve given blood before – I know that.

DOCTOR (HOPEFUL): Then you’ll help us? You’ll help the young girl?

JOHN SMITH (TROUBLED AGAIN): I – I can’t, I - I CAN’T go through that again! (SNAPS) I won’t! You’ve no right to ask me!

DOCTOR: Oh please, Mr Smith – calm down. (BEAT) What I’m asking isn’t so terrible.

JOHN SMITH (SNAPS): Yes, it is!

DOCTOR: But you said yourself…

JOHN SMITH: (AGITATED) You don’t KNOW what you’re asking, I CAN’T do it!

DOCTOR: Mr Smith, unless young Beryl Rogers receives a transfusion of blood - type AB blood - she will most certainly die.

Ahh, the joy of MP3s.

Those of you who read this blog regularly will already know how much I was enjoying this at 5:30am this morning.

Anyway if that opening has piqued your interest, you can hear the remaining 25 minutes at:

http://www.radiolovers.com/pages/creakingdoor.htm

Just click on “Don’t Take My Blood.”

Well, I must be off – I really feel like a cigarette.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension!

This is a movie with an awesome start.

By which I mean its title.

In fact, let’s be fair, it does actually have an awesome start.

Somewhere in the desert, a team of scientists are attempting to cross the bridge between our dimension, and the eighth one which exists in the gaps between all of the tiny atoms in our one.

Wow, what a concept.

The only known way of making this jump is to travel at an incredible speed towards an object large enough to theoretically pass inside of.

After a fascinating attempt in the present-day, we then get a flashback of John Lithgow as the quite mad Dr Lizardo, enthusiastically accelerating towards a brick wall.

And Lithgow is indeed one of this film’s successes. He plays the whole thing as way over-the-top comedy, despite the absense of much that I could positively identify as humour.

One scene that I did laugh at early on, was when Buckaroo, whilst singing in a bar with his band, singles out a lonely crying female in the audience to play a song especially for her, to cheer her up.

BUCKAROO BANZAI (singing): I don't have plans or schemes…
And I don't have hopes and dreams...

(SHE GETS MORE UPSET)

I don't have anything...
Since I don't have you...

(SHE MOUTHS THE WORDS OF THE SONG TO HERSELF)

And I don't have fond desires...
And I don't have happy hours...

(OTHER COUPLES START GAZING AT EACH OTHER ROMANTICALLY)
(SOBBING, SHE QUIETLY PULLS A PISTOL FROM HER HANDBAG)

And I don't have anything...

(IN RESIGNATION, SHE POINTS IT AT HER TEMPLE)

Since I don't have you...

Sadly after this scene, my feelings about this film headed in the same direction as the girl’s.

Within minutes, aliens with quite disppointing prosthetics were on the scene, and there was a spaceship in Earth’s orbit, sort of compromising the early promise of a story about the creepy dimension inside Doctor Lizardo’s brick wall.

The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension! is a movie that people seem to either love or hate. I’d prefer to think that I merely tolerate it. I didn’t follow the story (which immediately prejudices me) and the comedy that I assume was there didn’t work for me either, although I did spot some subtle political swipes. (but what do I know – my brain went stale sitting through Jacques Tati's 'masterpiece' Playtime)

The very final scene was quite upbeat, (despite appearing to have been shot as an afterthought on a quiet Sunday morning several months later), and I actually found myself rooting for a sequel. The trouble was that I was presuming a second chance would not repeat all the problems that I’d had with the first one.

I suppose the bottom line is this:

The film is well-loved, and even today there is still talk of a sequel. If they make it, I’ll go see it.

Whether or not I ‘get’ it.

Until then, 5 out of 10.

(available here)

Scooby Doo – What Did They Do To You?

Most movie sequels are not as good as the original.

However when the original is quite poor to begin with, the sequel is often better.

Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed incredibly mixes the worst parts of both rules.

I don’t know where to begin. I mean I didn’t even like the first movie.

Like so many remakes of popular kids’ shows, they’d missed the key ingredient of innocence.

Scooby Doo 1 took a nice clean-cut bunch of high-school kids and their dog, and riddled it with flatulence, burping and sex-appeal.

And let’s ignore that in the original cartoon, the monsters were always exposed as fakes.

And everybody now hates Scrappy. I mean I know most of the original viewers did, but the characters in the cartoon were always above that.

I personally had been hoping for some cleverer humour, such as perhaps a chase down a corridor lined with the same painting on the wall over and over again. That would have been a well-meaning josh at the original.

As it was, the first movie’s only redeeming feature for me was Matthew Lillard’s excellent performance as Shaggy.

Anyway, enough of my knocking the first movie, here’s my review of Scooby Doo 2.:

Oh waitaminute I’ve just done it.



4 out of 10.

Josie And The Pussycats - now there was the greatest movie ever made…

Bodyshock: Wild Child

What if you grew up with no other humans to copy?

Would you still speak English? No.

Would you walk on 2 legs? Hmmmmmmmaybe.

Would you eat with your hands?

Could you add-up?

Would you know what you looked like?

Would you be consciously aware that you had eyes?

