The Wrong Transport

I have two big failings in life:

1. Procrastination.
2. Trying to do too much.

Today was a perfect example – this morning I was teaching in Highland Park for the Institute of Commercial Education New Zealand, then in the afternoon I was missionarying for the Christian Broadcasting Association over in Penrose, and then this evening I was to teach back at the school again.

Like it or not, I have three days a week like this at the moment!

And, would you believe, I do all my journeying between the two… by bus.

So this evening, in trying to get too much done, I left CBA late and hastily strode up the Great South Road for 15 minutes as usual to Ellerslie, where I missed my bus.

35 minutes to go until the lesson would start. Oh dear. I always caught a 50 or a 51, and neither of them were due for another half-hour. That meant I was going to be late for my own class. It’s one thing to be late when just one or two people are waiting for you, but a small class of paying customers is another matter.

So I said the customary prayer at the bus stop, and a bus from a different route showed-up – a 52. It suddenly occurred to me that the 52 might – just might - be going as far as the school before turning off towards Bucklands Beach, and maybe I’d always had the option of catching 52s to the school, and just never realised it.

So, figuring that he would never have heard of the little Chinese school that I work at, I decided to use the supermarket near the school as an easily identifiable reference point (since it was on the 50/51 route) and asked the driver “Are you going to Pakuranga Plaza?” and he said “yes.”

Yes!

Scarcely believing my simple luck I enthusiastically got on, thanked him, swiped my Howick & Eastern Buses Ezi Pass, sat down and cheerfully began looking out of the window at all the familiar buildings passing-by.

25 minutes to go.

I remembered an occasion about a year and a half ago, when I’d been on my way to the Excel School of Performing Arts in New Lynn, when I’d prayed that God would provide a bus for me even if it hadn’t been going there. On that occasion God had indeed supplied a bus, and I’d had to walk the last bit. A good compromise, and a collaboration that increasingly reflects how I believe God actually works together with us in our lives, rather than the total 100% domination that so many Christians seem to suffer tunnel-vision from.

Anyway, as I was sitting there on the bus I suddenly remembered that actually... I didn't want to go to Pakuranga Plaza. I’d asked if we were going to Pakuranga Plaza, but I’d meant to ask if we were going to Countdown in Highland Park, some ten minutes further up the road. I had asked the driver if he was going to the wrong supermarket.

This might not be good.

So I left everything rushing past the window to approach the driver, and asked something like “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean Pakuranga Plaza, I meant to ask are you going to Countdown in Highland Park?”

And he said “yes.”

Yes!

Once more I thanked him for his help, returned to my seat and again proceeded to enjoy the child-like pleasure of watching all the familiar buildings scrolling past my view outside.

And then he said “no.”

Somewhere along the line the driver had also remembered that, despite having said “yes”, actually he wasn’t going as far as Countdown in Highland Park after all. This time he’d got the wrong supermarket. Sorry. I’d have to get off when he turned away from my route then I’d have to wait for a different bus.

Now this really was bad news, because apart from being late to my class of students again, my Howick & Eastern Buses Ezi Pass had run out of credit when I’d got on… just like my wallet had earlier in the day. Now I didn’t have any way to even pay for another bus, let alone the taxi that I now needed.

This paragraph is only here to provide a pause in the otherwise breathtaking non-stop what-will-happen-next action. Been to the fridge? Got a drink? Sitting down again? Good.

So then suddenly he says to me that he’ll take me to Countdown in Highland Park anyway, even though it’s not on his route.

He proposes that when we turn off Pakuranga Road and start to head away from my destination, I should actually stay on the bus, and then when he’s swung by Bucklands Beach and finished his route, he’ll drive me all the way back to Countdown Highland Park, because, y’know, he’s going that way anyway, because he has to drive the bus back to the depot or something.

“How long will that take?” I ask suspiciously.

Not long, he assures me. How long is not long, I ask. Only about ten minutes, he asserts.


Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrm…

So with ten minutes to go until my class starts, I’m on a bus heading away from the school.

