It's... Mad Alistair And Friends!

Women Standing On Chairs Screaming In Early 70s Sitcoms

And here I am finding a dead mouse in my room.

Makin' M' Face

Today, in the pursuit of moviemaking, I was at a local pub wearing a nappy on my head and rapping “Could I be happy, wearing a nappy, in an Iraqi café, with Colonel Gaddafi?” while Alistair filmed, and Herschel pretended that his hand was indeed Colonel Gaddafi.

Okay, you don't believe me. Look:

After that we were joined in a nearby field by Steve H, whereupon, in stark opposition to 100+ years of live-action film-making, we proceeded to mime our dialogue to a pre-recorded audio track. Steve H filmed, while Alistair played Richard, Herschel played Goodwin, and I played myself 13 years ago.

After this we found a bus-stop, where Steve H kindly died of boredom for our viewing pleasure. At least, I think he was acting.

Anyway, after that, things turned unexpectedly surreal.

Whilst walking home through the drizzling rain, I spotted a familiar face – it was Kev, who I’d last seen six months earlier in Australia!

“I would like to stop and chat Steve,” he explained, “but as you know we are in a raining situation.”

Ironic - it had been raining the last time we'd seen each other too...

You'll Believe A Budgie Can Fly

Spent a good deal of this afternoon dressed up as a budgie and floating in mid-air, whilst long-suffering Herschel filmed me from a safe distance.

Is Budgie-Man™ secretly The Warehouse™ kiwi?

Not Only But Always

Comedians have a funny old life. Death I mean.

When comedians die, their memory seems to go through two distinct stages.

First there’s the purer-than-pure martyrdom. The general public, wracked with remorse at their loss, express their grief by wrecking the TV schedules, as hitherto unmovable shows get hastily elbowed out of the way for reruns, obituaries and famous people eulogising over what a persecuted pioneer the deceased was. I well remember, in the wake of Benny Hill’s death, seeing one Thames TV executive getting grilled for an explanation of why he had cancelled Hill’s show two years earlier.

And then, a couple of years later, there comes the second stage, and it’s every bit as biased.

Yes, the hatred.

After a year overseas, I have quite a backlog of VHS tapes to catch-up on, so in the early hours of this morning I watched Not Only But Always, which on the face of it looked to be a biopic of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s famous “Pete’n’Dud” comedy partnership.


What it actually turned-out to be was a rampantly unforgiving character-assasination.

Of just one of them. The heartless girlfriend-stealing wife-cheating alcoholic one. (the other guy was just a long-suffering innocent, apparently)

Although I enjoyed this film, it left me rather wishing that I hadn’t seen it. Now when I rewatch their old material I’ll always be looking for the signs. I just don’t find comedy funny unless I first believe that the performers are happy.

And who knows how much of it is true? People’s souls are very big, capable of terrible evil and tremendous love on the same day.

It really isn’t fair, or moral, to edit all the good out of a man’s life.

Like we have with Hitler.

The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Quandary Phase

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish (the fourth book in the inaccurately named HitchHiker's trilogy) was a bit of a departure for the series.

After years of swearing that he would never write another HitchHiker book, Douglas Adams finally caved-in and penned what some fans extol as the series’ finest entry. No doubt there must also be many who dismiss it as the weakest. Probably for the same reason.

It’s set on Earth. In any other science-fiction tale this would be a humdrummingly unoriginal location, but HitchHiker’s entire history is founded upon the Earth’s demolition. Having Arthur Dent later return to it was therefore going to be either magically unexpected, or frustratingly contrived.

I’m with the former.


For Radio Four producer Dirk Maggs, adapting the most ‘ordinary’ book of the series was always going to be a challenge. Far from talking mice running planet-building economies, the marketing of the universe’s destruction as a tourist attraction, and spaceships that are powered by mathematical errors, suddenly Arthur finds himself going down the pub, meeting girls, phoning with his boss and generally having an all-round normal life again.

How on Earth do you broadcast that on Radio 4 without it sounding like The Archers?

By loving the material to bits.

Adapter Dirk Maggs clearly adores the late Douglas Adams’ work, and has equal respect for both his books and his original early-80s radio episodes. Maggs had had a bit of trouble adapting the previous book, if anything he’d been too true to the text – the opening episodes had been slow, relied on the narrator too often, and had begun by clumsily writing-off half of the original series as just a dream.

By this series however he’s learnt – the pacing is back to its old self, and he’s actually hinting at plans to go back and reinstate again the episodes that he’d previously written off.

Also in evidence is respect for the show’s many other incarnations.


David Dixon - Ford in the TV version - plays a one-off character, and most appropriately the radio series’ original producer – Geoffrey Perkins – was cast as Arthur’s boss at the BBC.


I don’t normally like famous guest-stars as they break the illusion and remind you that you’re only listening to actors, but, like Douglas Adams’ appearance last season as Agrajag, these guys snuck past my attention until I heard their names in the closing credits. Which is of course how it should be.

Of particular note is a scene between Arthur Dent, still played as ever by the gibbering Simon Jones, and a newspaper editor, voiced by Stephen Fry. Simon Jones, and Stephen Fry. It was just an Adams-esque coincidence of course, but this was a scene between two actors from the recent movie version.

It did disappoint me that Paddy Kingsland had not also been retained from the original series, to score the music for all these wonderful new episodes. His jingley synth melodies, optimistically suggesting a wonderful technological future, somewhat defined the original HitchHiker’s ‘feel’ for me. The guys behind the new score however have created some sounds so out-of-this-world, that I’m won over. The scene at the end of fit the 21st, when Arthur listens to his goldfish bowl, made the hair all over my body stand on end.

Radio doesn’t get much more enthralling than this.

Curse you Dirk Maggs – 10 out of 10! :)

(Production company's website here)

Funny Klown

Herschel: "Reading your blog this year, it's really great how you've rediscovered your faith."

Me: "You know me well enough to know the blog only covers one aspect of me. I feel as though I'm on the brink of losing my faith every single day."

Everyone always seems so surprised when I say that.

The Humanoid

I never like to say this, but there are some pretty bad movies out there. That’s not to say that they deserve our scorn (which would be to exalt ourselves as somehow ‘better’), but simply to acknowledge that some films…(now let’s see, errr…yes, yes that’s how I’ll put it)…have a detrimental effect on my current frame of mind.

Out of respect for the filmmakers, I shall simply refer to these movies as “cinematically-challenged.”

Someone once said that if you want to really enjoy something, then you have to pay for it. Following this principle, no matter how bored, how incredulous, or how rabid that I may have become, I have never once walked-out of a movie, unless I was on-duty there.

Over the years, whilst mentally chaining myself to my seat, I have identified 4 different levels of desire to escape, which roughly correspond to 4 different categories of cinematically challenged productions:

1. So dull that I repeatedly estimate how long is left until the end.



2. So boring that I perceive the whole experience as an endurance test that must be beaten, in order to prove myself a man.



