THE NEW ROGUE AWAKENS

It’s not a Star Wars Story it’s a prequel. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

It doesn’t get much more ‘pre’ than having a creepily rejuvenated Princess Leia stood clutching a floppy disc and mouthing a large proportion of the first instalment’s title at you. Perhaps that's what a Star Wars Story is: a cruelly curtailed prequel in which anyone with aspirations to appear in the follow-up gets vaporised on a beach.

Rogue One, like all the worse kinds of prequels, obsesses with answering questions that no one has asked.

Want to know why it was so easy to blow up the Death Star? 

No.

No really, do you want to know why it was so easy to blow up the death star?

No, I really don’t.

Okay then. You interested in how those rebels got hold of those plans? 

No.

Actually I’m more interested to know why a basic wireframe graphic heralding from the age of Atari won’t fit on a USB stick. Or hasn’t the Empire got round to inventing those yet? Preferring instead to pour its tech budget into jaw droppingly elegant shuttle craft to whisk it’s bad guys around the galaxy. And a pointlessly spacious apartment built over flowing lava to contain its arch villain’s disabled shower unit.

SURPRISED & DELIGHTED

We get settled in seats at the back of the cinema and realise that the youngest has left his glasses at home and can’t see the screen.

"It’s okay," says my wife. "We’ll move forward when it starts, there’s plenty of room."

But people are coming in all the time and I can’t live with that level of uncertainty. So I go off to get our seats moved. We’re still on the ads so there’s plenty of time. On the way out I clock the rows further forward that have spaces - ammunition if needed. But actually I’m quietly confident; the whole thing’s shaping up like something out of a customer service training video and I’m sure I’m going to win the sympathy of the Odeon staff.

NAIL IN THE COFFEE

This morning I ordered an Americano instead of a Latte. With hot milk for prolonged rapture. And it made me wonder where this is going. I’m guessing the next step is drop the milk. Then add an extra shot (whatever that is). Then two extra shots, then three, four - I don’t know, what’s the maximum? When do they pat you on the shoulder and say ‘I think you’ve had enough son’ and alert the security staff to see you off the premises?

For years I held out against coffee. It was tea all the way, the comforting and benign ritual of bubbly water on herby pillows. The aural equivalent of a hot bath - every half hour. Because that’s the thing about tea. It’s such a non event that you just keep doing it. Not so much a drink as a periodic change of texture. In those days the coffee drinkers were a dark and mysterious under-class. Masters of the infernal filtering apparatus that summoned forth the pungent black liquid of their desire. I treated them with suspicion, nay disdain.

BATTLE FOR BEACH 8

Never sure how to take being trained. I’m just not comfortable around people whose sole purpose is to know more about something than I do. It makes me nervous. I guess I’m just out of practice. I think the last person who taught me something useful was my driving instructor. Everything since then - largely useless - has been picked up through trial and error. Mainly error. So it feels quite novel to be in a small boat in the middle of a harbour being shown how to make it go and, more importantly, stop, without killing everyone involved. 

We’ve hired a Yellow Boat for the day on the promise of accessing one of twelve Beautiful and Secluded Beaches just up the coast. Beaches that no one without a boat, or hooves, can reach. But first I - and my fellow trainee, a wiry cockney with a nicotine croak and scarlet polo shirt - need to learn the ropes.

I don’t much like our teacher. If Ben Affleck was asked to play a Greek sleazeball this is probably how he'd do it. I don’t think he likes me either. I suspect he’d just as soon drop me to the bottom of the harbour in concrete flip-flops as teach me how to use his boat. 

Anyway, unlike my co-trainee, I have prior boating experience. Which is why I’ve not bothered looking at the video before we came, and he has. We’re shown how to moor the thing off a Beautiful and Secluded Beach. I ask what happens if the anchor gets stuck. Scarlett lets slip that the video covered that and sends his eyes briefly skyward. Point made. He gets to drive the boat back to shore, I don’t. I take this as our mentor acknowledging my innate nautical aptitude. Or possibly he wants me dead.

GREEK LOAF

Our luxury villa has been laid waste, pulverised into little more than a pile of gravel on an arid hillside. Either that or the sat nav got it wrong.

"Ring the number."

"I’ve tried, it doesn’t work. Just goes to beeps."

