Thursday, July 5, 2012

The God Gene Engineer


Ladies and gentlemen, we can re-build us. We have the technology. The Office of Genetic Intelligence has seen the future, and that future is truth. Today, we embark on the greatest medical adventure the world will ever know: the elimination of God.
   Ladies and gentlemen, the OGI brings you iDeus66.

They’d messed with her head, those God people. All those lies. Waking to find an empty cage and her mother and father telling her that Ted the budgie had flown away to a hotter country. Convincing her that Mij the otter in Ring of Bright Water had not been decapitated by the clumsy workman with his axe; that it was a distant cousin of Mij, whose death didn’t matter because he was a naughty otter.
   The fairground fish, Daisy and Bill; the dogs – Nancy, Jock and Poppy; Napoleon the cat; Prince the toad. All of them, she was assured, having a fun time in the pet heaven, where she, too, would one day join them in the house next door, but only if she was good.
   Christine Bryant, the most hated girl in school, who stole your hopscotch stone halfway through every game, had also been to see Ring of Bright Water and told her, the next day, that her parents had lied: that Mij was well and truly otter meat, and she grieved all over again, but thought that maybe the pet heaven would be able to put him back together.
   They took her to Sunday School for the first time one Easter, in a straw boater held in place with a piece of elastic that cut into her neck while she sang There is a Green Hill Far Away. She liked the countryside and thought that the green hill sounded as if it was quite a nice place, probably with an ice-cream van, until the bit where it said that it was where a man was crucified to save us all. She struggled with the meaning, but, in time, she learned that the crucified man had said that you couldn’t have something called sex unless you were married to the other person, and that you must never touch yourself, whatever that meant, too. He also said that if you ate your greens, he would give you more pocket money and you would get nice things if you prayed for them, although at Christmas you had to say a different kind of prayer to a man called Father Christmas, who was somehow related to the man on the cross. And if you did all these things, you would have your reward in the same place as the crucified man, who was looking after the animals; although she hoped that he wouldn’t ask her to put her finger in the holes of his hands, as he had made the people do in her Children’s Bible.
   Her fear kept her close to God – fear of repercussions, fear of punishment, fear of one day being separated from everyone she knew; but most of all, it was fear of the unknown alternative. All she had been told was that there was a place called hell that was very hot, and that the man with horns who lived there was very bad indeed - worse than the TV Daleks on Doctor Who, worse than the Cybermen - and there would be no turning back, no second chances, once you were banished to that place. So, at thirteen, she was baptised by total immersion, water filling her ears and emerging to hear the congregation singing “Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah!” She was told that from this point on, everything would change, now that she had given her life to the Lord; but after she dried her hair and changed out of her wet white dress, she had difficulty summoning up the emotion she was told she would feel. Sipping her tea - barely warm, too weak - as the church deacons fussed around her, she was filled with nothingness; if anything, she felt as if a piece of her had been taken away, handed over on a platter like John the Baptist’s head – another picture that terrified her in the Children’s Bible. Desperate to be one of God’s Chosen People, she continued to study the Scriptures and tried to resurrect emotion in prayer, but now there was a hole where once there had been stories she believed. Then the minister who had baptised her ran off with the organist’s daughter and she decided to stop going to church.
   Still, though, she tried to stay in contact with her maker. She took Religious Education as one of her three ‘A’ Levels; she listened to Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven; she visited art galleries and tried to make sense of Blake; she sat on the beach to watch the sun go down, and the world she had been told was created by God daily filled her with wonder. Two years after she last stepped foot in a church, she went on a school trip to Venice and took a boat to the Island of the Dead, where she lit a candle in the church, giving thanks for her family and friends. But it all felt like the actions of an intruder into others’ emotions; every effort, an attempt to stir those same waves of emotion within herself, but failing. Art and beauty did not bring her closer to God; they were a constant reminder that the world was greater and more mysterious than the tales about the man in the sky; so vast and so unbearably painful to comprehend, that generations had sought to contain it under the umbrella of a supreme being, who was able to exercise control over the chaos. 
   Mary Donald finally lost her faith the day her parents died. Celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in August 2005, they had travelled to New Orleans to indulge their love of jazz. On their first ever meeting, at the Regent Ballroom in Hove, they had danced to the Syd Dean band playing Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World and had always vowed to visit the city that had given birth to their beloved “Satchmo”.
   Along with over 1800 others, they lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina. They had been in the city just two days and their bodies were never found. For weeks, Mary ranted at the kind of God who could authorise such a tragedy; but then, just as suddenly as grief had struck, it was as if the light of her parents’ lives extinguished her darkness as quickly as the hurricane had their own. One morning, she woke to feel her father’s hands brushing sand from her feet, when he sat her on a wall at the beach: the sadness of the closedown of day and the now distant sea, being replaced by the comfort of warm sock; the same cool hand she felt that held her forehead over the toilet bowl when she was sick, the powerful cup of his fingers bringing stillness to her hot, trembling head. She felt the warmth of the kitchen where she grew up in the small, terraced house that echoed the sea wind, and could taste the toffee her mother decided to make as a late night treat, the sweet smell of soft brown sauce that turned to brick; and, just as clearly, the cloying scent of her mother’s Lancome face powder, the finishing touch before her parents left the house for an evening’s entertainment at the Regent; the Imperial Leather soap in her father’s cheek when she reached up to kiss him goodnight; the Chinese food they brought to her on a saucer, long after she had been put to bed, hating to leave her out of any of their treats; and waking, like a newborn bird with open beak, for its parent to jump-start its belly into life. Her stomach once more leapt with the excitement of waking on New Year’s Morning, to the whistles, sweets, and foil hats with crepe streamers her parents left at the foot of the bed after their late night out.
