Dentistry – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

When I was at school our main concern was that we might die before we got laid. That would have been true tragedy.

11.11.01

 

Brush your teeth, use fluoride toothpaste and don’t eat too many sweets. That’s good advice. Unfortunately, not advice I was given as a child.

My teeth are not too good, all capped and filled, but I rarely get any decay these days. That’s because I brush regularly twice a day. Most of my dental problems occurred when I was a kid.

My mum was not too hot on teeth. She tried to pretend they didn’t exist. She made half-hearted attempts to get me to brush my teeth regularly but eventually gave up, so I didn’t bother brushing. I was always in too much of a rush.

My Mum was also pretty keen on sweets. I think that was a hangover from sweet rationing in the war. When she was a girl sweets were a rare treat. Mum and her friends would have died for a bag of liquorice allsorts. Consequently, after the war she went a bit mad and completely over the top and indulged us. She reckoned that sweets were a necessity of childhood. We always had sweets in the house and I never went short.

That combination of sweets and no brushing meant that my teeth soon became badly decayed. It was not nice. They hurt.

The only dentist available was the school dentist. He was an old guy who was not very up to date with the latest developments. I suspect that he was hopelessly underfunded and overworked. His equipment was probably rescued from the stone-age – all old, rattly and excruciatingly slow and painful.

I hated the dentist. He always found something wrong to get to work on with his old ramshackle drill (none of this fancy high-speed drill that we have these days). He’d probe around with that sharp metal prod and jam it into a cavity and you’d nearly jump out the chair as electricity shot through your body like a bolt of lightning. It always seemed to jolt out of your tooth and right down to the tips of your toes like your tooth had been plugged in to the mains.

He’d chuckle and prepare his drill. Our school dentist used none of those painkilling injections. He’d crank up the old grinder and slowly bore his way into your tooth while you clung on to the arms of the seat in sheer terror, agony and desperation, willing it to be over quickly. It never was. When it all became too much you tried shrieking but to no avail. He had the nurse grip your head tight while he applied the drill. You dug your nails into the armrests and tensed up while he slowly ground your tooth away and seemed to be hitting every nerve on the way. He could have got a job in a concentration camp!

What made it worse was my mum had this phobia of dentists and couldn’t go near them, and my dad was always at work, which meant that I always had to go on my own. It felt like visiting the executioner. Looking back I can’t actually believe that I used to go.

Before I had my second set of teeth I actually had four teeth out because they were too rotten to fix.

In my teens I had a tooth with a big abscess on it. It made the whole side of my head swell up and was agony. I actually wanted to go to the dentists and get it sorted. The dentist, in his white coat, looked at it, prodded around, tutted, and said it had to come out. I didn’t care. It hurt too much I just wanted it dealt with. I wanted someone to make it better. I didn’t care what they did.

It was a big back molar and not the easiest to extract. He gave me an injection for that. At that point in time, I don’t think I really cared he could have pulled it out without any pain relief. I can remember him yanking it this way and that with this pair of pliers. The nurse was holding my head and he was putting all his weight behind it as he gripped the tooth and forced it one way and another with all these crunching noises sounding like he was doing serious damage. The force was tremendous. I imagined him crunching up my jawbone. The nurse and dentist held my head so hard I thought he’d crush my skull. Then he finally triumphantly pulled it out. It came with a squelching, crackling noise. He held it up for me to see and there was a big yellow bag of pus dangling from it. What a relief.

That wasn’t the end of it though. It seemed that he’d left a root in. The wound healed and about a year later it all swelled up again. All pus oozed out of the socket, my face swelled up again and my breath stank. The root that he had broken off had developed an abscess on it. I had to go back for a second bout. He gave me another injection and this time had to cut into the gum and crunch the jaw-bone up to get at the root. He deployed a device like a long silver pair of pliers. Having lanced the gum and mangled half my jawbone he eventually managed to prise the festering root out.

