blackrat - @ 20six.co.uk

PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES

I like travelling by train; there's something irresistably romantic about it, the promise of somewhere new, different or exciting at journey's end offering all sorts of temptations. I don't mean the daily grind of the commute, of course. Nor the short hops to familiar places. No, for a train journey to hold sway over my imagination, it has to be somewhere new, far enough away to warrant travelling First Class, and with the promise of adventure at the destination.

I had ample opportunity to indulge my dreams then, with a train journey last week, the beginning of a marathon few days of assignments and travel for me which took me away from the monotony of life working from home and into the realms of some of my remaining boyhood dreams. So, where have I been and what have I been doing? Away 'working' on what for me have been two fascinating and enjoyable assignments - aboard the Royal Navy's flagship aircraft carrier at sea, and a day later on to the U.S, the first of three countries in three days. I took in Belize and Bermuda too before I returned home on Monday. What follows is a narrative of what I did and where I went along with a significant number of images to illustrate. Sorry if you've arrived here via a dial-up connection; might be an idea to go and make a cup of tea whilst you wait for the page to load ;-)

So, last week then. A week ago last Tuesday, I was waiting for GNER's 11:00 service to York and a connection to Northallerton in North Yorkshire. Aboard the luxury of one of their first class carriages, I was able to surf the web and send emails, courtesy of the free onboard wi-fi internet access. And before I knew it, I was at my destination.

There, I was met by a representative of the Royal Navy who drove me to RAF Leeming where I boarded a Sea King ASaC helicopter belonging to 849 Squadron RN. We took off, flew east across the North Sea, and after about an hour in the air, with land no longer visible in any direction, began our descent to my destination - three days aboard Britain's most advanced aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious.

HMS Illustrious on sea trials off the coast of Newcastle, May 24th 2005: Clearly visible is the new third mast at the rear of the superstructure and the redesigned ramp to accommodate the RAF's GR7/GR9 Harrier. These are clearly visible parked at the rear of the flight deck. (c) Black Rat

HMS Illustrious emerged last Novemnber from a two year, £120m refit which saw the ship evolve from a 'force protection' platform into Britain's most versatile strike carrier, capable of projecting the nation's air power and acting as an independent deployed operating base anywhere in the globe.

I joined the ship as she was conducting the advanced phase of an intensive 'working up' program, prior to taking on the role as the Fleet's high-readiness flagship later this month, ready to respond to world events at 24 hours' notice. Having landed, I was met by one of the ship's officers and escorted to my cabin off the Wardroom below deck.

Sun Over the Water: Watching the sun set over the North Sea from the flight deck prior to the commencement of the evening's flying operations at dusk (c) Black Rat.

Illustrious' role is to deliver Air Power from embarked Joint Force Harrier (JFH) aircraft, supported by Sea King ASaC Mk7 helicopters such as that which carried me from the mainland. The Royal Navy Sea Harrier FA2 is to be phased out of service by Spring 2006 with all carrier borne strike operations thereafter being handled by the more powerful Harrier GR7/GR9 of the RAF. These aircraft will be flown jointly by RAF/RN pilots and the integration is already well advanced, with pilots of both services currently flying in the other's squadrons.

The RAF's GR series Harriers are principally attack aircraft, desgined to deliver offensive air power to targets ashore, wheras the Navy's FA2 Sea Harrier was designed as a fighter jet, to protect assets within a Carrier Group at sea. With the increasing focus on power projection from the sea, the senior service had to accept that proposed upgrades to the FA2 should be sacrificed in favour of investment in the far more potent offensive air capability offered by the GR9

Silent Sentinel: HMS Illustrious' 'Goalkeeper' Close In Weapons System, designed to shoot down missiles and aircraft which have evaded the outer layers of a ship's defences

No other platform provides the flexibility, power projection capability and command and control facilities of an aircraft carrier. As the World's political landscape changes and new threats to the stability of peace emerge, the United Kingdom relies increasingly on Illustrious as an important enabler of foreign policy and I was onboard to observe at first hand just how capable she was at fulfilling that role.

I watched with interest as the Royal Fort Victoria, one of the Royal Fleet Auxilliary's supply ships pulled along our starboard bow just hours after my arrival to begin cross decking supplies, food and fuel for Illustrious' mission. Whilst being fully conversant with the operations of our air force, I was on virgin territory with the Navy and I was standing on a steep learning curve. After dressing for dinner in the Wardroom where I met with the ships' senior officers, I just had time to change back into working dress for the night time flying operations from the newly refitted flight deck.