Despite our best efforts we’re both thinking the unthinkable. That we’ve been taken in by people who dupe people far less intelligent than us. That we might have to go on the telly and sit side by side holding hands to relate our sad and tragic tale for the amusement and edification of people to whom this kind of thing never happens. People like us.

Nearby a goat bleats insensitively as if nothing’s happened.

"What do the directions say?"

"Turn left before the Shell garage." 

But this doesn’t feel like the kind of place you’re going to find one of those. In fact it feels like we're the first motor vehicle ever to pass this way. Other than the one that brought the gravel. 

STILL HERE

David went cos he lost. Nigel went cos he won. Boris went cos he won but can’t win thanks to Michael, who reckons he can win despite having won. Theresa lost but might win, even though no one who lost can. Jeremy won but, like Boris, can’t win, so he’ll be gone soon too - once someone who can win wins. Tony would probably have to go soon if it weren’t for the fact that he already went. So he’ll stay gone.

Meanwhile, the rest of us - winners and losers - aren’t going anywhere. Us amateur legislators don’t have the luxury of resigning, disgraced and discredited, because we never had a reputation to besmirch. Of fading back into the background, because we never stepped out of it. Of spending more time with our families because we spend too much time with them already.

MIND THE GAP

Today as I boarded a tube train I was warned to "mind the gap". Twice. And then, more specifically, to "mind the gap between the platform and the train". So I took a proper look at the gap for perhaps the first time in my life. And found it to be around 2.5 inches wide. Which left me wondering what danger such a gap could represent. Later at the airport I traversed a gap at least half an inch wider between the top of some stairs and an aeroplane. And no one said a word.

Is it because, when it comes to flying, falling fifteen feet through a 3 inch gap onto concrete is the least of your worries? Or does EasyJet just not care? Or can London Underground just not help itself trotting out the same old gap thing because it’s what it’s always done, and if it didn’t the tourists would complain? Even though no one really knows what they’re minding, and what it means to mind it.

But given the number of times it gets a mention, we can only assume the gap is insanely dangerous. So it seems strange not to be given more detail. 

CENTENNIAL BUG

As a rule, I think you should understand what something is before you commit to looking after it for the rest of its life. For example, last year the youngest wanted a pet so I bought him a Roborovski Hamster. On the misapprehension that anything with ‘hamster’ in its name would do the job. Turned out it's too fast to handle and sleeps all day. And keeps the rest of us awake all night by spinning its wheel at an rpm that would put a supercharged V8 to shame. In short, it’s very bad at being a pet. But that’s not its fault. Because, it’s excellent at being a Roborovski Hamster. And what more can you ask of any rodent - or anybody for that matter - than being itself, well. Undoubtedly the fault was mine.

And it looks like I’ve never understood my children either. Because an article in the paper has just told me what they actually are. Turns out we’re not the same species, which accounts for a lot. They’re something called Centennials; 21st century super beings descended from late breeding Generation X’ers (like us) and our beloved successors, the Millennials. 

Who have had their day it would seem. Fine by me, never liked them anyway. Moping around with their suspicious-looking tubs of homemade super juice. Nibbling bird seed and whinging on about terrorism and not being able to buy a house. 

Anyway, now they’ve got something else to worry about. They’re about to be outclassed by Centennials, and I’ve got two of them.

POP GEAR

So 4.4 million people tuned in to watch Top Gear. What does that tell us about how good the show was? Absolutely nothing. They didn’t tune in because they liked it, they tuned in because deep down they knew they wouldn't, but wanted to be proved wrong. Unfortunately, and inevitably, they were not.

Imagine if James Bond walked off the set of the next Bond movie and vowed never to come back. Not Daniel Craig mind you, James Bond. What would the producers do for the next movie? Make a Bond film without Bond in the hope nobody notices? Fooling themselves into thinking that international espionage and the inner working of the British Intelligence Service are what people actually watch Bond movies for? No, they’d probably call it a day.

Which would have been a very good idea when Clarkson went last year. May and Hammond knew the show couldn’t work without the three of them so they left too. The BBC probably knew that as well, but had no choice but to give it a go. So they pretended people watch Top Gear to see people - any people - dicking about in cars, and re-booted the show. 