I don’t think that the school dentist was the most expert or caring of individuals. But then it was probably not a highly sought-after occupation. The private dentists with their fancy high-speed drills were probably making ten times what he earnt. We weren’t able to afford such luxury. I can understand why my mother developed such a phobia. Back then dentistry was one step removed from torture.

The next time I had to have a tooth out it was under gas. They put this rubber mask over my face and the dentist and nurse held it firmly in place. The gas didn’t smell but the rubber did! It was a horrible sensation. They forcefully held me down so that it felt like I was being smothered! It was really claustrophobic and I panicked a thrashed around but they kept hold of me until the nitrous oxide did its job. After that they pulled the tooth out and I never felt a thing!

Both experiences were equally horrendous. If I had to choose I’m not sure which I would opt for.

Thankfully dentistry has moved on. It’s nowhere near as much of an ordeal.

Rationing and the war was to blame. Shortages seem to induce more desire. Sweets have a lot to answer for – but in some ways I was one of the lucky ones.

Gary was in my year. He’d never once brushed his teeth and he constantly had a gob-stopper in his mouth. Through judicious use of truancy he had managed to avoid the school dentist for all of his life, but when he was twelve he was caught. By this time he had a mouth that Shane McGowan and Johnny Rotten would have been proud of. His teeth had gone through their green years and emerged into a terminal condition. They were now black and many of them were mouldy stumps, the crowns having completely crumbled away. If he’d have had a nervous system he would have been in excruciating pain. Fortunately he did not seem to suffer. Heaven knows how he hadn’t poisoned his entire bloodstream though. Most probably no self-respecting bacterium would dare set up home in such a disgusting pit as existed in Gary’s mouth.

Gary was a lesson to us all. At twelve years old he had to have all his teeth removed except for three – and they all had to be filled. He had dentures fitted!

We all took up brushing!

11.11.01

 

When you’re young looking ahead means the weekend. The distant future, adulthood, careers, marriage, is too far away to contemplate. Time travels slowly. You’re obviously never going to get there.

11.11.01

Jimi Hendrix at Woburn Abbey – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Some watch sport, films and drama in order to avoid thinking.

11.10.01

 

Hendrix played the Woburn Abbey Festival. We had to be there.

We camped in a field which the farmer had, rather maliciously, sprayed with liquid manure. The smell infested our tent forever. It had to be thrown away.

Geno Washington was the act who had the unenviable slot before Hendrix came on, but the tension of anticipation was too great. Everyone wanted Hendrix, poor Geno had no chance. No matter how good he was he wasn’t Jimi. The crowd booed and threw chairs at the stage. They wanted him off. There was electricity in the air. Everyone was baying for Jimi. Eventually Geno gave up and left. The roadies began setting the stage up.

Everything was ready. The stage was empty but it held such promise that all our attention was focussed on it. There was a pregnant pause that seemed to go on and on as we impatiently waited. Everybody was up on their feet, calling out, clapping, chanting, trying to contain the nuclear energy of expectation. This is what we had all been waiting for.

Then Jimi, Noel and Mitch came out on to the stage. The whole arena erupted and surged forward taking me off my feet.

The band plugged in and began to play. The speakers were crap. The sound was distorted. The speakers were just too small to deal with a big outdoor space; they couldn’t handle the volume. It didn’t matter. We could hear it and we could see them. The bass formed a wall of noise. Hendrix’s guitar soared and whined through it all. The drums pounded and the vocals punched over the top. The sound quality might not have been first rate but it was good enough!

The crowd surged forward to get even nearer, I was in the crush near the front. We all wanted to watch Jimi as he performed his magic. He was so much larger than life in a big black broad brimmed hat with a coloured sash around it, a floppy bright flowery psychedelic shirt, green loons with a scarf tied around the leg. He held that guitar like a weapon and unleashed it on us. The excitement was palpable – hysterical. The band were multicoloured giants storming around the stage. Noel stood still, studiously playing, while Mitch pounded away and Jimi stole the attention. You could not take your eyes off him. Hendrix was magnificent. The band blazed. Who cared about the sound quality? This was a wall of excitement the like of which an outside concert had never witnessed. We were bouncing up and down, caught up in the overwhelming group mania, living every note, every growl and wave of the hand.