3. So mind-emptyingly barren that for many years afterwards I have suffered nightmares, panic attacks, and, worst of all, flashbacks.



4. The Humanoid.

The last 2 are sort of connected.

Y’see, a few years ago I convinced poor long-suffering Herschel to come with me to the Richmond Filmhouse to watch a double-bill of French humourist Jacques Tati’s fun-loving capers Playtime and Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.

After the first 120 comedy-free minutes, Herschel, a klown no less, couldn’t face any more and had to leave, standing-up and declaring to the entire cinema audience “Never again shall I pollute my tortured soul with this sterile poison that claims itself 'comedy'” at which point he symbolically cast off his klown nose (he always goes out in full costume) inadvertently causing his oversize klown pants to fall down, which tripped him up in his oversize klown shoes, and precipitated an entire angry tussle with his whole costume on his roll up the aisle towards the exit, which the audience thought was just another of his famous routines. (true story - if you don't believe me, click here.)

The quite unbelievable punchline to this incident is that Herschel subsequently discovered that the 120-minute diet-comedy that we had watched was in fact a shortened version - the original release had been half an hour longer.

Anyway, tonight Hershel had lent me a video of Aldo Lado’s 1979 Italian science-fiction blockbuster The Humanoid.


He never actually said it, but I’m convinced that this was some kind of revenge…

Herschel’s hook was that the film was infamous for being a rip-off of George Lucas’ lesser-known outing Star Wars, and indeed the similarities in design are far too numerous to be mere coincidence.







(To see a full run-down of The Humanoid’s visual resemblance to Star Wars, please click on any of these pictures - I highly recommend that you do.)

But when one considers The Humanoid as a film in its own right, then one discovers that it really is so much less than that.

Right from the movie’s opening lines, you know you’re in storytellers’ hands:

Pilot: “That’s one of those ships that guard the prison satellite. What’s it doing in our area?”

Co-Pilot: “Let’s try to find out.”

No dull character-establishment or plot-exposition, we’re in. Genius.

But it doesn’t stop there. This is a film in which the most bizarre things happen, the most sickening cliches all get together for a party, and, thank God, everyone plays it with total conviction.

The first 10 minutes bless us with lines like:

(whilst planning an armed raid…)

Lord Graal: “And make sure there are no survivors...especially that Barbara Gibson.”

(and, whilst carrying out the armed raid…)

Soldier: “You two go ahead. I’ve gotta check something. I gotta make sure we really did kill that girl. (checks corpse) Damn it, its not her! He'll dock me for this.”

(and, when reporting back to the villain following the armed raid…)

Craven: “We've got the Kappatron, your Lordship.”

Lord Graal: “And my special request?“

Craven: “It all went very smoothly Sire. We killed everyone at the laboratory, but unfortunately, the girl you wanted just wasn't there.”

Lord Graal: “So you did manage to disappoint me after all Craven. You are stripped of your privilidges for one hundred days.”

Craven: “Yes, your Lordship.”

And inadvertant post-modern irony laces the script too:

Nick: “All of the guards were killed, as well as the two men lost in space.”

There’s a super-intelligent kid called Tom-Tom, a comedy robot dog called Kip, and bad guy extras who courteously line up to be fought one at a time.

In short, this film gave me 90 minutes of joy.


10 out of 10.

More about The Humanoid here.

Resurrection

Today I visited Emsworth and caught-up with my Auntie Sunny. (Sunshine is actually her first name)

Auntie Sunny is into plants, and keeps a ‘resurrection plant’ in her kitchen.

So – why is it called a ‘resurrection plant?’

Well, for many years now, it has been dead, but whenever she puts it in water, after 10 minutes, it comes back to life again.

Seriously – look:

Fig. 1: The resurrection plant – before and after.

Photo Finish

Got most of my photos back today.

There’s 10 rolls of them. I hadn’t wanted to risk damaging them as I travelled about NZ, so I’d numbered all the rolls and brought them back here to the UK for developing. It took a couple of hours to go through them this afternoon.

Now, sadly, I can’t bore you with all 300+ of them here ("…and this is me on a Tuesday"), but here, for the sake of melting your intelligence chip, are just a few of the edited highlights:


Fig. 1: This is me at home on July 20th, just before leaving, with a goodbye cake my mum made, shaped like the Starship Enterprise. It came with a card on which she’d written "Best wishes to Stephen’s Enterprise."


Fig. 2: Nuclear testing in Auckland.


Fig. 3: Auckland at night.


Fig. 4: Now you know why they call it "Sky City."


Fig. 5: I really wanted a photo of a kiwi dial telephone, ever since reading about them in Douglas Adams’ book about endangered species Last Chance To See. This is in one of the lifts at Auckland Central Backpackers.


Fig 6: Gearoid, after a M*A*S*H party at about 2am, again at the backpackers. Living there was like living in a cheerful prison.


Fig 7: My new local shopping centre.


Fig. 8: Back home again after a year, with another cake from my mum.


That's Doctor Who on that telly, that is!

You're Not In New Zealand Now, Dr Goble

My life seemed a bit self-conscious to have me back.

Would I relate to my friends differently? Would they even notice that I’d been away for a year? Would I really want them to notice?

And things were different – different in a subtle, slightly awkward, almost nearly sort of way.

The morning I arrived home, I had expected my mum to look a bit older, but she looked exactly the same.

We sat in the living-room, looking out at the garden that we’d photographed each other in when I’d left a year earlier. One of the cats, Seven, was sitting out there. “Will she remember you?”

I got up and opened the French windows to find out.

There she was, sitting in the middle of the lawn, looking across at me, all contented. I approached. I'd got her attention. I got nearer. Cats smell everything first, so I decided to let her sniff my fingers. Except that I couldn’t, because she’d bolted away terrified.

I returned to the living-room. “Yep, she remembers me all right.”

The post. There was a whole box of it. All the important stuff had already been scanned and emailed to me, but I still went through it all straight away, to get rid of it.

Multiple brochures from Mastersun Holidays, rejoining offers from my gym, letters from my solicitor, mailings that had resulted from my unsuccessful job-seeking enquiries at the Christian Resources Exhibition a year ago.

A pop-up Christmas card, sent circa October, from John Brownlee. (we have an ongoing war each year to send each other’s card first – I haven’t actually seen John since I first met him in 1994)

A birthday card from Suze, not actually saying goodbye, but wishing me the best for the future, wherever I’ve disappeared to. Really must phone her and schedule that now 6-year-old coffee appointment.

My life, without my input, slowly developing anyway with whatever I had left behind for it to go on, like the disappointing contents of an abandoned fridge.

Speaking of which, in the kitchen, I couldn’t remember where anything was. I washed-up, but I couldn’t remember where anything went. I ate, but I had to complement the fork with a knife again.

