Steve'n'Seagull

So I sat on my favourite bench in Myers Park and tucked into my burger and chips.  Then I remembered why takeaways offer a bizarre eat-in option – seagulls.

There was just one, on the other side of the path, nonchalantly eyeballing me. You know the expression on his/her face - you've seen it on a million birds yourself while eating in the park: "Who, me?  No, I'm not interested in your cholesterol-filled chips thankyou very much, och no, certainly not.  I think I'll just edge a bit closer to you now for no reason in particular.  Ahh here I am on the path, a bit nearer to you, but still just far enough away to pretend that my real purpose in being here is to measure my feet and admire the gravel.  La la la, I am a seagull."

"What?!" I blurted out loud at it.  "Look at you - you live by faith, don't you?  You get up in the morning with nothing in the larder and go out and just have faith that God is going to provide you with insects and plants and stuff, don't you?  How do you do it?  Do you pray first?"

The seagull, who I shall call Paddington, was now looking straight at me, and beadily giving me a very hard stare.  A fairly important question occurred to me, so I asked it.

"Are you merely hoping for some food from me, or are specifically trying to illicit some?"

There was a subtle but important difference.  If the seagull was just hoping for food, it would indicate that it had faith in God to provide food today, without it having to do anything. It would have been just waiting to find out how.

On the other hand, if the seagull was trying to illicit some food from me, this would evidence the fall's effect on the animal kingdom. It would have been taking matters into its own hands. Wings even.

In response, the seagull silently opened and closed its beak at me, several times.

Me: "You are trying to illicit some food from me, aren't you?"

Ah well, no question then.  It had given up on God and was now fending for itself.  Or maybe it did still have faith, but like me was seeking God's direction.

I threw him a chip.  After his fascination with tarmac, his enthusiasm for a Burger King fry quickly revealed his true motives.  Well, you know what happened next.  A second gull joined him.  And, mug that I am, I threw him a chip too.

The third bird was bigger.  He also had a sales pitch, of cawing at me.  I chucked a third chip.  Someone walked past, and they all turned their backs and scuttled away a bit to ignore him, the same way people do around beggars.  The sideshow over, they all turned back to non-comittally pressurise me again, this time joined by a house sparrow. 

The big bird kept cawing.  It occured to me that its cawing was probably the reason why it was so much bigger than the other seagulls.  It had practiced this, and discovered that cawing got it more food from humans, hence it had eaten more, and become bigger.

I finished, held the bag up-side down in front of them, and eventually they drifted away, more through boredom than any understanding my cross-species gesture.

Then it started to rain.  Now I would have to study my daily Bible-notes indoors.  Heck no, why should I?  I may be choking back yet another cold, but there's a Biblical response to bad weather. Jesus – in the boat – during the storm – you remember. So, in Jesus' name, I told the rain to stop.

Miraculously, it got heavier, which irritated me as giving up and going in now would have been a lack of faith in my prayer.  So in the now increasingly heavier rain I got out my Bible and began reading, as always these days, out loud. 

The rain very quickly stopped, but an easterly wind struck up instead.  I told that to stop, and a westerly one replaced it.  I told that to stop, and after a few minutes engrossed in what I was reading, I noticed that all was now quite calm.  Calmer and more pleasant than I could have foreseen.

How did that work? I'm sorry, but narrative structure demands that I now compare my attitude to that of the seagulls'.

I could have waited to see if the rain would stop, or I could have opened and closed my beak in prayer and illicited such a response from it.

Would the rain and wind have stopped if I hadn't prayed?

Well, would the seagulls have eaten if they hadn't approached me, opened their beaks and cawed?

I do believe that God answers prayer, and I include speaking in His name within my definition of prayer. By 'speaking in His Name', I mean saying a prayer that I believe that Jesus would. In this way, I honestly believe that we can do anything in faith that Jesus could.

We can't really control the weather, anymore than a seagull can make me throw a fry towards it. In both cases it's God who does all the work – changing the weather, and providing the fries.

Yes, we both illicited these things, but it was God who actually performed the miracles, through the weather, through me, through my friend who bought me the fries, and through Burger King International. And through the guy who picked the potato. Oh yeah, and through the...err...weather that helped grow it.

God does far more powerful things than I could ever even ask for. I can't even get a seagull to stop cawing.