He stroked, caressed and wrenched at his white Stratocaster, pulling out every trick. He played it between his legs, upside down and behind his head. The sound roared and the fanged beast he had produced and set free, devoured us.

Afterwards, in the press, they said that this was one of the jaded performances. If that was below par then bloody hell. It was the most exciting gig I’ve ever been too. Any more excitement and it would have been heart attack time. He was stupendous.

I only managed to see Jimi perform three times in a small club – I think Klooks Kleek, where he was mind-blowingly brilliant, at Woburn, where he was fabulous, and at his farewell concert at the Albert Hall which was nowhere near as exciting.

I’m glad I was alive to see such jaded dreams. I so wish Jimi was alive to have given us more of that magic. I’ll never experience anything like it.

8.11.01

 

Human beings do a lot of weird stuff to fill up the seconds that make up their lives. But is any of it more valid than anything else?

11.10.01

Inquisitive apes – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

When I was growing up we lived on a new estate in the suburbs. There were lots of vacant plots and areas of woodland, green fields, ditches, ponds and trees. The road was untarmacked and cars were few and far between. From an early age, I was allowed out to play in the street. My little friend Jeff and I trundled our trikes up and down the concrete road as toddlers. Later we’d roller-skate and play tennis. We were entrusted to the older boys. Clive taught me how to ride a bike on his bike which was far too big and I could only just reach the pedals let alone the ground – although I did encounter the ground on many occasions during my long training.

One day, when I was about three, we were playing with the older boys down on the corner. There were no nicely manicured verges. The corner was a little expanse of land that had been left untouched. There were trees and bushes to hide in. Clive was twiddling about with a twig and it came to life in his hand and began looping its way up his arm. The twig was a heavily camouflaged stick caterpillar. It was huge. We were all greatly impressed and looked around but couldn’t find another. I wanted one. By tea-time, everyone started to disperse and Clive took his caterpillar home. I went home but I still wanted a caterpillar; a stick caterpillar like Clive’s.

When I got home I whined and wailed on at my mother. I wanted a stick caterpillar.

When my dad came home I whined and wailed at him. Eventually he picked me up in his arms and took me down the end of the road to the corner plot. He was an adult. He could do anything. I was confident that he would get me a stick caterpillar like Clive’s. We hunted and hunted until it started getting dark then, as we were giving up and I was preparing for the world’s first super-sulk, he found a stick caterpillar. It was only small but it was a stick caterpillar and it did loop its way up your arm. I was ecstatic. I knew he would sort it out. He was my dad.

11.10.01

 

Some people fill their time building models of old ships, doing jigsaws or playing computer games.

11.10.01

 

We humans are so very clever, probing matters of life and death, even analyzing eternity with the aid of our sophisticated thought and technology, our complex symbolic language and explanatory religions, but we’re really just inquisitive apes.

7.11.01

Breaking in to the Rugby Team – extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’

Posted on by Opher

I was five foot three and weighed eight and a half stone. I was tiny and as light as a dandelion clock. The whole year group played rugby. They were big, burly kids. On Wednesday afternoon they were divided up into six teams and allocated to the three different pitches where they all played a game.

The five of us leftover were given a rugby ball and told to kick it around at the far end of the field, out of the way, where we couldn’t get into mischief.

I was right pissed off. I was tiny and thin but I was strong and wiry and extremely aggressive and nippy. I’d already been thrown out of cubs for being too wild. I was the champion of British Bulldogs. I was thrown out of scouts for being too wild. I was the sporting champion of my block. My whole life was spent running wild in the fields, up trees, in ditches, riding horses and up to all sorts. I was co-ordinated, determined and fearless. Yet I couldn’t even make the sixth team. It was insulting. I knew I was born to be a rugby player.

