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Mike
Mike 2
The Problem With Trolleys
Dear Martin,
A few words on a subject close to both our hearts (or should that be "our self-plexes"?)
It was on Sunday that I heard of the death of Douglas Adams, while we were visiting some friends. One of them mentioned it, and then switched the conversation capriciously to the subject of the latest developments in "Brookside" - as if nothing more important than the death of a family cat had taken place. I have never felt my mood change so instantly. Having been extraordinarily happy that day, laughing and joking with everyone, suddenly I could do nothing but sit there stunned, completely speechless with shock while the party continued around me. I wanted to leave, but that would have been rude. I was OK after about ten minutes, but it really hit me the next day, on Monday morning. I don't often feel like actually crying in my car on the way to work, but I happened to play the tape in the stereo and it was the end of the first radio series, Fit 6th. Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World" was just a little too appropriate. I ended up rather upset, I'm afraid.
My Rubik's-Cube desk calendar is still reading "Friday May 11", the day Douglas died. Somehow I can't bring myself to change it yet. I'll have to soon though, because I keep entering the wrong date on the computer...
This enigmatic creative genius ('author' does not cover it) touched my life in so many ways. He supplied a large portion of my vocabulary ("Whinnet-ridden", "Belgium, man!", "Don't talk to me about life", "Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson brain" etc.).
He gave me a way to cope with a one-hour commute to work, via a set of tapes of the HH radio series and a knackered old cassette player in my first car.
He introduced me to the concept of scepticism and gave me a healthy palette of anti-establishment cynicism from which to select philosophical shades in my later search for a suitable approach to life.
He wrote in a thousand shades of grammar, many of them unconventional but highly effective. To Douglas, a few words could be worth a thousand pictures: "A dustbowl... snow... my legs, drifting off into the sunset!"
He managed to combine ideas in ways that no-one else could ever have dreamed of: Philosophers and trade unionism; fish, linguistics and telepathy; poetry, aliens and time-travel; cricket and galaxy-wide wars against fanatical nihilistic folk-singing hippies...
Through the marvel of the BBC radiophonic workshop, he was the stimulus for some of the most wonderful sound effects ever devised: the universe ending, complete with plughole-gurgle; a man being put into the Total Perspective Vortex; the sound of the book itself - which has been the Windows startup sound on my PC for a couple of years now.
He had a totally off-the-wall modus operandi. Imagine a radio series where the Earth is demolished in the very first episode! Or where characters are reincarnated for a second series by arranging for the beast that devoured them to spontaneously re-evolve into "a really neat little escape capsule". That makes the shower scene in Dallas look a bit lame! (not that that is difficult, but that's not the point).
I would love to have been a fly on the wall when he and John Lloyd were writing "The Meaning Of Liff"! I can't even begin to imagine the intensely hysterical and creative (not to mention drunken) atmosphere as they conjured up gems like "Blandford Forum: A particularly dull kind of Radio Four chat show".
Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the book-signing in Bristol that fateful day in the late seventies, but my sister could. She met him, and I'm eternally jealous. At least I got my books signed though. I can't help wondering if someone discovered exactly what he was for and why he was here. Perhaps we should expect an even more bizarrely inexplicable person to replace him - but I don't think that would ever be possible.
Goodbye Douglas.
We apologise for the inconvenience.
Mike