But if Jesus would have prayed for something, then we should always ask for it.

(GOOD NEWS) Luke 12:24 - Look at the crows: they don't sow seeds or gather a harvest; they don't have store-rooms or barns; God feeds them! You are worth so much more than crows!

The Price Is Light

Turning money down is polite. Turning gifts down is downright rude. Working for free - that's a crime.

Ever since I was 5, when my Uncle Eric would come to visit and, as he left, press a big silver 10p piece into my hand, I have just not had Christ's willpower to resist. Presuming of course that Jesus did turn down such things as a kid. I'd really like to find out just how, as a carpenter, he dealt with money. Did he give all his furniture away free, having fashioned it all from one plank of wood "fish and loaves" style? But I'm getting off the point here.

I have learnt that there are 3 stages to refusing payment for voluntary work:

Stage 1: "Here, take this money, it's not much, but I insist. No, I insist. I INSIST."

Stage 2: "Oh no, it's not a payment - it's a gift."

Stage 3: “Let me buy something for you.”


Today, one of my Korean friends/students, who I have been teaching English to, took me shopping, as a gift. Having lived off of God's uncanny supernatural provision for a while now, (the last time I needed to buy food, phone-calls or internet time was back in 2004) I had developed a short list of non-necessary stuff that I wanted. I considered today to be God's way of magnanimously providing some of these things.

So my friend kindly bought me a pair of British-definition pants, a Snickers bar, a meal at Burger King, an orange juice, 2x L plates (it's a long story), 3x 35mm camera films, a $10 cinema voucher (see next Tuesday), 4x watch batteries, 20x AA batteries, 10x postage stamps, Mentoes, a $20 mobile phone voucher and a 2005 diary. I know what you're thinking - and I could easily afford all of these things - but that's not the point. I would much rather pray and let God provide them, as indeed He did today.

I thought about stocking up on some stuff that I know I'll need shortly, like toothpaste (which I've never bought here), but I realised that this would be storing up my treasures on Earth. I'd prefer to leave my toothpaste with God, where it will be safe until I need it. My securities are in Him.

People just don't get this.

As our hour drew to a close, with more than half my alloted figure unspent, my friend kept trying to thrust this envelope containing the rest of the cash into my hand.

Korean Friend: "Why don't you just take the money and buy these things yourself?"

Me: "Because I don't want to even touch the money. Jesus didn't accept money for His ministry. I'd prefer to let you just give me a few small free gifts, like I've given you a free gift."

Korean Friend: "But the money is a gift."

[AHHH - WE HAVE A STAGE 4]

Me: "But it may look like a payment."

Korean Friend: "To who? No-one will know."

Me: "I will know. I will not be paid money. I will not even look as if I am being paid money. I want to be able to look people square in the eyes and honestly tell them that I have not accepted any monetary payments in all the time that I have been here."

Korean Friend: "Show me your wrist."

Me: "What?"

Korean Friend: "Your wrist. Show me your wrist."

So we stopped outside Nando's, I put my backpack down, pulled-up my sleeves and bore my wrists at him.

Korean Friend: "No, no, your wrist, in your pocket, what else do we still have to buy?"

After a moment, the penny dropped.

Me: “Ohhh, you must mean my...shopping wrist.”

Well at least my English lessons hadn't been worth paying for.

Room With A Few

They say that space is endless, and in so saying they accept that they can never prove this.

What I'd really like to know is, where does my space end, and someone else's begin?

In return for my housekeeping work, I live in a small windowless room on the 7th floor of a backpackers' hostel in Auckland, New Zealand. I share my cupboard with 3 other housekeepers. There really isn't enough room in there for 1 person, let alone 4. There certainly isn't room for any of them to start picking girls up and bringing them back at 4am.

When room-mate #1 tried this on about a month ago, I had to cut through all the kissing and giggling to tell them straight out that she was leaving. Room-mate #1 protested "It's not like that - she's a mate" and began to accuse me of throwing her out onto the streets, as she had nowhere else to stay. I told them I really didn't want to go down to reception to have her removed, and offered to pay for her to stay in a room of her own that night. Suddenly they remembered a friend of theirs who could put them up. Fortunately my subsequent relationship with room-mate #1 remained friendly.

