Christmas 2003

Once upon a time I went to Australia for two and a half days to shoot a video for a friend of Boy George. For such a short trip it turned out to be quite an adventure involving many acres of burnt countryside, ten tubes of toothpaste, a super 8 camera and a strange story of adultery. I’ll give you the details on another occasion but I’d always felt the need to return for another, more detailed, look to the country that they always joked was different from yogurt. (Yogurt’s a live culture).

 DAY ONE

Land at breakfast time in Sydney looking forward to seeing my old friend Ed who’ll be meeting me at the gate. I should have known better he is still across town having breakfast. Later we find ourselves upon a boat of the Captain Cook Tour Line cruising Sydney’s amazing harbour. In an eerie re-run of a long distant Christmas holiday in which we’d stationed ourselves happily in the front of a sleigh on a cold Colorado night happy with our exclusive seats only to realize we were facing the arses of two exceptionally flatulent horses we now grab two rows of seats on the top deck at the back of the ferry and subsequently realize we will be down-wind of the boat’s exhaust system for the next two hours. In my highly jet-lagged state I strap on the iPod and listen to a Trevor Rabin era Yes album. The day ends with a Monorail trip back to our hotel after dinner. Ed’s upset that I’m not eager join him on an expedition to search for extra-mural activities involving willing Australian babes. I remind him that a) I haven’t been to bed for about 44 hours and that b) in the 30 years we’ve been going on holiday together neither one of us has ever scored.

DAY TWO

We drive to the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. I’ve got my Bike Friday with me and I hope to achieve two ambitions this trip 1) to complete my 2,000th mile on the bike in one calendar year and 2) to see a kangaroo in the wild. After 11 measly miles of cycling I climb back in the car: there’s an unpleasant head wind, it’s unbearably hot and I’m still jet-lagged. We have a distant view of Sydney from a lookout and notice how the suburbs snake out from the city following the lines of the arterial roads. No kangaroos.

DAY THREE

Ed and I are godfathers to two wonderful sisters: Hannah and Zoe. We go to meet them and Eddie & Sheila (their Mum and Dad) at the airport and then race for the Ferry to Manly Island. Eddie is very manly and body-surfs while I fall asleep on the sand listening to Stevie Wonder.

DAY FOUR

Today’s big event is climbing up on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sadly none of us are BASE jumpers or rock climbers looking for front page news so we pay $150 Australian and, like extras from an old version of Star Trek, suit up in cheesy-looking grey boiler suits and undergo a 40 minute safety tutorial before we are allowed out on the hallowed structure. By the time we’ve climbed to the top our calves are hurting and our noses are roasted by the sun but Gavin, our genial guide, has furnished us with all kinds of wonderfully useless trivia. For example the British built bridge came with a 6 month guarantee and is now well past its planned 70 year life-span but they’re hopeful they can string out its usefulness for another 300 or 400 years.

 DAY FIVE

(Christmas Day) A flight to Melbourne and a drive down the Mornington Peninsula towards Portsea where we meet up with another eight of our friends and spend the afternoon on the beach which, I’ve always been told, is what all Aussies do on Christmas Day. For dinner we are treated to a sumptuous BBQed turkey and I get a rockin yellow Kangaroo keychain for a Christmas present.

 DAY SIX

I bike 42 miles and discover the Pig & Whistle, a gorgeous English style pub, situated high upon a hill near Arthur’s Seat that offers a stunning view of the Southern end of the Peninsula. All 14 of us descend upon the place in the evening for dinner and I order the kangaroo. It doesn’t taste like chicken.

 DAY SEVEN

My hotel is situated close to Sorrento beach and claims that is has freshly renovated rooms. While this statement was clearly accurate around the time that Nixon was President it (or the paintwork in my room) needs some updating. The bathroom and the communal showers are down the hall, my room is opposite the games room in which three year old children can be found at all hours of the day pounding on the piano. I’d venture to say that neither Van Cliburn nor Elton John need lose any sleep tonight. Around the back of the hotel there are very friendly and rather large black birds with white stripes on them, no kangaroos. I ride to Rye Ocean beach. Glorious views and very windy.

