Some Days You Just Can't Get Rid Of A Bomb

Tonight, my mum and I boarded a train in London.

It was fairly crowded, particularly with Koreans, so we made our way through them, stowed some of our luggage in an overhead compartment, and sat down on opposite sides of the aisle from each other.

Sitting on the far side of my mum on the double seat was a twenty-ish foreign-looking girl, who at the next stop had to squeeze past my mum to get out, while chatting away on her mobile phone.

A moment after she’d gone, my mum found a very large cloth bag stashed underneath the double seat.

We looked around. No-one would admit to owning it. There was no-one else who it could belong to. The train was still in the station, and the sliding doors were still open.

Grabbing the bag I forced my way through the party of Koreans and stood in the train’s doorway scanning the milling crowds on the platform for her.

She’d gone!

I waved desperately at a guard, who either didn’t see me, or didn’t want to be bothered by this idiot waving at him when he had a train to dismiss. I waved again. Still no response. I’m pretty sure I waved a third time, but still couldn’t catch his gaze.

What was the right thing to do here? Keep this stranger’s bag safely with me until I got to my stop and was able to hand it in, or drop it on the platform here just as the doors closed, hoping that she would realise her mistake and come running back momentarily to find it? In fact, which of these two options would have made me look the least suspicious?

I waved at the guard a fourth time, and tried lifting the bag in the air to attract his attention.

It worked!

He came over, and I told him, “A lady just got off the train and left this behind.”

The sense of imminent disaster in his voice was unmistakable. “Oh, NO.” 24/10 was beginning.

Anyway, he lifted the bag off me, and that seemed to be that. I made my way back through the Koreans to my seat, where I discovered that, sitting in the seat behind my mum, was another lady fidgeting around in a state of some distress.

“Where’s my bag?”

… oh.

Well, you can imagine the hundred and one thoughts that charged through my brain at that moment. I guess amongst all the horror, guilt and insecurity was the central dumbfoundment of how on Earth I could have not thought of something as obvious as asking the lady sitting behind if the bag was hers. I mean, isn’t that the first and most obvious explanation when you find a bag under your seat that isn’t yours?

I quickly told her what I’d just done, and with the train still motionless and waiting to depart, we both rushed back through all the Koreans to the sliding double doors… which were now both firmly sealed shut.

The train began to heave away slowly, like a guilty bloodhound who'd just disobeyed an expressed command not to eat the new kitten. I realised I was watching the platform gliding silently past the windows. Now, with the rest of the carriage, I was listening to this lady's entirely understandably whining voice. “Everything’s in there! My keys are in there!”

Just how is it possible to go so quickly from doing a favour for a complete stranger, to realising that your idiotic interference has just ruined someone’s otherwise smoothly running evening?

Though moving, the train hadn’t yet completely cleared the station, so she pushed the emergency button, an act which I think I've only ever once before witnessed. (there's a £25 fine for misuse)

The train ground to a halt, a voice over the speaker asked what the emergency was, she explained that "someone's just taken my bag off the train", the doors were re-opened, her bag was brought back, and all as I just stood there with her.

Thankfully, she was entirely pleasant about the whole misunderstanding, chuckling about it with me straight afterwards, which was a massive relief on my part. She also said that she had been too engrossed in her book, and a little inconsistently asked “Didn’t you see me looking around?”

I returned to my seat, the guy next to me reassuring me “You did the right thing mate”, but I didn’t want to agree with him too loudly. The next hour of the journey would be an awkward one, as we both now had to return to our former state of being British commuters ignoring each other. I feared that in that silence of non-communication, with the adrenaline high of the misunderstanding over, the corresponding low was about due to kick-in inside each of us, very possibly bringing with it blame and bitterness.

I obviously cannot speak for her subsequent feelings, if any, but I was surprised that this negativity never emerged in me.

When she eventually disembarked, she didn’t make eye-contact with me, so I was unable to wish her a smoother rest of her journey. When my mum and I subsequently got off at our station, we were finally able to speak to each other about it and compare notes regarding exactly what had taken place.

It turned out that, when my mum had first found the bag, she had checked the seats behind her, and they had been empty.

HELLO?!? I'M ON A BLOG.

Not that I want to shout about it or anything, but this morning this blog registered it’s 100,000th pageload. (in fact it wasn't exactly that, but according to the statcounter it was)

I'd therefore like to thank everybody who's read this site so far for their time and interest, and reassure you all that I'm not planning on continuing this forever.