KILLING TIME

Passing gallstones hurts, but passing time hurts more. Especially if you’re eleven and waiting to play Star Wars Battlefront on your brand new Xbox One.

First the box needs updating. Cue two hour wait with mid-strength teary tantrum. But we get there ahead of time, and suddenly there’s hope. The Microsoft account works. Good. The Xbox profile copies across. Good good. We get out the new game - on a good old disc God bless it. No more of this interminable downloading nonsense. 

But guess what, it turns out the game isn’t finished. The bloke who was supposed to have finished it must have nipped out for a vape and left it on his workbench where the bloke who was supposed to put it in a case and take it to Amazon mistakenly put it in a case and took it to Amazon.

FREE LUNCH

The youngest is contemplating his plain cheese burger, the eldest his burrito. The youngest’s friend is contemplating his chicken nuggets and I’m contemplating him. He’s small with specs and ginger hair. Quite cute looking I suppose you could say. Which makes it all the more difficult, because I’m thinking about the most humane way of disposing of him.

To be clear, this isn’t the kind of thing I do on anything like a regular basis. In fact I can’t remember the last time I disposed of a child - let alone a small, relatively cute one with ginger hair and specs. But fate has dealt young Reginald a cruel hand, because he’s standing between me and £100,000. 

GOD AWFUL ADVERTISING

Funny how the laws of advertising don’t apply when it comes to God. You’d think a once all-powerful worldwide movement trying desperately to hang on to the last remnants of credibility would try a bit harder.

You can imagine God’s brand people briefing the agency:

"Okay, so the challenge we have is that people are repulsed by our use of meaningless cliches, antiquated language and constant references to insanely cruel and sadistic ancient torture techniques." 

And the agency goes away, gives it plenty of the old blue sky, and comes back with this:

At which the brand people pop a bottle of bubbly, give each other a hearty pat on the back and brace themselves for an unprecedented surge in church attendance and a complete reversal of society’s encroaching secularism. 

PROXIMITY MAN

"Nice dog," I observed as we swung into a parking space. "What is it, Spaniel or something?"

“Labradoodle," came the correction from the dog experts in the back.

"Oh. Nice though."

The dog was emptying itself from the car in front of ours, controlled by the smallest and palest of three children who, in turn, were controlled by a couple who looked like they too were on the way back from a relaxing self-catering holiday in an idyllic corner of Scotland, i.e. tense and irritable.

EVEL EYE-PAD

I remember the night in 1976 when it came to a head. We were out on our bikes when dad came home and I was called in. I knew I was in deep trouble. As usual it was Dad's job to mete out the punishment. But first, the crime: 

“He’s been out all day playing with his friends,” Mum began. “He hasn’t touched that Eye-Pad once, or been anywhere near the couch. I told him after his lunch to go and lock himself in his bedroom in a sultry and withdrawn manner, but he wasn’t having any of it. Next time I look, there they all are outside again, running around in the sunshine." 

1 DAY , 2 FLIGHTS , 5 SHIT EXCUSES

07.55: Shit Excuse No. 1

The pilot’s taking on that smug 'aren’t I a star' tone of voice because he’s flown us to Stansted airport ten minutes quicker than he had to. You hear it first somewhere over Norfolk when he says "Cabin Crew prepare the cabin for arrival," with a slight lilt and rising intonation that actually says 'this really is a piece of piss you know.' By the time he orders the crew to "disarm doors for arrival” the smugness has blossomed into a full blown 'God, I’m good at this. Sometimes I surprise even myself.' 

But his next announcement is a little less triumphal. It transpires that, although he’s really rather fine, some of the people with whom he is forced to associate have failed to live up to his standards. Big time. The ground crew have been taken totally by surprise by his over performance, and are still trying to find a set of steps to get us off. So, through no fault of his own, we’re stuck, and the extra time generated by his flying prowess gradually wastes away as we stand in a line waiting with our coats on. All of which prompts a number of questions:

#KILLFATHERSDAY

I'm watching my children perform a touching and entirely spontaneous act of love and admiration for their mother, presenting her with an assortment of thoughtful gifts and cards. Only they didn’t buy them, I did. And I’m watching them through the sites of a sniper rifle trained at their pretty little heads, which was the only way I could persuade them to take five minutes out of their terribly busy schedules to do something for someone else for a change.