DAY EIGHT

I’ve finished my book about a German POW who escapes from a lead mine and takes three years to walk across Siberia and eventually to Germany. I’m now reading Bobke II by OLN’s hysterical biking correspondent Bob Roll. Though he says Whoa! rather too much he has a way with similes that is captivating. My two favourites are: “as nervous as a balloon in a pin factory”, and “spastic as a Devo guitar solo.” Ed, Steven, Ian and I take our bikes by ferry across the mouth of the bay and cover 29 glorious miles on the other peninsula that protects Melbourne’s southern approaches. There are no kangaroos there either.

 DAY NINE

If I can cover 36 miles today I will achieve my 2,000-miles-on-a-bike-in-a-year ambition. If you’re a real biker my goal is pretty lame let’s face it the TdF guys do that in three weeks (AND they have two days off!) but for me it will be a major achievement. I’ve decided to head for the settlement of Cape Schenck. There’s an impressive scale to the typeface on the map which suggests that it’s a big enough place for me to be able to purchase food and water there. It’s very hot today and I know that I will run out of water if I have to do the full ride with no support and  this peninsula, as I’ve discovered, isn’t exactly groaning with 7-11s and convenience stores so finding supplies will be crucial. As I set out I realize it’s especially windy today and every road in this land seems to have a head-wind. I hate head-winds. I pedal on.

I reach the point on the map, a road junction, designated as Cape Schenk. Bad news, it has only one building and it’s not a shop. Good news, it has a sign which says “Beware Kangaroos for next 7km.” Right on! Now we’re talking! I decide that rather than turning right and cycling down to the cape itself I’ll go straight on towards Flinders and look for kangaroos.

2km down the road I find a second sign which insists drivers slow down and suggests that the ‘roos appear mostly between dusk and dawn. It’s broad daylight but I’m feeling optimistic and I press on. Apart from incessant head-winds, flesh-melting sun and seven out of ten of the worlds most deadly species Australia is also notable for its wicked fly population. After much pedaling I’ve discovered that at any speed above 12 mph the flies can’t keep up with me so I’m working hard on all the hills but the wind goes out of my sails when one of my ambitions is sadly realized in a form I’d not dreamt of. There in front of me is a host of teeming flies the like of which I’ve never seen in my life before and underneath it a dead and partly decomposed kangaroo. Ugh. Apart from looking very dead the kangaroo looks rather small. A quarter of a mile later another one. Also dead. Also very smelly. I’m at the top of a particularly steep hill and I know that if I pedal down it I’ll only have to come back up so I turn around and head for Cape Schenck’s lighthouse. I’m out of fluids so I’m happy to discover a tiny wooden shed selling sausage rolls, steak and kidney pies and bottled water at the usurous rates expected in a State Park. But the flies! The flies taunt me and terrorize me. As I try and eat my lukewarm steak and kidney pie they climb under my sunglasses and inside my helmet, they tickle my arms and crawl across the back of my neck. I’m feeling like that dead kangaroo on the road to Flinders. I climb upon the bike and pedal out of there fast as I can while the sauce from the steak and kidney pie dribbles on my cycling shorts and makes it look like I’ve shat myself.

On the way home I finally clock that 2,000th mile and it’s a desperate anti-climax. What now? I guess I have to try and ride more next year. Bob Roll’s 7th bicycling commandment is: One year vow to cover more miles on your bike than in your car. Hmmm.

 DAY TEN

The grown ups go and see Lost In Translation. As I’ve already seen it (and I’m probably not a grown-up) I join the younger members of our party and go see Lord Of The Rings part 3 instead. I’m reminded that Tolkein’s book was the inspiration for one great Zeppelin tune (Ramble On) and about twenty truly awful 70’s rock bands (Shadowfax, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf etc.). I fall asleep – seen one battle against the forces of evil and you’ve seen ’em all.

 DAY ELEVEN

Ed, Steve and Ian play golf. I follow them around the course reading Amy Gray’s Spy Girl which, despite its encouraging title, inspiring cover blurb and hip Catch Me If You Can style jacket design, has no intrigue in it whatsoever (she does most of her PI work using Google!) and is really a long whine about the endless stream of unsuccessful dates and one night stands she has with a number of very tall men. At the 17th hole (Par 4, 345 yards) Ed spots a rather fat lizard crossing the Tee. I go and study it closer just in case. Sadly it does not have a pouch or large hind legs or answer to the name of Joey.