   They came fast, now, the memories. That’s when she knew, and she felt as if she had never been more certain of anything. This was everlasting life: the things passed on. Of course. The thoughts, the memories, the ideas, the laughter, the love. She felt high on insight. She wanted to run into the street and tell everyone of her great find. Suddenly, she felt as if she could take the hugeness of it all. This was what it was to be human, and we lived on in every word, every gesture, in every atom in which we had ever shared. William and Anne Donald were living on in everything they had ever been. As a child, she had cried when the old Dr Who transformed into the new one, but she soon forgot; he was just living on in a different body, but the old Doctor was still there. Her parents had not gone anywhere; their history was their future, the everlasting life that she, too would pass on. Yes. That was the moment that Mary Donald lost God. She was 21 years old and it was a relief, finally, to be free.
                                                                           *
The Office of Genetic Intelligence was familiar with the God gene long before the geneticist Dr Dean Hammer announced his findings to the world in 2004. The man who had one time declared that he had discovered a gene linked to homosexuality designed a 226 question survey, aimed at determining an individual’s propensity for feelings of spirituality, or willingness to believe in a supernatural phenomena. He found that those with a tendency to embrace religion shared the gene VMAT2, which was said to dictate the flow of mood-altering chemicals in the brain. His findings had been met with derision and scepticism, which mattered little to the OGI, who not only believed that they had correctly identified the God gene, but also developed the necessary technology to eradicate it. The gene, iDeus66, was, said Dr Matthew Gosling, in his introductory speech to the new recruits to the OGI in 2008, essentially a truth drug. Truth was the very antithesis of God: a truth that had no need, nor desire for the constrictions imposed by the fiction of a superior being; a truth that would annihilate mankind’s fear of the unknown; a truth that would outlive death.
   It was as a result of reading Dr Hammer’s findings, however, that Mary Donald became familiar with the work of the OGI. Just over a month after her parents’ death, and beginning a PhD at Lancaster University, she found herself surrounded by like-minded people for whom faith was an aberration of the standard genetic code. She immersed herself in Bentham, Mill and Nietzche, researching the feasibility of building a moral structure in the absence of God. Having successfully eliminated God from her own life, she concluded that a godless society would be more conducive to Bentham’s greatest happiness principle, and, she suggested, the elimination of God was not only desirable, but essential, in bringing about the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
   She had been dating fellow student Robert Mentorn for nearly three years when she completed her research in 2008. He was, by everyone’s reckoning, a brilliant student. She had fallen in love with his mind before emotion took over, and although neither of them believed in marriage, they had talked of their combined futures during their first week together, as if it was an inevitability, rather than a decision that had to be made. Mary was glad that they had never felt the need to suffer That Conversation, when one party demanded to know where “it” was going, only to be met with the other’s negative response. Like her, Robert regarded himself as an orphan; he also shared her non-belief, and this, too, brought them closer. He was the son of a preacher and had lost his mother to breast cancer the week he received his ‘A’ Level results. He was with her when she died, but could not share his father’s comfort as the grief-stricken man lay his hand on the fading glow of his wife’s forehead, assuring her that she was going to a better place. When she went, Robert knew she was gone for good. In her final breath, he could hear no relief of a soul acknowledging its final resting-place; just the echo of a door slamming shut forever. He attended the funeral, where his father stood in his own pulpit and read from the Bible – “I go to prepare a place for you.” He survived his wife by just three months and joined her in the adjoining, pre-booked plot in the crematorium. Robert did not attend the funeral. Instead, he went to the pub, where he got excessively drunk and railed against the Life Thief called God, who had stolen his parents. 
   When Mary was contacted by the OGI, she was made to sign the Official Secrets Act even before attending the interview, and on the day itself she told Robert that she had decided to become a teacher and was attending an interview for a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education. She would never see him again. Six weeks before her first interview, he threw himself off the tower they called Suicide Watch on the university campus. He left her a note: “From nothing I came, and to nothingness I return. Be happy.” She Googled the phrase to check the quotation and glean what might have been his thoughts when he wrote it, but it seemed it had been his original work. His mother’s sister arranged the funeral, even though Mary tried to convince her that it was not what Robert would have wanted. She called Mary a bitch and ordered her to stay away from the church. Instead, Mary went to Lake Windermere for the day and tried to remember Robert’s voice, but it was already gone.
   For the first time in three years, she prayed or, as she preferred to call it, issued a summons: a summons to whatever power the universe held, to deliver the sound of his voice one more time. Occasionally, she caught a sense of him and wished she believed, so that she could picture him tucked into God’s pocket, the way she had remembered each of her grandparents when they died. One night, she fell to her knees and begged God to come back into her life, remembering: “Ask, and it shall be given unto you.” She asked. She felt her heart beating in the silence. She just didn’t have the God gene.
