And it also meant that from 1963 onward, John Landi sold a lot more bananas.
Perhaps for that reason the idea took off.
Almost immediately Australians of the north, south, east, and west realised that they could draw major national attention to their farms, their businesses, and even their hobbies just by building huge, colourful statues in honour of whatever was at the core of their obsession. From Sydney to the Sunshine Coast, just like Lizzie had told me, these Big Things began to line the highways and byways of Australia. Naturally some garnered more praise and plaudits than others … the Big Pineapple of 1972, experts agree, is probably the most successful of all the Big Things, and in the seventies and early eighties really brought pineapples and pineapple-related issues to the foreground. But the Big Oyster, a towering testament to the vast oyster beds of the Manning River region, is something that few Australians like to talk about. It plays, they will tell you with their eyes fixed to the floor, a sad second fiddle to the Big Prawn, only a few miles to the north.
I was beginning to really love Big Things. And right now, sitting in an office at the BBC, I was clicking my way around the Web, finding out all about them. I was fascinated. And I was slowly finding my favourites, too. The Big Rock, for example (imagine that!), or the Big Avocado, to be found at Duranbah’s popular theme park, Tropical Fruit World (formerly known as Avocado Adventureland, an experience which sounds only marginally more appealing than an afternoon at my very own Shelf Adventure).
“Dan, can I have a word?”
It was my boss’s voice, and I spun round in my chair, deftly quitting the Internet as I did so in order to hide the words Tropical Fruit World from my screen. Sadly all it did was bring up the game of Minesweeper I’d been playing earlier, but my boss politely ignored it.
“Listen, say no if you don’t want to, but there’s a meeting over at TV Centre later this week—some kind of development thing—and they want someone from radio to attend. Everyone I’ve asked seems very busy all of a sudden. Funny how everyone gets busy when there’s something they don’t want to say yes to. So how about you? Can you make it?”
“Yes!” I said, proud that I was bucking the trend. “Definitely. What kind of meeting is it again?”
“Development. The usual thing. People sitting around coming up with ideas. But you’re up for it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Great. I’ll tell them. Thanks, Dan. And enjoy Tropical Fruit World.”
He closed the door, and I decided I’d better get on and do some work.
Working from home is a great thing, but so is working from BBC Broadcasting House—home to a thousand scruffy, cardiganed radio producers. Part of my freelance contract demanded that I spend a couple of days a week sitting in one of the offices here, working up ideas, and that was just dandy by me.
I’d worked for the BBC ever since leaving university, when I’d somehow talked my way into a six-month traineeship in the Light Entertainment department, and now here I was, a bona-fide Light Entertainment producer, a few years shy of thirty and my first-ever cardigan. What qualifies as Light Entertainment I’ve never been sure, though you and I both now know that cardigans are involved, and I’m fairly sure it also has something to do with Nicholas Parsons.
But Broadcasting House is a fantastic place to work, steeped as it is in glorious radio history—from Churchill’s wartime addresses to the comedy of The Goons—and it was always with a sense of genuine pride that I walked through the huge, brass doors with my special BBC pass clipped to my jeans. Fair enough, it’s not as if I was the man charged with making the type of quality journalism that the world has come to rely on as the most trustworthy and respected on the planet. It’s not as if I was one of those who were bringing down governments or exposing corruption or staying up all night poring through secret dossiers and turning them into the next day’s global headlines. But I was one of the ones making silly and obscure little programmes that might pass the time on the commute home or be heard by a lonely shepherd tuning in to the World Service somewhere on the Savannah Plains or confuse a prisoner in some jail somewhere with a topical joke they blatantly wouldn’t understand, because they’d been inside on arson charges since 1987. It’s a strange job, but the way I think of it is someone has to be heard by the shepherds and confuse the prisoners.