My clothes were enjoying mothballs, so I thought of Pastor Brett Jones’ sermon on Mothball Mathematics. (yes Brett, I now associate you with mothballs – congratulations. :))

My bed felt very hard. I couldn’t believe that this was the mattress I had chosen 2 years earlier. Flatmate Neil’s words drifted back to me from nary a week earlier “You won’t be able settle back home now mate.”

Herschel was my best friend. He’d emailed me almost every weekday. But I hadn’t actually spoken to him since leaving. What if there were now awkward pauses in our conversation? I was exhausted after a day, followed by a 24-hour flight, followed by another day, and my eyes were closing in bed, but even with my brain clumsily trying to write sentences 3-words-at-a-time at dial-up speed, I reached over to the phone and called him anyway.

Over an hour later I put the phone down again. Nah – still the same green-haired klown.

On Sunday morning I got up and snuck quietly into St Stephen’s Church. I felt pretty cool about this – flying 10,000 miles just to casually drop-in to church one Sunday – as if I could do so every week if I felt like it. I really needn’t have worried about attracting any attention, there were only my mum’s friends there, including Raili.

“Hello Raili!” I said in an unusually clipped British accent. Well now I must be home – I was greeting Raili. And another retired lady who I’d met at a dinner over a year ago. I chatted to her for quite a while – now I had the confidence, and the genuine interest, to do so.

Nothing had any meaning in the present – but plenty in the past.

Passing the hospital, I remembered Dorry, and how I had taken her for a zimmer-framed walk down one of the hospital’s corridors, and how I would not be hearing any more of her.

In New Zealand, I used to walk through modern-looking Botany Town Centre, imagining it to be Kingston. Now I walked through modern-looking Kingston mentally placing shops in Botany Town Centre.

I looked at the corner where Nando's was in New Zealand, and fellow Brit Karen's advice floated back to me. “When you go back home, you’ve changed, but everyone else is the same.”

Hmmm, well the dog was the same - still missing. Not an actual dog you understand, but a man who, quite inexplicably, used to refer to himself as one. David Dog – my father.

The house was, as it has been for a few years now, empty without him. Without all the sound he used to make. The tinny sound of football on his radio. The urgent blare of BBC News on the TV, at 1, 6 and 9 o’clock. The industrial gurgle of the kettle boiling, cups being stirred, and then the wet teaspoon clattering onto the tea-tray. Clever activities for a dog.

Now the house sounded a bit like an empty school classroom during the summer holidays.

One of the reasons why I’d delayed my trip to NZ last year, had been to organise a very, very important film-shoot. Now, amongst my post, was the roll of film, returned from the processors in Switzerland.

I set-up the projector and viewed it – it had come out perfectly, but I still had a few more shots to get in the can, so I picked-up the phone.

I’d cleared my post, phoned Hershel, been everywhere and now I was picking-up my old film-projects again.

There was really no evidence at all that I had even been away.

It was just all so quiet without me around.

Bomb Voyage

I hate packing.

I can’t do it, I can’t organise all those things.

And yet I’ve spent the past year living out of an increasingly high number of backpacks, boxes, carriers, cartons, lockers and lunchboxes.

Three nights ago (that's the day before yesterday) however, I was trying, somehow, to squeeze all of my NZ belongings into just four of these containers, and my pockets.

I was in my room in Howick, Auckland, trying to sort the past year out, so that I could go home to the UK to visit my family and friends for a month.

I would be leaving two of these bags behind. In the unexpected event that I did NOT return to NZ, then David was under instructions to ship one bag to me, and to throw the other out. Nothing can possibly go wrong with that plan, eh? :)

I remembered, 18 months earlier, sitting in the UK watching someone else similarly pack-up at the end of their year abroad. They’d said something rather beautiful about wanting to be wherever in the world God wanted them. Now I understood how they’d felt. What on Earth could possibly be better about being somewhere else?

Anyway, as I was packing my bags, my other flatmate came in.

“Steve, just letting you know, three bombs have gone off on buses and trains in London, it’s on the TV now, they’ve closed all the airports, there are no flights going in or out of Heathrow.”

Typical, absolutely typical. Out of the whole of the last four years, the terrorists had actually decided to pick the day before my flight on which to wage an organised bombing of London.

I could just picture them all sitting around in their balaclavas, diaries open, plotting “Okay, now Goble’s flight date is July the 8th, so we all need to make this thing happen sometime on the 7th.”

And then it hit me. There were a heap of people dead. Some might be people I knew.

Fortunately, my flatmate then fell apart laughing. “Nah-nah-nah, not really mate, I’m only having you on!”

A smile flooded across his face, and then across mine – it was all a wind-up! Laughing, I shouted at him in mock anger “I believed you! You totally had me!”

“No, no, not really, I’m only messing with you,” he chuckled, “they haven’t really closed the airports.”

I froze. Those people, who in the last few seconds had been alive, dead and then alive again, now once more hung helplessly between death and life on the next words of the guy standing in front of me. “Whoa whoa whoa, have bombs gone off or not?”

Seconds later we were standing in his room watching the live pictures on TV. It was about 9pm for us, therefore about 9am in London. It was real. Those people were dead. Who knew how many more bombs would go off today?

But it was worse than that – the terrorists had learnt their lesson from the World Trade Centre disaster – if you want to be noticed, now you have to let off multiple bombs simultaneously.

This was now officially the future of terrorism.


48 hours later however, Heathrow Airport still looked very much as it had done when I’d left it a year ago.

Getting through UK customs was a lot easier than getting into NZ – no thorough searches, accusations or failed attempts to build baseless cases against me today. Perhaps Satan was relieved to get me back in England – well away from NZ.

The thing I always think of when I picture Heathrow is that massive rotating aerial-dish with the giant microphone in the middle.

That was still there, endlessly revolving like a shocked triffid on a record player.

Inevitably, my mind compared Arrivals at Heathrow Terminal 3 to the last time I had come back through here – back in March 2004.

That time, before leaving Auckland, I’d met a guy in the express queue who was flying to London in the opposite direction to me. 26 hours later we’d run into each other again at Heathrow. We’d chatted for hours by the taxi rank. He’d seriously encouraged me to go back, and indeed all I had wanted to do for the next 4 months was turn around and do just that.

Today, I had been expecting everything to look somehow smaller, but it didn’t. Everything just looked unimaginatively the same, apart from a few token police.

All was normal - but had my perceptions of normal altered?

I had planned to save money and get the bus home, but after 24 hours in the air, I decided to treat myself.

A year ago, as I’d left home, my mum had thrust a £20 note into my hand. Even though, thanks to Freakazoid at ACB, the Queen had since grown a biro-coloured goatee, I now planned to finally spend it.

So away I headed in a cab, passing as we went a red bus coming along in the opposite direction.