I've long held a fascination for the Harrier, perhaps the most amazing piece of technology ever to grace the skies. The key to the Harrier's unique abilities is its Pegasus engine, a low bypass-ratio turbofan that differs over other engines through the additional feature of four rotating nozzles through which the engine's fan and core airlows exhaust. These four nozzles can be rotated through an arc of 98.5 degrees allowing the engine's thrust to be applied from directly aft in conventional flight to straight down for hovering and slightly forward (for flying backwards!)

Dusk Take Off: A Sea Harrier FA2 of the Fleet Air Arm's 801 Squadron cycles its Pegasus engine as it begins its take off run along Illustrious' flight deck.(c) Black Rat.

Although capable of vertical take off, carrier borne Harrier operations utilise the ramp to give additional lift to the aircraft via a short take off run. This allows them to get airborne with a greater payload of weapons and fuel than could be achieved via vertical take off. Even so, the short take off run is a sight to see and being in such close proximity for the evening's photoshoot illustrated the aircraft's immense power in a truly memorable manner.

Predictably, I had a late night spent chatting with some of the ship's officers over drinks in the wardroom. The gentle rocking of the ship as she made progress through the North Sea meant that sleep had no problems finding me when I evenutally retired to my cabin, though. Awoke to the boatswain's whistle broadcast over the tannoy at stupid o clock the following morning and dressed for breakfast in the wardroom followed by an early start for a packed program of events and interviews. I was up on the flight deck first thing for the first of the day's flying operations, as the embarked Harriers of 1 Squadron RAF began the first of the day's many missions.

The Ramp: An RAF Harrier GR7 sits parked on the incline of the ramp on the flight deck. The Harrier GR7 is recognisable as it is somewhat larger than the FA2 Sea Harrier. It is noticeable too for the wheels, which extend from mid-way along the wing on the GR7 as opposed to at the outermost tip on the FA2. (c) Black Rat

The aircraft performed a number of fly-bys in close proximity to the ship before returning to land 50 minutes later. This is a truly incredible sight to behold close up, almost poetic to watch. The aircraft form up together on the port bow, decelerating to the hover. The exhaust of the jets, vectored downwards in the hover, creates an amazing spectacle as the sea boils angrily below, throwing up a spectacular amount of spray beneath the aircraft. The aircraft then 'crabs' sideways until it is directly above the flight deck at a height of around 50 feet or so, at which point the pilot simply shuts off the power and the Harrier drops from height to settle down onto its undercarriage on the deck below.

Hovercraft: A Harrier GR7 of 1 Squadron RAF hovers over HMS Illustrious' flight deck seconds before the pilot cuts power to land onboard the ship. Clearly visible at the rear of the deck is an RN Sea Harrier with its distinctive wingtip gear (c) Black Rat.

I spent some considerable time that day chatting to the embarked ranks of the RAF, interested in hearing the perspective of men who had joined Britain's air service and who had then been sent to sea. The feedback wasn't all positive, but it was thoughtful and considered - and given that the men had only been at sea for three days, bound to be unshaped by experience. Useful all the same though.

From there, it was off to the Bridge to interview the ship's Commanding Officer, Captain Bob Cooling, RN who gave me an interesting viewpoint in terms of the ship's capability and the challenges of commanding a mixed company of men and women from different branches of the military together with the offer of a flight in a two-seat Harrier T8 at a date to be arranged. Er...thank you very much! The afternoon was spent getting an introduction to the ship's engineering and weapons capability including an exploration of its capacious hangar and two garagntuan lifts capable of carrying aircaft from below decks onto the flight deck. Later in the evening, I went flying in a Sea King for an aerial photoshoot of the ship at sea.

I barely had time to catch my breath when I was eventually flown off the ship into Newcastle airport where another Royal Navy driver sped me to the city's train station and my onward connection to London. I arrived home on Thursday afternoon and just had time to shower before heading off on my next assignment which meant arriving at RAF Brize Norton for 23:00 that evening where I was to join 99 Squadron as supernumerary crew for a three-part mission to San Antonio departing at 05:00 last Friday morning.

On the Pan: Our C-17 Globemaster III sits on the apron at RAF Brize Norton as we complete pre-flight checks before departure for Kelly Field, San Antonio, TX (c) Black Rat.