   She stayed in Lancaster and vowed to concentrate on her work and prepare for her forthcoming interview with the OGI. She bought a new red outfit and matching shoes, as if marking, with a big red tick, her new life. 
   The office was an unprepossessing building on the outskirts of the Yorkshire Moors and its existence was unknown to all but the select group of young scientists hand-picked to work there. Dr Matthew Gosling, who personally collected her from Leeds station, engaged in little small talk en route to the office, but he did say that they had been following her progress for some years and had, through a source he could not name, been made aware of her thesis. Mary was flattered. She assumed that nobody, apart from a few lecturers, would ever see what she regarded, in her best moments, as a small triumph in her circle’s escalating war on God; the knowledge that her work had made it beyond the university walls suddenly made her feel very grown-up.
   It was to be the first of 23 interviews. Mary talked about her upbringing, her parents, her schooling, her love life, and, it seemed, everything she had ever thought about anything. She talked about Robert. About how, following his death, little by little, but in a mere matter of weeks, memories defeated pain once more, just as they had when she lost her parents. She told them about the book she was writing: Everlasting, which challenged the church’s traditional concept about eternal life. And at no time was she allowed to, and nor did she, breathe a word about what took place during these clandestine meetings. It was clear that the absence of any living relative or emotional tie in her life had been a factor in her selection, for nothing less than total dedication to the cause was, said Dr Gosling, of utmost importance.
   She assured them of her independence and her devotion to scientific truth and the pursuit of happiness, based on the God elimination principles that had been central to her studies. On her 21st birthday, she received a call to say that her application to the OGI had been successful and they looked forward to welcoming her to the organisation. She packed a small case filled mostly with books and left for Leeds station where, as he had on every other occasion, Dr Gosling met her. She did not know, on December 12th 2008, that it would be three years before she saw the outside world again.
                    *
Andrew Tappen had been at the Wiltshire Daily News just one week when he landed the big one in January 1998. Two pigs, siblings named Butch and Sundance, had gone on the run from an abbatoir in Malmesbury, his home town. During their week on the run, they had managed to squeeze through a fence, swim the River Avon and take up residence in some neighbouring gardens. When they were finally found, it was Andrew’s job to try to buy the pigs to save them from slaughter, but his small paper did not have the funds of the national Daily Mail, which secured the animals from owner Dijulio, in return for exclusive rights to their story.
   Lost dogs, cats stuck up trees, sick cows - no minor animal story escaped his paper. “This story’s got legs,” his editor would call across the news-room. “One for you, Andrew.”
   When it wasn’t animals that were being spotted across the county, it was Jesus. Every day, readers sent in photographs of their latest sighting of a bearded man appearing in the most mundane of places. A slice of toast, a bathroom tile, a frying-pan – it seemed there was no place too humble for the Lord to make his presence felt in people’s lives.
   On June 26th 2008, Andrew would be marking ten years on the paper. He had celebrated his 30th birthday just before Christmas and did not need this second reminder of how life was passing him by. But his editor insisted on throwing a party for his loyal employee, and he was forced to grin and bear it as his colleagues catalogued his dubious record of trivial story-gathering.
   It was on Facebook that he began to follow the trail that would change his life.
                     *
Mary Donald was loving her work. She had not yet been assigned to any laboratory tasks, but under Dr Gosling’s tutelage was able to concentrate fully on her work and, inside the dark confines of the OGI, able to dispel thoughts of the life she had once had with Robert on the other side. It was, she thought, like her own version of heaven and hell: the outside world, with its wars and pain and suffering and, inside the OGI, a world of dedicated men and women, committed only to the pursuit of happiness.
   She knew little of how far the OGI had come with its development of iDeus66; her job was to collate names and addresses, separating them according to age, profession and religion. Marked for special attention were young women without children, and these went into a computer file marked Priority; only Dr Gosling and his colleague, Dr Annabel Winters, could access the file with a secret code, and Mary learned that you did not ask questions of your superiors, no matter how curious you might be about any aspect of the operation.
   It was the screams that woke her in the night. Loud, sobbing, female screams that made the walls tremble in her small bedroom in the OGI’s living quarters. She could not locate exactly where they were coming from, and when she first heard them she thought that she must be dreaming. She put them down to an over-active imagination and her grief at the loss of Robert, but one night she put on her dressing gown to try to track them down.
   They appeared to be coming from a room below the main building, but as all areas were locked at night, it was impossible to pinpoint the exact source. On the mornings that followed the screams, Mary watched her colleagues closely, for the tiniest sign of something that might give away the previous night’s activity; if they knew anything, they were not showing it.
   “Dr Gosling,” she said, one morning, when she felt brave. “I’m having a problem sleeping; there appear to be some very strange noises that I can’t quite identify.” She had been at the OGI for nearly two years and was hoping she had proved her loyalty.
   Dr Gosling said just four words: “Everything in good time.”
   That night, she heard the screams again and, shortly after they began, there was a knock on the door. She answered it to find Dr Gosling and Dr Winters standing there, and after ordering her to get dressed, indicated that she follow them.