 DAY TWELVE

Back in Melbourne I end my day in front of the TV and watch Australia A lose to Zimbabwe by 9 runs. During a break in play there is a TV commercial in which a kangaroo plays a significant, if momentary, part. It’s an animated kangaroo.

 DAY THIRTEEN

Fly from Melbourne to Sydney on Qantas. The Qantas terminal has a row of their planes parked outside and they all have kangaroos on their tails. In Sydney I make my connection for LA. As the jumbo staggers into the sky I look over my shoulder and the last thing I see is the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge with the two flagpoles and the Australia and New South Wales flags flapping in the breeze on top. When we passed under those flags last week Gavin told us to make a wish and he smiled and added: “Just remember I’ve been working on this bridge for four bloody years!”

I made my wish but I didn’t see a kangaroo and I can only conclude that Gavin will still be working on the bridge for the forseeable future.

Back in the mists of time as I would sit in my tiny London bedsit with the latest copy of Melody Maker I would always dream of going on the road…you know a real rock n’ roll road trip complete with middle of the night truck-stop excursions, strange vehicular adventures, cross country driving marathons, all access backstage-pass laminates, endless guitar solos on a huge stage, nightmarish storms, weird gigs, foreign borders to pass through and guiltless, yet exciting, dalliances with eager and attractive members of the opposite gender.
I’m delighted to report that over the years all of the above wishes have been granted to me but as they say be careful what you wish for. Of course in my perfect dream the world tour I was on was my own and the band I was hanging out with were my band and the groupies pounding the side of the bus were hoping to shag ME but as we know the fates have a weird way of messing with your dreams don’t they?

I can reveal that I’ve found myself perusing the late-night roadside shopping possibilities with Staind; I’ve had a strange vehicular adventure with Lene Lovich; I’ve driven wildly across the country pursuing Peter Himmelman; I’ve collected laminates for Oasis and Ozzy, Guns N’ Roses and The Corrs; I’ve soloed endlessly on stage with Billy Ray Cyrus’s band at soundcheck (oh the shame!), endured a twister (Billy Ray again), shot a gig in broad daylight at midnight with Toto north of the arctic circle, smuggled something through a border with Madness and even, on a dark and soggy night in Oklahoma, gone home with an eager young female – sadly she wasn’t attractive and it wasn’t very exciting but after selling T-shirts for six weeks on a tour with non-stop rain earning a measly $25 a night I was getting desperate and depressed – and that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it!

Which brings me to my recent adventures with the very talented and enormously decent Jason Mraz. Before we go any further a brief disclaimer: though there were shopping opportunities in the truck stops and long drives through the night there was a noticeable lack of sex anywhere – not in my bunk anyhow. OK, I admit it, there were some guitar solos but none over 16 bars and while we’re talking plank spanking the one Jason plays on Absolutely Zero (a bullet straight into the top three of my fave songs of the year chart) is bloody gorgeous.

And so to the guilt.

I was hanging with Mraz to shoot a live DVD which we all hope will be available sometime in the New Year. The plan was to do one show with the mobile truck and the multi-camera thing and then yours truly would dispense with the luxuries and, armed only with a spare pair of sox, a mini DV cam, a box of tapes and a pile of release forms, I would become invisible and document what it’s like to be the hottest man on the charts with a Z in his name as he traversed the Midwest and beguiled thousands with his whimsical wordplay, magical melodies and extraordinary voice. In advance we discussed how I would wake him up on the day of the gig, shoot him in his P-Js and follow him through all the exciting stuff that rockstars get to do on the road, i.e. talk to journalists on cell phones, sign autographs, have their picture taken endlessly with sycophantic well-wishers (that’s you and me everybody), do stupid radio station idents (OK one of them was funny), answer numerous questions about chickens and psychics, soundcheck and try and remember the words to the
second verse of Sweet Child O’ Mine.

Throughout it all Jason was quite the gent, never held back, was always honest, very often funny and even lost his temper a few times. He was real. (I hope I’m not ruining for you all out there in Amazon.com land). He even made me really jealous a) because there were a lot of adoring babes who were obviously just besotted by him but more importantly because b) he’s a great musician and how dare he be THAT good a guitarist and songwriter after only 5 years. (Note to self: If I get my hands on a pair of pliers and Mraz is in the vicinity nobble a few fingers and then maybe I can catch up again…but what good would that do? – I’d only turn him into the new Django).