To mark the milestone, last night I briefly reformatted the top of every page to read:

“Congratulations! You are this site’s [TOTAL]th reader!”

Well, I figured there ought to be just one occasion when a website greeted someone with the news that he/she was its 100,000th visitor, and actually be telling the truth. Best of all, said random visitor would probably assume the statement to be false, and live the rest of their life never knowing any better.

I tell you, it was all becoming a bit like an episode of Candid Blogger.

So, with my fiendish trap set, near as I can ascertain, at 11:50am this morning and 20 seconds, one lucky reader somewhere in the world apparently did just that.

Near as I can make out, they were searching the web from the Dutch version of Google, apparently from the town of Badhoevedorp in the Netherlands, and came through to this site's archive page of November 2009. They were smart enough to have not yet upgraded from a Windows XP operating system, had Mozilla Firefox version 3.6 installed, and javascript enabled. Their screen resolution was 1024x768. I could tell you their IP address, but that just feels like giving out personal information.

So, wherever you are now Mr/Ms Googler from Holland, thanks for stopping by, and I sincerely hope that you found the information you were looking for about Spider-Man.

Yes, you've been blogged.


Fig. 1: In Auckland CBD in February 2005, caught on camera plotting this site's 100,000th pageload in nearly six years' time.

Saga Pearl II - Inaugural Cruise

Free DVD from Saga Holidays advertising their cruises on the Saga Pearl II.

Kim Hartman catches the ship for the first leg of its journey, and chats to the Captain, crew and guests about how enjoyable they all find it. There's also footage of snowmobiles, dog sledding and the icy igloo hotel. There's even a brief chat with Wish You Were Here…?'s Judith Chalmers.

The highlight though is the sight of the famous northern lights, presented here in still photographs, due to the difficulty of capturing them on video.

I was surprised that this video-brochure ended when the trip was only part-way done, but I guess the idea is to book the rest of the holiday to find out what happens on it.

Songs From One Hit Wonderland

In 1988 Tony Hawks had got together with two of his mates to perform comedy songs in cabaret, when one of their compositions unexpectedly became a big international hit.

Stutter Rap (No Sleep Til Bedtime) by Morris Minor And The Majors was a parody of the Beastie Boys, and even reached number one over in Oz! You may remember it - its satirical chorus went:

Well no-one's ever seen what I mean,
From the age of n-n-n-n-n-n-thirteen,
We've all been caught in a m-m-mouth trap,
So join with us and do the st, st-st, st, st, st, st, stutter rap.

However a few weeks later, just as instantly as fame and success had been foisted upon them, it was all over. Even their well-observed sequel This Is The Chorus couldn't re-ignite the magic. Well, follow-up comedy records rarely do.

Fast forward to the millennium and 40-year-old Tony, getting belittled at a dinner party for having recently received a PRS royalty statement for 5p, decided that he didn't much like being referred to as a 'one hit wonder', and accepted a bet to somehow score a second top twenty hit, anywhere in the world, within the next two years.

By now, Tony Hawks had become an established comedian, and seized the opportunity to turn his upcoming 24-month odyssey into his latest bestselling travelogue - One Hit Wonderland.


The whole crazy adventure is still in print, but the thing that I found frustrating about reading it five years ago was the absence of any way to listen to the various songs that Tony sweated blood to interest record labels in recording. There used to be a CD of them available from his website, but sadly no more. Dang, if only I had been over at a mate's this weekend and discovered that he owned such a hallowed collector's item which he then said I could borrow.


Yes!

I don't know if the above short disc - labelled 'promotional copy' - had come from said website, free with an early hardback printing, or had been simply distributed as launch publicity, but this week I've been mightily pleased to finally get a chance to listen to all of Tony's five potential second hits from a decade ago.

And what a wide-ranging collection of styles it is. In isolation from the book, this plays more like a particularly diverse sampler.

Track 1 - You Broke My Heart Like A Bird's Egg - represents Tony's initial attempts to break into country music in Nashville USA. The title says it all really, and demonstrates Tony's refusal to tell us whether or not he's also setting out to sneakily parody each genre.

You broke my heart like a bird's egg but now the yolk's on you,
You never thought when you took off I'd find someone new,
Oh! When you quit the lovenest, well you forgot that I fly too,
You broke my heart like a bird's egg but now the yolk's on you.
Yeah - the yolk's on you!