   As they opened and re-locked each door, the screaming grew louder until, at the final door, it suddenly stopped. Mary found herself in a laboratory, although not one of the kind with which she was familiar, as there were more computer screens than she had ever seen in one room. In the far corner, she made out what looked like a body, handcuffed to the railing of an old-fashioned hospital bed. A man she had not seen before was standing close by, so still, that Mary wondered if he might be a waxwork. This, explained Dr Gosling, is the EGL, and it is where the creation that is the elimination of God begins.
                        *
“Jenna Crewe has invited you to be her friend on Facebook.”
   Andrew Tappen remembered Jenna Crewe. They had started on the Wiltshire Daily News together, but Jenna had quickly moved up the Fleet Street ladder. Not for her the two-bit stories about mobile sausage escapees.
   Jenna was returning home for a family visit and wondered if they might meet up. It was quickly arranged and they met at a pub called the Potting Shed in Crudwell.
   A decade on, and over a bottle of Shiraz, they talked easily. Jenna was now freelancing, but there was something on her mind.
   “Do you remember Matthew Gosling?” she asked. Matthew, Andrew recalled, had been thrown out of medical school for unethical conduct.
   “Yes, of course. Strange business. We tried to do a story on him but got nowhere.”
   Jenna placed a journal on the table, open at page six. “Take a look at this.”
   It was an article by Matthew Gosling, titled Goodbye, God . . . It Wasn’t Nice Knowing You. It talked about the joy of losing his faith and his mission to save the rest of the world from what he called “the God lie”. Science, he said, was the only truth, and had, within its grasp, the means to purify mankind by the removal of the errant God gene.
   “Wow,” said Andrew. “He’s really lost it. Where’s he working now?”
   “That’s just it. Nobody really knows. There was a Facebook group supporting his theories, but it’s now a cold trail. If you try to contact any of the members, you get nowhere, and not just on Facebook. They’ve vanished. All of them. Students, mainly. I just thought it might be one for you.”
   “Did any of them own a horse?”
   Jenna looked confused.
   “Sorry, it’s just my name is never first in the frame when the political intrigue stories come up in conference.”
   “I thought maybe we could work on it together, do a bit of digging.”
   “Woodward and Bernstein.”
   “Little and Large, more like.” It was an unwelcome reminder that, at six feet tall, Jenna, who would never look at any man under six three, would never be interested in Andrew’s seventy inches. Sometimes, God could be very cruel.
                      *
The God gene elimination process is, in essence, no different from that of the homologous recombination technique and, once the errant gene has been targeted and isolated, iDeus66 can destroy it without harming the foetus in any way. To treat more well-established genes, particularly those in adults over the age of 30, the procedure is more complicated, as the gene can prove resistant and, even, multiply itself, but there is every evidence to suggest that by the end of the century, the process of permanent god gene targeting will be standard procedure in our hospitals.
   Dr Gosling told Mary that she was ready to begin working in the laboratory, and as she finished reading her mentor’s paper she realised that she had inadvertently stumbled upon what might turn out to be the most important scientific study of her generation. Maybe she would win the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Her mind started to race as she read and re-read the work. No more wars; no more imposition of religious strictures designed to bring about nothing but guilt and fear; no more lying awake at night, worrying about what happens when you die. No. More. God.
   She could not sleep that night, and even when she heard the screams, she knew that the young mothers would one day be glad of the gene cleansing they had been privileged to experience at the OGI; in the long run, it would make their lives easier, even if they didn’t know it yet; it would certainly make the lives of their children easier.
   When she finally closed her eyes and fell asleep, she dreamed of her dead parents for the first time. They were not sitting at dining tables on fluffy clouds, surrounded by famous people; they were lying still, at the bottom of the sea, but large fish had started to eat at their bodies, starting with their eyes. At the end of the dream, there was nothing left of either of them. Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Water to water. When she woke, she cried, because she missed them. She missed Robert.
                       *
The leads on Matthew Gosling went cold in Yorkshire in 2004, but Andrew Tappen and and Jenna Crewe were persistent in their research. The doctor had been spotted a number of times in Leeds during the early part of 2008, but only at bus stops, railway stations and the odd café. They contacted old friends who might know his whereabouts; they visited his parents, his sister, his old employers, but he really seemed to have disappeared. They visited Lancaster University, where Mary Donald was known to have met him during her time at university there. They knew this because her boyfriend, Robert Mentorn, had written about it in his diaries. She told him she had an interview for a teacher-training course, but he found her diary and, suspecting she had not been telling the truth, read it. She had left all his belongings when she suddenly left, they said, but they had held on to them in case she ever decided to return, and it seemed heartless to throw away what were his only real remains.
   It was a cold December morning when Andrew and Jenna set off for the OGI. It was easy to find. Mary had detailed every step of her journey in her own diary, and Robert, for reasons of his own, had meticulously reported every detail in his. There was no obvious means of entry or exit, and they walked for half an hour before finding something that looked as if might lead to a main reception area. They lay on the ground behind a low concrete wall when they saw a car approach and a man emerge with a young woman. She seemed to be struggling to walk, and although Andrew’s instinct was to run to offer help, he resisted the temptation. They walked around the building once more, and when a light came on downstairs, in what appeared to be an annexe, they crept over to try to look inside.
   What they saw was Mary Donald, sitting upright, but rocking back and fore on her bed. They could not hear a sound through the obviously heavy glass, but they could see, from the shape of her contorted body, that she was sobbing convulsively. Jenna tried to get a clearer view, but the window was too high even for her, and so Andrew knelt on all fours to enable her to stand on his back. When they finally caught Mary’s attention, they said it was like looking at someone who had been eating nothing but darkness all her life.