Anyway, imagine my despair when Bill, Jason’s manager, forwarded an extract of Jason’s web diary to me. JM confided he was locked in the bathroom away from the glare of the camera (that’ll be me) writing his diary : “I don’t need the room for any other reason than to sit and think, to meditate…on the other side of the door awaits thousands of ears and possibly millions of eyes.” He concludes, “I wish this bathroom could remain locked all night.”

And here’s the rub. This is what life on the road can be really like. While you’re locked in bedsit land it seems like such a dream – the riches and the babes, the guitar solos and the priceless magical laminates (real value – about a buck!) – but the guys on stage become isolated in their travelling world, nervous of those who attach themselves for a few days and always dreaming – despite the monstrous buzz of those two hours a night – of being in their own bed for a few nights and getting some different, clean clothes to wear. The road is surely a mystical place but there really is no There there. To really be on the road you must always be moving someplace else as if you’re searching for an end to a rainbow that remains constantly elusive. I’ve now been on so many tour buses that even their plush seats and tinted windows can’t disguise the feeling that it’s a kind of comfortable rolling prison with an annoyingly small moving toilet that protocol says you can’t take a dump in.

And so now I’m home and sleeping in my own bed editing Jason’s footage while he and the band and his crew still plough up and down the freeways plying their wares and doing what they love. I’ve felt guilty about disturbing Jason but I’m fighting that guilt because I think we’ve captured some of his magic for you to share and because I was doing my job. Perhaps if I’d done it better he might not have noticed me but it’s that observant and vulnerable quality about him that makes his music so intriguing. It’s now my dream that by the time the DVD is done Jason will be out of the bathroom and you and he both will think it was worth it.

It was a sunny morning in August as I sat down outside a small coffee shop on Fairfax and met the producers of a script called Chasing Fate.

All meetings follow a similar pattern. You shake hands and exchange small talk about what you’ve been up to and then eventually you talk about their script. What you have to say and how you say it is undoubtedly crucial. They’ve been working on the damn thing for months, they know the characters inside out, they know what they want to hear and you have no way of seeing inside their heads to see if you’re flying on the wings of genius or crashing and burning like a stricken fighter plane in some grainy History Channel War In The Pacific documentary. Like the pilot in that old film you take your life in your hands and propel yourself along the deck of the aircraft carrier and see if you’re flying yet. They nod as you wax lyrical about what you love and what you would like to change in their script. “Am I flying? Am I dying?” you wonder.

Just a few weeks previously I’d gone to meet a bunch of people over at Disney about a teen action movie. I felt the meeting was going great – my preparation was paying off until, on the spur of the moment, I suggested a minor approach as to how I felt you could (not should but could) take the look of the movie. They all jumped upon this idea. “Elaborate!” they asked and I did, feeling that they were truly enthusiastic about my radical idea, and their heads continued to nod and then slowly and imperceptibly their smiles slipped from their faces. I saw I had just written myself into the long list of also-rans: I was not going to get the gig. Nothing could make the last five minutes rewind. I’d crashed and I’d burnt and there were other pilots waiting to sacrifice themselves like I did knowing that just one of us would land safely at the other end.

So, as we sat in the sun and watched the traffic rumble along Fairfax Ave., I was honest. I asked the producers what they wanted to hear. They said they wanted the truth and so I strapped on my flying helmet, yelled, “Chocs Away!” and hurtled blindly into the sky. I gave it to them straight, I talked about things I wanted to change, ideas I had, cracked daft jokes and showed them a book I’d once bought about Screwball Comedies and looked for the tell-tale signs of an imminent prang.

Eventually I was out of breath and out of ideas and they shook my hand and wished me well promising me they’d be in touch. Yeah, right. Everyone says that. I walked to my car and went to start work on someone else’s script.

Well it seems that when I turned left everyone else turned right. Everytime the tracer shells came my way they either fell short or I dodged them. They tell me I’m their guy. I’ve landed safely and, looking back over my shoulder, I can see the burning wreckage of all the other pilots who didn’t make it.

Yesterday the lines lit up and the question was: ?We want to make a video to give peace a chance. Are you in??

I?ve done three videos like this in my life with varying degrees of success: Band Aid – ?Do They Know It?s Christmas?? Voice of LA ?Stand And Be Proud? and The Peace Choir ?Give Peace A Chance.?