The clock’s ticking, one-by-one people are getting off at their stops, and I’m turning over in my mind the freakish chances of how a passenger can actually state HIS OWN DESTINATION WRONGLY, AND a bus driver can then state HIS OWN DESTINATION WRONGLY, both in the SAME encounter. And my stomach doesn’t like this, mainly because all those oh-so-familiar buildings going past my window are now oh-so-UNfamiliar.

Every so often though I did catch a fleeting glimpse of a place I hadn’t been to in ages. The Macleans College bus-stop, Bucklands Beach and the always-amusingly-named Pigeon Mountain Road. Suddenly we whizzed past a green car that I’d seen parked on Queen Street outside Rhema about two years ago with the numberplate “A JEDI”. Well it was nice to see that again.

Finally, so close to 7pm that it was minutes either way, we pulled-up opposite Countdown in Highland Park, I thanked the driver, exchanged first names with him, jumped out and he pulled-away.

As I started to cross the road towards Aberfeldy Avenue where my evening class would be waiting inside the school, I reflected on how ironic my decision to ask the driver if he was going to such an easily identifiable reference as Countdown supermarket had been. I really should have just asked him if he went past my little-known off-road Chinese school that he would never have heard of. For at that moment he turned down that road and drove straight past it.

Isaiah 9:2-7

...and almost straight after the Uncle Travelling Jesus sketch I had to put on my normal voice to do this...

Uncle Travelling Jesus sketch #1 of 5

At church, we’re doing a series on advent at the moment, which has somehow resulted in Jacob, Jonathan and myself all collaborating on a series of Fraggle Rock-esque postcard sketches about “Uncle Travelling Jesus.”

Tonight’s episode was about peace, and just a tad topical…


(and yes, it is supposed to be just one still picture with a soundtrack)

"Dear nephew Go-Bro,

Well, it hasn’t all been smiles and hugs here in Auckland, New Zealand, outer space.

When I arrived, it seemed like the whole city was up in arms – something about a stadium for a sport the silly creatures call “rugby.”

I asked around a bit and scoped the situation and finally managed to get the two key players in a room together.

After some tense discussion, anger and fisticuffs, tears and hugs, we managed to agree to disagree.

Remember: different isn’t bad… it’s just different.

Love your Uncle Travelling Jesus."

Sketch #2 of 5 here.
Sketch #3 of 5 here.
Sketch #4 of 5 here.
Sketch #5 of 5 here.

C'était un Rendez-vous

It’s a movie.

It’s 10 minutes long.

It has no dialogue.

It’s shot in one take.

It’s a camera clamped to the front of car as it breaks all speed-limits to cross the deserted streets of Paris early one morning in 1976, before the ten-minute film-cartridge runs-out.

We’re running red lights, driving on the pavement, missing pedestrians… and every frame is real.

It's awesome - download official clip here:

http://www.rendezvousdvd.com/clip.html

Are We Nearly There Yet? I Don't Know.

There is a myth that there are no trains in New Zealand. In fact, there are several. There just aren’t any signs to tell you what stop you're at.


1. Newmarket


2. Ellerslie

The View From My Bedroom

Spitting Image: The Ronnie And Nancy Show

Satire is usually a bit hit-and-miss.

Ask any adult in the UK about the old long-running political sketch-show Spitting Image then, and they’ll probably make the same observation. The brilliantly-designed puppet-caricatures of whoever was currently in the news, would regularly fill the nation’s Sunday nights with either cries of hysterical laughter, or stomach-thudding embarrassment.

It often depended on just how funny the news had been that week. The Russians' playing-down of the Chernobyll disaster, for example, was hilarious. The stuff I don't remember, as I recall, was less so.

But my all-time favourite episode was not even aimed at me.

For whilst Luck and Flaw were knocking-out 18 of their puppet sketch-shows a year in the UK, every so often they would also get commisioned to make a one-off programme just for the USA.

What posessed the Americans to buy-in their satire from overseas is anyone’s guess.

Anyway, after US transmission, such toned-down Americanised ‘specials’ would then generally get repeated in the UK, usually to dubous sneers and sage scoffs that the old show had been dumbed-down for the less-sophisticated US audience. (who of course dislike UK telly for exactly the same reasons)

Except me. I preferred the American-aimed shows, partly because I preferred to buy into that pop-culture, but mainly because it was cleaner.