For the past five years I've known the lyrics to this song, but had to compose my own tune for it in my head. I'm therefore aware that to some extent this catchy official version is probably going to wipe 'my' version from my memory and replace it. Still, it's a fun little melody, so that's all good.

His learning curve in Nashville completed, Tony then travelled to Sudan, where he used a minidisk to record some schoolchildren singing world music (obviously). Later in London he got Jakko and Mark King from Level 42 to give it a bass-line and tart it up into the dance number We Are Happy. Still no hit record deal though.

With attempt #3, Tony wisely returned to his comic roots with the techno Shhh: What Does A Pixie Do?

I'm the only living pixie,
You can check the Pixie News,
You can ring my bell anytime,
You'll find it on my shoes.

For its sheer strangeness, and shamelessly big production, this has got to be my favourite track of the five. It's made all the more bizarre by Tony's story in the book of dressing up as a pixie to hastily shoot the video at an airport just before catching a flight to Holland, and forgetting to bring any normal shoes to change into afterwards. What a shame Holland turned out to be a country where no-one had ever heard of pixies.

After some soft words of gentle encouragement from the then-unknown Simon Cowell ("You're too ugly"), Tony tried Romania where he teamed-up with Paula Seling for the duet When All Is Said And Done.

This is a straight love song, which they even got to perform on daytime TV, but there was still no sign of a record contract, let alone a record, or the actual hallowed hit. With his two year time-limit approaching its deadline, it was time to pull-out all the stops.

Tony's fifth and final attempt was made in Albania - a country whose bootleg culture had resulted in its top ten being calculated not on the basis of sales, but instead on airplay and votes. This streamlined his campaign somewhat.

In three incredible twists, he convinced Sir Tim Rice to pen some lyrics, demoted his own status to that of guest rapper, and decided to bring in a new lead singer to front the whole thing for him. Obviously he needed to find someone less 'ugly' than himself, preferably younger, and who had enough charisma to make the Albanian public swoon before him.

The handsome young sex-symbol who he chose was 87-year-old Norman Wisdom.

Yes, that Norman Wisdom!

It goes without saying that Sir Norman's sad passing last week makes my procurement of this disc now all the more special to me.

This final track - Big In Albania - is a roving fusion of lounge and funk, endowed with the all the enchanting tenderness of an elderly gentleman's distinguished crooning…

On the hillside, in the valleys, in the forests, on the lakes,
All Albania cries out "Norman - hey you got what it takes!"

Tony's entire two-year saga is one of those uplifting triumphs of silliness over seriousness that always do the heart good, and if you want to know whether he eventually won the bet, his book is still widely available. (e.g. from Amazon here)
However as I mentioned earlier, it does suffer a bit from the near-impossibility of finding a copy of its matching CD.

Still, as you know, there are a few places on the internet where you can sometimes track these things down…

(With thanks to Bish)

Aliens Invade Washington

Much as on our last walking weekend, it took Rich, John, Perry and myself ages to rendezvous with Bish at his house in Sussex on Friday night.

In fact, Perry and I only made it there by telephone, which for the purpose of strolling through the English countryside, was pretty rubbish.

Perry actually arrived by car the following morning, while my vaguely simultaneous train journey was fraught with dog poo, losing the map, forgetting to bring Bish's address anyway, and actually managing to call at the wrong house. And all this despite the Godsend of having accidentally asked for directions from a guy who turned out to be Bish's neighbour…

Still, once Saturday morning breakfast was inside of us (and Bish's cat?), we got the Gorse Fox's directions from the internet and took them all the way to Washington.

Washington, Sussex, that is.

This time, we all had cameras, which was a handy thing considering the multitude of paranormal phenomena that we were to stumble upon.

The mystery began when we came across the remains of a tree lying in an inexplicably mutilated position:


Clearly, no mere human could have done this.


Then Rich and John began to wonder where all the sheep had mysteriously disappeared to.


Here - apparently hiding from something in the sky.


Then suddenly, before our very eyes, the entire herd was ferociously consumed from behind by this weird form of meat(and metal)-eating plant-life.


Fleeing for our lives, we became surrounded by the flock's undead zombie sheepdogs, which the ravenous plant-creature had spat-out. Rich coolly attempted to send for help by updating his Facebook status to "is currently being prehended by an assemblage of reanimated k9s fyi tty l8r dawg :o", but unfortunately some large nearby energy-source was jamming his signal. (ofc)


Said eerily silent mutts then herded us all towards a path leading up to big bright light at the crest of the hill, or arguably just over it.

