Nerd Do Well (13 page)

However, neither occasion quite matched the levels of hilarity that ensued on the day Mr Miller sat on the corner of his desk and farted it to pieces. Bear in mind, I was a typical eight-year-old, for whom bodily functions, slapstick and the humiliation of authority were among the most amusing things on the planet. Now imagine, if you will, this triple threat of child-spazzing rib-tickling comic factors being unleashed on a class of thirty-five eight-year-olds, all of whom were likely to be buzzing on sugar and tartrazine from all the Space Dust they had ingested at break time. It was comparable to a bomb going off, a blast wave of gut-busting hilarity that spread through the room in a microsecond from Mr Miller’s red-faced ground zero at the front of the class.

It happened in tiny increments as I remember. Mr Miller sat on the edge of the desk, which shifted slightly; the sudden exertion of the correction he had to make to regain his balance resulted in a double blow-off; two little rasping braps, accompanied by an expression of amused shame on his face, before the table suddenly lurched, cracked and then collapsed on to the floor with Mr Miller on top of it. There must have been a nanosecond of disbelief and amazement at the confluence of this combination of farcical ingredients before the class exploded into frenzied, screeching giggles, which Mr Miller simply had to allow, since his embarrassment and indignation would have only made it worse.

The ramifications continued long after the event, with random class members suddenly bursting out laughing, the result of post-comedic stress disorder. Mr Miller himself grew used to the odd light-hearted raspberry, which would erupt behind his back, accepting the reminder with a reluctant nod of the head. He actually moved up with us from Class 5 to 6, so that we enjoyed his company for nearly two years. I’m sure he privately lamented not getting to teach a new group of kids, one who hadn’t witnessed the calamity.

However, the incident in no way undermined his status among the children; such was his reputation, it could withstand any ignominy, even a furniture-destroying guff. The first thing I think about when he comes to mind is resting my head on my arms, closing my eyes and listening to him read us those classic stories. It’s only after further reminiscence that a smile twists itself across my face and my shoulders start to shake at the thought of his marvellous, impromptu and entirely unintentional comic
coup de grâce
.

Like most riads, Pegg’s consisted of a living space built around a central garden or courtyard, with the majority of the building’s windows focusing inwards on the central outdoor space so as to give the residents protection and privacy.

The transition from the featureless mud-brick exterior to the often ornate atria proved an inevitable surprise to those unfamiliar with this introspective architectural style, but how much greater would that surprise be if the unwary visitor witnessed a sleek black stealth aircraft lower itself gracefully into the centre of the building, as the zellige-tiled fountain folded in on itself and the citrus trees, heavy with fruit, parted to allow the silent aircraft to further lower itself into its subterranean hangar? They would probably shit themselves.

The hangar had been built by previous resident Sean Connery back in the seventies in order to house the personal helicopter he assumed would be commercially available to the general public by 1981, but alas it did not materialise until 2006, by which time Connery had sold the riad to Pegg and moved to a delightful property in Spain with two tennis courts and a weather-changing laser cannon which he sold to the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck who gifted it to his daughter Liza.

The hangar remained intact until Connery vacated it in 1995, used mainly for storing wine bottles and mountain bikes. On his purchase of the property, Pegg had the hangar tastefully restored to house his experimental aircraft. He had to smile to himself when he went to see the first
X-Men
film at the Canon, Frogmore Street, in Bristol, and noticed that the students of Professor Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters had a similar hangar in their basement but there was no way he had stolen the idea because his was built when Bryan Singer was just a gay baby (gaby).

‘Power down,’ said Pegg, easing the hefty bird to a perfect landing. ‘Secure the tethers.’

Canterbury’s metallic digits flickered over a bank of instruments and the sound of clamps, closing around the landing gear, resonated through the plane as it released a final, breath-like whine.

‘Welcome to Morocco,’ said Pegg like he always did when they landed in the riad, usually around Easter and the last half-term break before Christmas.

‘Should we start looking for her?’ enquired Canterbury.

‘Let’s get some rest,’ said Pegg. ‘You need to recharge and I didn’t really get any sleep on the plane because
The Shawshank Redemption
came on the TV and I was only going to watch the first ten minutes but I ended up watching it all.’

‘Get busy living or get busy dying,’ mused Canterbury.