Band Aid was easily the most effective and arguably saved millions of lives from starvation in Africa in the mid 80?s (see Band Aid diary icon on your left). ?Stand And Be Proud? which was designed to show a united city in LA after the damaging riots was a stunning achievement for all those who took part and featured a multi ethnic choir and orchestra numbering 1500 people but did not reach its destined audience. Give Peace A Chance was last minute attempt to stop the Gulf War – and obviously no one took a blind bit of notice of that one!

After some consideration I tried to imagine the effectiveness of a new bunch of solemn-faced pop-stars standing around a microphone begging Bush, Blair and any other belligerent allies they can convince not to drop a load of smart bombs on thousands of Iraqis half a world away and I tell you I can?t see it working – even worse I?m afraid it sends the wrong message.

By chance I last night finished reading ?Ambushed? by Ian Stewart, an autobiographical account of a Canadian war journalist?s remarkable escape from death in the civil war in Sierra Leone, and today at lunch I read articles by famous war photographer Don McCullin and war reporter Maggie O?Kane in Rolling Stone. I read about war a lot. In the past 2 years I?ve read complete histories of the First and Second World War and the American Civil War. I?ve read two different books about the fight for Iwo Jima, and books about the Submarine campaign in the North Atlantic and the bombing campaign launched by the US Army Air Force on Germany. I have pored over photographic volumes of dead Vietnam War photographers and read and re-read Don McCullin?s ?Unreasonable Behaviour.? In words of one syllable one?s conclusion can only be: WAR SUCKS.

I?ve never seen a bullet fired in anger but my father was a military pilot his whole working life as was his brother. I was born after the end of WW2 but vividly remember that the centre of every British city I visited as a child – Bradford, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, London, Coventry – was a pile of rubble awaiting the funds for rebuilding. As a child I also lived in Germany and saw the same destruction in the centre of Cologne. The phrase bomb-site was as common a part of my lexicography as building-site would be in yours. As a child I remember seeing a picture of my father wearing shorts holding his revolver outside his tent in Cyprus where he was stationed for 9 months during ?The Troubles? and fearing for his safe return. Later I too would live in Cyprus where I?d see bullet holes in walls and graffiti which was still painted with the words Enoka or Eosis – the acronyms for the warring factions. When I was twelve I visited Beirut and saw the city just months before it collapsed in bitter fighting and later watched the hotel where we’d stayed taking artillery fire on the 9 o’clock news. When I was 19 I visited Munich for the Olympics and stood in shock with other teenagers from all over Europe as I listened on German radio and heard the news about the death of the Israeli athletes. I have stayed in the Europa Hotel in Belfast which has its own entry in the Guinness Book of Records because it has been so frequently bombed. Last year I crawled through the frightening Chu-Chi tunnels outside Ho Chi Minh City and then in Spain was shown the bullet ridden walls where thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians were murdered in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.

Throughout my entire youth whenever I took anything for granted, was shiftless, lazy, rude or unproductive my parents would tell me their experiences of their years surviving the Blitz. My parents both went to work in Germany after the war and would tell me endless stories of shortages and sacrifices – and they were on the side of the victors. My parents actively discouraged me from becoming interested in the armed services – they were for peace – but even so I remember my Mother once being berated by a German friend: ?Für sie, immer den Kreig!? ?For you, it?s always about the war.? For my parents the war was the all consuming drama of their lives by which everything else was measured.

I bore you with this list of ?achievements? to say: ?I haven?t been in a war but I know a little of the damage that war can do.?

And now we want to Blitz Bagdad. The official line is that a) it will be a clean surgical process; b) ?collateral damage? (i.e. death to innocent civilians) will be minimal and c) it will all be over fast. Well, a) the articles I read in Rolling Stone at lunch today suggest that what we think we know about the surgical brilliance of the Gulf War is not really the whole story and pictures of dead bodies whether Iraqi or American were rarely taken or allowed to be published; b) It seems likely that collateral damage will be bigger than we?d like to believe and c) I?d just like to remind us all of that most infamous of pre-war expressions: ?It will all be over by Christmas.”

If we go into Iraq we may indeed neutralize weapons of mass destruction (which if they exist may never be used – who can predict?) but we will also injure, mentally and physically, large numbers, I mean huge numbers, of people. If we are to do this then we the public need to be aware of what we are doing – let us be COMPLETELY aware of what we are doing. Lying through the press and hiding images from us of the terrible truth of what we are committing in the name of world peace will not cut it. If not we will be guilty through our innocence.