Here we confronted the aliens, at which point they demanded to know which one of us was the planet's President. We all pointed at Perry (centre) who was then able to ascertain that our captors were actually looking for Washington D C, but had got confused when planning their invasion using Google Earth. All very embarrassing, especially their genetic engineering experiments that we'd encountered earlier. Consequently they kindly agreed to take this photo on Bish's camera of us all posing in front of their very bright spaceship.


Having kindly treated us to a quick orbit of the planet to say sorry, here are Bish, John and Rich waving the ship goodbye, and realising that we'd been erroneously dropped off on the wrong hemisphere, specifically in east Auckland. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has trouble finding an address. (heavy irony)


Well, that's another mystery solved. Let's go home.

Deleted Scenes:


The crater left by the alien saucer.


Rich is assimilated by the Borg. (shouldn't have worn that red shirt)


Excised yeti scene.

With thanks to Bish and John for some of the photos.

Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)

Would you believe that I originally saw this film about a US family preparing to move states… while it was still on film?

In 1996 I was privileged to be the projectionist screening this at a local old folks' home. There were maybe 20 residents packed into the dining-room that afternoon, plus my mum and dad.

Any worries that I had about the room being too light or echoey for their eyes/ears were well and truly defeated by the applause at the end.

Being a Technicolor musical, the story isn't so much about the nuts and bolts of preparing to moving house as the emotional journey involved, told here through the colourful picture, beautiful singing and feel-good attitudes. Well, set about 40 years before it was made, it was always intended to be a retro period piece.

Though the film proudly demonstrates the giant budgets that these epics are known for, director Vincente Minnelli also knows full well when to be minimalist too.

For example, for much of the iconic Trolley Song he seems to have just turned the camera on and left it running for nearly two full minutes, capturing the performance of Judy Garland and her surrounding chorus in all their glory.

Of course, it may have been editor Albert Akst who actually employed this strategy in order to avoid showing too much of said trolley-bus' back-projection, which, it must be said, is possibly the worst in the history of cinema.


It's so washed-out that I might suppose this to be a symptom of the amount of daylight in that retirement home's lounge, but I've since caught this number again twice on TV - once on late-night programming in darkest Matamata New Zealand in 2004, and then again this lunchtime back here in London. Said background also dutifully bounces up and down throughout, exaggerating the effect of the swaying bus into that of an earthquake. And with no stops one poor guy looks like he's chasing after it by running on the spot!


But with such a bright, breezy atmosphere, so what if the occasional outdoors scene has been obviously filmed indoors?

By the time the melancholic Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas comes on, this classic has easily worked its magic.

Available here.

Spider-Man (2002)

Adapting a popular story for another medium is rarely done very well, but 2002's Spider-Man really gets it.

Mainly, I think, because it aims to get in everything.

A great deal of the classic comic series' history gets compressed into just two hours here, right down to supporting role Harry Osborn's (James Franco) relationships with his father (Willem Dafoe) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). J K Simmons as the larger-than-life J Jonah Jameson exactly treads the line between character and comedy, and even Cliff Robertson gives Ben Parker such presence that after his carjacking the second half of the film painfully misses him.

That reworked murder also represents the rest of what goes well for this adaptation - all the new stuff. In the original strip, Ben got shot by a burglar at home one night, but the updating of his murder to a more modern method, in the same style, enables this film the retain the comic's sense of telling a fresh story.

And Ben's death is arguably the most pivotal event in Peter Parker's time-honoured hero's journey. When Pete earlier lets the thief get away, sealing his uncle's fate, even though I already knew the story, I sat there in the cinema knowing that I would have made the same deadly mistake.

Which brings us to how well this movie gets Peter Parker.

Tobey Macguire is excellent in the role, realising the hapless bookworm so effectively that it's no wonder they dropped his alter ego's penchant for wisecracks. Somehow, the two personas just wouldn't have seemed like the same guy on film.

Not to say that this movie consequently lacks comedy. The ogres on show when Parker enters the wrestling match are hilarious because they are so extreme.

Where, for me, the film falls shortest would be in its melodramatic dialogue, particularly Ben and May's (Rosemary Harris) scenes. While so much exposition out loud of how the plot is developing is may be another symptom of following the comicbooks' lead, some of it did make me feel as though I was watching a play.