I put up with it for a few weeks but it was so boring kicking a ball around with six other non-combatants. They were useless. It was obvious that we were considered the dregs. Nobody even checked to see if any of us had any potential. As far as they were concerned, from a cursory judgement, we were too fat, too uncoordinated, too unfit, or too little to be of value on a rugby field.

After three weeks of boredom, I went to see the sports master Kallinack and complained. He brushed me off.

In frustration, I went home and demanded that my mum write a note. I was steaming. Kallinack read it grudgingly, weighed up whether he could put up with the hassle of sticking to his guns and grudgingly made a decision. It was of little importance to him. He put me in the sixth team and ousted some other unfortunate into the wilderness that existed behind the touchline.

I played like a man possessed, or at least a boy possessed. I tackled, wrestled, charged and fiercely contested for every ball. The teacher in charge had put me in as a hooker. I asked him where I had to be as I was a bit hazy about the rules. He said my job was to be where the ball was. That’s where I was.

I was under every maul. I was charging every kick. I was wrestling the ball off anyone who had it. I didn’t care what team they were on. That ball was mine. I was a demon. I had no regard for personal injury. The rules were a little bit of an unknown but I had five weeks pent-up frustration and unlimited energy to burn.

The next week I found myself promoted to the fourth team. Once again I was like a firework exploding in their midst. I wanted that ball. I chased it down and once I had it I was a fury. Nobody was getting it off of me. I ended the game bruised, battered and exalted. Many of the bigger kids were afraid of me. My determination more than made up for my lack of finesse or brawn. I was a midget H-bomb. They saw that I had no limits.

I walked off the pitch clutching that ball. I was loving this!

The next week I found myself in the second team. The second team were important, they actually played other schools. Somebody had said something. Kallinack gave me the once over and I thought I detected a little hint of admiration in his eye. I would show the bastard. I would teach him to leave me out on the touch-line. This time it was not so easy. We played against the first team and they had craft, speed and stamina, but I was a ferocious dynamo and I had something to prove.

It took me a few more weeks for me to break through into the first team. Trevor, the school hooker, had to drop out with bad burns on his back, caused either by someone putting a firework down his shirt or deliberately burning him with a lighted cigarette, depending on who you believed (he was a bit of a bad lad). I took his place as the school hooker.

Once I was there no one was going to get me out.

I played like a dervish. The centre of that scrum was mine. I didn’t care which side had the put in, I fought for that ball. I’d fling myself in there. If the other guy was foolish enough to get his legs in between me and the ball that was his look-out. I swung on my props and fought for that ball into their second row. My job was to get it back for my side. Every ball lost was a mortal blow. I wasn’t happy unless I hooked every ball and even if it was deep within their scrum I still fighting for it. This was where being small was an advantage. I could stand up and swing on my huge props. I could reach into their scrum and battle. It took other teams by surprise. It was normal to acknowledge second best when it was the oppositions put in. Not with me it wasn’t. I won a fair proportion.

The following season I was playing for my county. Nobody would ever write me off again.

21.9.01

The right to bear arms – extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

My Dad was a good driver. I don’t think he ever had an accident in a car. He enjoyed driving and drove assertively. I think that comes from having learnt to drive on a motorbike first.

11.8.2020

 

I was driving around in my old VW van and I couldn’t help noticing that all the strangest rednecks would keep waving and flashing me V signs.

After a couple of months of this, I asked what was going on. It seemed I had an NRA sticker on the windscreen. I was a real John Bircher now! The guy I’d exchanged the van with was an NRA man. Keep America free. It’s the right of every free man to be armed. They told me they were the good guys. They needed to protect themselves against the bad guys.

Among the bad guys, they place their own government. While I am none too enamoured with our own politicians and see the government as an arm of the establishment, I do not see that revolution is a good way forward.