‘Look, I’ll be a mess if I don’t get at least six hours,’ snapped Pegg. ‘It’s all right for you, you’re a robot.’

‘It’s a quote from
The Shawshank Redemption
, sir,’ said Canterbury apologetically.

‘Oh, yeah.’ Pegg inwardly cursed his failure to pick up on the reference. ‘I’m tired, I told you,’ insisted Pegg. ‘Otherwise I would have definitely got the quote and probably quoted the next line back to you. Give me another one.’

‘You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?’ asked Canterbury in a perfect imitation of the actor Tim Robbins.

‘Not a general knowledge question,’ said Pegg testily. ‘Give me a quote from
The Shawshank Redemption
.’

Canterbury’s neural servos whirred quietly as he considered his options. His vocal capacitor crackled very slightly before he spoke.

‘Brooks was . . .’

‘Here!’ screamed Pegg triumphantly. ‘Brooks was here. I love that bit when the old man hangs himself because he can’t hack it in the real world. It’s so funny!’

Pegg’s hysterical laughter echoed around the hangar as he performed a short self-congratulatory dance.

‘Y’see, Canterbury?’ trilled Pegg, ‘You have to be firing on all cylinders to catch me out when it comes to quoting
The Shawshank Redemption
.’

‘Indeed you do, sir,’ conceded Pegg’s lovable robotic counterpart, ‘indeed you do.’

Pegg stretched the ache of confinement from his toned body, snapping a crackle of pops from his crispy joints. He was in the best shape of his life, but as he had wittily attested when his
Raiders of the Lost Ark
VHS
had become unwatchable due to overuse, ‘It’s not the age, honey, it’s the mileage.’ To say Pegg had seen action would be a gross underestimation of his exploits and adventures over the years and his body was worn from too much brawling and having it off. Despite the wear and tear, he was still well fit in both senses and looked genuinely good in skinny jeans, which is rare for someone in their thirties.

Pegg stabbed at a button on the dash and a ramp extended silently to the ground beneath the jet. Pegg disembarked with his faithful robotic assistant, butler and acupuncturist in tow and took a lungful of the warm night air.

‘Let’s hit the medina first thing,’ Pegg suggested. ‘If the Scarlet Panther is here, we’ll find her, and when we do, she’ll wish she’d never set foot in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquity.’

‘Do you think she’ll be easy to find, sir?’ enquired Canterbury.

‘That depends on whether or not she wants to be found,’ said Pegg knowingly. ‘If she’s in the mood to remain inconspicuous, we could be eating couscous for days. If she’s feeling playful, she’ll come straight to us. In which case, there’s a Wimpy out near the airport; I’ll probably grab myself an eggy bender.’

‘She will come to us?’ said Canterbury, confusion in his synthetic voice.

‘If I know the Panther like I think I know the Panther, then yes, we just need to make our presence known. Should have brought the personal helicopter rather than the stealth jet,’ Pegg mused. The pair were silent for several moments. About eight.

‘Will that be all, sir?’ enquired Canterbury, aware he was due to recharge his power cells.

‘If you’ve got enough juice, can you nip over to that vending machine by the bus station and get me a Coke Zero?’ said Pegg with childlike hope.

‘Of course, sir,’ Canterbury replied immediately and without complaint. ‘I’ll use the usual disguise.’

As Canterbury pottered off to prepare for his errand he stopped and turned back to his master. ‘You think we’ll definitely find her then?’ He faltered slightly. ‘The Scarlet Panther that is.’

‘I hope so,’ replied his handsome creator, pausing dramatically before saying it again. ‘I hope so.’

Canterbury nodded. ‘Remember, Red,’ he said, once again quoting Frank Darabont’s much-vaunted prison saga, ‘hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.’

‘Who the fuck’s Red?’ enquired Pegg.

In 1979, the news that there was to be a
Star Trek
movie proved immensely exciting to me. Thanks to the renewed interest in science fiction generated by George Lucas, BBC2 had started showing the original series again at 6 p.m. so that I would invariably find myself wolfing down my evening meal so I could leave the table and rush to the living room in order to boldly go.

Prior to this (and of course
Star Wars
), my budding inner nerd had been serviced by a variety of sources. Like most young boys, I became obsessed with dinosaurs at a very early age and can recall roughly sticking together a model Allosaurus long before I should have ever been permitted to wield powerful glue.