If I am to be involved in some filmic thing at this stage of the pre-war hubbub I want it to be about the images of what war does. Tattooed teens singing about peace is great but it won?t do anything but wind people up. Let?s be brutal and be aware of the truth – let?s not nest and cosset ourselves and hide away in SUV-land and switch channels. Let?s see the blood for it will shock and scare and sadden us. I will not make a video of singers singing songs of peace for it?s own sake.

Read all you can about war and never stop if only so you understand how horrifying it is. In the Donald McCullin book I mentioned he recounts his life as a war photographer, its reality, its addictiveness, its glamour and its brutality. But eventually you understand that trying to bring truth to the world damages a man who started out with the highest of intentions – to show the world that war will not work. As he recounts his life away from war in the final chapter of his book you become aware that he is a deeply sad man. This is how he finishes his book:

?My son Alexander sometimes stays with me, but mostly I?m alone in my house in Somerset. The ghosts in my filing cabinets sometimes seem to mock me – the ghosts of all those dead in all those wars, especially that little Biafran boy. Now, since that last head-on collision with life, there are also the ghosts of my loves. With this book perhaps they will be set free.? (Unreasonable Behaviour – Don McCullin).

Let?s talk about this war thing for a moment. I think we?re all agreed that S. Hussein esq. is one of the least attractive world leaders around at the moment and I suspect that when we have to vote people off the island Mr. H. is going to find himself in select company with other not very nice men with names like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Amin, Mugabe etc.

And yet it seems that we are all in agreement that sending the lads in to put Sadaam in his place is not something we feel at all happy about. (Sorry, George, but this is the word on the street). And so, once again, I?m concerned about the way the great American public are being kept abreast of foreign viewpoints in this case with regards to our determined war-like stance.

This is something that concerns me greatly as I have recently chosen to become an American citizen and have been duly accepted by the USA as a permanent resident, taxpayer and voter. (Thank-you by the way). In the hours after the 9-11 attacks I was bemused by the number of people I spoke to who said to me, ?Do people in the rest of the world really hate America that much?? And I laughed rather tragically and replied in a duh!-like tone of voice, ?Yes!? It was just another reminder how isolated the USA is from the way the rest of the world works and thinks and to be fair the problem is understandable in a country that is larger than some continents and essentially isolated geographically by two large oceans from direct contact with any other cultures.

Yes there?s Canada and Mexico but the former feels American in many ways and the latter does pretty much what we ask it to. In California alone Los Angeles is about the same distance from San Francisco that Paris is from London. Israel is narrower than Los Angeles. Vietnam is about the same size or slightly smaller than New Mexico. When most of the time we?re consumed by talk of how different LA is from New York or how weird people from the South sound if we live in Chicago how are we expected to understand what is happening half a world away? After all we?re talking about the most powerful country in the world – one which has THREE time zones!

How vast is America? Get out your Atlas and a ruler and try this on for size. America is so vast that if you took the 2,500 mile flight eastwards from LA to NYC and then travelled the same distance eastwards from London?s Heathrow airport you?d find yourself about fifty miles short of Bagdad and (in a straight line) you?d have flown across parts or all of France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey and Syria! Just think of the range of languages, cultures, creeds and attitudes that encompasses. Oh, yeah and the captain would have interrupted your in-flight entertainment to tell you you could see parts of Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Romania, Cyprus and the Lebanon on your way. If the Captain had messed up his flight plan a journey of the same distance would have taken you deep in to Greenland, 1,000 miles beyond Moscow, 250 miles short of Tehran, 120 miles beyond Jerusalem, deep into Nigeria or most of the way across Mauritania towards Senegal!

At the beginning and end of our US coast to coast trip we would be able to watch the same TV shows, order the same food and dial the same phone numbers. On our trans-Europe/Asian schlep I think we all agree that (CNN, McDonald?s and your cell phone notwithstanding) things would be very different. However in both journeys one factor would be similar: the daily paper in Greenland, Iraq or Mauritania would all have editorials skewed towards their own perspectives and would be strangely intriguing and yet somehow alien to us. The same I think is true of America – on some days NYC and LA seem as different as Greenland and Mauritania politically and climatically so its no wonder that the rest of the world seems like an annoying diversion.