   This manifestation of the other side, arriving so suddenly at her inner sanctum, induced in Mary a horror of the kind she remembered when they told her that her parents were never coming home. She beckoned to the face to go away, mouthing the words in silence, for fear of being caught in collusion with the outside world from which she was denied access. Finally, the face disappeared, but she knew it would be back.
   “We have to do something,” said Jenna. “What is this place?”
   “Warehouse of the Body Snatchers, if you ask me,” said Andrew. “Come on, let’s go.”
   The couple were surrounded before they even reached their car. Six men, all armed, pointed guns at them and, in their midst, stood Matthew Gosling. Andrew tried to make light of the situation and held out his hand. “Had a bit of trouble tracking you down on Facebook,” he smiled, but there was no response.
   “Take them inside,” said Dr Gosling.
   Locked door after locked door, and the pair finally arrived at the laboratory where Mary had first witnessed the iDeus66 experiments.
   Handcuffed to security rails on opposite sides of the room, they stared at Gosling, awaiting his next move.
   “Where do you stand on God?” he asked.
   “Sorry?” Andrew and Jenna spoke in unison.
   “Believers, or non-believers?”
   “Right now, I think I must be on the side of the believers, because I’m praying really hard,” said Andrew. Jenna wished he would stop trying to be a comedian and acknowledge the seriousness of the situation.
   Had events not taken the turn they did, the doctor would have told them what he had learned: that there was no God. He would have asked them to imagine the freedom, if they had known, once and for all, that it wasn’t true, any of it. Would it not have been a welcome release? And an end to war, with nations embracing nations? He could have taught them how to live in every single moment, sure of its passing forever. To live without God was to live without fear, to be happy: knowing, completely, that this was it. That was his discovery. What sane person would not grasp the opportunity to eliminate the faulty gene that had corrupted their very existence since the beginning of time? He had seen the power of the godless master race, and it was good.
                        *
Mary lay on her bed and listened for the familiar sound of new incumbents. She knew that the face at the window would not have managed to get away; nobody ever did. She dressed and made her way to the lab. Now that she had her own set of keys, it was an easy journey to make.
   She had never seen Andrew and Jenna before but knew, as she had with every arrival, that they were not there by choice. The guards had returned to their posts outside, and she had to think fast. She sensed that the couple suspected she might be their friend; they certainly knew she was their only hope, and they begged her with their eyes.
   The supply of iDeus66 Mary threw in Dr Gosling’s face stunned him momentarily and gave her time to snatch the syringe they used to stun newcomers resistant to the research experiment. She had to be quick to retrieve the keys for the handcuffs, but when the couple were free, they followed Mary back through the corridor of doors she knew so well. But each way they turned, they could hear the running footfall of another guard – Gosling had clearly managed to hit the emergency button before falling to the ground. Without their mobile phones, which had been taken from them when they were captured, they had no means of alerting anyone to come to their assistance, and so the threesome just kept running and running, and praying. Andrew thought that if this were ET, they would be lifted high into the sky to escape their captors, but he decided to keep his thoughts to himself.
   An explosion from the vicinity of the laboratory where they had left Gosling unconscious blew the hole in the wall that provided them with their escape route. A second explosion sent flames and smoke high into the evening sky, overpowering navy blue ribbons of dusk, splitting the building in two like the Red Sea get-out provided for Moses to lead God’s people to the Promised Land. Matthew Gosling’s body was unrecognisable when they took it from the inferno in which he had perished, along with iDeus66. He had seen 9/11 and the Iraq War, he had seen the war in Afghanistan, and he had known that the elimination of God could have prevented them all. It would have to be enough for him, for now; but there was a time for everything.
                           *
On her 100th birthday, Mary Donald gave thanks to God for her life. But it wasn’t God, just the thing she needed to give thanks to because it was bigger than her. Call it God, a god, power, energy, the universe. If people chose to give it a name, she no longer cared; it was of no real consequence; if they needed to believe that there was more to come, it was not her job to burst their bubbles. And who was she to say that any of them were right – or wrong?
   Her life had been filled with love. Two devoted husbands, three children, six grand-children, and friends of over, in some cases, sixty years’ standing. She counted Andrew and Jenna, until their deaths, among her closest. Sometimes, she heard their voices, but knew it was only the wind. Still, sometimes she liked to pretend otherwise.
   She had published books, too, including – and her personal favourite – No God, No Art? The argument questioned whether the greatest music, art and literature was born of the need to believe in a superior being, irrespective of whether that being was real or not. Sometimes you needed certainty, and sometimes you needed belief. She had seen both sides of the wall and no longer feared either.
   It was a truth, of sorts, and she had been happy. Within a month she knew she would be dead, but it no longer worried her what that meant. The last thing she would remember hearing, if ever she woke, would be the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major.
                      *
   Dr Tam Gosling, of The Royal Institute of Genetic Engineering, paid tribute, in the annual address to the Worldwide United Genetics conference, to the scientists behind the discovery of iDeus66, but Mary’s name was not among them. It was, he said, as had been predicted by Dr Matthew Gosling, the greatest scientific discovery of their age; his great grandfather would have been proud.
   Dr Tam Gosling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2084. 
                            
