by Simon Pegg
I didn’t have quite the same feelings towards Mrs Harvey, although I liked her enormously and looked forward to seeing her every day. She was the first teacher I ever accidentally called ‘Mum’, much to my enormous embarrassment, but I think this was due to the relaxed, informal atmosphere she engendered in the classroom. She was also a slightly softer touch than Mrs Hortop, and the rowdier boys, the ones that befriended me on the first day, pushed their luck a little more forcefully with her, trying to look up her skirt and asking asinine questions like ‘What’s love juice, Miss?’
One of the key factors in my appreciation of Mrs Harvey was that she was something of a nerd. She didn’t look like one particularly. She was pretty with a fuzz of curly black hair and dressed in loose blouses and flowing skirts that you had to lie on the floor to look up. Not that I did, nor in fact needed to. I have a vague memory of being able to see her legs through the material when the sun shone through the classroom window and giggling breathlessly about it to whoever was next to me, probably Sean or Lee or Matthew Bunting, a boy I eventually drifted apart from due to conflicting feelings about sport (he liked it, I didn’t).
Mrs Harvey’s nerdiness extended mainly from her fascination with the paranormal. She had a grandmother who was reputedly psychic and Mrs Harvey would regale us with stories of how her granny participated in regular conversations with dead relatives. These stories would simultaneously thrill and terrify us and inspired us to sit at her feet (trying not to look up her skirt) or gather round her desk at any given opportunity.
It wasn’t just the spirit world that fascinated Mrs Harvey; we had long discussions about Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster as well as other aspects of parapsychology. She particularly nurtured in me a fascination with UFOs and even gave me a book on the subject called Mysterious Visitors by Brinsley Le Poer Trench, which featured a pictorial supplement, illustrating how certain biblical conceits, such as the luminous cloud/pillar of fire that accompanied the Israelites, or the ‘wheel’ witnessed by the prophet Ezekiel, may have actually been visiting spacecraft. I still believed in God at the time, as children tend to do, and this made stuffy old religion ten times more interesting.
We discussed how the immense geoglyphs carved into the Nazca Desert floor, which can be seen only from a great height, could be messages intended for extraterrestrial visitors. I loved talking about this kind of thing. I had been fascinated by unexplained phenomena from a very early age. I avidly watched television shows such as Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World and In Search of . . . presented by Leonard Nimoy (a man I would eventually meet on an ice planet called Vega 4). I subscribed to The Unexplained,5 a monthly magazine about the paranormal, which could be collected into volumes and housed in an attractive binder, available gratis if you purchased all twelve issues.
Looking back, this fascination was formative in my journey towards geekdom, further inspiring an existing love of all things alien and unknown that compelled me to close the curtains whenever I watched The Clangers,6 or enjoy spending time underwater. Thirty-five years after Mrs Harvey handed me Mysterious Visitors, I found myself in the deserts of New Mexico with my best friend Nick, making a film about an alien called Paul, who enlists two British nerds to help get him back to his spaceship, idly wishing I could fizz off back to 1978 and let me know.
Around this time of fantastic, inspiring teachers, we were lucky enough to also be taught by the limping, storytelling genius that was Mr Miller. Stern yet avuncular, he inspired a similar desire for approval as his predecessors but somehow made that approval even more of a mission to attain. Maybe male approval was more important to me because of latent abandonment issues brought on by the creeping realisation that my father had walked out on me as well as my mother, although I never really thought of their divorce in those terms, at least not until I was older and even then I didn’t regard it in such a self-pitying, egocentric way.
Still, these experiences do manifest themselves in our behaviours and it’s fair to say I looked for fathers for a while, despite having a brand-new step model at home. But perhaps the desire to please Mr Miller was keener, simply because he was enormous fun when he was pleased and quite scary when he was cross. He was the first teacher to make me stand in the corner and it made me cry with shame and disappointment. For some reason the whole class had collectively decided to make the popping sound achieved by putting your index finger in your mouth and firing it out against the inside of your cheek. We’ve all done it to demonstrate how the weasel goes at the end of that bizarre nursery rhyme. The Class 5 popspasm inevitably got out of hand and Mr Miller sternly proclaimed that the next person to emit a finger-assisted explosive would be in big trouble. Without thinking, I called his bluff. He wasn’t bluffing.
I realised I had been quite literally cheeky, the moment I felt the air on my wet finger. Mr Miller ignored the wave of suppressed tittering that skidded across the room, and zeroed in on the transgressor, me. The order to stand in the corner was given with what I can only describe as disappointed indifference, as if in that one second he had given up on me completely. I sobbed remorsefully in the corner until he took pity on me and relieved me from my position of shame. I can’t remember exactly what he said to me (something like ‘try not to be such a silly billy’), but he said it comically from the corner of his mouth and accompanied every other syllable with a painless kick up the backside, which was harmless and affectionate but today he would be fired for.
I remember Mr Miller with great fondness; his natural air of authority was gently undermined by the pronounced limp, which gave him an appealing vulnerability. He had a wonderful way with words, regularly using antiquated phrases such as ‘by jove’ and ‘by jingo’, and referred to our schoolbooks as ‘goods and chattels’.
He was undoubtedly the best storyteller I had ever encountered (perhaps second to my dad who I still recall reading me The Hobbit when I was just four). At the end of each day, we would all put our heads down on our folded arms and listen to Mr Miller read from a variety of books which continue to exist in my memory because they were all read to us with such passion and vigour. Tom’s Midnight Garden, The Little Captain and the Seven Towers were delivered in daily, nail-biting instalments, and I attribute any understanding I have of the importance of drama in narrative storytelling to Mr Miller and what was clearly his and our favourite part of the school day.
The other significant recollection I have of him is far less salubrious but remains fixed in my memory as one of those occasions where laughter segues into great heaving sobs, indistinguishable from hysterical crying and emotionally not that dissimilar.
There are two more occasions on which I recall this happening during early childhood. The first occurred while watching Morecambe and Wise perform a sketch in which Eric, dressed as a Cossack, was repeatedly pulled off the front of the carriage he was driving by a disobedient horse, while Ernie sang a love song to a female guest. With each successive ‘giddy up’, Eric would leap out of shot and the level of my hysteria would increase, until I was helpless on the living room floor.
The other transpired as a result of a game I was playing with Sean Jeffries, which involved running towards one another in the dark at high speed, wearing vampire fangs, illuminated only by torchlight, presumably to try to elicit some sort of visceral scare. On the fourth or fifth iteration of the ‘my turn/your turn’ cycle, Sean came haring round the corner of his house and fell over on his arse. It doesn’t sound particularly funny in the recounting but it crippled me with laughter at the time. I folded up into a breathless heap on the floor for about five minutes and howled uncontrollably at the night sky. I wrote about the event in my schoolbook the following week, as part of an essay about my weekend activity, complete with a drawing of Sean, bearing his fangs, mid-skid.
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 f
unctions, 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.
5
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 Zer
o?’ 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.
Fabulousity
I
n 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.