It is every American’s right to be armed to the teeth in case, one day, they have to overthrow their own government. It did not matter if this meant putting assault rifles in the hands of the criminally insane, terrorists, criminals, gangs or madmen with a grudge. It did not matter that the State they were looking to overthrow was the one that they had elected or that it could deploy an army of hundreds of thousands, tanks, missiles, bombers and nukes; it was a basic right. The repeated mass killings in schools and concerts are an unfortunate side issue.

The irony was that the time when the government really should have been overthrown was the very time that these gun-nutters supported it most!

I took the sticker out of the windscreen.

19.9.01

An American Driving License – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

I decided I’d go and get an American driving licence in case we decided to hire a car to travel across the States at the end our time in Los Angeles. My English licence was valid but it caused a few problems when we were stopped and it might not be any use for hiring a car. I’d noticed a licensing centre on my way home and decided to go in to check out what I had to do.

When I dropped by to enquire it seemed that they’d do it there and then. In England there was a three month waiting list.

I joined the line. The first part was a multi-choice written section. It asked all sorts of strange questions about road signs that I’d never seen, highway code that I never knew existed, and insurance details that I had no idea about. It was all American and different to England. You had to get 70 right out of a hundred on this test. I knew some and had a guess at the rest and scored 65. When my test score had been assessed and I had been told I had failed a very pleasant lady went through my wrong answers and pointed out where I’d gone wrong.

“What’ll I do now?”

“You can go away and learn up on it and come back another day or you can join the line and do it again. You’ll have to take another paper though.”

I was enjoying myself. I decided to do it again.

I lined up and took a different paper. Most of the questions were the same as on the first one though, and the lady had told me the right answers. This time I got 92 and was deemed an advance driver. Not bad in quarter of an hour – from failure to advance status in one fell swoop!

I was directed to the eyesight test, which I passed, and then outside for the practical road test. It was the same format. You had to get 70 out of 100. Every mistake you made the examiner deducted points. He was a sombre looking gentleman who didn’t say much, apart from giving me instructions on where to go and what to do, looked thoroughly bored and sat there with a clipboard on which he kept ticking boxes.

We went out on the road and came back. I’d scored 68 and was a failure. I was a little miffed because I considered myself a pretty good driver and hadn’t made too many mistakes that I knew of.

Once again I was led through the sheet. He seemed really friendly now that he’d failed me and apologetically informed me that he’d had to knock points off every time I looked over the wrong shoulder. He looked bemused and asked me about the peculiar hand signals I had been doing? I explained that they were the English ones. He laughed and showed me the American versions.

“So what’ll I do now?”

“You can come back another day or join that other line and take it again with another examiner.”

That’s what I did. I took it again. This time I was equipped with the right hand signals and knew which way to look. I achieved a score in the 90s and was deemed an advance driver! I like this American way! Instant learning! Instant gratification! No hanging about! You can go from complete failure to the pinnacle of success in two easy moves! It’s the American Dream in working practice (or is it?).

I went in with my slip of paper to say what a genius I was, had my photo taken and left with a new gleaming plastic license. From beginning to end it took an hour and a half. No messing! From failure to super-driver in quick succession! That’s the American way!

I’d only dropped in to enquire!

31.10.01

 

I believe we all change the world. The sum total of all our minds is the current zeitgeist.

18.9.01

Making a blood smear – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

I was teaching about blood to one of my High School classes in the Spring of 1980. I had gathered them all around me. We were going to make slides of blood smears – a popular lesson. This was the bit they loved. This was when the teacher fearlessly jabbed himself in the finger with a sterile lancet to demonstrate how it was done, and how easy and painless it was.

“Hey man, I missed that! Do it again.”

You had to do it nonchalantly as if it was nothing. You had to produce loads of blood. It hurt.

The kids were always attentive. They were nervous about making their own slides and pricking themselves, but they just loved to see the teacher jabbing himself and bleeding. You usually had one who could not cope with the sight of blood and passed out. It was a chance for the macho ones to show how it was done, but ironically, most of them were the ones most nervous.