...a red one! (you don't see many of those these days)

But more was to come. With traffic jams alarmingly bumping the meter up, we took a detour through Hampton Hill. Now this really was normal. I’d worked as a Purchase Ledger here for 4 years, but these days I found myself in Hampton Hill…ooh, I’d say about once a year. The last time I’d come through here had been during a driving lesson – a year ago. Being here today, then, was normal.

And then, out of nowhere, I spotted someone I knew.

I mean that proves it, doesn’t it? I don’t know him very well, he’s my mum’s friend’s husband, and I only glimpsed him, he certainly didn’t see me, but whizzing past old friend Franz on the pavement proved beyond any doubt that I must be back home again.

It was so normal, yet it was a normality that had been impossible for a year.

Eventually the streets became more and more familiar, and the memories more numerous, until we turned down a very familiar road indeed. A road that, more than anything else, meant my mum, my dad, my sister, our cat Lucky and lots of cracked paving-stones. Some of them would never be there again, but that’s what that road still says to me.

We pulled-up, no-one heard us.

I climbed out and swung open the gate.

I headed up the path to a familiar painted green door, rang the doorbell, waited a moment, and then, seeing my mum for the first time in almost a year, said the words that every son returning home after a year says.

“I need to borrow some more money.”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Tertiary Phase

The single biggest failing of today’s entertainment media is to begin a story and then not finish it.

The casualties of this sort of production apathy are legion, and they are perhaps best expressed by the curse of the abandoned BBC book adaptation: The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe (only 3 books made, and that was the intention from the start), The Tripods (2 out of 3 books made before abandoned), The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. (2 out of 5 books made)


Well all right, the 2 Hitchhiker radio series were actually written before the 5 books, so that last one isn’t really fair. Nevertheless I still remember, in about 1982 I think, sitting in my bedroom listening (probably off of tape) to the end of the second radio series.

Suddenly someone blurts out something about Earth’s destruction, Arthur and Lintilla steal the Heart Of Gold spaceship, Zaphod and Ford are stranded at a hut with Zarniwoop, the ruler of the universe (who isn’t sure whether anything actually exists) and his cat.

Cue closing narration:

“What does the future hold for our heroes now? What does the past or present hold for that matter?”

(you can tell it’s by Douglas Adams, can’t you?)

Many times over the last 20-odd years I’ve pondered just what in the universe did happen next. So in 2000, I sat down and read all 5 Hitchhiker books, each of which flatly contradicted the radio episodes.

You see, the late Douglas Adams was a perfectionist. He would rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite again, often for many years after his final deadline. Radio series producer Geoffrey Perkins often tells the story of how Adams would show up to a radio recording session with only 10 completed pages, spend all day working on them, and then show up the next day having successfully increased the page-count to 5. Perkins calls this process “writing backwards.” Some episodes, I gather, were even written on the same day as transmission.

So when he came to novelise these radio scripts, Adams understandably took full advantage of extensively rewriting them all again. As a result his first 2 books read a bit like mixing-up one of those 2-dimensional sliding puzzles that challenges you to arrange all the numbered tiles into sequential order. It looks like it’s all there, but in a completely different order.

For example, in the novelisation, when they all meet Zaphod’s deceased father, Trillian falls quiet, partly out of shock, but mainly because she wasn’t originally in that scene.

This re-arranging of the story, pivotally, causes the second book to end, not as on the radio with the ruler of the universe and his cat, but with Arthur and Ford trapped on prehistoric Earth…a predicament from the middle of the radio episodes.

On the radio, this was resolved with Arthur and Ford dropping Arthur’s towel into a lava flow where, over the millennia, it became fossilised until modern-day Earth was blown-up by the Vogons, and Zaphod subsequently found Arthur’s fossilised towel floating amongst Earth’s debris in space, and so travelled back in time to save them.

With me? No? It doesn’t matter.

The point is, blow me if the resolution at the start of the third book isn’t completely different, with Arthur and Ford escaping from prehistoric Earth on a time-travelling sofa instead.

I’ll say this for Douglas Adams – there’s plenty of his wonderful imagination to enjoy!

Anyway, after Adams’ death in 2001, it seemed as though the 1982 radio series’ final cliffhanger with the ruler of the universe and his cat might never be resolved.

Until now.

It all sounded too good to be true – BBC radio producer Dirk Maggs adapted the remaining 3 books and – crucially – reassembled all the available original castmembers to record them. Same voices, same music, same episode length, same station even. Finally I was going to hear what happened next – what really happened next. Even the guy who voiced the ruler of the universe came back. (he also voiced Marvin)

So, with about 20 hours still to kill until my flight got in to London, I put my cassette of the first new episode in over 20 years into my walkman, closed my eyes, and listened.


The opening music teased into my ears, the same guy from 20 years ago read the opening credits, some imaginative editing enabled the voice of the original, now deceased, narrator Peter Jones to be heard intercut with the new narrator. This was wonderful. As far as I was concerned, it was 1982 again. This was exactly the same show.

And then my heart sank like a stone.

This guy had adapted the third book, yes. He had adapted it all right. He had adapted it exactly.

Arthur and Ford were back on prehistoric Earth again – from where they had already escaped back in episode 7.

I listened, feeling just awful, as they escaped a second time, this time on a time-travelling sofa…with of course no memory of their first escape.

And then to account for this, there was a throwaway line writing-off the WHOLE of the second half of the original series as being just a dream.


I couldn’t believe it. Douglas Adams’ huge imagination was apparently being adapted by a writer with so little of it. Just like the recent movie version that disappointed me so.

What a stupid thing to go and do. What a missed opportunity. What an insult.

And the most inconceivable thing? That was the new series’ one and only error.

The rest was utterly, utterly brilliant.

Oh sure it took a few episodes for the cast to get back into their roles again (Geoffrey McGivern initially projecting his lines as though for a studio audience like he had on The Griff Rhys Jones Show), and the new Slartibartfast didn’t sound anything like I remember, and the adapted dialogue was quite lazy at first, but apart from that this was absolutely lovely.

One of the highlights would be Douglas Adams himself playing Agrajag. Yes, I know I just said that he’d died in 2001, but a man of Douglas Adams’ imagination would never let a little thing like death stop him.

What a terrible, terrible way to start though, by destroying so much of what had gone before, and crippling the credibility of what followed.

The only thing it needs now is another new episode on the beginning to bridge the gap. To resolve the lost cliffhanger and strand Arthur and Ford on prehistoric Earth a second time.

I’ll have to ask the Campaign For Real Time if they can help.

Melinda And Dave

What is it with TV shows and movies that feature one actor playing two roles?

You know the plot already…Joe Ordinary is always trying to be something he’s not.