American censorship was quite tight back in the early 80s, and forcing the show’s writers to be funny instead of crude improved the show no end.

My favourite episode was entitled The Ronnie And Nancy Show, and the whole thing was one big parody of crass American sitcoms.

The opening theme music, set to shots of President Reagan and his wife getting into various barmy scrapes in “earlier episodes”, said it all:


Ronnie And Naaancy!
…She’s wacky,
He’s zany,
They send guns to Ayatolla Khomeini,
He’s cuddly,
She’s plucky,
They have a cute little dog named Lucky.


So please stay tuned!
Please don’t go!
It’s The Ronnie And Nancy Show-oo-whoa!


All this, and pretty well the entire cast played by Chris Barrie.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeextraordinary.

Grey

Returning to New Zealand was much, much harder this time.

I’d had a real holiday – I’d seen my friends, done some film-making, and watched a lot of The Goodies - I’d been a kid again. In fact, the madness of those three things made me feel as though I had discovered who I was again - silly.

In a normal year I might well have only seen many of these people once anyway, but seeing the likes of Tim, Mickey and Herschel Krustofski practically all in the same week painted an unrealistically good expectation of every week in England.

The truth was, if I stayed, it just wouldn’t remain like this.

On the down side, for months now, when dropping off to sleep, I’ve been waking-up suddenly and sitting bolt upright with a start. Now I found this happening to me while I was sitting on a crowded aeroplane heading away from Heathrow.

Hoping that the person sitting next to me hadn’t noticed, I was able to make a note of the rather telling thing that I had been dreaming. I’d been standing in The Goodies’ office in a business suit singing I’m Puttin’ On My Top Hat.

Cathay Pacific, it must be said, have gone down in my estimation since I first flew to New Zealand with them in February 2004.

Now there were fewer TV channels. (no black-and-white comedy channel rerunning Sergeant Bilko today) Also, the guy back at the Heathrow check-in desk had said that they could only allocate emergency exit seats to disabled people, but when I’d told him he was wrong, he’d tried to do so. Unsuccessfully. Then, when I’d boarded the plane I’d accidentally sat in seat 33A by a window. So they’d made me move. Seat 33A remained empty all flight.

The second flight, from Hong Kong to Auckland, only had one working toilet on our side of the plane. When I asked the flight attendant for some milk, she said she’d go check for me, but never came back.

Finally, after the statutory 24 hours in the air, we began our descent into Auckland on a chilly Sunday morning...






At Auckland, I queued at Immigration for about an hour, wondering what unique problem they were going to invent for me this time. It was my two visas. They’d never seen that before.

Finally I made it out into the public area of the terminal, all ready to thank flatmate Dave for coming to pick me up and waiting so long.

But, ha ha, flatmate Dave had actually forgotten to come! I honestly found this tremendously funny. :)

The cab driver didn’t know the way to Howick, and tried to charge me for the time he spent looking up directions. I had none of that.

I got back to the deserted flat, and in my weary state texted Dave to ask where on Earth everyone was.

From: David
Date: 5-Nov-2006
Time: 10:04:00

I’m at church, Cathy’s at alpha camp, Tim’s at Pukekohe

Even Smokey the cat wasn’t anywhere to be found.

So I opened the freezer to get out the freezer-meal that I’d bought last September especially for this moment.

Dave had eaten it.

Finding my sheets, I made my bed (something else I’d failed to do before leaving in September) and crashed-out for a mere 3 hours.

Church that evening was good. At the start Melissa publicly welcomed me back, and everyone clapped. They made me feel as though I had achieved some Herculean battle against beaurocracy to be there.

Back at the flat afterwards I finally caught-up with Dave, Cathy and Tim. It was November 5th, so Tim had bought some rockets. We let them off, and somehow I felt as though I was at the beginning of another long new adventure in New Zealand.

Doctor Who Magazine #371

Whatever happened to Doctor Who Magazine?

Last time I bought it (about 2 years ago) it was its usual cocky self, continually knocking the old series, whilst delighting in the new CD episodes, to the point where I eventually stopped buying it.