My wife expertly feigns both surprise and delight, pretending not to notice the little red dot that darts back and forth between their foreheads.  She comments on the fine workmanship of the hastily thrown together card they made him make in art class - probably at gunpoint too. Afterwards the cards, flowers and chocolates are arranged in a fetching display on the mantlepiece, where they remain as a tribute to the fact that we have once again negotiated our way through the emotional minefield that is Mother’s Day.

CAR TROUBLE

I’m having car troubles. Not the mechanical variety - I wish!  No, it’s much more complicated than that. More of a relationship thing. I’ll try and explain.

It’s a nice car, blue and quite attractive. You could call it a head turner - the women-folk definitely go for it. And I loved it too to begin with. It was like no other car I’d ever had. Great personality, great fun. And reliable too - or so I thought. But I guess the signs were there at the very beginning. I just chose to ignore them.

ANGEL ROAD

This morning I was sat next to a German couple on the Stansted Express. The guy, who was sitting opposite, was talking a lot. And in a way I was finding impossible to ignore. So I found myself listening to every word, even though I couldn’t decipher a single one. From his voice I formed a mental picture of him, and it was Christoph Waltz.

Eventually I looked up from my iPhone to sneak a proper look. And guess what, he looked exactly like Daniel Craig. For a moment I was terrified. Imagine that: the mind of Ernst Stavro Blofeld inside the body of James Bond. Retreating back into my phone, I wondered why I was instinctively afraid of Germans. Especially ones that looked like 007.

ON ICE

Ranulph Fiennes is sawing off the end of his own fingers with a fretsaw. 

It was all going so well. Well about as well as pulling a half-ton sledge across Antarctica at -40º can go. Nothing too much to worry about, just the usual chronic crotch rot, ultraviolet facial burns, gangrenous toes, frozen eyeballs and, of course, gradual and inevitable bodily deterioration, dehydration and starvation. All in a day’s work for Britain’s greatest living explorer.

SPACE SHODDITY

Posted 12th February 2016:

Big week for Space.

Turns out Einstein was right after all (note to self: never doubt anyone called Einstein) and gravitational waves exist.  The thing is that they always had to exist because of his theory of relativity. It’s just that now they do. Thank God.

So how did we finally find them? Well, we invented a machine that can detect things that are so small, and happen so quickly, that until recently we were happy to conclude they weren’t there at all. Things less than a thousandth the diameter of an atomic nucleus apparently. Now I’m no expert (despite having the Guardian App on my iphone) but I’m guessing that’s pretty small.  Small to the point of not really mattering.  

GUITAR SHOP MAN

When was the last time you went to buy a new car and came back convinced that not only do you not deserve one, but that you can’t actually drive?  Never, I’m guessing. Because dealerships don’t tend to hire wannabe Schumachers to take you for a dozen circuits of the carpark to demonstrate the how well the suspension and braking systems works at 120mph.  And it’s as well they don’t, because if they did a good number of us ego-fuelled menfolk would ditch the car and rely instead on ridiculously expensive racing bikes and tight lycra outfits to get from A to B.  Which of course we don’t.  Much.

RECOVERED

I’m being Recovered.  Processed like a piece of lost luggage, or a suspicious package, by an elite group of highly trained individuals with walkie-talkies, bright yellow waistcoats and passes round their necks that give them access to absolutely anywhere.

The family huddled next to me seem to have been in Recovery for much longer than I. Days possibly.  They look malnourished and worn out.  The children are tearful and listless. The mother comforts them as best she can.  The father is clearly exhausted, asking repeatedly for information.  When will they get help?  When can they leave?  Or at least I assume that’s the kind of thing he’s asking because it’s not in English.  And the Recovery Team only talks in English.  And only into walkie-talkies.

SWEGWAYS (AND OTHER VILLAINOUS ALIEN SPECIES)

It’s a few days before Christmas and I’m alone in the garage giggling like an idiot. Because I’ve just tested the youngest’s swegway before wrapping it up.  It works, and it turns out I can do it.  

Being able to ride a swegway - or hover board  - depends on your ability to do nothing.  It’s a state of mind.  If you get on and try to do things - like making all those involuntary muscular adjustments that have kept the human race upright and moving in the right direction since we first took our knuckles off the ground - then you’re stuffed.  The swegway takes care of all that.