As a result he’s become a failed crook with a heart of gold. One day he gets caught. Worse, the FBI take an interest, and he knows he’s lost everything. He’s facing life imprisonment, and even worse, will never see his little daughter ever again.

And then it unexpectedly turns out that he happens to look exactly like another top FBI agent/the local mafia boss/the US President who has just been seriously incapacitated/killed. Really - he looks exactly like him, right down to the finest detail, apart from the beard.

“It’s uncanny,” gasps one of the FBI dudes, usually adding at some point that the chances are “a million to one.” He obviously hasn’t been to the movies much lately.

At this point Joe always refuses point blank to impersonate his successful doppelganger, until someone points out that the alternative is to go to prison. And anyway, he only has to pull off just one small simple crucial public appearance in two days’ time, and then he’ll be free forever.

In the audience, you look at your watch. They still have another 80 minutes to fill. Oh yes, this plan is fail-safe.

A comedy montage ensues of Joe Ordinary undergoing his transformation into his double, to a completely inappropriate track by some modern shouting rapper. His beard gets shaved off. He’s given new clothes. He’s taught how to behave in high society. We repeatedly cut back to him failing to perform the same simple task of, say, pouring a glass of wine in character. (he pours it on the waiter, on himself, on a girl, on an expensive piece of hi-tech equipment, anywhere except in the glass) He even takes elocution lessons to get the accent right. (No-one’s ever amazed that he already has the same voice) Finally we see him enter a room with the right hair, clothes, and accent. Oozing with confidence he crosses the room, greets everyone individually, and pours a glass of wine like a pro. The music stops. Everyone cheers. His training is over – now he can go and pull-off the stunt for real.

At his final briefing he gets gemmed-up on the people he will meet today and have to convince of his bogus identity – including some attractive girl played by a singer, who used to be famous back during filming. He’s told to keep contact with her to a minimum. As indeed the casting executives might have.

Despite some hilariously unexpected mishaps, he pulls-off the meeting, but at the last moment he gets all overconfident and asks the girl played by the has-been singer out to dinner, still in the guise of his double.

At this point 99% of the audience loses interest, which is all good and proper, as by now the cinema already has everyone’s money. But back to the ‘plot.’

The lie gets perpetuated for longer and longer, until the real guy either gets better or dies, and the FBI realise that Joe Ordinary is out of control in his new persona, and needs to be ‘dealt with.’

Then the most unexpected thing in the whole world happens – the girl reveals that she’s known he was a fake all along.

(gasps!!)

Together they cleverly defeat the FBI’s evil plans, free some persecuted innocent people, make the world a better place, and either fake his double persona’s death or defeat him by a cunning mixture of split-screen, motion control and Lucasarts special effects.

Either way, Joe Ordinary and the singer are now finally free to pursue their love in anonymity by returning to his old life.

But this time he won’t be a failure. Because along the way, you see, he’s learnt an important life lesson.

Be yourself.

In fairness, on the big screen Dave may well have been funnier than The Marx Brothers. However in 1993, on an Air 2000 flight from Kos to Heathrow, on a small ceiling-mounted TV twenty feet away, and with a telephone quality soundtrack, quite frankly showing any movie with one actor playing two roles was really not a smart move.

I can still remember my thought patterns to this day. “What? What’s he doing there? Wasn’t he in the city a second ago? When is this – the following day? Is this a flashback? Is this one of those arty films that starts in the middle and tells everything in the wrong order? Did they start two different movies with the same actor, run out of money and then splice them together into one and think we wouldn’t notice? Whu…?”

Anyway, gripe over. Today I was on Air New Zealand flight NZ2 from Auckland to London, when I found myself watching Woody Allen’s Melinda And Melinda. Not a doppelganger movie by any stretch of the imagination. Oh no – this was far worse.


Melinda And Melinda is framed by a group of writers, arguing over 2 conflicting ways of telling the same story. One sees Melinda’s story to be a drama, extolling the tragedy of her mysterious past. The other sees her tale as a comedy. We, unfortunately, see both.

That’s the entire cast times 2, dressed the same, using the same names and performing on the same sets. Or was it? From that distance it was sorta hard to tell. This was Dave times a million.

I really have no idea what happened, but the disembodied voice telling everyone they were heading into turbulence was quite imaginative, unlike the special interactive meal which, quite frankly, has been done a lot of times before.

I’d like to see this film again properly, you know, to give it a fair chance, but since I already have 2 thoroughly skewiff impressions of the story, I’m afraid that a third and fourth version might not really help.

Maybe I’ll just go rent something more straightforward, like Run Lola Run.

A Year In Providence

Some years ago, at a church slide-show, I heard of a missionary who’d been roughing it somewhere in the depths of darkest Africa, and was about to meet a tribe who had never seen a white man before. Preaching the gospel to everyone on Earth was a touchy business. Befriending this tribe, gaining their trust, and learning their culture and language would take years at best, but behind the next line of trees waited the crucial moment of first contact. Any seemingly innocent gesture or facial expression might turn out to be a suicidal faux pas in front of these people. Cautiously, he pulled back the branches of the tree, to see the tribe’s coveted local branch of McDonald’s.

God only knows quite how apocryphal the above story is. If apocrypha levels were measured by how far you were through the Bible, then I’d probably rate this one a Gospel According To Thomas. However the point that was being made at this presentation was that McDonald’s had got there before we did.

Curse you Ronald, curse you and all your Satanic burger-eating evil clown friends.

Then, today, this evening, live, as it happened, the above story took on a new spin.

My journey all the way around the world to get back to the UK took me to a place where there was no McDonald’s.

Let me just say that again so that it sinks in – I have been somewhere where there is no McDonald’s restaurant. And by the term “McDonald’s” I include Burger King, Wendy’s, Wimpy, Hungry Jack’s, Burger Queen (it’s real), Blue Tops and the Krusty Burger.

Yes, I know, you’re already reaching for the phone to book your next holiday there, so I’ll tell you all…it’s the duty-free area at Auckland Airport.

No kidding.

I have spent the last 12 months promising myself that whatever happened to me in New Zealand, no matter how badly things went, no matter how much I was afraid that God might let me down, I would at least still have a huge unhealthy Burger King meal waiting for me at the airport after I had checked-in to leave. Plastic cup of pig fat and all. But no, I think God was proving a point.

I queued-up for some extortionately-priced slices of pizza, but it really wasn’t the same.

Curse you pizza-servers, curse you and all your over-charging graveyard shift Auckland airport friends. (except you Rhett – cheers for reading buddy :))

I suppose it’s time to look back on the last year and draw some conclusions.

More than anything else, despite what I’ve said about following God, I think the last year has really all been about me. The reason why I say this, is because I think that’s what God has been working on.