So anyway, I was trying to get some work done. I really was. But there were a couple of things against me. The first was the growing realisation and excitement that my life was in the hands of just about everyone else in the world, but not me, and that just one well-placed yes to one well-placed opportunity could change or improve, or if Ian was to be believed, destroy my life forever. And the second thing that was against me getting any work done today was that there was very little work to be done. I was between projects. Sure I could start a new one. But that would just be making work for myself. Who does that? And anyway, who wanted to work when they could dance and play outside in the sunshine, saying yes to people willy-nilly, instead? I started to stride out of the office, looking at all the world like someone who was on his way to a meeting at which he’d say lots of important things, involving words like “merger” or “hierarchy”; the kind of meeting normal men would faint in, and women would avoid for fear of leaving the room impregnated by the sheer weight of the testosterone in the air. Testosterone that probably smellt like quality aftershave. Real men sweat that stuff.
“Hi, Danny,” said a voice to my left, all of a sudden.
“Hello!” I boomed, still imagining myself to be quite important.
“How are you?”
It was Robert, a technician I’d worked with on a rather intense weeklong edit. An edit which had actually seemed like it was closer to a month, mainly because Robert was cramming for a pub-quiz final and kept stopping every five minutes to tell me a little-known fact about the animal kingdom or to ask me to test him on what was number one in the charts in specific weeks during the 1990s.
“I’m fine, thanks, Robert.”
“Waiting for the lift?”
“Yep. Are you?”
“Nope,” he said.
And then the lift arrived, and he got in with me.
“I’m going to have a little party next week, Danny. Nothing fancy, just a few friends from ‘the industry.’”
He used his hands to signify the quotation marks, and then laughed and shook his head as he enjoyed what he’d done.
“I was wondering whether you might like to come along?”
Ordinarily this would have been a tricky one to answer. It’s not because Robert is a boring man—he’s not, and I’ll always defend him on that—it’s just that he’s terribly dull.
“Of course I would, Robert,” I said, pleased at least that I’d have another thing to pop in the diary. “I’d be delighted, in fact.”
“Oh, cool. Ace. You’re the only one from the BBC who can make it! Everyone else is really busy at the moment.”
“I’ve been hearing that, yes.”
“Okay. Well. I’ll e-mail the details to you, okay?”
“Great.”
And with that, Robert and I stepped out of the lift, we shook hands, and he stepped back in and went all the way back up.
It was still sunny as I walked down Regent Street, and I was smiling. Since my scratch card win, I’d started to wonder something: What if, potentially, every single moment I was awake could lead to somewhere wonderful? What if all I had to do was keep my eyes wide open and welcoming? After all, the man on the bus had made me realise that sometimes the little negatives of daily life don’t have to be negatives at all. The crush of the Tube, or the bus that doesn’t stop for you, or the nightclub that won’t let you in … Before I’d thought of those as self-contained little moments. I’d never really considered that they might be beginnings, that they might lead somewhere, that they might be for the best. And this was precisely the attitude I needed when I headed for the underground and saw something that, only days before, would ha
ve made my heart sink and my body weary: a huge, seven-wide queue of people, spilling out of Oxford Circus station and onto the street.
Once again the Tube was at a standstill. I joined the back of the queue and looked around me. Perhaps a hundred people were here, with more on the other side of the street, all of them waiting for the station to reopen, all of them cursing their luck or shouting into their phones or kicking their heels in the sun. It was a tired, frustrated mob, and for a moment I was nearly one of them … until I remembered that the last time this kind of thing had happened to me was the night I’d met the man on the bus. And then I realised. This was perfect. This was another opportunity to see what life would throw at me! Did I want to stand here by a busy road with its dust and honking horns and smoke, or did I want to treat this as a chance? Did I want to stand here with an angry mob of commuters and tourists, or did I want to do something? What if I just walked away? What if I just walked past the Tube and just took life as it came? What would happen?
So I walked.