I had all the class sit down, so that if anyone passed out they didn’t crash to the floor and smack their head, and applied the alcohol to sterilise the area on my index finger. I played to the house. You swung your arm round to get centrifugal force working. The blood built up in your fingers. You theatrically took the lancet and demonstrated where you were going to jab on the pad of your index finger. The back of the finger at the base of the nail was for cissies, besides it didn’t bleed so much. The forefinger produced a lot of blood.

This was the moment where all the eager eyes were feverishly focussed on you. You dragged it out before jabbing the lancet hard into your finger and squeezing a big dollop of blood out. It really hurt, inflicting pain on yourself is not pleasurable, but you smiled and told them it was nothing.

I could sense that the class were excited as I went through the act, but then I became aware that they were not really watching me. Their eyes were focussed on something behind me.

I looked around. There was Ruben ‘El Gangster’ Alvarado standing behind my ear holding a slide in one hand and a long stiletto flick knife in the other. He had not merely jabbed his finger he had sliced it to the bone. Blood was dripping freely on to the slide and pooling over to trickle on to the floor.

Ruben grinned at me.

I turned back to the class. ‘If anybody has any trouble getting sufficient blood for their smear, they should ask Ruben. I think he has some to spare.’

19.9.01

 

I am changing the world!

18.9.01

 

“Hey man, lend me your eraser.”

“No. Get your own.”

“If you don’t lend me your eraser I won’t let you use the machine gun tonight!”

19.9.01

Religious Beliefs – extract from Farther from the Sun.

Posted on by Opher

I don’t believe in doing good, in the hope of heavenly rewards in some what I consider fictitious after-life.

18.9.01

 

My Dad was certainly not a church-goer. I don’t think he believed in religion, but I think he may have had some vague spiritual beliefs but he certainly would not talk about them. I know he had been quite shocked by my Mum’s belief in spiritualism.

When he first met her family they had invited him to a séance. He’d treated it as a joke. He’d had a close friend who was a submariner who had been reported missing in action during the war and took along a cap-band of his friends. During the séance he offered the cap-band and was given a set of numbers. He followed it up and discovered that they were coordinates. The MOD enquired where he had got them from. The coordinates were fifty miles from the last known position of the submarine.

Dad never went to another séance and did not want to know about it. Anything to do with religion, death or spirituality was off the table; he did not want to give it headroom.

I don’t know how true any of that was.

11.8.2020

 

I taught a section on evolution. California State law stated that equal time had to be given to Creation. I had parents sitting in with stopwatches, and one with an egg-timer, to check that I kept to the law. That was a new experience for me. It is quite difficult to generate enthusiasm and involvement with a group of sullen adults staring at you as if you were Satan.

So, what, as a non-believer, do you tell anybody about creation theory that can possibly take as long as explaining the intricacies of Darwinian evolution through natural selection?

Easy. I sent the whole thing up. To start with I put on my best, over the top, Monty Python voice. I made expansive arm movements. I got them to close their eyes and imagine nothing. We spent ten minutes trying to hold that concept. I then got them to picture God. I asked them what they thought he looked like. It is astounding to me how many eighteen-year-old students and forty-something -year-old parents actually believed that God was this old geezer with long robes, long hair and a great straggly white beard.

I find that absurd. If someone proved to me that there was a god and asked me to picture what god was like, I would automatically think more in line with the forces released in the centre of a hydrogen bomb, or the energy that holds atoms together.

But they all did as they were asked and took it very seriously. They closed their eyes and tried to make everything black and empty. Then this old geezer comes in stage right and does some hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo complete with hand movements and there is a great flash of light. Then he makes this plasticine stuff and spends six days rolling zillions of stars and planets and spinning them around and painting oceans and mountains. Then he made living stuff and breathed into them to give them life and last of all, the crown of creation, he made man – little models in his own image. Then he took a bit out of one of his models and made woman. I have always thought that this story was a bit demeaning towards women. It was straight out of the Abrahamic tradition of pandering to some mediaeval theory of women being lesser beings, subservient and not really made in God’s image. But there you go. You give the folks what they want to hear. That’s entertainment!

