Aping 2001

OK then, I'll face it, we've had a building cock up at my address. HAL: "Look Tim, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. ..."

Tim Reeves' Big Day Out: MPH07

I had a very enjoyable day at MPH07. Some of the vehicles on show were spectacular and, needless to say, so were the prices. Here’s the vehicle I bought with my initials on the front as an extra:

The sticker on the back of this car will read "My other car is a wreck".

The spectacular theme continued in the arena performances presented by Clarkson, Hammond and May with breath taking internal combustion engine based stunts: car football, a flying car, and formation hand break turning. Four motorcyclists not only managed to squeeze themselves into a spherical iron cage but also managed to ride at speed as well. It was not just the wall of death, but floor and ceiling of death as well. So precisely coordinated was their riding that a dangerous collision was only small fractions of a second away:

With its 80% male attendance this was a show for the lads. It fulfilled all those stereotypical notions of testosterone charged males fascinated with danger, risk taking and fast sleek phallic looking machines. And if Richard Hammond’s recent antics are anything to go by, Top Gear’s blustering presenters are not pseuds but really do engage in risk taking. But as well as dangerous antics the show was also about being naughty boys and breaking the rules. Jeremy Clarkson drove his range rover up a 38 degree slope, but gleefully told us beforehand that Rover only recommends a maximum slope of 35 degree. Clarkson was pushing the envelope and certainly not doing as he was told:

It was all a refreshing change from today’s church experience, an experience so crushingly and slushily feminine in style, intuitions and behavioral expectations, that it habitually expresses the faith in quasi-sensual and romantic terms. Its notion of risk is that of listening to the prophetic intuitions of the limbic mind when you know that the prophetic hit rate in recent years has been all but zero.

Most Haunted Mansion

In a Halloween publicity stunt, the National Trust has published a list of its top ten most haunted properties. Blickling hall, the Jacobean mansion near Alysham in Norfolk has hit the number one spot. But how was this list arrived at? Was it done by carefully counting and collating reports and giving them a verification weighting, or did the National Trust dowse Sian Evans abdomen with a pendulum in order to get a gut reaction? The house manager at Blickling provides a few clues:

We are absolutely delighted to be at the top of the most haunted chart. This will give Blickling a very scary five skull rating in the national guide to haunted halls. The house staff always look forward to coming in and being scared witless by our team of ghosts who have worked hard for this position and put in a very spirited performance. They are good workers who enjoy their work and always moan about their tasks, although they are sometimes difficult to distinguish from the cleaning staff who also do a lot of moaning (especially on pay day). With a celebrity ghost like Anne Boleyn we definitely have a head start here at Blickling, but we will be giving all our hard working ghosts a Halloween bonus and pay rise.

So, if you are an employee at Blickling your best bet is to take a white sheet with you to work and scare the living daylights out of a visitor of two - you might get a pay rise and bonus. Not a ghost of chance of that I suppose. I wonder if anyone has spotted my pay slip lurking in a dark corner at Blickling? I wouldn’t believe it if they said they had .....there I go again, moaning; must have caught the habit from the spooks.