That night I walked to wherever the wind seemed to take me. Down Oxford Street into Soho, toward Picadilly Circus, and then Leicester Square. I was walking slowly, willing opportunities to come my way, but gradually noticing things I’d never noticed about London before. Just little things. Like the statue of Charlie Chaplin in the centre of Leicester Square. Or the telephone boxes in Chinatown that have been crafted to look like pagodas. Or the tiny dance put on by the little wooden peasants hidden inside the clock at the Swiss Centre, which they perform faithfully once an hour, on the hour, to the delight of tourists and tourists alone. I was starting to discover that for someone who lived in this city, I really didn’t know it very well.
I walked toward Holborn, exploring Fleet Street and stopping to study a plaque in honour of someone called Wallace. I walked through Chancery Lane and sat on a bench in the city of London, while I watched a man in a suit silently fit an entire bagel into his mouth. I sauntered and I meandered and I ambled along … and before too long I realised I was most of the way home. It was strange. Before, I’d always rushed my way around my city. London was just the collective term for lots of different places I’d had to get to, quickly. But tonight… I’d walked home. Slowly. And taken everything in. And enjoyed it. I had gradually rediscovered, and then quickly fallen back in love with, my own city.
I arrived back at my flat late but relaxed and happy. I shoved a curry into the microwave, flicked on the kettle, and sat down at my computer to check my e-mails.
Hi! I’m Sandi! Would you like to see me get hot and wild with my college roommates?
Now, I didn’t know who Sandi was, but she seemed friendly enough, and it was a lovely offer, but it could wait.
Another e-mail came from Robert the technician with full details of his party. “Bring a fact!” it read. “Stump a stranger and break the ice!”
And that was about it.
I got out my diary, added the date of Robert’s party, and added all the other things I’d said yes to today. But I was disappointed. My walk around London had enthused me. Surely I could find something else to say yes to?
I sat on the sofa with my cup of tea and started to idly flick through the Tower Hamlets Recorder—a newspaper I tend to hide when being visited by my mum, seeing as how every other story tends to heavily feature one or more of the words “stabbing,” “robbed,” or “police believe the muggers are targeting the bespectacled”—trying to find something of interest.
There was the usual array of crime. A fete. An article about a historic bench.
But there on the opposite page, tucked away next to a birthday advert and a picture of a very old cat, was the following important announcement:
The Starburst Group Would like to invite anyone and everyone to our third local meet-up! Come along if you are nterested in aliens, telepathy—anythink! Blind Beggar, Whitechapel, Wednesday, 6 p.m. Ask for Brian.
An invitation! To anyone and everyone! Including me!
Granted it looked a bit strange. Usually I’d go to great lengths to avoid hanging around with anyone who says “anythink” instead of “anything,” but not this time.
I smiled. Wednesday was tomorrow. I made a note of the address, I switched the computer off, and I went to bed.
Well, no, hang on.
I smiled, I made a note of the address, I clicked on a link and looked at a colourful picture of Sandi getting hot and wild with her college roommates, I smiled again, I switched the computer off, and then I went to bed.
Smiling.
The Blind Beggar pub, not too far from my own home, is a piece of East End legend.
It was there that Ronnie Kray, one of London’s celebrated gangster twins, the Krays, shot and killed a burly ex-con named George Cornwell. Every cab driver in London will tell you that they were there the night it happened, and it’s best to just keep quiet when they say this. According to police reports, the only two other people who were there that night were a couple of rent boys, and I can tell you from experience that cab drivers don’t like it if you ask them what it was like to be a 1960s male prostitute.
The Krays, of course, did something almost everywhere in East London. Grab a pensioner in the East End and point at whatever you like.
“Yes,” they’ll say. “That is the very wall that the Kray Twins probably once saw on their way somewhere. Are you a tourist? Can I have five pounds?”