Now it's fawning over the new TV episodes like it's a press-kit. I get that a higher percentage of its readership is only familiar with the new episodes, but this mag is now not much more than a propaganda sheet.

Much pre-publicity inside for plot-hole riddled Love & Monsters, not one single reference anywhere to how deliberate they later claimed this was though.

Mind you, FANTASTIC-looking comic-strip...

Doctor Who: Fury From The Deep

So it’s come to this – after all my complaining about modern Doctor Who, when watching the original series now, I feel like I have to compare it.

Well, here we go, and let’s be fair here, this was a story set on Earth, that featured zombies.

In fact, it’s hard to review this story, because one major difference with the modern stuff was that it made very little effort to engage me. It was set on a gas refinery, after all.

What they did do a good job of was writing out Victoria. This was really dwelt upon for a change, and one really felt for both parties when she was left behind at the end.

Once more this was a reconstructed story, marrying home audio recordings off the TV with still photos and any odd clips that happen to have survived. (either cut from the Australian broadcast, or from the original BBC transmission)

Afterwards on the tape I was surprised to see the opening credits start again, leading into an episode that began with the first Doctor returning to the TARDIS only to find a Dalek standing guard outside. I had no idea which episode I was watching. I did find out later, but at the time it was an unusual feeling – I genuinely had no idea where or when he was, or what would happen next.

Wow – it was like being a kid once more – discovering Doctor Who for the first time.

The Goodies

The Goodies have a very simple history:

They were brilliant.

Anything else that I may have to say about them can only subtract from that.

When I was a kid, I loved their TV show. Despite all the visual comedy, I audio-taped it. When I was a teenager, and supposed to rebel against the things I’d loved as a child, reruns of The Goodies on ITV were still easily the best show of the week. And yes, I was still audio-taping them.

In my twenties I would get hold of old shows on VHS and still find them fantastic.

Now I’m 35 and, courtesy of Herschel's DVDs, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks watching 16 episodes again on DVD. (+ 1 they repeated last Christmas)


One episode - Kitten Kong (about a 100ft kitten terrorising London) - I’ve seen so many, many times now, that I expected to find it a bit old hat. Instead, I sat literally crying with laughter at it. My face was soaking. It was so funny it was beautiful.

Bun Fight At The OK Tearooms (about a power struggle over a clotted cream mine) is perfection itself.

Goodies And The Beanstalk (about… guess) was enthralling, more so on this viewing as I realised parts of it had been filmed just around the corner from my house!

They made about 70 of these shows, before the BBC decided to constructively axe it at the height of its popularity. And by height I don’t mean it had peaked. The Goodies was still soaring higher.

So much so that the Goodies themselves were immediately offered a 3-year deal to continue their masterpieces on ITV. Alas, only 7 shows later, despite their contract to the contrary, the show was rudely ripped off the airwaves again, by the same guy who would later move to the BBC and try to stop anyone ever seeing Doctor Who again – Michael Grade.


Despite its topicality, The Goodies has aged extremely well. Sure, in some of the early ones they’re trying to fill some time in the studio, but as soon as they stopped including a guest-star, they’ve tightened every script up to the funniest gag or plot-twist that they could come up with. It's no longer studio with film-inserts - it's whatever the heck their script says it is.

A few gags miss, but not many. The scene in Punky Business when Bill beats himself up in a tuxedo whilst crooning the whole of I’m In Love For The Very First Time really isn’t remotely funny, but it is utterly fascinating to watch. The Goodies had the self-assurance to go off on their own tangent regardless of whether anyone else would ‘get’ it. No-one's even allowed to do that now. Everything's got to be relevant.

I could go on and on about their great episodes, but I should temper it by mentioning one of their rare duds - Goodies Almost Live - which was just a series of musical numbers with no story. Can’t knock them for that though – what a fantastic average. It really was almost always brilliant.

In fact if there is a negative side to their legacy, it would have to be all the interviews they give today claiming how 'adult' these shows were. Sorry guys, but these DVDs prove you wrong.

We children of the 70s were more intelligent than you realised.


Buy the DVDs:
The Goodies … At Last
The Goodies … At Last A Second Helping
Boxed-set of both