Martin Esslin

Wow!

To be frank, I'm amazed to be alive. After all, Tuesday was Satan's big day. Nostradamus said so, in hindsight. A man in Australia spent the day praying for the souls of Australians. Presumably groups of Baptists across the USA did the same for everyone except those who didn't vote for George. In local events, a small group of evangelists gathered in Town Hall Square to tell all of Leicester that we should be begging God for forgiveness, especially the 45 percent of us who are Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Jainists, Jews, Zoroastrians, Jedi or other Miscellaneous non-evangelical Protestants and sohave doomed ourselves from the outset.

And then nothing happened. Surprise sur-fucking-prise. It may have something to do with the Bible having been written in Greek some 500 years after the event rather than as a live ticker-tape of the kind seen at the bottom of the screen on Sky News. Doubtless if it had been Rupert Murdoch would have had it on Sky Jesus Live for only ten pounds a month, but that's an aside. Thirty quid for one of his poxy dishes and all I get is adverts, adverts, adverts.

I blame, of course, 20th Century Fox. Had it not been for the remake of The Omen I doubt if anyone had noticed. But Rupe's bottomless appetite for money must be sated, and so we have another pointless remake to go along with The Poseidon Adventure. This is what I call a Columbia Idea. The men at Columbia are desperate for a hit and are stood around the ideas barrel:

"How many ideas are there left?", says one.
"Just the one," says another.
"Get me Jet Li!"

Although this is without doubt the funniest thing I have said to date, it has nothing to do with my prevailing theme and I apologise if the reference is obscure. I am, of course, talking about civil unrest.

People don't think much of us. As I type a police helicopter is cruising over ASBOville just across the hill, in case the poor try to escape from their council houses and wreak havoc on the defenceless middle classes of LE3. All papers have moved news of the hideously complicated process of building a government in Iraq or the brewing diplomatic storm at the UN between the US and everyone else ("Do as you're told!") in favour of Wayne Rooney's foot or John Prescott playing croquet. This is because we are deemed unable to grasp the fact that as Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott may in fact have an answering machine for when Vladimir Putin rings and so can spend what was actually five minutes in his garden holding a croquet mallet, or that invading Iraq may have backfired for other reasons than that they are foreign and so too excitable to be trusted to look after their own oil.

Add to this the heat and hayfever and it's a powder keg waiting for a spark. In my case, the spark is badminton. Yesterday was my storied return to the court and to be frank, I sucked. In three games my team lost 3-15, 3-15 and in a rousing, never-say-die finale, 4-15. I sweated progusely and hit my hand with my own raquet. I woke this morning feeling like I had been savagely beaten.

Really I have no-one to blame but everyone else. I lack any hand-eye co-ordination. I hated PE at school. Nick, who's a teacher, says that this is because of bad PE teachers. He may have a point. A lot of my teachers have faded into a kind of generic memory of a person stood in front of a whiteboard or being unable to use a video. But Mr Penford, Mr Payne, Mr Margetts, Mr Swann, Mr Thorpe, Mrs Johnson, all these are names burned into my soul with a thermite lance. Even as a nine year old I could see that I was lacking in brio on the playing fields, but if I asked exactly how I was supposed to hold the mysterious object I had just had thrust into my unwilling hands (a hockey stick, rounders bat, tennis raquet, rugby ball, javelin, whatever) I would immediately have the piss ripped from my shivering frame by everyone, including the bastard in the tracksuit who was supposed to have told me in the first place. They would then disappear, laughing and fulfilled, to jump, run and catch as I waited in a corner of the field for death's sweet kiss.

Perhaps it wasn't that bad. But it did irk me that although I couldn't run the whole length of the Sheppey Canal or climb a rope with one hand or even catch a ball thrown gently from six feet away, I could at least string three bloody words together. I was out of my element. I was also seethingly jealous. It's complicated. Really, in those pre-national curriculum days I was lucky to have learned anything at primary school at all except Beatles songs in assembly and how to program a Big Trak. This is scant consolation, however, for the fact that I am currently walking like a man with hips made of cake mix.

But I have a weekend in London with James and Lousie to look forward to. Nick and I play at The Walrus on Friday night (tickets still very much available, by the way) and then it's off to a play at the National Theatre. I can't tell you what it's called or who it's by as I forgot immediately after James told me, but it is apparently about Aztecs and Conquistadors. Fair enough. My contact with indigenous South American civilizations has been limited to seeing every episode of Children Of The Lost Cities Of Gold when I was a kid, except for the last one, which I missed. I immediately lost patience with that kind of thing and to this day do not give the tiniest toss about Lost or Alias or 24 or any of that bollocks. It's amazing the aversions you have from that age. Like PE.

It's a tangled web we weave, and no mistake. Thank you for your patience.
Good Night and Good Luck,
Dougal