Another example of this hurried narrative would be Spider-Man's saving Mary Jane from being attacked at knifepoint, following which she passionately kisses him before he swings off leaving her behind in the same alley, with at least one of her assailants apparently still there. The scene had served its purpose and that, apparently, was all that was required of it.

Likewise, the film's topical elements didn't sit well in 2002, and today are the only components that date it. I'm referring to the sudden brief appearance of a singer character named Macy Gray, portrayed serendipitously by actress Macy Gray.

Also that added-in post 9/11 remark "We're New Yorkers man - you mess with one of us, you mess with all!" Uh, yeah, tell that to Uncle Ben's murderer. (New Yorker) And Mary Jane's attackers. (New Yorkers) And the guy who you're actually speaking to - the Green Goblin. (New Yorker) Oh, you did.

Overall though, Spider-Man does its job very well, telling its similar story in a similar style.

Best of all though, it features a nameless old guy in shades saving a child from some falling masonry.


Now there goes a real hero.

With thanks to Herschel.

Available here.
Review of Spider-Man 2 here.
Review of Spider-Man 3 here.

Uno Spin

Found the above named game for sale on a kid's garage stall in my road a couple of months ago, and figured it was worth a squid to try it out for an evening with long time gaming buddies Herschel and Elmo.

After the Matrixy classic Uno (we play in bullet-time a lot at pivotal moments), and the Matrix-sequelly Uno Over Hotmail (aka Uno Reloaded), Uno Spin seemed like the next logical step, gagging as it was to get dubbed Uno Revolutions.

Which begged the inevitable question - would this turn out to be the best version of the three games, or just one mind-numbingly long and drawn-out battle sequence?

On Saturday 4th September, we still weren't certain, as the instructions were missing. Hey, that's the rag-tag world of garage sales for you, kid. Now buzz off. (I'm not quoting Herschel at all here)

Uno Spin appears to be basically the same game as traditional Uno, but with several of the number cards adapted to double as 'spin' cards. Playing one of these requires the next person to spin the wheel of Uno and then perform whichever task the arrow points to. Sort like Uno meets Twister. Or Uno meets Russian Roulette. Hmm, this game could take a long time to clear up afterwards.


The yellow spin cards are a bit tricky to differentiate from their normal counterparts.

The nine tasks are:

Discard Number - Discard all cards of the same number.

Discard Color - Discard all cards of the same colour. Yes, we Anglicized it. Anglicised. Go 'way.

Almost Uno - Discard all but two cards. These were without doubt the longest decisions.

Draw Red - Draw until you get a red card or a Wild card. A bit left-field, probably influenced by Pictionary.

Draw Blue - Draw until… oh, you've got it.

Show Hand - Show your hand to all other players. Maybe Mattel marketed this game to nail-painted teenage girls? Herschel refused to remove his gloves. Elmo kept counting his digits. And laughing. He's still unnerving.

Trade Hands - All players trade hands to the left. That'll be that messy Russian Roulette influence coming through. As will…

War - All players reveal their highest number card at the same time. The player with the highest card gets to discard it; all other players keep theirs. Tied players face-off with their next highest card, and the winner discards their cards.

We renamed this development "It's War!" in the style of The Day Today's Chris Morris, and frantically babbled the Star Wars incidental music each time it occurred, but mainly because we do this all the while when playing regular Uno anyway.

And finally…

UNO Spin - The first player to say "UNO Spin" discards one card. We started to shout "UNO SPIN!" every time the spinner was used, just in case, and so presently imposed a penalty of one card for saying it when it wasn't warranted.

Ultimately, Herschel and I decided that we actually preferred to play regular Uno. The consequences of the spinner seemed just a bit too random for us, and it was quite frustrating to be winning a game only to suddenly have to swap one's hand with another player.

Tonight, we therefore gave the game a second chance, but with our own made-up rules for the spinner:


Discard one card
Discard all cards of the current colour
Discard all cards of the current number
Change number
Change colour
Pick up one card
Show hand (retained from original rules)
Trade one card blind
Trade one card sighted

Previously the tasks had been divided equally between 3 benefits, 3 forfeits, and 3 that could go either way, however I reckoned that this significantly reduced the amount of strategy involved in choosing to play a spin card. Unlike the rest of the game, the equal chance of a good or bad outcome from forcing a spin meant that there was little probability to wrestle with.