A few weeks' later, I woke up one morning to find that room-mate #2 had pulled the same stunt and gotten away with it. He protested that she was paying for another room, so it was okay. I checked, and it wasn't. I told him, and again there was no further trouble.

Then one night, while I'm brushing my teeth, room-mate #3 comes up to me with a whole prepared speech about why his girl was an exception. Here is the conversation, condensed for the sake of this posting, that I had with room-mate #3:

Room-mate #3: "Look, she's a really good friend of mine, and she has to get up really, really early to catch her coach tomorrow morning. She lives a long long way away from here, too far to make someone walk at this hour. You can't make her walk all the way home when she has to catch a coach at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning. We won't make a single sound, I promise."

Me: "No way man."

Room-mate #3: "You're joking. And after I actually got up and came here to tell you."

Me: "You're right - I didn't even know she was there."

Room-mate #3: "I know you didn't. So if I hadn't come to tell you then she could have stayed. Come on man, you can't make her walk all the way home."

Me: "No way, man, no way."

Room-mate #3: "Look I understand that you're religious, but really, if you were to stop being religious, you'd have girls left, right and centre. You really would man, you'd have girls left, right and centre."

Me: "I am not losing my faith, and even if I did, I would still never have a relationship."

Room-mate #3: "You have never known what it's like not to believe in God."

Me: "And you don't know what it's like to believe in Him."

Room-mate #3: "Yes I do, because I was brought up as a Catholic. Look, I understand you have your religious beliefs, but really, just give me...four good reasons why she can't stay the night."

Me: "Because it's against the rules."

Room-mate #3: "That's...a very good reason."

Me: "Because I worked for my bed in a 4-person dorm, not a 5-person one."

I never got on to reasons 3 and 4, in fact I never even got on to trying to decide which ones to give. I just wanted to get to bed. I had work in the morning. Anyhew, they both left, room-mate #3 shaking my hand.

Then, last night, room-mate #1 tried it again.

Despite his girl's ability to walk and converse, room-mate #1 claimed that she had drunk herself completely unconscious, and that it was his moral duty to carry her upstairs onto his bed for the night. It was also my moral duty to let him. Room-mate #3 backed them up with "I have never seen anyone at the Globe as bad as she is." (Of course, she wasn't crying in a pool of blood with a guy on top of her, but that's another story)

So I played the inevitable "I will go down to reception if I have to" card, but room-mate #1 had remembered this and adapted, telling me that he had already cleared it with them.

In reception, there was both good news, and bad news. The good news was his denial of even having seen room-mate #1, let alone of having agreed to anything. The bad news was his denial of having any authority to throw out unpaying guests. That's reception talking. Anyway as a result, at 3:30 in the morning, I changed rooms.

The following day, without my asking for it, several staff-members came up and told me that I was completely in the right, and my boss fired room-mate #1 on the spot.

Me: "But this wasn't my intention," I protested. "He's a good mate, I get along well with him, everyone does."

My boss: "It's not that. He owed us 15 hours - that's a whole week. Don't feel bad."

I could well believe that my protest had only been the catalyst, but all the same.

Room-mate #1 was a good mate. We'd shared food, cooked for each other, I'd even leant him money precisely to keep him employed, which he'd subsequently paid back without my ever having to ask.

Now room-mate #1 is paying to stay in another room, reception have been told what the rules are, and at time of writing I still haven't seen room-mate #1 to find out what my friendship with him is now like.

I have no regrets. If I were given my chance again, I wouldn't do a thing differently. I just feel sorry for him, and wonder how pleased people will be on the day when I make the wrong choice.

My New Job

Bad Reception

Spotted Mickala in reception. She keeps leaving and coming back again, so I jibed "Ahhh, there she is! She just can't stay away, that Mickala loves ACB so much!"

Then the receptionist she was talking to replied "Yeees, just like you Steve."

Owwwwwwwww.

Father's Day

2 days ago it was April 16th.

Maybe this date means something to you. Maybe it's your birthday. Maybe it's the date you went on holiday last year. Maybe it's Government Day in Bakwadistan. For me it's the day on which, in 2002, Father died.