Joining as a member of the crew carried certain advantages, but the departure time wasn't one of them - after just two hours sleep in a room at the Gateway Hotel on base, I was whisked off to 99 Squadron's crew room to meet the rest of the crew for our 03:00 briefing. Here, I met Squadron Leader (soon to be Wing Commander) Simon 'Spoons' Edwards and Flying Officer Ben Mountfield (captain and co-pilot respectively).

Crew's Control: The crew of Ascot 6709 muster on the steps of the C-17 before departure (c) Black Rat

99 Squadron was only reformed in 2001 when it took delivery of the first of its now current four Boeing C-17 Globemaster III heavy lift aircraft. These were leased from the manufacturer for a seven year term to fulfil a requirement in the Strategic Defence Review for a strategic airlift capapbility for the RAF. The aircraft features many advanced features such as winglets, a highly efficient wing and high-performance engines. The aircraft's excellent short field performance is achived by extending the wing flaps into the jet efflux, allowing the aircraft to put down on unprepared landing strips of just 3,000ft when fully loaded. This feature also affords the aircraft considerable tactical capability, allowing it to descend at an incredible 25,000ft per minute! The C-17 is the RAF's most state of the art aircraft, featuring a 'glass' cockpit with head-up displays and multi-function screens in place of switches and dials, and fly-by-wire control systems.

State of the Art: The so-called 'Glass Cockpit' on the flight deck of the C-17, somewhere over the Atlantic, 27/05/05 (c) Black Rat

The mission seemed straight forward enough in outline; the C-17s, which are the RAF's main heavy lift capability between the UK and Kandahar, Afghanistan/Basra, Iraq are undergoing an upgrade program at the Boeing Aerospace Support Centre facility at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. One aircraft had been completed and was awaiting collection from there; the one we were flying was to be left in situ for its upgrade over the next 55 days.

USAF C-17 Globemasters: Awaiting work outside what is purportedly the longest aircraft hangar in the world at Kelly AFB (c) Black Rat

Our mission timing would see us on the ground in San Antonio at 08:30 local with 24 hours rest before an onward routing to Belize, nestled between Guatemala and Mexico on the Caribbean coast. Here, we would load on 18 pallets of equipment from a recent exercise by British troops who had been jungle training in the area, and fly on to the sun-kissed island paradise of Bermuda where we would overnight before flying home again early on Sunday afternoon. The plan would see us visiting three countries in three days, arriving home to Brize Norton at 23:00 local on Sunday night. Hardly the most troubling of missions, and one which was as novel for the crew as it was for me. Easy enough.

Above the Below: Two airliners pass us several miles to port and several thousand feet apart somewhere over the coast of Ireland.

After briefing, we were driven out to the waiting jet, one of the biggest aircraft in existence. It can carry Tornado F3 fighter jets within its capacious fuselage. Or a brace of Apache gunships, or tanks - you name it and the C-17 can swallow it. So to say it's roomy inside would be an understatement of Herculean proportions. It's huge - epecially the cockpit area, reached via a staircase. This leads up to a crew rest area behind the cockpit containing two seats and two full-size bunks which can be curtained off for privacy. Through a doorway is the flight deck itself, again one of the largest out there. As well as the two pilots' positions, there are also observers' seats directly behind each. Fully adjustable on every plane, inordinately comfortable and next to a huge window, they offer a commanding perspective on events. Plumbed into the aircraft's comms system via my David Clark headset, I was able to communicate with the crew whilst listening to air traffic control and the traffic from other jets in our airspace.

Turning Hard Left at 37,000ft: Ben makes some adjustments to 'George' the autopilot following instructions from Shannon Air Traffic Control who handle 'high level' traffic ex-UK bound for North America.

The flight across the Atlantic was magical. I'm always at my happiest when flying and never more so than when involved in the action. The view from the office is unrivalled for me, like nothing else - that feeling as you punch through cloud cover and into the deep blue of the tropopause five miles up - what it there to compare with it? You see things from here that you're denied sat back in the 'cheap seats' on a commercial flight. You see other aircraft sharing your airspace passing head-on and below, or head on and above. Jets tracking you from a couple of miles abeam or heading towards you. You get instruction from ATC to move up a couple of thousand feet to avoid a jet climbing towards your vector...it's constant, involving, magical.