So with that in mind, here are 21 things that I have learnt about myself over the past year. This advice is from me to myself, it is definitely not intended as advice for anyone else. Everyone’s different, just like numbers. (bad analogy – ignore that)

1. Get 8 hours’ sleep.

“Getting by on 6” is not the same as being wide-awake. When you’re wide-awake you feel as though you can do anything. Easily. Definitely still working on that one.

2. Get up earlier.

There’s nothing like a morning. And in my life they’re so rare. When I worked evenings at a callcentre, for years I would regularly get up at 2pm, go to work, come home, stay up all night, wake my family with tea last thing at 7am, and go to bed. Breakfast telly was the worst.

“Well Gavin, it’s going to be a great day out there today. There’s so much to look forward to. I really pity any poor sap who has to sleep through and miss the next 8 hours.”

3. Read the Bible most days.

For the same reason as watching The Simpsons. It’s very encouraging, and reminds me what the real world is like – it’s not the one that I might be wrapped-up in and despairing over. I read it out loud now as well. I say “most days” because I think it’s a mistake to blindly enforce rules.

Their religion is nothing but human rules and tradition, which they have simply memorised.

- Isaiah 29:13b (Good News)

Jesus. Healing people. Sabbath. Son. Well. Fallen down. Common sense.

4. Get out of my room.

I can’t do anything in my room. Going to my room always results in lots of doing nothing. It’s like a black hole in there. Or the Goble Triangle.


"Goble’s room, where things dis-a-ppear, Goble’s room, wooh-don’t go too near. But she doesn’t see my angle…"

5. Exercise.

My body is the tool through which I do everything, even praying. Joining a gym was one of the best decisions I ever made. I can do so much more now, for longer. And God has provided a treadmill in my room!

6. Wash every day.

I hate washing. I hate shaving. I hate showering. It’s such a hassle. But skipping it always kills my energy levels, making it harder to do later on.

7. Tithe.

The first handful of dough that is offered is holy. This makes all of the dough holy.
If the root is holy, so are the branches.

- Romans 11:16 (NIR)

I don’t think tithing is so much about giving God a tenth, as giving God your best. If I always keep my best, that leaves God with second best, so who is most important to me?

8. Pray.

Again, out loud.

When I was a kid, I used to open my curtains each morning and say “Let the light of God engulf this room in happiness and joy.”

By the time I was 34, this had grown to about 20 minutes of careful exact wording and concentration. Trying to start each day without fearing how much I might blame myself if something went wrong and I hadn’t yet said my obsessive carefully-worded prayer and meant it – it was tough getting it out of the way in time for my evening prayer.

Today my prayers vary, but I try to avoid set ones. In his book The Prayer Of Jabez, Bruce Wilkinson recommends reciting 1 Chronicles 4:10 every single day.

He was the one who prayed to the God of Israel, "Oh, that you would bless me and extend my lands! Please be with me in all that I do, and keep me from all trouble and pain!" And God granted him his request.

- 1 Chronicles 4:10 (NLT)

Every day would rob it of its meaning, so I just pray it sometimes.

Now I say a quick prayer before beginning something, and a longer one when appropriate. I try to keep everything varied.

And I’ve replaced my long daily prayer with reading the Bible!

9. Speak positive things.

If the future is going to be dreadful, then you might as well enjoy believing the opposite while you still can. It’s better to be wrong and happy than right and miserable.

10. Watch The Simpsons.


I always feel better after watching that. Despite what people say, it’s a wonderful life-affirming show, and it’s always on.

Mmmmm - Simpsonsssss.

11. Play games. (for motivation)

12. Change things regularly.

I’ve always tried to find the best way of doing everything, but that’s just resulted in repetition and stagnation. I get used to things real quick.

13. Stop thinking.

Thinking is probably my worst trait. Must stop thinking, it only magnifies everything and ruins Star Trek...

(Heh heh heh - if I only had a brain.)

14. I Can’t Make Decisions.

What I really mean to say is that I always need a deciding factor. If there are 2 identical boxes of corn flakes at the supermarket, you can bet that I’ll pick the one that’s further away, so that the remaining one will be easier for the next person to pick up. I need something to go on, anything.

15. Make friends with everyone.

I’m rubbish at faces, and even worse at names, but serving people is what I’m here for.

16. Go outside every day.

Nothing new there.

17. Take a day off every week.

Another oldie.

18. Be thankful.

Everything is a gift of grace from God. Even the way I can see the leaves’ shadows dancing on the kitchen door as I type this. The contrast between that white speck of dirt and the rest of the table. The way 7 numbers can be re-arranged into laughter through a game of dominoes – it really is a miracle.

When they banged Jesus to a cross, he was probably blind by that point. He’d have heard everyone hating him, felt only agony from his body, and had his sense of smell and taste flooded with his own blood. Bad example. What could Jesus possibly have been grateful for with only evil coming through all his senses at once?

I guess that’s when you only have your faith.

19. Blog.

Keeping this blog has given me a real sense of identity. I have a better idea who I am, and who I want to be.

Words focus us. I think this is what separates us from the animals.

20. I can live anywhere in the world now. Woo-hoo!

21. Most of those were pieces of advice, but this final one is something that I've learnt about myself: Right in the centre of my heart, more fundamental to me than anything else, is my belief in the truth.

I believe that this is the same as my allegiance to the Holy Spirit.

Even back at infants’ school, people would come to me to ask what had actually happened. I remember: “Ask him – he always tells the truth.”

Lying, by my definition, is deliberately causing a false belief in another person. (jokes are not lies)

I am failure, and a sinner, and make no pretence about my track record, but I will go on the record and say that I do not recall speaking, typing or writing a lie this year.

And now that I've gone on the record I recall telling Tiger that I had no free drinks vouchers, and then apologising to him afterwards for lying to him. And I remember answering the phone and a friend hissing at me that he wasn't there. I really really hated saying that. I told him afterwards "Don't ever ask me to lie for you again." I felt awful. If I sit down and go through the year I suspect I'll find others, but I don't remember any others right now.

I do sometimes find it very hard to tell the whole truth. Especially when I am afraid of how I may be treated as a result.

I believe that lying by omission, if it indeed causes a false belief in another person, is lying.

So yes, I sometimes lie, by saying nothing, but I do try to avoid it.

I always try to tell the whole truth.

I always try to do the right thing.

This is who I am, who I want to be, and who I always will be.

Lastly, when people lie to me, it can hurt. But I feel really sad when I go on to tell them a truth, and they can't believe me.



So as my flight took off, and the “Auckland Airport” sign hurried away behind me yet again, I inevitably reflected on the past 2 life-changing years, and on what a renaissance they had been in my life. Had God really had it all planned out like this? Was He really in control? Was He just silently manipulating me for as long as He could get away with it?

And what did I have to show for giving up my life, family, friends and beliefs to follow what inescapably repeatedly claimed to be His path for me?

I’d changed, sure, I followed God more closely, was far more certain of His existence and reliability, was happier, more bullish, less afraid, lived more for the present, and had lost so much cynicism and arrogance.