We therefore redistributed these consequences to benefit the player doing the spinning, thus making the playing of a spin card something to be avoided.

Uno Spin has been fun for a couple of evenings, but ultimately I'm giving this game to my mum to sell on one of her charity stalls.

This opinion has nothing whatsoever to do with Elmo creaming us both.


Available here.

Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death

These days, it's very easy to forget just how good Doctor Who used to be.

Having never seen this seven-parter before, I must admit that I had quite high expectations of it. I mean it's surrounded in this season by the top-notch Spearhead From Space, Doctor Who And The Silurians and Inferno! My hopes might have been even higher, had I known that this story's authorship was a fusion of such Who luminaries as Malcolm Hulke, Terrance Dicks and the great David Whittaker. (and Trevor Ray!)

Right from the off this is captivating stuff. Drawing from the original moon landing programmes a year earlier, the opening episodes revolve around the live TV coverage of a Mars expedition, complete with smoked-glass helmets, slow-motion and accordingly low frame-rate. In one scene Jon Pertwee actually has to mouth a line quickly enough for the slowed-down version to match his dubbing of it!

There's also plenty of politics, genuinely formidable bad guys (Reegan knows everything), and stunning action sequences from HAVOC, who back in the day were Doctor Who's regular band of commercial stuntmen. Consequently, whenever there's a fight, the action really goes to town.

It's also the second story in a row in which the aliens are not really portrayed as evil, which again makes for an interesting dynamic.

At a cost-cutting seven episodes, some portions do drag, notably the theft and recapture of the Recovery Seven space capsule in the countryside, and most of the scenes at Reegan's hideout.

There are also not just one but two sets of mind-controlled zombies, which ties off some of the characters' motivations a bit too easily for my liking. For example, when the Doctor finds the three human astronauts still in space, but eerily believing themselves to have landed safely on Earth, I felt there was some obvious drama missed there. They're completely cut off in space, fer goodness sake!

The body fall in episode five is really quiet. Just felt I had to point that out.

Most of the cast does well, but particular praise must go to Ronald Allen for his intriguing portrayal of Professor Ralph Cornish. This must have been an interesting character on the page, but Allen plays it in such a curious and unexpected way that he doesn't seem like a guest actor at all.

We've been watching this off of the 2002 VHS release, which is a hotch-potch of colour and monochrome scenes, depending upon what the BBC still retained from 1970. This was also the release when BBC Video, ha ha, suddenly realised that, heh-heh-heh, y'know, they actually could fit a seven-parter onto just the one cassette for a tenner after all. Sorry everyone.

The Ambassadors Of Death is a complex, at times thinly explained, story which explores the UNIT concept even further, while also denting it with the high-profile live TV device.

Like UNIT itself, this classic takes its shortcomings and runs brilliantly with them.

Brave, Mad & Memorable: Journalist On Assignment by Rob Harley

Investigative journalist Rob Harley gives his in-depth personal perspective on ten TV documentaries that he's fronted over the years, and pulls no punches.

I first read this in early 2004, and I guess it's testament to Rob's work that, six years on, I found only two tales in here that I had forgotten. A lot of New Zealand's geography and culture slot together better for me now too.

The stories are:

1. Searching For Diana - I expected this book to open with a happy optimistic tale to please the crowds and encourage the reader to continue through the rest of the volume, but this harrowing account of one man's search for his missing daughter overseas is anything but. No wonder this one stayed with me.

2. The Poor Man's James Bond - Investigating a US poison guru and his circumstantial connection to 1990's siege in Aramoana.

3. Trying To Remember - Surgeon Lee Savill's struggle to regain her identity, memory and career after a massive car accident.

4. Alien Encounters - Abductees share their experiences.

5. West Side Story - A man who killed his de facto wife and hid the body in his car for seven weeks.

6. In Memory Of Andrew - A woman and her child work through their loving husband/father's suicide from depression.

7. The Long Walk Of David Green - A wheelchair-bound air-crash survivor determines to both walk again, and forgive those responsible.

8. The Galloping Granny - Judy Moore's lifetime in overseas aid work.

9. Playing With Fire - Pyromaniacs who lead a double-life as volunteer firefighters.

10. New York, New York - The short-term aftermath of 9/11.

Available here.
Brief review of The Power To Go The Distance - Staying Strong On The Inside by Rob Harley here.