What it isn’t is education.

My lesson on creation worked a treat! They were well pleased. All the Monty Python, over the top Magnus Pyke presentation, was British eccentricity and passionate theatre. After all, they were used to it with all those evangelist preachers. I was in good company. They loved the ranting, visualisations and role-play. They could visualise the old man rolling up balls of plasticine. That made sense to them. Two of the parents actually commended me on my lesson.

Liz castigated me for making a mockery of peoples’ beliefs. I protested. That wasn’t really the case. I’m a tolerant person. I just do not believe that religion has a place in education. For me to teach it as if it was factual made a mockery of education.

Liz said that I should not have ridiculed their faith in such a manner.

Perhaps she was right.

See. Liz says I’m arrogant. I acknowledge that at times I can certainly come across that way. I sometimes think that I have good reason to be. Many people are simple and stupid. They don’t delve below the surface. How long does it take to roll up a few zillion balls even if one takes point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one of a second? Can you do it in six days?

Why does God, who is infinite, get knackered and have to have a rest on the seventh day?

How big was this dude?

No. They were more than happy with the old bloke rolling up balls, breathing life into stuff, modelling mountains and spitting out oceans. Especially as I took longer over the creation theory than I did with the evolution bit plus I was far less animated and theatrical with evolution. I did that in my normal voice.

It seemed to me that half my class were born again Christians and half the class were stoners. The strange thing was that half of the born againers were stoners. I found this bemusing and asked one of them.

“Where’s it say in the bible that you can’t smoke dope, man?”

Well he had a point.

19.9.01

 

I do believe in infinity, mystery, wonder and awesome beauty.

18.9.01

Starsky and Hutch and a carton of milk – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

You couldn’t walk in most of Los Angeles. There were no sidewalks. Everyone drove.

I drove to the supermarket, just two blocks away, to get some milk. I pulled into the huge car-park and was cruising along in my VW camper van looking for a space near to the entrance when a car shrieked past me at huge speed and, with a screech of tyres producing a cloud of smoke, broadsided in front of a big Chevvy van that was chugging down the next aisle. At the same time a similar car performed the same action from the other direction so that the two cars were now blocking the van in. Simultaneously two other cars screamed up behind the big van and also screeched to a halt in a pall of smoke. The van was now completely hemmed it in. For a moment it was as if everything was on pause. The van had halted. I had jammed on the brakes and come to a stop and was watching the scene on auto. The blue tyre smoke slowly drifted off over the parked cars. Then it went bananas. All the doors of the four cars flew open and armed men jumped out. Sixteen guys crouched behind the open doors pointing guns at the Chevvy van.

My mouth dropped open. This was like the movies. I was frozen.

I could see one of the guys from behind the Chevvy come out from behind his protective door, edge along the side of the van with his gun cocked up in the air at the ready, towards the front of the Chevvy.

A helicopter buzzed down overhead.

The guy reached the door, reached up to the handle and flung the door open, jumping to the side and levelling his gun at the occupants, young white guys in their twenties, who had their hands raised in the air. He then reached in, grabbed the guy in the passenger seat, yanked him out of the van and roughly flung him on the ground. Most probably the same thing was happening on the driver’s side but I couldn’t see that. The other guys with the guns began coming out from behind their doors, still training their guns on the van, and fanning out to cover the van The guy I was watching stood on the passenger’s head with his boot and pointed his gun at his head. There was a lot of shouting.

I was twenty feet away stationery, gawping like an idiot at a scene that was like something out of Starsky & Hutch. It had all happened so fast.

What if they had started shooting? I was right in the middle of it. What was it all about? A drugs bust? Some gang or other? A routine check? Even for America, it was a bit OTT.

“Excuse me sir, can we see your driving licence, please?”

Where was my camera? I always had my camera with me. I’d left it at home. How could I have done that? I would loved to have had some photos of the action. I could have taken some stunning shots of men with guns, helicopters and action.