And rather than blame God for the things that my life are still missing, I now repeatedly stated and steadfastly believed that God was able, willing and would prove that He really could do anything.

Tonight, as the aircraft’s wheels let go of the runway, for the first time in my life, I had absolutely no idea whether I was returning home or leaving it.

I Think I've A Phone Now

It always used to amaze me that you could stand in the middle of a field talking on a mobile phone to someone in New Zealand.

Of course, now that I am in New Zealand, I no longer need a mobile phone to speak to people here.

And here's the thing – everyone in New Zealand has bought a mobile phone now…with which to talk to each other.

Mugs.

When I touched-down in Auckland last summer (sorry) winter, my plan for that first month was simple:

1. Get a flat. (failed)

2. Get a job. (failed)

3. Get a Work Permit (prior to point 2) (failed)

4. Get a mobile phone.

For some reason, I never quite got around to...what? Oh all right then.

4. Get a mobile phone. (failed)

For some reason, I never quite got around to that last one. In fact, as the days became months, I consciously moved further away from this plan, and towards what most of us would label as madness.

I decided that I wasn't going to buy a phone, I was going to get given one. For free. And not only that, but I was going to get given a mobile phone for free by none other than God. I'm the Queen of Spain by the way.

Yes, I could have just bought one, but the only circumstances under which I would do that were if God had first provided the job, which of course required Him to first provide the Work Permit. Which of course, required the offer of a job. And here's where my resolve to wait on God collapsed. To get the job offer, I was definitely not going to just hang around waiting for the phone to ring.

Late November 2004, and new contact (therefore potential employer) Mr Phil Guyan was paying for a getting-to-know-you snack at the Greenlane McCafe...


"What's your mobile number?" he reasonably enquired.

Oh yes, this was a good first impression to be making. Mr Guyan ran a Christian radio production company, and this meeting, to a certain extent, inevitably involved at least a small degree of sizing each other up. Of course, the likelihood of my being any use whatsoever without a permanent address, a Work Permit, a mobile phone or even any sort of a concrete plan as to how I would get any of these things, rather made me feel as though today was all about getting a free sandwich, albeit at the expense of a much larger cab fare.

Anyway, right now my potential employer was waiting to write down my non-existent mobile number. Let's see – what would Jesus do? Oh yes that's right – he'd shun common sense, exercise His faith, and come out with something utterly ludicrous. How did I wind up following this guy again?

"Err, well..." I stuttered in answer to this friend of a friend who I had only really known for about an hour, "I haven't quite got one of those yet. I was going to buy one, but then, well, then I sort of thought that I'd wait for God to provide one on faith. You know, he keeps providing me with free accommodation at the backpackers and... err... free..." ... I looked down at the sandwich he'd bought me, "... food, and stuff, so I, err, thought I'd wait for Him to provide me with a free mobile too."

Mr Guyan's face, true to his radio background, gave nothing away.

"Hmmm," he considered, or more likely to my mind stalled, before eventually conceding "I want to see if we can get you … a laptop."

Ye-ee-es!

Here was I only daring to believe that God could provide me with a mere phone, while this guy was way ahead of me and foreseeing the divine provision of an entire audio-software-enabled computer!

A few weeks later however, and in keeping with God's generally perceived track-record, neither a laptop nor a mobile phone had fallen from the sky, floated past in a basket, been left outside my door with an anonymous note attached, or any of the other clichéd ways in which I wanted to see God provide these things. This became abundantly clear when Phil Guyan actually did find a little voluntary work for me to do, but couldn't contact me in time as I was away camping and I had no mobile.

Well, so much for that contact. I could just imagine Phil calling my mobile now, and hearing the polite recorded message "The person you are calling does not have a mobile. Please try again later. Say, after we've all been around the sun a few more times."

Months passed.

Then, on 3rd March this year, Nadia at the hostel gave me her SIM card before leaving NZ, and shortly afterwards I found another one on the Free Food Shelf, and yet a third one on the pavement in Queen Street. Still no actual phone to go with it though.

More months passed.

Then Sam offered to buy me a phone, and I actually turned him down. "God will provide one, for free," I declared.

And yet He didn't. I wanted to text-message God and ask him why, however I couldn't, partly because I didn't have a mobile phone, but mainly because, despite all of His sovereign power, He actually didn't have one either.

Hence the phrase "Thou shalt not text The LORD thy God."

(sorry…)

Then in May I had a breakthrough. Mr Hippy told me he'd now got himself a new mobile, and would I like to take over his old telescopic-aerialed brick?

Hmmm, just two problems with that.

Firstly, it appeared to have been designed for olympic shot-putters who wanted to stay in practice.

Secondly, and this was a big one, it only worked when it was plugged in.

As mobility is a pretty essential quality in any mobile phone, this was going to cost me alot in extension leads.

So, mobile it was. By about 8 feet. I did experiment with taking it about with me and plugging it into the mains wherever I was, however since its densely-packed molecules had begun to exert their own gravitational pull, this occasionally caused some embarrassment.

"Thanks for the use of your mains Mrs Goggins, sorry again for removing your boiler there."

Then, in mid-May, I discovered Mr Hippy's brick's third minor drawback… and once again it was heralded by a call from the by now very long-suffering Phil Guyan, inexplicably offering me yet more work.

Undeterred by my previous track-record of telephonic poverty, this time Phil called me on my new Korean landlord's cordless landline. Unfortunately, said cordless landline was so quiet that I had to wonder if it was sneakily connected to someone else’s base-unit across the road. The irony here of course was that, despite being on a private landline, I was now yelling like I was in public on a mobile.

"HELLO??? YES I'M IN A LIVING ROOM. HOLD ON, I THINK WE'RE ABOUT TO GO INTO A TUNNEL."

Perhaps missing the universal uniqueness of his request, Phil actually suggested that he call me again on the mobile… for a clearer line.

Thus I put the landline down, picked-up my coffee and, aided by the force of gravity, bounded down the corridor towards the room where my ringing mobile was helplessly clinging to the mains.

Phil outlined the job to me. It was extraordinary – right up my street. It was helping with his radio series of modern Christian parables - work I was experienced at, had a passion for, and that I believed in. I was exactly qualified. Not only that, but the phone call really had come out of the blue - proving that this was God's doing, not mine. However the icing on the cake was what Phil said next:

"I understand that you have an aversion to money, however we would like to pay you for this."

I explained that I was simply a law-abiding citizen, and would need a Work Permit to enable him to pay me.

Unfortunately at that moment the line went dead.

Incredulously I stabbed at the buttons, but it was no good. Despite having apparently been built from the heavy-matter found at the centre of a collapsed star, Mr Hippy's brick had suddenly crumbled on me, and even trying the infallible trick of turning-it-off-and-on-again wasn't working. (they even do that with heart patients y'know)

But wait, back down the other end of the corridor, I could make out the quietest cordless phone in the world ringing again.

