Still, we all do it. It’s an immutable feature of human existence. We are born, we get excited about bits of coloured plastic, move on to the enticements of underwear and the usefulness of alcohol in getting access to said underwear and by and large look forward to what life has to offer with a fresh-faced cheerfulness that is quite sickening to anyone old enough to remember flares without any kind of nostalgic embarrassment.

But then, somewhere in the thirties, when the bits of coloured plastic have become substantially larger and more expensive and the effect of alcohol a detriment to the whole area of undergarments, we quite simply get the hump. The world is no longer a place of hidden treasure but moreover one of veiled threat. We become uncomfortably aware of disease, illness and …oh no…death. Bugga.

It is the one effortless act that unites everything native to this planet. A design flaw? Possibly. A neat evolutionary trick to reduce competition from the genetically redundant? Almost certainly. Still, consciousness, with all its associated state-of-the-art evolutionary and genetic advantages becomes a real sod when trying to cope with the one simple fact that whatever we do towards the contrary, whatever we strive for, whatever we fight against - and I can’t be emphasise this any more strongly - we are utterly doomed.

What makes it doubly worse is the amount of money we spend on the process of staying alive – all the cleaning and creams, the clothes, the trendy haircuts, the most bleepy and annoying must-have mobile phones, the expensive skin treatments and anal irrigations, the dental work, boob jobs, bottom lifts and tummy tucks, not to mention the literal mountains of food and drink we stuff into ourselves to make sure all those important processes run smoothly. All that effort money and time to simply leave the thing rotting away in some hole somewhere can’t make any economic sense whatsoever can it? And look at the mess we are making of the planet while we’re doing all of this.

Aging, the scientists tell us (and they do tell us a lot of things, not that I listened until now of course) begins in the womb. The culprit? It turns out to be oxygen. Oxygen rusts metal, makes fat go rancid, causes browning of peeled fruits and vegetables…and it also helps to make us age. And there we are, every minute of the day, breathing in great lungfuls of the stuff. Just what are we supposed to do?

Still, until this whole life and death thing is sorted out once and for all, we have not only to cope with our own certain and unavoidable demise, but also handle the knowledge that the most cherished bits and pieces of our earthly bodies will one day turn to dust and, if the astrophysicists are to believed (and let’s face it they mostly shouldn’t be as it seems they can’t hang onto one single theory about the universe for more than a few seconds at a time) we will eventually end up drifting around the cosmos in a dark empty dead Universe that, as far as three astrophysicists out of five can agree, will one day also die and turn to black…

Just how can we possibly have an optimistic outlook with all that hanging over our heads? And why do we let the scientists get away with telling us all of this anyway? Don’t we have enough things to worry about?

I would like to fund my own research into ‘how heavy drinking is good for us’, ‘how eating late-nite kebabs, early morning fry-ups and anytime pizza is an aid to long life’ and ‘how reading annoyingly contradictory and gloomy scientific research can lead to a premature unhappy death from worrying-about-everything-killing-us syndrome’.

Oxygen bad for us? Come on!

Now I don’t have to take the bus into Brighton (oh, I live in Brighton, I forgot to mention that), but there is the double whammy of parking and not being able to even sniff a lager if I’m driving, which unfortunately means the bus is an absolute and necessary necessity.

My main bus? It’s the No.1 Brighton and Hove bus service from Whitehawk to Portslade. A £3.20 ‘day saver’ to sit on stinky seats, to be assailed by stupid idiots with tinny music, to wince at stale lager-smelling boozers clutching their half cans of Extra Strong Tennants at 8.30 a.m., of screaming kids and crying babies, of shouty noisy mothers, of belligerently stupid bus drivers who argue with everyone getting on, with slow bus drivers, with boy-racer bus drivers, with mobile phone shouters, piss-smelling tramps and tedious stupid people having dim conversations at twice the normal volume level because they are too arrogant and thick to realise that NO-ONE IS INTERESTED!

And don’t even get me started on the whole ‘trapped wasp buzzing up and down the bus dementedly and terrorising everyone’ scenario…

So, bus experience #1 - Guy wanking at me at the bustop…

So here it is. There I am at the bus stop the other night. Casually minding my own business when this guy starts wanking at me. I know - it shocked me too. It’s not as if I’ve not heard about this kind of thing, or read about the kind of people who perform sex-acts in public, but I was totally unprepared for what he was doing - actually standing there with his hand in his pocket, rocking backwards and forwards and smiling at me with a sort of, ‘I’m having a wank at you and arn’t I pleased with myself’ kind of look on his face.

I said, “You all right, mate?” - which only seemed to spur him on.

I don’t get it. I was on my own. It was early in the evening. And he chose me to have a pocket wank at? I hate the entire bus experience, and I’ve had some rare times at the bus stop in the past, but this one literally beat them all hands down.