Of course some landmarks are more famous than others. There’s Pellicci’s Café, in which the Krays used to do their business and drink their tea. There’s Turnmills Nightclub, where Mad Frankie Fraser got shot in the head and lived to tell the tale. There’s the house on Evering Road in Stoke Newington, where Reggie Kray stabbed Jack “the Hat” McVitie. Who, before you ask, was a man and not a hat, and will doubtless remain that way until The Animated Adventures of the Kray Twins finally gets the green light.
The Blind Beggar, though, is the true East London Krays experience, and a bit of an odd choice for the Starburst Group to hold one of their meetings in, to be honest.
“Of course,” said James, one of the people I’d correctly identified as a Starburster, “I know someone who was here the night it happened. Saw the whole thing.”
The others—Laura, Bob, and Brian himself—all looked fairly impressed.
“Is he a cab driver?” I asked.
James looked at me, shocked. “Why, do you know him?” he said.
I decided it would probably be better for me not to introduce myself to the group with lighthearted tales of male prostitution, so I shook my head and said, “No.”
The Starburst Group, it turns out, meets once a month in various pubs around London and is essentially made up of these four people, the odd guest, and one other regular, who was currently on holiday in Malaga.
“There are others, though,” said Brian. “Plenty of others. Many in the States, a couple in France, and of course there are hundreds on the mailing list whom we’ve never met. Though I doubt we’ll ever truly meet them….”
Brian looked knowingly at the others, and they chuckled.
“How come?” I asked.
“Let’s just say they know a little more about us than we do about them,” said Brian, and Laura, I think, mouthed the word “government.”
I was excited to be here. Saying yes had introduced me to my first bunch of strangers. Strangers with some rather strange ideas.
“So,” said Brian, “Bob’s got some things to run past us on his pyramid theories. Bob’s our resident Egyptologist, Danny.”
“Right!” I said, enthusiastically. “Brilliant!”
“Do you know much about the pyramids, Danny?” asked Bob, who was bald with a silver-grey-haired goatee and a waistcoat with little moons on it.
“Er, well, I know that they’re in Egypt.”
“That’s right, very good,” he said, sincerely. “But who built them?”
I thought it over. “Egyptians?” I tried.
Bob smiled. “That wou
ld certainly conform to popular opinion,” he said. “While it may be true that some Egyptians were involved in the process, I think they may have had a little help.”
At this point Laura, who was still wearing a hat even though she was indoors and there was central heating, made a little mm-hmm sound as if to confirm what Bob was saying.
“Who do you reckon helped them?” I asked.
Everyone looked at me, ready to gauge my reaction.
“Aliens,” said Bob.
My reaction was to blink a couple of times and then say, “Aliens?”
“Think about it,” said Bob.
I thought about it. It didn’t help.
“Are you completely sure about this?” I said.
“Actually, Danny, it’s not all that far-fetched,” said Laura. “Studies of ancient hieroglyphics show that the Egyptians often talked of beings from the sky who would impart great wisdom and bestow wonderous new technologies upon them. If you look at ancient Egyptian art, you will see many unusual shapes, some of which do bear an uncanny resemblance to spacecraft.”
James nodded and looked enigmatic. Brian sipped at his lemonade. Bob continued.
“Moreover the Pyramids at Giza are built in the exact layout of the stars in Orion’s Belt. And when you divide the circumference of the Great Pyramid by twice its height, you get the figure 3.141.”
“Pi,” said Brian with a wink.
“But … do aliens have pi?” I said. “Why couldn’t it just have been some Egyptians who, you know, were good at building?”
“A possibility! Certainly a possibility!” said Bob. “But there is absolutely no record of who built them. And the Egyptians recorded everything. Wars, kings, pharoah worship, everything that went on. But not the building of the pyramids. Odd, eh?”
Brian let out a sudden and short burst of totally inexplicable laughter.
I tried to work out how simply not knowing who built the pyramids meant that aliens did it. I mean, I don’t know who nicked my bike from outside Loughborough Leisure Centre when I was nine, but it seems unfair to lay the blame at the feet of our extraterrestrial cousins. If they have feet.