Author: James Lark

Yesterday was, of course, anti-Bush day. For weeks us British people have been happily united in talking about how we shall stand up and shout loudly at George W. Bush so that he is made aware of just how much we hate him. Oh, how shocked the American nation will be! we have gleefully been chortling over our sherry.

Being British, of course, when push comes to shove we don’t really like shouting. We don’t really like doing anything at all. Most would-be protesters probably realised yesterday morning that they had a very important quiche to put on instead. Or something.

The BBC have very helpfully put a detailed diary here highlighting precisely how nothing at all of significance happened yesterday. Some people went to London, one of them was George W. Bush; the protesters were generally outside, George W. Bush generally inside, so there was little chance for friction; a man sang some songs through a megaphone and a policeman told him to stop – he stopped.

So meagre were the actual events of the protest that a whole section addresses the fact that “One man has just been arrested outside Buckingham Palace after he apparently stole a policeman’s hat.”

Whilst I applaud the Wodehousian spirit of the man in question, I must ask whether this is really the height of what we as a nation can achieve when we decide we want to protest about something. Stealing a policeman’s hat is surely the kind of thing we expect after the boat race, not when we’re standing up to challenge a lying, cheating, hypocritical, clueless maniac with no more regard for human life and rights than a wet wipe.

Oh, but wait – spare a thought for the real victims here: “The main casualty appears to be the Queen’s flower beds which have now been thoroughly trampled.”

That the actions of one well-meaning but ineffective protester could cause such horticultural damage upsets me deeply. George W. Bush, having seen not a single protester because

1. they were mainly in a different place to him
2. they were mainly at home and
3. he is the most blinkered individual on the face of the earth

will go away thinking “what nice folk.” The American nation will think “what a welcoming country,” because that is all their TV networks will show. Our own beloved Queen, on the other hand, is probably inside her living room, peeping out of her net curtains at yesterday’s devastation, and weeping at what has been done to her flowers.

In short: we’re crap. The irony of the phrase “couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery” is far exceeded by the simple improbability of “couldn’t organise a protest during a state visit by George W. Bush.” Much as I hold to the assertion that George W. is one of the most useless twats in the history of the world, I am sorry to say that I have come to similar conclusions about the British people. At least George gets himself noticed.

Given the current political climate, what with George W. strutting around our little country and terrorists eagerly looking for targets, one can not be too careful. Especially when one works in a Government Office, as I do. Sure, this isn’t Whitehall, we’re dealing with development in the East of England rather than major national policies. Even so, we’re a target.

I was therefore shocked that when, about fifteen minutes ago, I detected a suspicious package in the office, my warnings were treated with jovial levity.

Yes, it looked like it may well be the business cards we were expecting to arrive. But bombs and business cards share many superficial similarities when wrapped up – characteristics of suspicious packages taken from advisories issued by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the United States Postal Service give the following examples:

– Letter bombs may feel rigid, or appear uneven or lopsided (this particular parcel was all of those).

– Mail bombs may bear restricted endorsements such as “Personal” or “Private” (it said “documents enclosed”, which is a fairly restricted endorsement).

– The addressee’s name/title may be inaccurate (or, more suspiciously as in this case, entirely accurate; clearly we weren’t dealing with amateurs).

– Mail bombs may reflect distorted handwriting (not having a mirror on hand, I was unable to check this).

– The return address may be fictitious or absent (there was NO return address).

– Mail bombs may have excessive postage (this one had insufficient postage, surely even more suspicious – not only were these terrorists professionals, they were mean, penny-pinching professionals).

– Package bombs may have an irregular shape, soft spots, or bulges (it was all of these things. “Oh, but it’s two piles of business cards,” my colleagues argued. Yes, or two bombs, you silly people.)

– Package bombs may make a buzzing or ticking noise or a sloshing sound (it made a crackly, popping sound, like bubble wrap).

Well, I issued my warnings, I declared to the office that we were in mortal danger, I did my absolute best to create a genuine bomb scare (and certainly on a personal level achieved an ostentatious, if slightly camped-up, aura of panic). But at the end of the day the parcel was not addressed to me and I was forced to hand it over.

Naturally I was relieved that it turned out to be business cards after all, but I can’t help feeling that if it had been a bomb my colleagues would at least have taken this brush with death a bit more seriously.

Film makers have long been out of good ideas for films. Generally unable to come up with their own plots, and having ravaged British history, mythology and – worst of all – being in the process of ravaging British films, big Hollywood companies have, for the last ten years, methodically plundered what must surely be the bottom of the barrel where film inspiration is concerned. Computer games.

This would have seemed a ridiculous idea back in 1986 when computers were invented. If anybody had told me and my playmates as we grappled with Chucky Egg on a BBC micro that it was going to be turned into a blockbusting film, we would have laughed in their face.