In the days immediately following his death, I remember we had various leaflets and books strewn on the table about how to deal with bereavement. I recall flicking through some of them. One of the most useful nuggets of advice I found was that, while everyone's grief is as unique and individual as their relationship with the departed was, these reactions do seem to roughly break down into 3 popular reactions:

1. Loss.

2. Hate.

3. Nothing at all - life goes on.

I recall another piece that said, somewhat mathematically "You should not make any big life-changing decisions that you don't want to, e.g. start a new job, move house, get married etc., for the next 3 years."

Last Saturday was my 3-year marker. And I never noticed once the entire day that it was April 16th.

104 Hours, 52 Minutes and a Glass of Milk FREE!

Teaching Vietnamese To The Kiwis

Buenos Estente.

In 2003, a friend of mine had a particularly vivid dream that in the future I would be overseas teaching English.

About a month before I left the UK, a headmaster friend recommended that I learn to teach English as a foreign language.

Since arriving here, I could not possibly have engineered the staggering list of English-teaching encounters that have taken place in my life, purely through the doors that God seems to have opened and taken me through.

There really are far too many people to recall, many of whose foreign names I never even knew. Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Brazilian, Argentinian, French, Italian, Chilean...I couldn't have planned these appointments.

They've come to work with me – I didn't employ them though.

They've come to share my room with me – I didn't check them in though.

They've approached me in the street – whu...?

They've asked me to come over their houses and teach their families to speak English – I never advertised.

They've asked me to write letters for them to challenge the decisions of the NZ immigration department. They've asked me to represent them to the NZ tax office. Last Christmas a Chinese girl came to me in tears having lost all faith in the police to deal with the burglary and threats she'd just suffered, purely because they didn't have the patience to listen to her broken-English.

I was even invited, by a stranger (who later became Jamie), to help lead a week's bushcamp teaching illiterate children to read and write in Arapohue, near Dargaville.

The two room-mates who I made the closest friends with while here, and had the longest conversations with, were both British. And, quite coincidentally, they had both taught English in foreign countries, specifically Japan and Chile. Before he left for his next teaching adventure, Mike wrote out the details of the course that I would need to apply for.

Of course, I've also been living overseas for some time now as well.

Last week, as on previous occasions in my life, I could ignore the path that God seemed to be carefully leading me down no longer, so last Wednesday, I began a TESOL course in teaching English as a foreign language.


On day 1 we went around the room getting to know each other. We had a pretty good group, 10 including teachers. I think we all gelled on that first day.

On day 2 we watched a video called Rassias In China, in which American John Rassias attempted to teach English by mucking about and having fun.


The opening credits of this reminded me of The Steve Allen Show - Rassias wearing a comical mask, Rassias dancing, Rassias hilariously pretending to die - his theory was crystal clear. If you're having fun, you'll learn. I really hadn't expected the course to take this direction. It's a good job we all had a sense of humour!

On day 3 we put this into practice. We were told that including a simple mime with a word often made it easier to learn. To prove the point, a copy of The Beatles' We All Live In A Yellow Submarine was played, and a volunteer required to improvise relevant actions for the rest of the class to follow. Guess which mug volunteered?

On day 4 things got serious. We'd been split-up into pairs for a practical exercise. Of course, to teach English as a foreign language for half an hour required a class of non-English speakers. We had no such facilities, so we were asked to teach the rest of our English-speaking classmates at least five words in a language that none of them knew.

Hayley and I banged our heads together. What language was there that we knew, but which no-one else did? I knew a bit of French, and a bit of German from school, and had obviously picked up a few odd foreign phrases at the backpackers. But I didn't really know five good words with any authority. Hayley, on the other hand, was Welsh.

Oh, how I hoped to be able to tell my friends afterwards that I had successfully taught a class in Welsh. The comedy potential of such a claim would have been huge. We could have taught them the name of that railway station and everything.

In the end though we settled on the somewhat shorter-worded tongue of Vietnamese. The catch was that the entire lesson had to be in this language - we wouldn't even be allowed to speak to each other in English!

The first half went well. We played some video-clips of 5 animals, and we successfully taught these to everyone. Then we ran out of material.

With 15 minutes to go, it was time to call-in our 'spare' animal - the bug. I held up my carefully drawn picture of a bug and pointed excitedly to the video, which was showing a large pink animal with a snout making oinking noises. Channel 9 eat your heart out.

So I spontaneously developed the ability to draw, and we successfully winged it by adding a frog and an otter to the mix, inventing a few new learning games, and relying on the advice I'd received by email from Mike the previous night "Recap everything you can if your time's not up!!"

