I think I'm dead. I awoke a few minutes ago.
I'm dressed in a pair of familiar, faded Dangermouse pyjamas, and I'm lying in what looks very much like my old bed, with my old Star Wars duvet and my collection of bingo markers stacked, labelled and hermetically sealed in their special containers just under the photo of Carol Voderman. Mother came in just now with a tray. Scrambled egg on toast, a cup of sweet tea and a little gingerbread man with a smiling face. Just the way I like it. All as it should be. Except last time I checked, I was inside a stolen plane, plummeting towards certain death... my mother was dead and I'm sure I threw away my Dangermouse pyjamas sometime during the mid nineties. I'm both confused and hungry. I'm going to eat something. I have eaten my scrambled egg, toast and gingerbread. I have drunk my tea. It was very nice, although the crusts had been cut from my toast. I always used to eat my toast sans crust, but I tried asking for the waitress to cut the crusts from my toast once in a roadside diner in Birmingham, America, early on in my travels.
She looked at me as if she had just popped a Werther's original in her mouth and forgotten to take the wrapper off, and suggested cutting off something else entirely.
So over the past few months of hard travelling I have grown accustomed to taking my toast straight, and coping with whatever crusts life threw at me, both figuratively and literally. Mother always used to cut the crusts from my toast. It's this attention to the little details - like the crusts, like the stain on my duvet just over Han Solo's blaster, like the crack in the bedroom window where the badger dropped from the sky, like the loose floorboard (under which I keep the bingo marker reputedly used by Sir Thomas Telford himself in the bingo marathon of 1893) - that concern me.
If this was, as I first thought, some sort of elaborate copy of my bedroom created by the Americans or the military or Country Life, then I would notice subtle things wrong with it, but it's absolutely perfect in every tiny detail. Except my Mother is here, and my pyjamas are here, and that's impossible. So I must be dead, and heaven looks exactly like Shropshire, which really just confirms what I've been saying all along.
I'm not dead. It turns out there is a more rational explanation. The plane did crash, but we had two important factors in our favour.
It had run out of fuel, so we didn't explode, and we crashed into the swamp that extends from my old back garden to the edge of the Bletchley Road, which lessened the impact of the impact.
To illustrate, try dropping a marble into some thick soup, or a trifle, or some mushy peas, or a tub of hair gel, or now I come to think of it, try dropping a marble into some swamp.
Then try dropping the same marble onto a concrete floor. You'll see how important the swamp factor was in our landing. From my bedroom window I can see the last of Morris One's fuselage slowly sinking into the marshy ground just behind the greenhouse, like Artax in the Neverending Story, conveniently and completely destroying any evidence that I borrowed a luxury jet.
Yet again, Shropshire provides. My Mother is alive. It turns out she faked her own death so I would come home. Which, when you think about it, is perfectly rational behaviour for a loving Mother who misses her little poppet. And I did throw away my Dangermouse pyjamas in 1996, but Mother retrieved them from the bin bag. At first I was angry that my Mother had faked her death.
Angry that she had lied to me, angry that she had concocted an elaborate story that made me blame myself for her death, angry that she didn't let me do my own thing. Then she told me she had recorded every single episode of Countdown I'd missed while I was away, and to be honest (with the thought of all those unwatched hours of conundrums awaiting me) it was hard to stay angry. Even using long play, she used sixteen E180 VHS tapes. Jim Hawkins of BBC Shropshire interviewed me today. My words will be going out on the airwaves to the good people of Shropshire, and I expect a significant media frenzy following the broadcast. I may have rambled a bit on the radio show. I remember pointing out that even the gravel in Moreton Say seems that bit more special then the gravel anywhere else.
It was just the excitement of media attention, the professional studio, the complimentary cup of percolated coffee and the little visitor's badge that said "Morris Telford - BBC".
I could feel the buzz of excitement in the radio studios as I arrived, the receptionist... I've arrived on the Local Radio scene and the world is once again my oyster. From now on I'm Mr Action, Mr Go-Getting-Day-Seizing-Super-Achiever, Mr Man of the Hour. Morris Telford - Media Dynamo.
Spent the day watching Countdown. 20 episodes back to back, one after the other, a non-stop Countdownathon. It was one of the happiest days of my life. It's funny, when you watch Countdown in bulk like that, you can tell which episodes are filmed in groups.
For a few episodes Carol's hair will look one way, then it will change for the next few and so on. It was quite fascinating.
I wrote a brief email to Channel 4 suggesting they re-run old episodes of Countdown back to back all day, every Wednesday. I'm sure it would boost the ratings. During the salad years, when I was saving up (preparing for my Salopian Odyssey), I fashioned a rudimentary life-size replica of the Countdown studio out of farmyard machinery and scarecrows.
The big clock was made from the flywheel of a combine harvester, the desks were bales of hay, the scoreboard I borrowed from a local cricket club.
And I spent ages altering some scarecrows to look like Carol Vorderman, Richard Whiteley and Richard Stilgoe... Well, I spent ages altering some scarecrows to look like Carol Vorderman and Richard Whiteley.
After spending all yesterday watching Countdown, I dreamed about Countdown.
I dreamed of a world where every corner was dictionary corner, every woman looked like Carol and on the hour, every hour the church clock rang out the countdown theme tune - "Da-da da-da diddly-dum
. Doooo!".It was beautiful.
Watched more Countdown today too. To be fair though, I had to watch Countdown, I can't go out.
As an expression of her love for me, my Mother has hidden my passport and locked me in my bedroom. She isn't very keen on me setting off again to change the world.
When I say she isn't very keen, if I start to talk about travelling again she puts her hands over her ears and starts screeching "Mother can't hear you" in a sing-song harpy lilt that makes my teeth itch. Talking of teeth, Aunt Felicity just got back from the dentists. Aunt Felicity suffers with 'dry sockets', which is only slightly more unpleasant than it sounds.
I'm not sure if they actually re-moisten the sockets at the dentists or just fill them in, but I do know that it affects everything that Aunt Felicity says for the week or two after the dentist appointment.
Trent, Obican and the remaining Alaskans came round again this morning and interrupted Countdown. Aunt Felicity answered the door.
When they asked if I was in, I could hear through the gap under my bedroom door that she was trying to say "Yes, come in, he's in his room".
...But it came out as a sort of strangled, retarded sound and they left presuming it was some local dialect they were unfamiliar with. I'm sure they'll be fine anyway. I've bought them a barn and they are equipping it with items salvaged from Morris One.
They will soon have one of the few barn conversions in the area to boast a Jacuzzi, a home cinema, an inflatable staircase, an open fireplace built from a converted jet engine and enough complimentary peanuts to last nine lifetimes. I'm going to break out tomorrow, but while I'm here I may as well watch the rest of the Countdown tapes. Da-da da-da diddly-dum Doooo.
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