Was he maybe having a slow night or something? Or maybe, I thought - as I got used to the idea - I was just looking kinda sexy. That wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility, surely? I didn’t have time to contemplate. The bus arrived shortly afterwards. Not that this stopped him of course. And as the bus pulled away, leaving him behind, his hand in pocket lurching antics reached what I can only describe as a crescendo of personal / sick pleasure and I was left that familiar feeling that I get whenever I’m on a bus, that I’m travelling in some weird alternative reality where anything can happen.

Unfortunately for me, it usually does…

]]> http://weblizard.co.uk/2008/05/25/buses-1-the-bus-stop-abuser/feed/ http://weblizard.co.uk/2008/05/21/moffat-to-take-over-dr-who/ http://weblizard.co.uk/2008/05/21/moffat-to-take-over-dr-who/#comments Wed, 21 May 2008 08:08:15 +0000 Kev Heritage http://weblizard.co.uk/?p=15

BBC Wales and BBC Drama has announced that Bafta and Hugo Award winning writer Steven Moffat will succeed Russell T Davies as Lead Writer and Executive Producer of the fifth series of Doctor Who, which will broadcast on BBC One in 2010.

So, the much rumoured departure of Russell T Davies has finally happened. After the triumphant and poignant end of series two, I certainly would’ve looked upon his departure with horror. However, we are now part way through series four, and despite the fantastic kick-off with ‘The Fires of Pompeii’, I believe it is the right time for Davies to step down. The reason: quite simply, the subsequent episodes have somewhat failed to deliver. ‘The Sontaran Strategem’ and the ‘Planet of the Ood’ were of a slightly higher calibre than the rest, but they were followed by the truly awful ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ - “Hello Dad!” …ouch - and the painfully plotted ‘Unicorn and the Wasp.’ I’m not going to go into specifics about these episodes, but in both, the usual well crafted balance between slightly unbelievable plot, action, characterisation and great one-liners was woefully askew. There is now real evidence that the show is relying on ‘formula’ and is in danger of becoming a glib parody of itself.

Still, on 31st May and 7th June 2008 on BBC One, we are to be treated to Stephen Moffat’s ‘Silence in the Library’ two parter, which coming from a writer of his pedigree, should hopefully lift the series when it needs it the most. Moffat has penned some of the series’ most unforgettable and acclaimed episodes - including the Series One two-parter ‘The Empty Child,’ which became famous for its terrifying refrain “Are you my mummy?” earning him his first Hugo Award (his second for The Girl in the Fireplace for Series Two) and ‘Blink’ with its terrifying Weeping Angels, for which he was awarded the 2008 Bafta Writer Award.

There is no doubt that Moffat will bring a much needed darker aspect to the franchise, when he takes over for series five. I’m fervently hoping he is in time to save the series, that is only now showing signs of flagging. And who knows, he might bring with him a new Doctor. I hope so…

iPlayed the BBC4 programme about the blokish love affair for all things Gerry Anderson last night. A wonderful nostalgia trip back to the early sixties, the programme kicked off with ‘Super Car’ (in those days they apparently used condoms to make the mouths move - cue boyish humour in the chemists) before moving on the Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90. But of course, the star of the show was Thunderbirds - at its zenith in the late 1960s, the puppet-based action series was the most expensive TV programme ever produced in Britain.

It’s quite amazing to think that in their little workshop in Slough, they were the world leaders in special effects (all before CGI). And I don’t think I’m being too misty-eyed to state that the FX still stands up today. If anything, my love affair with Thunderbirds has grown stronger over the years. As a kid, I loved the explosions and the gadgets (and still do), but it is testament to the wonderful plots and an almost cinematic approach (Anderson was a frustrated movie maker) that has allowed Thunderbirds to endure over the years.

Interestingly, the shows were originally planned for only half an hour, but Lou Grade insisted that they be the full sixty minutes. This led to character development that was, at first, ‘filling’ for the seven episodes that had all ready been completed, but became the mainstay of the show’s enduring appeal.

The show’s special effects team split up after Thunderbirds and went on, in their individual capacities, to become the head of the BBC special effects unit, work on Alien and Terminator and have long lives spent in the movie industry.

For me? Well, I still get a shiver of unabridged wonder when I see Thunderbird 2 and hear that fabulous soundtrack - and it was all done with puppets…marvellous!

Interesting Stuff:

• If you look inside the hangar of Thunderbird 1, there is clearly a lemon squeezer glued to the wall.
• The enduring problem of using puppets was that they couldn’t get them to walk convincingly. Cue a whole range of gadgets to overcome this problem.
• “I wasn’t really interested in the plot, I just wanted to get to the vehicles and the explosions as quickly as possible.” Nick Park, the creator of Wallace and Gromit.