             
         


  
      
  
    


   

  
      



           
 
   
  


Monday, June 25, 2012

50 Shades Of Garbage


How does a book that is long, boring, repetitive and ridiculous become the fastest selling paperback of all time?
That is exactly what has happened to British author E L James’s 50 Shades of Grey, which has already sold 10 million copies worldwide – and it’s rising. Now we have men reporting on a daily basis regarding the number of women they have spotted reading it. In fact, the number of men counting women reading it will probably also exceed the 10 million statistic.
Billed as an erotic novel, it tells the story of college graduate and virgin Anastasia Steele, who falls for the richest, most handsome man on the planet, Christian Grey. He dresses fantastically, he has a fantastic smile, perfect teeth and everyone loves him.
There’s only one tincy wincy drawback: Christian is heavily into BDSM which, for the uninitiated, is Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism. Oh, drat. Wouldn’t you know it. There’s always a catch.
I won’t spoil the er, treats you have in store, should you wish to waste your money on this tripe, but let’s just say that if Christian were to buy you a bunch of red roses, he’d throw away the petals and stab you with the thorns.
He draws up a contract for Anastasia, setting out the terms for their relationship: in essence, she must be submissive in all things and he dominant. She must keep herself fit and healthy at all times and not snack between meals.
Hang on a minute, mate. No snacking? Maybe it was a misprint in the text and meant to read “no smacking”, which would make more sense. But not even a bag of Cheerios as a reward for being chained up before supper?
The book, which is the first of a trilogy (oh, yes, there’s more, alas – still, they might prove to be good book ends), is being dubbed “mummy porn”. The audience seems to be largely made up of married women over 30 who, for whatever reason, find this stuff erotic.
To be honest, porn is putting it a bit strong, and as for the sado-masochistic elements – well, there’s a lot more hard core stuff out there. But maybe that’s the key: it’s fantasy, with a bit of violence thrown in, but still sex taking place between two consenting adults. Well, until Christian whacks Anastasia’s backside very, very hard with a belt and she dumps him. Oh, drat, I’ve gone and given away the ending.
The ending confuses me a bit. Not long before said thrashing with belt, Christian has cuffed Anastasia to a cross he has constructed in his “Red Room of Pain” (trust me – he’s no Laurence Llewelyn Bowen) and whipped her privates. She rather gets off on it (as she does on quite a lot of beatings – she specially enjoys bath-time), although quite why she was okay with the cross and the shredded clitoris and not with the belt is anybody’s guess.
It’s not the BDSM part of the book that worries me – I’ve read far more erotic stuff and much harder porn – it’s the fact that so many women are devouring the material. The basic message it is sending is a fairly traditional, Mills and Boon one: all women want is a handsome, rich man and their life will be complete – certainly, a handsome, rich man who also happens to be an ace lover and the ideal candidate to pop your cherry.
People can do what they like behind closed doors, and BDSM is hardly a new phenomenon, but the idea of the submissive woman, surrendering not only her sexuality but her whole life, to satisfy a bloke’s every whim is, quite frankly, abhorrent.
Forget 50 Shades of Grey; this book sets the clock back 50 years for women. But it’s even being made into a film. The script is being written by Brett Easton Ellis, who wrote American Psycho (now that really is a disturbing, strangely erotic book) and will doubtless prove as popular as the novel.
Speculation is rife as to who should play the leads. Whoever they choose, they had better be good friends and, in the case of Anastasia, have no allergies to leather or masking tape. The film should also come with a warning: Don’t try this at home. Or, if you do, make sure you have a paramedic’s number to hand.
   
   
     

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Remembering Dad

Tomorrow, it will be 22 years since I last sent my dad a Father’s Day card.

Twenty-two years since the first Father’s Day after his death passed with a gut-wrenching sobbing and feeling of resentment towards children buying cards and gifts for their dads. 

This year, as every other, those celebratory images in shop windows do not lose their impact. The Interflora phone service from which I once ordered flowers still reminds me every year to send something to Dad, despite my having told them, as the first Father’s Day approached after his death, how much their automated prompt had upset me. Even the online Apple Store suggests Father’s Day gifts. The iPad, for example, currently being touted as “The gift Dad won’t take his eyes off”. Everywhere, I see the promise of things one’s father is going to love.
    
The things my dad might have loved - but I doubt it. Because what my Dad loved most was his family. My mum, my brother Nigel and me. And now, every Father’s Day, I try to put aside the immense sadness I still feel at his not being here and celebrate the fact that I was blessed with such a kind, thoughtful, strong and loving man who, all these years on, continues to have such a huge, positive impact on my life.
    
The last birthday party he attended would be his last. I was 30, living in London and working as television critic on the London Evening Standard. I still went home regularly, and even more so when Dad first went into hospital in the January of 1987. I was used to him being ill; he had been a smoker and had always had a weak chest. But he had always come through and we expected him to again. 

The moment I knew he would definitely not was the Christmas before he died, when a doctor at the hospital told me that he had suffered three “small” heart attacks that week. “But no one can survive that, can they?” I asked. “Well, no,” he said.
    
Until that moment, I had not thought of a life without Dad. Although I was very busy in my new job and having problems settling in an alien city, we were in constant touch, either through visits or on the phone. Then, as always, Dad was a huge part of my life, and even the thought of him not being there left a hole that left me gasping for breath. 

This was what people meant when they talked of the parent becoming the child, and I felt ill equipped for my new role. 

Feeding Dad his supper one night, when he was too weak to hold the fork, was a moment of grown-upness too far.
    
Both my mum and dad gave my brother and me a good, fulfilled and joyous childhood. There was not a vast amount of money, but we lived a comfortable life in which we felt no deprivation. 

