I.A.M. Musing About…

Given the fact that we couldn’t afford to get me to FantasyCon, how in the hell am I here now? Simple: last year’s motor accident which occurred inside of my first two hours on the Sceptred Isle resulted in the criminal charge of ‘dangerous driving’ against the chap driving the motorcycle which grazed my car and then collided head-on with the vehicle behind mine. Strongly suspecting that the only ‘independent testimony’ available of the incident is mine, I agreed to travel to Warwick to provide testimony in the case of R v. ****** so that justice might be fully served, and seen to be done so with all relevant evidence fully presented.

The Witness Services people were very kind when dealing with me, and even made my return flight two weeks after my arrival so that I can meet with people here over the extra 10 days resulting from this scheduling change. Originally I had hoped to have a plethora of meetings and events, but everyone seems to have gone to ground, probably due to the World Economic Crazy-ness having an especially deleterious effect on the publishing industry, as well as any other one which doesn’t produce what is considered ‘staples’ such as food, fuel, clothing, and other obvious necessities of life. Extravagances such as collectors’ books, high-end chocolates, fine wines, flat-screen televisions, full-scale models of Germane Greer; sales of all of these have plummeted due to being perceived as ‘luxuries’. Some of us still have priorities which include the aforementioned (although I’d want a full-scale replica of a TARDIS, preferably in working condition), but not in the amounts which support those providers of fine items require to sustain their usual forward-planning and production models of better economic times.

As it is, my schedule is rather thin on the ground regarding business events, but as there’s already at least one that I hadn’t even vaguely suspected to encounter, this ability to be available ‘at the drop of a hat’ has proven invaluable. But more of that once we attain the city of Londinium (as it was once known by the Romans).

You may recall a few posts ago that there exists the slight possibility of encountering a ‘wall of fatigue’ caused by jet-lag around the 72-hour mark following take-off. Those of you who are more adept at maths than the others might be able to anticipate where this mark was reached sooner than the rest, and you are to be praised for working out that it struck mid-morning as I was in the midst of giving testimony. In fact, given the sudden bridling demeanour upon cross-examination, it’s likely that an examination of the court transcript would reveal the precise moment of its grasping of my ballocks and not letting go for the balance of the day. Following the 20-minute or so experience (which included taking my seat after swearing the oath before being pointedly commented by His Honour that I ‘clearly wished to sit whilst giving testimony, then?; to which I quickly rallied and asked ‘if I might so do?’ whilst mentally filleting my pancreas with a small hatchet…)

It would seem that the description of the precise sequence of events of the motorcycle’s movements — appearing, accelerating, crossing the double white line, swerving to avoid my vehicle, sadly mis-judging the rabidly decreasing distance of the side of my vehicle and the side of the motorcycle, and so on — which I had just given under oath did not exactly echo my account in a post here, and which was written shortly after returning in mid-October last year and long before I had any awareness of charges being laid against the gentleman.

I panicked and bristled. Not a bright move, but this is what happens when under stress and also suddenly wanting to lie down for a nap at the same moment. The identification of myself as being an actor, theatre director, business man, etc., only added to that due to really wanting to let that portion of myself fade away as ‘yet another set of bad choices’, however accurate they may be; indeed, the description was nigh-on word-for-word from the bio here on the blog. Bugger me.

Anyway, all of that was over and done with eventually, I was thanked for my time, I went to have lunch at the near-by Caffe Nero, feeling a tad shell-shocked and emptied of any energy. As experienced as I may be on stage, having an entire room full of people hanging on every syllable coming from one’s mouth — and the order in which things occurred within probably ¾ of a second at most, a full year in the past — and the result of those details having a direct effect upon the life of a fellow human being… well, it’s a bit of a drain for any thinking subject of Her Majesty, isn’t it?

I shot some more pictures on the way back to the Inn, then had a lie-down.

While composing this in London some days later, there is no word of the jury’s finding regarding the charge laid. It may not be possible to find out, but the query may also not be put. Ultimately, it’s no-one’s life but his, and if he’s found guilty or not it’s his matter to deal with the results; whatsoever they might be.

This same day the British P.M. announced a new scheme to solve the impending world-wide economic depression. Initial reactions were positive, and the World’s leaders seemed to be embracing it in a manner that suggested they were thinking ‘thank Christ we didn’t have to rely on George Wack-O Bush to come up with some other half-baked scheme; he might have suggested a 50/50 raffle or a bake-sale next’. Among the predictable signs that at the end of the previous week’s trading that things were on the down-swing (increases in prices of gold, silver, and oil, for example), there were a few oddities on the trading floor in the UK: the values increased dramatically for stocks in small / micro-breweries, as well as those for the maternity needs consumer-market retailer Mothercare. Clearly the message the traders were sending was that ‘when the economy goes in the dumper, everyone will still want to get pissed and fuck each other like bunnies.’

And people say the Stock Market lives in a world of its own! Based on the above, wouldn’t you disagree? You know it makes sense…

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 1:50 am and is filed under BLOG-O-RAMA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.