Conversation was free-flowing, Ben and Spoons easy and amusing company and we quickly developed a bond between us. Ben was pilot flying the outbound leg and the officer in charge of the imprest, the cash in local currency handed out to the crew to cover their expenses whilst away. We talked of our plans for on the ground Stateside, the nightspots around San Antonio. We were interrupted periodically by the Air Loadmaster who served us full English breakfast prepared in the aircraft's galley, snacks and copious quantites of tea and coffee.

Self Portrait, Taken Somewhere over U.S.A: The C17's flight deck has plentiful windows offering unrivalled views of the air and ground.(c) Black Rat

Both Spoons and I grabbed some sleep about two hours out and I managed about three hours rest - more than enough to refresh me for the day ahead. Fully reclined on a full length bunk with pillows and blankets, it didn't take me long to drop off and when I woke up, we were over half way into our flight. Time passed immeasurably quickly after that considering we'd been staring almost 11 hours flying time in the face that morning, but before I knew it, we had begun our descent for landing at Kelly. Once on the ground, we were met by an advance party of RAF who were there to smooth over the handover of the jet we would be flying back, and driven to our hotel - the Drury Inn and Suites in Riverwalk, downtown San Antonio.

The Alamo: The most famous spot in Texas where 189 defenders fell on March 1836 after repeated attacks by Mexican General Santa Anna's army (c) Black Rat.

Couldn't complain at the accommodation - the room had a microwave containing popcorn, the minbar had free soft drinks, and there was also free internet and long-distance (pan-USA) phone calls. We all got vouchers on check-in for three free Budweisers each in the bar too, so none too shabby there - never look a gift horse in the mouth, eh! A quick bath and change, and we wandered off to explore the Riverwalk and the Alamo before meeting for drinks at the bar later than evening. Suitably refreshed, the whole crew hit downtown San Antonio, taking in Hooters, Coyote Ugly and a host of other bars. And this is supposed to be work?!

We mustered at breakfast the following morning at 07:30 local and our wheels arrived 30 minutes later for the ride back to Kelly AFB and our waiting jet. Pre flight checks were quickly dispensed with, briefings taken care of and we started engines and taxied out. It was as we began our take of run that problems started, the warning annunciator panel telling us that the pitot head heater on two channels had failed (a pretty major failure given that the pitot heads are the basis of airspeed readings). Spoons made a decision as captain to abort take off and we were cleared by ATC to return to the Boeing stand from where we'd left and said our goodbyes shortly before. The head up display (HUD) tells it all:

Going Nowhere: A USAF KC-10 Extender viewed through the co-pilot's HUD, which tells us all we need to know about our mission - 'Do Not Taxi' leaves no room for misinterpretation.

It made sense to return - if your aircraft is going to go tech, the place to be is at the manufacturer's facility. Boeing engineers were all over the aircraft as soon as we shut the engines down and systematically took the cockpit apart trying to trace the fault. We occupied ourselves in the hold until, two hours later, the fault was traced to a loose wire. Fault rectified, we were back on taxi out within 30 minutes and in the air by 13:00 local for Belize.

The fault on our take off run should have been an indicator of what was to follow, but we couldn't have known. No sooner were we on the climb out when the flight computers crashed and the auto throttle warning kept sounding. The computers were reset and a manual overide effected on the auto throttles, but the computer kept telling us that the thrust reversers were deployed in engines 1 and 2 - which clearly they weren't. We finally settled into the cruise at 37,000ft and Mach .760.

Our late departure rather messed up our planned routing as we estimated that by the time we arrived at Belize and loaded on the pallets, we'd be too late to make Bermuda that night. Spoons decided on us overnighting at Belize but worked out that the full load, plus fuel required for Brize Norton would mean we would be unable to take off from the available runway at Belize the following morning, therefore necessitating a stop in Bermuda anway. From a crew rest perspective, an overnight at Bermuda the following day made most sense, so he used the aircraft's built-in sattelite phone to call UK Ops with his request. In the mean time, we munched on hot beef burritos served by Jim, the air loadmaster. Tough call.

If the cockpit had been a fabulous place to be on the flight over the day before, it was as nothing compared to this leg of the mission - awesome views across the clear skies and deep blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  Our divert for most of the flight was Cancun which we all lusted after and banter over the mic consisted of us all trying to inveigle ways to justify us heading there. The irony is that it would almost be worth the invention of a minor problem as on the face of it, a divert to Cancun would appear so audacious, Strike Command would probably accept it at face value. Bonus!