Just another day in LA.

19.9.01

 

I’m one crazy, innocent, fifty-two-year-old mother-fucker. But nowhere near as crazy as I think I am.

18.9.01

Falklands War fever – extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

I have a dream of a world where enjoying yourself is not frowned upon and laws are just and equally applied to all – where a person has freedoms.

21.9.01

 

We hadn’t been back from America long when the Falklands crisis blew up. Those evil Argentineans had dared to land on a set of islands they arrogantly called the Malvinas when everybody knew they were really called the Falklands. For some obscure reason the Argentinians made some historical claim to these islands and, it seems, they have been a bone of contention in Argentina for years, just because they happened to be situated a short distance off the coast of Argentina and a whopping six thousand miles away from Britain.

Trust the Argentineans to get it wrong.

Didn’t they know the British had landed on those islands, run their flag up, and laid claim to them hundreds of years ago? They must have known that because that’s what the British did everywhere they landed, regardless of who was living there – particularly if the indigenous people were black or brown. In the days of the British Empire black or brown people obviously weren’t civilised so they did not count at all.

Now, I don’t mean to be too harsh on the British here. Not because I am British, you understand. Conquering was an evil practice that the British did better than anybody. It was not even a colour or race thing. Slavery and the conquering of other nations was what all humans did to each other regardless of race or colour. The blacks did it to other blacks, and browns to blacks and other browns, whites to other whites, reds to reds, and so on. Even the slave trade was inaugurated and sponsored by black tribes preying on other black tribes and selling black slaves to the Arabs who sold them on to the white traders. It was more that the British, and later the Americans, did it more thoroughly and efficiently. It was not something to be proud of, but we British conquered, enslaved and exploited better than anybody else at that point in history.

I don’t mean to digress, merely to explain. We had landed there and run up the flag, hence it was British forever. Those were the rules. We should know. We made up those rules.

Then again there were a lot of people living on the island and it has to be said that some of them were Argentinean but the majority were, or considered themselves to be, British. They lived a quiet rural life farming or fishing. There wasn’t an awful lot to do out there.

It all went along very smoothly with commerce with the mainland, ferrying goods back and forth between Argentina and the Falklands. Britain was much too far away to have meaningful commerce with, but the people still thought of themselves as British and the majority did not want to be ruled from Argentina. For some reason they wanted their masters to be British.

When the Argentinians landed and laid claim to the place people were up in arms.

In a democracy you ask the people.

Matter solved. Ask the Argentineans to go home.

After all, what was so important about a desolate island somewhere out in the ocean six thousand miles away from Britain? Why cause bother?

It surely wasn’t anything to do with the Antarctic, natural resources, oil, gas and mineral wealth? Surely not? No. This was democracy. The people had a right to choose. If they wanted to be British then British they had the right to be. Mrs Thatcher said so. The pesky Argentinians had invaded British sovereign territory. A lesson had to be taught.

A task force was rapidly put together and prepared for war as the British war effort swung into action.

Now back in England I decided to hold a debate in my classroom and explore the situation from all sides. To maybe weigh up the various options and apply a bit of logic to what was becoming a volatile situation. I gathered the class in and began a good old British debate where cool, calm reason was brought to bear, to tease out the possibilities and current intricacies of the situation and arrive at the best solution.

Before a few minutes had passed I found myself presiding over a bunch of hysterical demons baying for blood and chanting ‘Argies out!’ as if these people had always been our enemies and were the devil incarnate. Reason did not seem to be the main thrust of their argument. It was yet another scene from Orwell’s vision of the future. Of course, I repeated it throughout the day even though it was a bit depressing.

This thoughtless war fever could never happen here! But it did.

30.10.01

 

Sometimes it is necessary to keep restating the obvious otherwise what were once obvious ceases to exist.

29.10.01

 

I have a vision of a world where cultures are not homogenised into some twenty-first century plastic universe, where nature is not covered in concrete or fenced into reserves for human consumption.

21.9.01