We got away with it anyway - everyone learnt all the eight animals' names, with the only exception being me. Yep, I successfully taught the words for pig, frog and otter without really knowing them myself! I should probably be sued for malpractice.

The final day saw some wrapping up, presentation of certificates, and some amusing examples of poor English abroad, you know: "Customers will be executed in strict rotation." That sort of thing.

Now the classwork is over, I have 60 hours of study by correspondence for the course specialisation. In fact, I have 180 hours of study as I've booked three of them.

Bhutros bhutros.


Left to right: Sharon (teacher), Hayley (Welsh), Kim (seated), Amy, Robert, Steve, Barry, Warwick (organiser), Wayne and Roberta this weekend at Onehunga Community Centre, Auckland.

You're Travelling Through Another Dry Pension

On Christmas Eve last year I met a retired-looking lady at the hostel, who talked animatedly to me about her family, chess and all sorts of things. (You know how the more mature people you meet seem to like doing so) She was looking for work on local boats. All seemed to be well in her life.

Last weekend I saw her again in the canteen, but she didn't want to talk. Maybe she didn't remember me.

On Sunday night at about 2am, I saw her being thrown out of one of the hostel's TV Rooms, and indeed out onto the street, for being an unpaying "street-pussy." We're just heading into winter here.

Giving-up on the episode of The New New Twilight Zone that I'd been watching (which was no big sacrifice, yes it was technically competent, but certainly didn't carry the paranoid air of the original original), I headed-out to the street after her, barely a minute behind. I spent the next half an hour trying, unsuccessfully, to track her down. There were tramps sitting in the street, stretched-out in doorways, one of them inside a tent in Aotea Square, but no sad-looking weak old ladies.

What had happened to change her daily situation so drastically?

And why on Earth had it taken me a whole minute to decide to go after her?

Today I saw her again in the canteen. I said hello, but she avoided me, so I said a prayer, apart from anything else asking for the 2 other people present to leave, which they immediately did. I'd made myself a bit too much stir-fry, so I offered some to her, but she again avoided making any eye-contact. "Please? I'm eating."

"Okay, but if there's anything I can do to help you, please just let me know."

As I sat down to eat, with my back to her soas to appear as unthreatening as possible, scenarios played through my head of all the things I could have said. I could have told her she was obviously in trouble and needed whatever help she was offered. I could have proved my point by gently pointing out that she wasn't allowed to be in the building. In my experience though, whenever I tell someone something they don't want to be true, they've preferred to blame me for lying and being unkind. No-one ever seems to consider that I might, just might, be telling the truth if it consequently means that they've got something wrong. I don't know where the quote comes from, but it's true - "There's none so blind as those who will not listen."

I knew inside me though, that I had said all that I was supposed to, and that she would come up to me in her own time. She had to. Who else had offered?

As I was washing up, she did indeed approach me, and mutter that I probably couldn't help, but she needed 8 dollars for a passport photograph. I rarely see money as a solution to anything these days, yet the parable of the good samaritan made what my response should be clear.

I didn't have exactly 8 dollars, so I gave her a tenner, which in NZ money is nothing. I said it was "from one old friend to another" and that if she ever met someone else who needed it, then she should pass it on. Then she smiled, and for just one very brief moment it felt just like it was Christmas again.

Puppeteering

Sideshow Bobos

For reasons beyond my ability to fathom, for the last few days I've had Abba's Voulez-Vous running through my head, only sung (well, spoken) by The Matrix's Agent Smith.


I'm sure that if the Wachowski brothers ever realise the huge potential of such a release, it will automatically be seized upon as a "gay track", purely because of Smith's macho image. For me however, the appeal would simply be one of watching Hugo Weaving showing us Agent Smith dancing about and having some fun.


"Wahlll voulez-vous, Mr Anderson.
A-ha, Mr Anderson.
A-ha."

Q. How does Agent Smith get his kicks?
A. From Mr Anderson.


(1/10)

So after I had taught them English today, some Korean friends took me out for a meal at the local Korean place Club Bobos. Upon arrival, we split up into 2 groups, each in our own room, each with our own private karaoke machine.