Our holidays were spent at Butlin’s, where we enjoyed late nights drinking hot milk and watching the doughnut-making machine sugar our supper. On summer weekends we went to the beach, where Dad really came into his own packing the car (and unpacking it at the other end) the essentials Mum deemed necessary for a day at the sea - wind-break, Lilo, Flotina, deck chairs, table and chairs, cold-box, hamper, sun umbrella, Tupperware for sandwiches and squash, flasks for tea and coffee, dog bowls, towels and swimming costumes, eight gallons of Calamine lotion. 

By the time we left the house, dusk was falling and our day out became 40 minutes. But as with everything, Dad bore his lot with equanimity.
    
Dad’s calm nature was in stark contrast to that of Mum, Nigel and me, whose rather wacky humour put us in tune with each other in rather more obvious ways. Where Mum had me dressed in psychedelic dresses and wearing cowbells to school when I was 11, Dad practically needed oxygen when I wore my first pair of platform shoes with a bright red plastic heart on the sides. His views on fashion were, as his values, old-fashioned by today’s standards, but I remain grateful for them.

He taught me manners and respect; the importance of hard work and being driven, but not to the point of negating the people closest to you. Despite his intellect and enormous success in his work, his family came first, ambition second. I doubt he ever thought of it as a sacrifice, but it is one that I believe he made in order that his children might have better lives. 

Mum still lives in Bristol and works as a therapist. Like my relationship with Dad, it is a very close one, and undoubtedly Dad’s goodness and love live on in the special relationship I have both with her and Nigel. Every year, on Father’s Day, we call each other.
    
In celebration of my dad, I this week uploaded a short book on Amazon Kindle called, simply, Dad (available in their store, £1.99). It is another reminder of how very lucky we were to have him.



Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Addicted To The Chase - And Possibly in LA Soon?


Don’t phone your mother at 5pm on a weekday. That’s a given among all my friends. If you do, you’re likely to be met with a cold, ‘But you know I’m watching The Chase’ – that’s assuming she can tear herself away from the TV to answer the phone in the first place.

The quiz show has been running since 2009 on ITV1 and is such a hit it’s just been made as a pilot for Fox TV in the US. Here, it regularly attracts audiences of over three million and has become the must-see show in ITV1’s daytime schedule, beating its rivals in the same slot.

It is totally addictive television, and so much more than your average quiz: it’s a nail-biting race against the clock, in which a contestant and a quiz expert, called The Chaser, go head-to-head answering general knowledge questions.

The contestant is given a head start and it’s The Chaser’s job to catch and eliminate them by answering more questions correctly while a scoreboard keeps track of their progress. Successful contestants bank money as they go along, but to keep it they must play ‘The Final Chase’, when the Chaser invariably annihilates them!

The show’s appeal is in no small part due to the brilliance of host Bradley Walsh. Quick-witted, kind and sardonic without being condescending, he is perfect in the role. How he manages to keep a straight face is a miracle in itself (although his occasional giggling fits only add to the fun).

Take this question. ‘What was the Christian name of the education pioneer Montessori?’ Primary school teacher contestant: ‘Kevin.’ Somehow, Walsh managed to hold it together.

Don’t ask me how.

Undoubtedly, much of the appeal lies in the personalities of the Chasers - four brainboxes who take turns on the show and whose nicknames lend them a sinister presence that is played upon throughout. Mastermind winner Shaun Wallace is The Barrister or The Dark Destroyer; Anne Hegarty, who holds the rank of Master in the UK quiz rankings, is The Governess; Paul Sinha, ranked 20th in the quiz rankings, goes by name of The Sinnerman or The Sinner Winner; and Mark Labbett, runner-up on Brain Of Britain, is The Beast or Beastie Boy.

Much of the excitement rests on the moment when Walsh announces ‘It’s time to bring on the Chaser’, and the identity of that episode’s expert is revealed. At 6ft 7in and built to scale, Labbett is easily the most terrifying and by far the toughest on contestants who do not match his breadth of knowledge.

Then there’s the suspense element, as contestants move up the illuminated board with each question they answer correctly, only to find the Chaser hot on their heels.

It’s unpredictable, fun, a brilliant format, and perfect TV that could easily play in a primetime slot (are you listening, ITV?).

Until it does, just don’t call me between 5 and 6pm, OK?

