Welcome to my mid-life crisis

Why me? Why this? Why now? What kind of an idiot sets out on such a voyage? Perhaps I’d better begin by explaining precisely what kind of an idiot I am.

            Picture the scene. A rusting bus stop leans drunkenly against a grey limestone wall, which borders the foot of a sycamore-shaded hill. Strung out to one side of it, twenty pairs of bony knees fidget impatiently in the sunshine, waiting for the bus that will carry them home from school. Half these pairs of knees are complemented by short summer dresses and pretty faces, while the remainder lie almost hidden under drab grey shorts and grubby white shirt tails. Among this group of rather less pretty faces, and thrown into sharp relief against all the monochrome that surrounds it, is a shock of ginger curls, framing a pair of absurd ‘Joe-90’ spectacles. This is me.

            My moment of triumph was about to arrive. For some minutes I had been trying to persuade the two friends standing either side of me that I was not, in fact, an ordinary human being from rural Somerset, but actually an alien envoy from the Moon. To any science-savvy ten year old in the space age of 1968, such a tale would seem perfectly plausible, and my friends were now just about convinced. As a final flourish I removed a small glass bottle from my pocket and brandished it in front of their credulous faces. In the morning this bottle had contained a beautiful homemade ‘chemical garden’ – delicate towers of gold and blue crystals set in a sea of pearlescent waterglass. Sadly, after a bumpy bus journey to school and a few riotous hours in the playground, all that remained was a foggy brown goo, studded with broken crystalline shards. But it was enough. Only an alien being could possibly own something so magical. Given evidence this conclusive, I almost started to believe the story myself.

Copyright © 2004 Cyberlife Research Ltd.
Last modified: 06/04/04