We’d have gone to see it, of course. That’s the point, isn’t it? They sell. It hardly matters that the films are, without exception, irredeemably rubbish. (Though I would say that this summer I went to see a film based on a theme park ride and I thoroughly enjoyed it.)

Looking back to the games I played when I still thought that kind of thing was worth doing, I wonder what film masterpieces we might have got if Hollywood had got its act together a little sooner. What would a film version of Pacman have been like? Probably very surreal, possibly racist. How about Dizzy and its magnificent sequels (the computer game equivalent to Lord of the Rings), or my personal favourite, Rainbow Islands (with that title it could have been the first computer-inspired gay movie). Young folk today will have no idea what I’m going on about, and if I had a bigger house I would invite them all round and show them just what they’re missing out on.

Although I have a feeling my parents have moved my computer into the loft. Oh, the shame, the ignominy, my poor little Amstrad CPC464. You had to wait in those days for games to load, you would watch the tape go round and listen to the noise of a game loading – “duur diiiiiiiir, durrrrr, diiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”. There’s none of that these days, and I warn you all, we are breeding impatient children.

Anyway, it seems to me there is one vital and universal game that has not yet been exploited by the film industry: minesweeper.

Why has this beautifully constructed, tense and dramatic game been ignored? A film version could take full advantage of the vagueries of its actual background as far as plot is concerned, building up a fascinating scenario within which to interweave every ounce of the excitement of the game itself.

What the film should play on more than anything else is the unfairness of it all. It is a very very unfair game. Okay, to a large extent it is a game of skill, but there is an element of chance. There’s the first square you click on, for a start – there is no way of knowing, you just can’t tell, and what a tragedy it is when your very first choice of square reveals a mine, and the little yellow smiling face (who I see as being played by Danny DeVito) crosses his eyes and weeps.

It is also possible to get yourself into a position where, having almost finished a game in an unbelievably short time, you are left with two little grey squares, under just one of which lies a mine – and there is no way of telling which.

Oh, the heartrending moment of choice. You have to guess! Time, and your potentially highest score ever, are ticking away…but which square is it? Will you choose right, or will you choose wrong?

I chose wrong. So my film is jolly well going to end in tragedy.

We tried something in yesterday’s workshop which was new to me: the idea was to say a word – we chose the emotive, if overused, “love” – but to precede it with a noise expressive of some emotion of the speaker’s choice. Step two was to then remove the emotional noise and just think it, resulting in an internalised emotion apparent in the manner of the word’s delivery.

That is the theory, at least.

It is an interesting and surely useful technique for loading every word and every sentence with emotional meaning and intensity. Something that, as an actor, I was keen to try out more. So I’ve been doing it at work today.

All morning, before saying anything at all, I have carefully internalised a wail of anguish, a choking sob or a groan of resignation, with the result that the most insignificant comment or query – “this payment should have been processed two months ago,” “has anybody seen the file for Bulb Product Development?” or even “would anybody like a cup of tea?” – suddenly elicits responses of great sympathy and concern.

That is the theory, at least.

In reality, the last question merely elicits a response along the lines of “ooh, yes please,” “remember I have two sugars,” “can you pass the biscuits round as well?” Not one person has reacted to my internal agony in the slightest, not even with a troubled look or reassuring smile. I have been considering reasons why this might be – I momentarily worried that my abilities as an actor were at fault, an idea I naturally dismissed without too much thought. Perhaps my colleagues are simply thoughtless, inhuman and uncaring – a more likely theory. Or maybe they just don’t like me.

The actual reason is far more interesting. While the idea of internalising an emotion before speaking was new and exciting to myself, over the course of the day I have gradually realised everybody else in the office does it already. All the time.

There is a girl opposite me who makes every single thing she says sound like a threat of suicide. Spoken by her, the words “can I use the stapler?” cause a ripple of panic to pass around the office, hands suddenly poised over telephones to call for help, sharp objects quickly concealed in drawers. Clearly, this girl is preceding each word with an internal scream of desperation.

Another woman makes everything sound as if she’s just taken some bread out of the oven. “We’ve just had a complaint from a client who says we’re Luddites,” she’ll say, and everyone will sigh cheerfully and think of Hovis. I suspect she thinks about puppies a lot.

My boss is an impressive woman who somehow makes “I’d like you to do some photocopying” sound like she is bestowing the order of the garter on you. She undoubtedly precedes every sentence with the words “I am the Queen” (I am sure of this because she sometimes says it out loud).

It is an interesting discovery that while we at the Uncertainty Division have to practice ways of giving emotional context to our words, ordinary office workers have somehow perfected the technique. Perhaps office temping is not such a bad training ground for a resting actor…

That is the theory, at least.