Well, with CNN, McDonald?s and cell phones the world is getting much smaller very fast. We need to get a feel and an understanding of the way the rest of the world is thinking AND take notice of it. Did it have to take the Twin Towers for us to notice this? My fear is that it will take more than that. The isolationist policy that brought a President to power as Europe went to war in the late 30?s will no longer serve us and on this issue alone George W. has a point.

Why do we need to wise up? At the very least so the rest of the world will take us (Americans) seriously. Last year in Toronto I overheard two Canadian crew members swapping a tale of a head-in-the-sand American producer who had journeyed the vast distance between the two countries from Chicago to Toronto! The American lady just loved it in Toronto and remarked: ?This place is so neat now, and so up to date with the USA – they even have Roots stores everywhere!? In case you?re still not getting the joke Roots is a long established, much-loved Canadian company (though the founder, I think, was an American).

Which brings me back to the war (upcoming). Does anybody in the US have any idea how much some people in Europe are infuriated by the sabre rattling going on here? Joschka Fischer, Germany?s Foreign Minister, last week glared across a table at Donald Rumsfeld at a conference in Europe and told him: ?My generation learnt you must make a case and excuse me, I am not convinced.? Am I reading too much in to what he says if I feel that almost translates as: ?My parents were Nazis and you need to take a look in the mirror??

I?m just a bloke who makes videos and I don?t know what the answer is but how?s this for a solution? Here?s a quote from an English lady?s letter which recently appeared in my weekly English newspaper. Her name is Lesley Illingworth and here?s what she has to say: ?It would appear that UN weapons inspectors have not found any weapons of mass destruction. I note that nearly all of the inspectors are men. It recently struck me that, if my husband is anything to go by, they stand little chance of finding anything.?

I?m willing to try anything to get out of a war. So, ladies…any volunteers?

P.S. Yes I know that if I?m now a Yank I shouldn?t spell ?colour? like that but that?s kind of my point isn?t it?

Why do cyclists shave their legs? I know that this is a question which has been on your mind a lot so I thought I’d let you in on the secret.

Yesterday I wound up in the hospital. While cycling I’d been driven into by a man in an SUV and, deprived of my balance, my shoulder and then the rest of me collided rather messily with a typical piece of LA tarmac travelling at approximately 20mph. Everyone who was there agrees on the result of the collision: SUV 1, cyclist 0.

As I lay alone and bleeding in ER, stripped of my dignity and my rather eye-catching and fully matching Italian Alessio Wheels cycling kit, I wondered if my dream of scaling some Alpine passes, Jalabert style, would still be possible this coming summer. As the minutes ticked on wards and the aches and pains spread outwards I realized a more realistic assessment would be to focus on whether I would be able to bend over to put my underwear, socks and shorts back on when I was discharged.

After the form-filling and the contract-signing the X-rays were finally taken and the bandages were applied. The good news was that no bones appeared to have been broken – the bad news was that I was covered with a substantial amount of U.S.B. Type VII gauze up and down the left side of my body held in place by some very efficient sticky tape.

After making a phone call your rather subdued correspondent was picked up by itinerant friend in need, Brian, who had a good laugh at the image of a semi-naked rider shivering and bandaged in a corner of the Waiting Room.

So, 24 hours have passed and the pain continues but of course the dressings have to be changed – and so all that effective sticky tape has to be pulled off taking fistfuls of manly leg and arm hair with it. OUCH!

Why do cyclists shave their legs? Not because it makes them faster (it doesn’t). Not because they all take part in cross-dressing competitions every night after a group sprint (maybe they do – perhaps this is cycling?s dirty little secret!) No. The reason cyclists shave their legs is so that it?s easier to clean the wounds and less painful to remove the dressings when they get into the sort of human being versus tarmac contre-temps which I experienced yesterday.

Of course I’m not a professional cyclist. I don’t race across half of Europe at an average speed a small car would be proud to achieve. I don’t push myself up to 40 mph on the flat or touch 60mph on the downhills. But now I’ve had a good man-tarmac experience I’m wondering if perhaps the razor blade and the shaving gel are going to get a look at my limbs. So, if you see me wearing shorts and my legs look suspiciously hairless you?ll know I’ve finally taken the plunge and become a “serious” cyclist.

There again I might just have entered an amateur cross-dressing contest!