Alas, Abba's second most iconic milestone in music-history was not available, so the opportunity to don some shades and bring to life my idea was sadly not to be. Also, much as my second choice was to adapt one of Petula Clark's songs into a relevant expression of my feelings about the local supermarket chain Foodtown, said karaoke machine had seen that coming too and again obstinately refused. Neither would it even allow any of us to out-Shatner Shatner with a spoken-word version of The Real Slim Shady.

It's as if the karaoke machine was quietly scheming to itself "All right, you can hide in here and delude yourselves that you're a world-famous pop success like The Beatles, Queen or The Corr Sisters, but when it comes to singing established songs in the style of other performers, then no, because that's just plain silly."

What I did get away with was a frantic/spoken version of the Bee Gees' iconic Stayin' Alive. It was only then that I realised:

a. just what the lyrics actually are, and
b. just how repetitive they get in the second half. (just a bit like Agent Smith in The Matrix trilogy)

Eventually I got bored and just filled-in until the end by quoting lines from The Simpsons, such as "Monorail."

Goble's song: 10 out of 10. Deal with it.

And finally, to take us into the closing credits of today's show, here's the latest video from The Smiths. Stay awake.


"Hmmm, people everywhere
A sense of expectation hangin' in the air
Giving out a spark
Across the room your eyes are glowing in the dark
And here we go again, we know the start, we know the end
Masters of the scene
We've done it all before and now we're back to get some more
You know what I mean, Mr Anderson


Voulez-vooous,
A-ha.
Mr Anderson
A-ha.
Mr Anderson
A-ha.
No more sequels, no pay-cheques
Voulez-vooous,
A-ha.
Ain't no big decision,
A-ha.
This rain's blurring my vision,
A-ha.
La question c'est inévitable..."

(fade-out)

Doctor Who Magazine #351

Doctor Who's fandom has gone through some interesting growing pains over the last decade or so. Today's fans are a bit wary of being labelled as such, and some of them actively rebel against the attitudes they perceive others as expecting of them. DWM#351 seems to positively delight in this.


The main article this month a big interview with Paul McGann and Daphne Ashbrook about their memories of making the last episode to date back in 1996. In this interview, the editorial actually seems extremely pleased at McGann's assertion that, had he been offered the title role again in the new series, he would have turned it down! Scandal!

However the fan mentality is positively celebrated in Gareth Roberts' hilarious article Strange Love, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Embarrassing And / Or Rubbish Bits Of Doctor Who! In it, he lays into all the worst aspects of Doctor Who's original 26-year run, and while I would obviously take him to task on a few pertinent issues, it's six pages of joyous laughing at oneself.

My all-time 'behind the sofa' moment in Doctor Who isn't a Dalek emerging from the Thames, or a giant maggot bursting out of an egg and creeping up on Jo, and it isn't even the shocking revelation that Kalid was the Master all along. It's in Part One of Ghost Light, where Ace reveals of her friend Manisha's flat that "white kids firebombed it". I don't think there was a sofa in the world big enough for me to hide behind when she said that. Because in the middle of this typically hyperactive, incomprehensible, silly, noisy Doctor Who story, they were trying to be relevant, to 'get down wiv ver kidz' with the 'message' that 'Hey, racism is wrong'. Well slap me down with a feather, I'd never thought of that.

It makes the approaching new series sound dull by comparison.

Abstinence

A late conversation with a friend led to an encouraging reassurance of God's reasoning in placing me here.

Pope John Paul II sadly died a few days ago, so we were discussing his replacement.

Friend: "Whoever they pick, I hope he's more liberal and supports education and birth-control. So many problems and unwanted kids could be avoided if the Vatican recognised this as the only realistic answer to those problems. I expect you're in favour of abstinence, aren't you?"
Me: "I'm in favour of educating people about abstinence, yes. If they don't want to have kids, then they shouldn't have sex."
Friend: "I hear what you're saying, but you have to be realistic. People are going to have sex. Abstinence isn't going to work for them."
Me: "It's always worked for me."

BBQ

Today, following the Korean meal after the service at the Salvation Army, we were all to go out to a tomato farm for a BBQ.

Just before we left, I was told that it was not actually to be for a BBQ, but for walking. Great, I like walks.

When we got there, I discovered that the word they had actually been looking for was not "walk" but "work."