My love of big creatures and dinosaurs and films like
The Valley of Gwangi
and
The Land That Time Forgot
was further sated when I discovered David Attenborough presenting a TV show called
Fabulous Animals
. The show aired as part of the BBC’s afternoon children’s programming schedule, and covered such famous myths as the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman, as well as examining the more classical creatures from Greek and Roman mythology. I watched it avidly; not entirely certain that it wasn’t a documentary about creatures that might exist or in fact did exist at some point. I remember desperately wanting to believe in the Sphinx and Phoenix and being certain that these histories must have some foundation in truth. It was the beginning of my love for unexplained phenomena at a time when I was far more Mulder than Scully.

I remember being annoyed at my mum for interrupting my viewing of
Fabulous Animals
one winter evening, then promptly forgetting about griffons and centaurs, as she informed me that my grandfather had died. I was six years old at the time and that memory will always be inextricably linked to David Attenborough’s soft, breathy voice. It’s interesting that I should recall so precisely what I was watching on TV at the time. I’m not sure whether it was the shock of my first bereavement that imprinted the moment so vividly in my memory or the sharp contrast between the fantasy of the show and the reality of my mother’s tears. I certainly didn’t understand the concept of death, and as such, I didn’t truly experience a great sense of loss, I just remember feeling guilty that I had complained about missing my show, as I witnessed Mum struggling to give me the news, a sight far scarier than the Abominable Snowman or the Fiji Mermaid.

A much happier monster memory involved going to see
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
at the
ABC
on St Aldate Street with my dad. We walked the five or six doors down from our shop to the cinema, where two years later I would see
Star Wars
and where five years before I had entered my first ever theatre. Witnessing Ray Harryhausen’s marvellous animations on the big screen was amazing and I watched open-mouthed, even more than I had done at my grandmother’s house a year or so before, when Dad had introduced me to
Jason and the Argonauts
. I look back at both films as seminal moments in my development towards geekdom.
Jason and the Argonauts
had a particularly significant effect on me, becoming the focus of much of my art and stories for some time afterwards. Dad and I would re-enact scenes from the film with me as Jason and Dad as the bronze giant Talos. He would kneel very still then crane his neck round making a loud creaking noise, at which point I would erupt into giggling screams and attack him with a plastic sword. Earlier this year, director John Landis invited Ray Harryhausen to cameo in
Burke and Hare
. Ray signed a copy of his book for me and gave it to John to pass on. To be honest, I’m quite relieved he didn’t give it to me in person: I probably would have erupted into giggling screams and attacked him with a plastic sword.

My other nerdy pre-
Star Wars
interests included the television series of
Planet of the Apes
,
Lost in Space
(for which John Williams provided the score),
The Invaders
, Gerry Anderson’s marionation classics,
Thunderbirds
,
Captain Scarlet
and
Joe 90
, Jon Pertwee as Doctor Who and the animated series of
Star Trek
. The cartoon version of the classic live-action TV series ran from 1973 to 1974 and featured original cast members providing their voices. As a pre-schooler, I found the live-action show a little scary and I much preferred the animated adventures. It wasn’t until after
Star Wars
, as my interest in the genre became more sophisticated, that I started to lap up the live-action adventures of Kirk, Spock and that Scottish guy. Even then some of the episodes would give me a serious case of the creeps.

An episode called ‘The Corbomite Maneuver’, in which Clint Howard, star of
Gentle Ben
and brother of the more famous Ron, plays an alien child, who uses a terrifying alter ego to put the shits up the
Enterprise
crew, gave me an equal if not more intense case of the space willies. The scary proxy’s name was Balok and his appearance was deeply troubling to me as a child. A dome-headed, blue-tinged humanoid with piercing slanted eyes, his glare was so intense it forced me to hide behind my hands and make squeaking noises. It was a triumph of model-making at the time and the programme-makers made good use of it by featuring his image in the closing-credits stills montage of the show, so that even if I hadn’t been frightened by the episode, I’d get a dose of Balok all the same. The montage wasn’t always the same though, so watching it would amount to a game of visual Russian roulette. Would it be the green Orion slave girl caught in the middle of her sexy dance, or would it be Balok with his terrifying death stare? Interestingly my daughter makes the same face now, when she’s filling her nappy. Maybe that’s what Balok was doing.