ET Phone Home: The C-17's cargo hold, chilled by the aircraft air-conditioning, meets the humid climate of Belize as the loadmaster and Belize-based UKMAMS open the hold. (c) Black Rat.

Regular readers of this blog can't be unaware of my envy of fighter pilots, but honestly, they have nothing on this. Think about it - their job gets all the glamour but it means suiting up in a constricting flight suit, helmet and G-pants, sitting alone in a cramped cockpit for several hours, pissing into a bottle, and having to mentally calculate the effect on fuel of travelling at over 7 miles a minute. C-17 pilots on the other hand have a relatively easy time once the aircraft reaches top of climb and the autoilot is engaged - the flight deck is modern, spacious and comfortable. The crew get time to relax, walk around, read, sleep and eat hot food and drinks prepared for them in the full-size galley. They even have use of a full-on airliner lavatory! I finally realised, I don't want to be a fighter pilot when I grow up anymore - I want to fly these - especially if you get to go where we did. Like here:

On the Ground in Belize: Spoons took this snap of me opposite our hotel in Belize City just minutes after we checked in for the evening (c) Black Rat.

Having phoned our change of plan ahead mid-flight, everything was arranged for us as soon as we touched down in Belize. The ground agent responsible for making the arrangements boarded our aircraft, told us where we would be staying and a taxi drove out to meet us, as Spoons, Ben and myself loaded our gear and headed off. We'd been booked into the Radisson Fort George in Belize City, natch and wasted no time once we arrived - we dumped our gear, changed into our swimming shorts and made for the poolside bar for ice cold Belikin Beer, Red Stripe and big gay cocktails - well, we had limited time for R and R and wanted to make the most of it!

Poolside in Belize City: Spoons (left) and Ben show how stressed we are at being so far from home. Note the big pink gay cocktail in the centre of the picture (c) Black Rat.

I can't think of a happier memory so far this year than the afternoon the three of us spent drinking beer poolside in Belize. We watched the sun go down, swam, drank and laughed until our sides ached, marvelling at the privilege of our respective jobs which placed us in this ridiculous situation in the first place. The humidity and 92 degree temperature was unbearable though, necessitating ever more drinking and swimming to cool off!

Before we'd had too much to drink, ops called Spoons from the UK to advise that they'd agreed his plan for us to overnight in Bermuda too - before telling us that this had been negated by the news that a soldier on exercise in Belize needed to be flown home urgently on compassionate leave. The military pulls out all the stops for compassionate cases, diverting missions and utilising every resource both civillian and military to get their own home in the shortest possible time. That solved it for us; make the most of our time on the ground in Belize for tomorrow, we'd be going home. That night, we sat at the bar, swapped stories and ate in the hotel restaurant as our cicradian rythyms cursed us. We were running on Zulu time as all our mission timings were based on this, but our lives were lived around local time - never a good mix.

Are You Local?: Harry, 69, a native of Belize City poses for the camera after giving me an impromptu lesson in Britsh history (c) Black Rat.

I awoke at 04:30 local the following morning without the alarm, despite having fallen into bed at gone midnight local (I'm paying for it all now, don't worry!) and having showered and packed, I wandered the streets with my camera as Belize City came to life. Outside of the hotel, I bumped into Harry, a 69 year old local who's job seemed to be to sit streetside to talk to visiting photographers like me. He proceeded to talk me through all the things that make Britain great. I got a blow-by-blow account of the greatest ever Englishmen and the impact they've made on society - Cockerell, Stevenson, Newton, Whittle, Cromwell, Churchill - Harry knew the story of them all, and loved Britain for its democracy and freedom. He loved us too for what we did to Belize - but not for having pulled out in 1981 and given it independence. Life was better when we were there, according to Harry.

On the Ground in Belzie: Our C-17 as seen from the taxiway at the grandly-named Philip Goldson International Airport, Belize City. They did agree to stamp by passport as a favour before we flew out though! (c) Black Rat.

Our take off from Belize, accompanied by James, the soldeir flying home on compassionate leave, was uneventful and we were off the ground by 07:50 local, burdened this time with 87,000lbs of cargo and 108,000lbs of fuel - sufficient for our mission to Bermuda, plus some extra for diverts and delays.

Little Fluffy Clouds: The crystal clear waters of the Caribbean Sea lap at the white sands of an unidentified archipelago somewhere between Belize and the Florida Keys.