Spent the afternoon in the sunshine shovelling sawdust, slitting plastic bags that tomato plants had been grown in, and emptying the earth out.

Afterwards we went out for a Vietnamese meal at Hanoi's opening night.

Alone in the lift at ACB, after all the Asian food I'd had lately, I said out loud "God, I want some chocolate. Amen."

Less than 60 seconds.

I'll Explain Later

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Doctor Who Magazine #350

In October 1979 (when I was 8 years old) I (well, probably my dad) bought the very first issue of Marvel UK's Doctor Who Weekly from the station newsagents.


I wasn't particularly into Who back then, but as I'd already got that week's edition of all the other comics that I was collecting, I figured what the heck – why not? It was mainly comic-strips, barring the odd Crazy Caption competition, and came with free transfers on the cover, which I still have to this day.

The following week I got issue #2. The week after that, someone else got to it before me. And that was how I left it, for three years.

Towards the end of 1981 I rediscovered the TV series though, and 1982 saw me picking up the latest edition again.


It was much more wordy, and clearly aimed at an older audience now. Also, the numbering was much lower than I would have expected after three years. Apparently, the weekly hadn't even seen out a year, before changing to a monthly, more magaziney format.

Someone at Marvel had evidently realised that Doctor Who was bigger with bigger kids. A handy thing that, since I was a bigger kid myself now, aged 11.

The next few years were great. Doctor Who was pretty big in the early eighties, airing twice a week in prime-time slots. People would regularly write to the BBC to complain that it was on too late for younger kids to see it now.

Eventually the BBC relented and returned it to its old Saturday teatime slot, and then almost immediately axed it both for lower ratings, and for having become too violent for young children. Containing stabbings, torture and returning characters from 20 years ago, maybe no-one had thought to forewarn the production team of the new earlier timeslot...

Anyway, next the BBC did the right thing: they brought the show back again, aimed it squarely at an under-10 audience, and simultaneously moved it back to an adult weekday slot again, whereupon its ratings obviously plunged even lower.

Perhaps they should have just left it all alone?

That was what I, and evidently other fans, thought, so we exercised our right to free speech and told anyone who would listen. The show had become so dumbed-down, that I would actually have rather had no Doctor Who than to keep pointlessly rooting for a show that didn't want a teenager watching any more. But at least there was still The Official Doctor Who Magazine - they couldn't spoil that for us.

But here's the thing: one month, the mag's editorial actually had a go at those of us who were complaining about the lower standard of the new episodes.

From that month on, I kept me money. Two years later, the show got axed again, this time permanently.


A decade later, while on a break from work, I (now aged 27) found the mag still on sale in Kingston. I picked it up, and bought it on and off for a while. Off, because the editing still felt a bit snobbish.

The following decade, here on the other side of the world, I (aged 34) found the mag's 25th anniversary special on sale.


It's not actually the current one. Overseas magazine sales are a bit weird here in New Zealand, because it takes about three months to ship them here. I sometimes flick through science-fiction mags in shops, and my travelling between the UK and here can be a bit confusing, when you keep jumping backwards and forwards by an entire season. As a result, although it's March here, this current issue is actually dated December last year. If you're in the UK, and you miss an issue of something, then email me.

Issue #350 looks like an odd number to pick to run an issue-wide retrospective of the last 349 editions, but hey, we Doctor Who fans will use any excuse to plunder the past and re-examine it. And in this case it's actually the mag's 25th anniversary too, so that's all right then.

One of the lovelier ideas within this lookback is the resurrection of old regular features, for just one issue only. My favourite would be the return of the 3-panel Doctor Who? strip by Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett. Their strips were rather hit-or-miss, but for a one-off return, they can do no wrong. And the Crazy Caption Competition is back too, though given that the closing date is Christmas Eve last year, I don't think I'll be entering.

Finally, issue #350 also comes with a free full-size replica of that very first issue from 1979, though sans real transfers. (they're printed onto the cover below)


It's a bit weird to flick through this, as it's easy to kid myself that this is my original copy that has somehow followed me here from the other side of the globe. There's certainly a rush of nostalgia as I flick through the impossibly clean pages and see the comic again as it used to look in my eight-year-old hands 25 years ago.

And it's reassuring to know that, with a new series finally in production again, Doctor Who as a legend has proved itself to be as immortal as the man himself.