While in New Zealand I heard Rob Harley speak of a boy who’d been kept in a chicken coup while growing-up, and consequently behaved like a chicken.

Today I watched a Channel 4 show from last year about feral children, including a girl called Oxana.


Here’s the write-up from Channel 4’s website:

In 2001, reports surfaced of a young Ukrainian woman brought up by dogs. Abandoned by her parents, Oxana lived from the ages of three to eight with a pack of dogs that protected and cared for her. Remarkable footage shows her crawling on all fours, eating, drinking and even barking like a dog. Throughout history cases like this, known as 'the forbidden experiments', have both fascinated and horrified, going to the very heart of what it means to be human.

Wild Child, the second film in BodyShock, Channel 4's new series of extreme human science from around the world, uncovers the extraordinary lives of Oxana and three other 'feral' children brought up by animals or without human interaction. With just a handful of documented cases over the past two centuries, science knows so little about these children that rehabilitation attempts have proved consistently unsuccessful. However, startling new evidence shows how the neglect faced by these children in their formative years changes the way their brains function forever.

The show also detailed the stories of Edik (also ‘brought up’ by dogs) and Genie, who’d spent 10 years strapped to a potty-chair alone, and who upon discovery only seemed to know the words “stopit” and “nomore” – presumably because they were the words she’d heard most often.

I feel I should type some words of sympathy here, but really, they go without saying.

I also find myself wondering about God’s will, and how hard it is to type that I believe there’s a reason for his allowing these things, if only perhaps to show us how chaotic life would actually be like without him.

The X Files

Why did Mulder never carry a camera?

In 1994 I watched the first episode of The X Files… and then I watched every single subsequent edition, in order, including the movie.

Everyone raved about it in those early days. Well, everyone except Herschel, who complained that the stories didn’t follow any logic, but I rarely noticed.

When that first gritty realism-trenched season came to its apparent password-inventing close, I remember new friend Diana in Jamaica protesting that it really should have ended with Mulder and Scully dying.

I thought about it. She was right. It should have.

But I was just so pleased that at last someone had made a serious believable science-fiction show that even the general public had recognised as brilliant.

Then in the newspaper I read a review, or a letter or something, that actually slammed the show for lack of realism. Why? Because, the lady argued, in real life Scully would have ripped Mulder’s clothes off as soon as she’d laid eyes on him.

Oh, dear.

Sure enough, the show was becoming super-popular not because of its complex thought-provoking scripts, but because so many airheads took it, quite literally, at face value.

Once this had happened of course, everyone quickly hated it. It’s that mad arrogance that so many of us suffer from, whereby we try to exalt ourselves as superior to the majority, by rubbishing them all whilst they're safely out of earshot.

Although most episodes of The X Files were about the paranormal, for some reason the word that everyone singled-out to ridicule the show’s fans (i.e. me) for, was not ‘aliens’, or ‘demons’ or even ‘supernatural’. No, the word that the show was condescendingly sniggered at for was… (wait for it, you’ll remember it when you read it!)… yes, ’conspiracy.’

The saddest casualty of this random act of sneering was surely the way in which, as I recall, the word was then hastily dropped from the series.

For ages.

And then one day there was this episode with Mulder and Scully sitting in a car on a deserted street somewhere, and Mulder’s coming out with some huge long theory about the upper echelons of the US government’s true agenda, and suddenly Scully says something like “So – you’re saying that there’s a…”

Mulder quietly cuts her off: “Conspiracy?”

And there’s a pause. And the look on Mulder’s face is one of absolute embarrassment. And there’s only one possible motivation for this: it’s because he knows he sounds like a nerdy fan of that embarrassing TV show The X Files.

Which of course is impossible.

And for me, that’s the moment when I realised that the show itself had got a bit scared.

Pushing the conspiracy storyline to the fore, or removing it from the series entirely, would both lose the show a lot of viewers. A very subtle balance had to be maintained.

So the episodes concerning the ongoing conspiracy became ever more tangled, the staple one-off stories continued, and, almost in rebellion, into the mix of each season were thrown half a dozen jarringly-silly comedy episodes. (chatty ghosts, appearances by The Brady Bunch, Burt Reynolds singing a few numbers in Italian, that sort of thing)

But all played with the same constant total conviction.

The marks of a really successful TV series must surely be:

1. It runs a long time.
2. It spawns a spin-off.
3. It survives without its lead actor.
4. It makes episodes that feature none of the regular cast.

How many shows have accomplished all of these four things?


The X Files even made the occasional detour to tie-up the loose ends left in another cancelled series, such as Millennium.

Truly, a continuitologically responsible series.

Finally, after 9 seasons and 10½ years, this morning I watched the very last episode The Truth in which, believe it or not (pun intended), they actually wrapped-up the whole darn 9-year-long conspiracy.

For all its plot-holes, pseudo-science and hazy religious uncertainty, I will miss The X Files. I hope it comes back again and runs forever.

Whether or not Mulder finally gets a camera.


Related Posts:

1. The X Files (TV series)
2. The X Files (1998 film)
3. The Lone Gunmen (TV series)
4. The X Files: I Want To Believe (2008 film)