Monday, June 11, 2012

Diamond Jubilees Are Not A Girl's Best Friend

Everyone said it was an occasion that made one proud to be British.
Presenters and guests in studios across the world extolled the virtues of a country that is able to put on such a great show, claiming that it set a wonderful precedent for the forthcoming Olympics. People over-ate, over-drank and partied long into several nights, as they celebrated Queen Elizabeth’s 60-year reign.
I felt nothing. Zilch. Nada.
I went to Spain where, for professional reasons only, I watched some of the pageantry on the telly. I wanted to feel something. A glimmer of patriotism, a hint of belonging, a sense of having come home, where I belong, after several years spent living mainly in other countries. I dug deep. And all I found was a longing to leave these shores once more in search of sunnier climes, cheaper utilities, better service – and, most importantly, leave a country that purports to be a democracy, when the head of State is where she is purely by virtue of her birth; likewise, the rest of the Royal family. That defies the very essence of democracy.
The joke is that the many thousands who gathered to catch a glimpse of the Royals this week are where they are by virtue of their birth, too: Down There. They are Her Majesty’s subjects: every one of them poorer, less privileged, and with not a snowball’s chance in hell of ever rising to Her Majesty’s position. The only way they can even get close is with neck bowed or a curtsy. I recently saw a list of DOs and DON’Ts for Joe Public meeting the Queen – it disgusted me.
I back Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood, a staunch Republican, who refuses to attend events at which the Queen turns up – and she was once thrown out of the Assembly for referring to the Queen as “Mrs Windsor”. Good on her. And for any dissonant voices out there venting their fury at this – Plaid’s membership has gone up 23% since she took the reins.
The Royal family is one of the most dysfunctional ones in the country. Her children grew up shaking their mother’s hand rather than receiving a hug. Charles went on to marry a beautiful, young but vulnerable woman, whom he treated appallingly from day one, continuing his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles and, on his honeymoon, even wearing the famously embossed CC cufflinks she had given him.
 Both Anne and Andrew are divorced, and Edward revealed himself to have the business acumen of a dead stoat in the film business, despite people throwing chances at him purely because of his lineage.
Thank heavens for Diana in this mix, and the joy that William and Harry have turned out to be – and, also, for Fergie, who has brought up two rather fun-loving daughters, even if they sometimes leave a lot to be desired in the fashion department.
On November 4th 2008, on the even of my 50th birthday, I stood in tears, watching TV, as America stood on the brink of electing its first black President. He has not proven himself to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt proud of a country taking such a monumental step where, not so very long ago, black people had to give up their seats to white on public transport. Racism is still rife in the States as, sadly, it seems to be everywhere, but Obama has surely given hope to millions of young, disenfranchised Americans – yes, they can do it.
The Royal Family is a smokescreen for the real problems underlying British society – our failing education system, immense poverty, struggle on a daily basis for millions, as they find themselves falling behind on mortgages and bills. Waving your little flag might enable you to forget for a couple of days, but come the hangover, the problems are still there.
As for me: I’m out of here. Again.
  
  
  
  









Friday, June 1, 2012

My Horse And I 6/1/12

Don’t rent property from a private landlord. 

That’s the number one piece of advice I would give anyone arriving for the first time here. 

You may not get as much  square footage for your money from an established organisation in a block, but provided you have not violated any rules, you will get your money back at the end. 

With many private landlords, you may just have two choices at the end of your lease, when they are holding on to a chunk of your money on whatever pretence they choose. You can walk away, or sue. I sued. And I won. Californian law is very strict. Suing is a hassle, but well worth it. 

This time round, I have been far wiser and also been able to steer many people away from people I know to be bad landlords. Spread your experiences; it helps your friends, and LA is a very small place where a bad name counts for a lot – if you see what I mean.
   
 Another valuable piece of advice I wish I had been given when I first arrived three years ago is: never, ever, ever go to a post office. Unless you want to have three birthdays while standing in a queue for a stamp, do your business by any other means. 

In fact, hiring a horse and sending your letter by hoof will take considerably less time than organising it through the mail.
   
 Returning to any country for a second time when you have left it reminds you of just how naĂŻve you were when you first arrived. Hopefully, you have learned lessons; unfortunately, you will just make different mistakes. It’s as true of life the world over as it is here.
    
For example: when I came here from the UK, I was naĂŻve enough to think that cup cakes might be better than they were at home, where the experience was like sucking on a box of sugar cubes (that would have been better served being fed to the horse who delivered your letter). 

Having seen the queues outside the cup cake shops in Beverly Hills, I was optimistic. Big mistake. Had I bought a sugar cane farm and sucked on it for a week, I could not have been prepared for the massive hit of the sweet stuff that sent me rushing for the rest room. Gross. Now, you would not find me queuing for a cup cake any more than you would find me taking relationship advice  from a Kardashian. 

Learning such things is . . . well . . . the icing on the metaphorical cup cake.
   
Back in 2009, I was also naĂŻve enough to think that there would be an LA hairdresser who knew how to cut hair in a style other than anything that makes a woman look like The Addams’ Family’s Morticia – or, if you’re a man, Lurch (and heck, I’d had enough of that look from my landlord’s entourage). 

I had such bad cuts, I would have been happier emerging looking like Uncle Fester.
    
They just can’t do short hair here, not least because they hardly ever see it. Long hair is as de rigeur as Botox and lip implants, and unless you are a poodle, you can forget coming out of a salon with a short haircut and looking like anything other than a lesbian trucker or a serial killer. 

When I returned to the UK after a haircut here, I risked arrest as children ran for cover.
   
 The main thing I wish I had known in 2009 is that no one area is Los Angeles: especially not Beverly Hills which, for the most part, I found to be an enclave of narrow-minded, humourless, not very well travelled people who believed themselves to be the centre of the universe. 

Don’t get me wrong: there were and are some wonderful people, especially in the five star Beverly Wilshire and a select number of restaurants; a huge number of people working in the film and television industries are also among the brightest you will ever meet, and it is always a privilege to meet them and learn from their very varied experiences.
   
 Santa Monica is not the centre, either. While it has among the best sunsets in the world, it feels miles from any working environment and a magnet for lots of people who don’t want to do very much in life other than hang out at the beach.
    
West Hollywood is a vibrant, working environment, but not a great place for a woman to stand a chance of meeting a bloke.
    
The truth is: whatever you want, the city has it all. Outside TV and film, it’s still a cultural wasteland compared to New York or London, but there are worse wastelands on the planet.
   
Anyway, that’s enough for now. 

I have to see a man about a horse.