Wednesday, April 04, 2007

strife on mars

My name is Rill Super. In 2007 I had a terrible accident, I took a wrong turn off the Edgeware Road and when I ran out of petrol I found myself back in 1973. Am I in the North, in a coma, or did I go back in time? The bakelite telephone in the dusty corridor rang. I picked it up. ‘Rill’, said my agent, ‘we’re trying to get you back’, he continued, ‘but there’s been a code twelve at the old factory.’ ‘Trouble at mill?’ I replied. ‘What’s a code twelve anyway?’ ‘Theft of the introduction to a spoof 1970s TV show that was on telly last night’, he said. ‘You mean All Creatures Great and Small?’ I asked. ‘No, All Creatures Great And Small was a real 1970s series, not a send-up’ he corrected me, ‘and it wasn’t on TV yesterday’. ‘It was up here’, I pointed out ‘It’s shown on a continuous loop, only interrupted by broadcasts from President Botham.’ ‘My God, it’s grim up north’ said my agent. ‘So what do you want me to do?' I asked. ‘You have to solve the case Rill, get all the facts’. ‘Facts?’ I said, ‘but I’m a journalist’. ‘Looks like you're buggered then love’ said my agent and hung up. Would I ever get back to 2007? Would people stop pointing at my haircut from 30 years in the future and laughing? Would everything be hunky dory? Could I send a distress signal to the outside world, it was still the seventies here in the north, surely I could find some flares? One thing I did know for certain though: cue apt contemporary music clip and roll credits…

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of an advert one a bus yesterday by 'Stonewall'.

It featured a guy in a seventies jacket and a cigar.

And the slogan said 'Homophobia - It's so over..'

Now I am against homophobia as much as the next man, but given a choice between someone who wears a 1970s jacket, and some americanised twat who uses the phrase '..so over.' I would definitely be voting for the guy in the jacket.

Why can't people speak English - we are not in America, and we bloody well don't want to be...

Mutterings and Meanderings said...

Rilly, ref: All Creatures Great and Small – that’s the window you’re looking at, not a flat-screen telly ...

Stay at home dad said...

You poor dear Rilly. It may be that you are just toooo busy to put all the letters in the correct places or it may be that you've been away from home for so long that you've simply forgotten. But of course it's Edgware Road, as we all know down here.

I do hope this isn't the start of a trend.

Sahd

rilly super said...

anonymous, it seems to me that the ever so cliched image they used in that ad slightly contradicts its own slogan. That chap sounds so village people, are you sure it wasn't a spoof ad?

mutteerings, damn, think you might be right dear - just realised that I can open the TV and hear the birds singing, but it's a bit smelly too so won't be doing that again - oh, wait, I see james herriot is standing behind the stunt cow ready to film another tricky calving...oh, yuk..

stay at home dad, thanks ever so for dropping by. Actually you've really made my day because now that the kind of people who read Wife in the north just to correct her spellings are coming over here I know this blog has made it. Hope you come again soon dear.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant!

Anonymous said...

rilly, Understand where you are coming from, but I forgot to mention that the seventies man had a speech bubble, and he was saying something like 'Well, you don't have to be homophobic to work here, but it helps'. Which come to think of it is also a very naff thing to say. Maybe that in itself will shame people to be a bit more open-minded'.

Or knowing the 'youth of today' they will say 'Whatev-ah' / 'Do I look like I'm bothered' / 'Talk to the hand', or whatever other daft Yankee catchphrase is spreading like H5N1 through the hoodies of the country...

Anonymous said...

stay at home dad - Ah, but Rilly is correct. Like a lot of 'television' shows based in London / fictional southern town, they would have been filming in Bristol [Think 'Only Fools & Horses' / 'Casualty' etc.]

And here it is spelled 'Edgeware' - so maybe not strictly accurate as a representation of London, but a fair portrayal nevertheless...

Perhaps you could add it to those 'continuity errors' / 'bloopers' on IMDB when you have a spare minute?.

Stay at home dad said...

It's very kind of you to write in support of Rilly, anonymous. She certainly has a lot on her plate and one jibe too many might well push her over the edge. (And it looks a long way down from the photo).

On my free (London) Evening Standard DVD containing the first two episodes, it says it is in fact based in Manchester so now I'm very confused. Not confused enough to actually watch it though.

Sahd.

Anonymous said...

stay at home dad - hmm..maybe as I don't actually have a television I am straying well outside my area of expertise...

I liked the advert a few years ago [possibly for a nippy town car] where drivers were taking their car down a tube station called 'Anyware'...

rilly super said...

ahh, just your mention of the london evening standard has touched me where I haven't been touched in a long while stay at home dad...

Touch me
It's so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun...

sob...

Anonymous said...

Oh, don't cry Rilly dear, there, there, it will be alright. To cheer yourself up, perhaps you could think of a suitable topic for your next post which will allow me to do a contrived and rather lame update of one of Prince's pop 'hits'.

I wouldn't want you to feel that I was being guilty of 'favouritism' by doing this for 'Wifey' [albeit rather poorly] and not for you dear.

Perhaps something about the time when the weather was autumnal, rain was in the air, and the sky was purple...

Or when life was getting to you so much that you were thinking 'Let me go crazy'.

Or maybe M&M once lent you a funky cap, on which she had accidentally spilled some raspberries...

rilly super said...

gosh anonymous, nobody's ever written a Prince song for me before. That's so romantic, oh if only I'd found you when I was younger, sigh...