So grabbing my coffee once more, I heaved myself out of the antique Motorola's gravity-well and staggered back to have the third part of our conversation, which I sincerely hoped would not concern my communication skills.

It was only when this shambolic travesty of modern communication was finally over, that I remembered what Greg had prayed for me in church the previous Sunday (15th May) – that there would be a breakthrough this week in God's purpose for me. I even wrote it on my blog for that day.

Anyway, after an interview and a myriad of phone-calls and emails between Phil, myself, an immigration agency and the New Zealand Immigration Service, the Permit application got underway.

Having to leave the Koreans' house, I moved into a flat, where my new cockney flatmate Neil punctually decided to treat himself to a new mobile, and bequeathed his old one to me.

At last, I could now play Reversi at the bus stop like everyone else.

Then today, after almost a year, I finally received the necessary papers to work in New Zealand!

Too bad that today is also the day on which I must return home to England.

So here I am back at Auckland Airport after almost a year, with the flat, the job, the Work Permit and the mobile phone, all successfully provided by God. And what am I doing with them? That's right – I'm giving them all up again.

The first handful of dough that is offered is holy. This makes all of the dough holy.
If the root is holy, so are the branches.

- Romans 11:16 (NIRV)

"Bring the entire tenth to the storerooms in my temple. Then there will be plenty of food. Put me to the test," says the Lord. "Then you will see that I will throw open the windows of heaven. I will pour out so many blessings that you will not have enough room for them.

- Malachi 3:10 (NIRV)

"The King will reply, 'What I'm about to tell you is true. Anything you did for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

- Matthew 25:40 (NIRV)

Surrender the first and best part of all God’s gifts back to Him. If someone else wants it, then let them have it first.

I’ll be back in a month. I've found coming through at the last minute to be one of God's traits, so I suppose the arrival of this paperwork just a few hours before my departure means he wants me back in NZ again shortly.

Right now though I gotta go - but before I do, I gotta give back this laptop.

Has-Been

So it’s come to this - my last full day in New Zealand.

I passed Giles the tramp begging on Queen Street again. In the past I’ve made him sandwiches, so today was my last chance to feed him.

I headed into the youth hostel that I had lived in for nine months, to fetch some food off the Free Food Shelf for him.

There was none. God hadn’t provided. I got myself a glass of water instead. Have faith, I kept telling myself.

Then Leni came up to me. She had a whole bag full of food that someone had left behind, and she asked me if I wanted it. What was in there? Porridge! Milk! This was perfect. I mixed it up in a bowl, found there was exactly the perfect amount of milk, heated it up, added some sugar, put in a spoon and headed back out to Giles with it.

He didn’t want it.

Wondering if he had been a cat in a previous life, I carefully replaced the bowl of untouched porridge in my bag, and headed down towards The Warehouse, where I had some souvenirs to get.

In my mind, I wasn’t sure if God wanted me to walk in this direction. The other tramps, I knew, hung out back the other way, in Aotea Square. But if God was really in control, and if I really didn’t have to do anything, then surely they would be on my way to The Warehouse.(The Warehouse)(where everyone gets a bargain)(and a money-back guarantee)

Half-way down Queen Street, and with the porridge getting cold in my bag, I gave up on this and turned around to head back past Giles towards Aotea Square, scanning the whole street on the way for vagrants.

None.

I was on the final stretch, under the covered walkway by the Post Office, when we made eye-contact.

I don’t recall if I offered him the porridge first, or whether he asked me for something, but this guy didn’t want the porridge either. What he wanted was a couple of burgers.

Great - another cat.

Again I found myself reluctant to use any actual money to help the guy, but the parable of the Good Samaritan really doesn’t leave much room. I offered to buy him the burgers, so back to Wendy’s we went.

“Are you sure you don’t want any of the other burgers?” I gently prompted, not unreasonably since he was asking me for the cheapest one.

He was definite though. He knew what he wanted. The little 2-dollar burger that comes with a second one free. No problem.

As we queued-up, I was bugged that he seemed a little familiar. He was very polite and friendly. He told me that he played the harmonica to earn money, but that every time he found one, someone stole it from him. I asked for his name. “Rex.”

“You are Rex!” I gasped, suddenly feeling a flashback coming on…

As we got the burgers, I just marvelled at what an amazing transformation had taken place in this man. Six months ago he’d been an angry swearing suicidal alcoholic. Now he was someone who I genuinely wanted to spend some time chatting to. “People tell me I have very kind eyes,” he said, and he did. What on Earth had God done for this man this year to transform his character?

“I’m schizophrenic,” he answered.

I wondered, surely no-one could be that schizophrenic.

In anticipation of leaving NZ, lately I’ve been photographing everyone I know, and Rex was no exception, happily posing outside Wendy’s. I wondered a bit about my motivation here. I was thinking “I’ll post this on my blog,” but wound up wondering whether this was pure egotism on my part. “Look at me – I feed tramps.” It felt a bit like this photo was some sort of trophy, and he wasn’t smiling that much, so as my finger depressed the shutter, I mentally decided not to post it. Then, as soon as the flash had gone off, Rex broke into a massive grin.

Call me mad, but in Matthew we’re told that whenever we feed the hungry we’re feeding Jesus, (you know the quote) and on this, the final day of my Kiwi odyssey, I really felt as though I actually had.

I wanted to help this guy out, so before leaving I looked him straight in his kind eyes and said “You will get another harmonica.”

Back in Aotea Square, I was alone. Again.

How many times in the last year had I sat here now, praying to God, angrily, determinedly, reading the Bible out loud?


There was the white clock tower, the “Sky City Metro” sign still lighting-up in sequence…


…the statue of Steve Allen (he looks like Steve Allen to me)…


…and that abstract Mountain Fountain thing.

And the memories. Walking along the tops of the benches when I was first here in March last year...


... the football match, the fire-jugglers, the time I’d decided to walk the circumference three times reading some psalms out loud, at which the most hideous screaming-match had broken-out between two groups of tramps.


And there’s that building that looks like the last thing Number 6 sees before he passes-out in the opening credits of The Prisoner. Oh yes, The Prisoner - I was writing a magazine article about that when I first came here.

Now it was all empty, like Maplins in the last episode of Hi-De-Hi, and I was still sitting there with a cold bowl of uneaten porridge that no-one wanted, not even the tramps.

There was only one thing left to do.

It went against everything I believed in, but I ate the porridge.

Well actually I ate about a third of it, before deciding that it was disgusting, and tipping the rest of it away. Blasted soy-milk, no-one’s that desperate.


I walked back under the arch, left Aotea Square for the final time and headed back to the hostel to return their utensils.

It had all meant something, but I had absolutely no idea what.