This leg of the flight was fueled by cup after cup of black coffee - and a spicy chicken curry served as 'breakfast' an hour and a half into the flight! It might be early morning where we are, but in the meaningless of space, we're officially on Zulu time which means dinner. The view from my oversized window at left though is just as awesome as on the flight across the Gulf of Mexico as we bank steep left, fly over the Caribbean islands and the Florida Keys and see Miami Beach with its signature beachside skyscrapers 37,000ft below us.

Where's Your Head at?: The pilot's view through the Head-Up Display as we make a steep left turn at 37,000ft.The HUD enables the pilot, copilot, and other flight crew to visually observe aircraft flight data while maintaining exterior situation awareness (c) Black Rat

We're vectored down to 33,000ft for most of the flight, an altitude which is punctuated by the tops of Towering Cumulonimbus (TCB) clouds which show up on the weather radar as thunderstorms. We fly a vector around them, but as we leave the Caribbean and head towards Bermuda in the Atlantic, the CBs blend into a carpet of stratus which blankets the sky as far as the eye can see. A diifuclt approach and landing at Bermuda are well handled by Ben who is flying this leg of the mission - we gain a late visual on the runway for the visual approach and the winds are gusting at 30 knots as we fly finals.

On Finals for Bermuda's Runway 30L: Our position to the right of the centreline gives some indication of the strength of the gusts. (c) Black Rat

We're only due to be on the ground in Bermuda for an hour or so - just long enough to take on the fuel we need for the final leg of our flight - but the gremlins in the system start to make mischief again, manifesting themselves this time in the Mission Control computers which fail. This is sufficient in itself to render the aircraft U/S under any other circumstance, but given ou mission to repatriate the compassionate case (designated Comp-A in military terms, the most urgent classification), Spoons pulls out all the stops and pulling the circuit breakers and reinstalling the relevant bus solves this problem. An hour later than planned, we're off again, departing Bermuda at 20:00 Zulu.

On the Deck in Bermuda: Our C-17 Globemaster III shortly after touch down at Bermuda International Airport, our third and final country in three days (c) Black Rat.

Our flight plan from Bermuda is to fly to Manchester International Airport to drop off our Comp-A passenger where a car will whisk him direct to his final destination. After 20 minutes or so on the ground there, we will fly direct to Brize Norton with an estimated arrival time of 04:00 local - nice!Once we reach top of the climb at 35,000ft, both Ben and Spoons spend some considerable time planning their approach and reading up on Manchester Airport, somewhere neither have landed at previously. As a major commercial airport, it has countless rules governing every aspect of flying operations and given the unusual hour at which they will be receiving us, there is much to do to ensure that correct approach procedures are followed.

Heading east across the Atlantic, we leave mid-afternoon behind us with the sun and fly into the inky black of the night time sky. Dusk comes in minutes, but gifts us the most fabulous display of golden light which bathes the cockpit in warm hues whilst the clouds and sky outisde are a miasma of purples, reds and organge. I jump into Ben's seat as co-pilot whilst he goes for a walk and when he returns, he offers to take a picture of me in situ:

Dusk over the Atlantic Ocean: The light show lasted a matter of no more than fifteen minutes and marked the dividing line between the sunny afternoon in Bermuda, and the night time sky over the North Atlantic and Europe. (c) Black Rat

Just before 01:00 Zulu, Spoons tells Ben that he's going to grab a couple of hours sleep prior to flying the approach to Manchester. Ben gets up to visit the toliet before taking control of the aircraft and the minute Spoons and I are alone, all hell breaks loose in the cockpit as klaxons sound and the warning annunciator panel gives us horrifying news: We've just lost all fuel from the No1 tank! We're just past 20 degrees west, at mid point over the Pond and hopelessly out of reach of any diverts. All the indicators are that we're headed for a watery grave, and I'm busy saying silent prayers and saying my goodbyes as Spoons curses, saying "What the fuck?"

The fuel state on the overhead panel tells us we have no fuel. A loadmaster is despatched to check visually for any leaks as the flight instruments tell us that we still have power to all four engines - something which the warning is telling us is not possible.

Ben returns and is brought up to speed on events and I watch the art of cockpit resource management in action as an observer on the dynamic between Spoons as captain, and Ben as his co-pilot with the input of several loadmasters. There is a reaction and an action for every possible failure, warning and breakdown on an aircraft and checklists to follow, all of which swing into action to combat this latest, and most worrying of warnings. A full and frank discussion takes place to ascertain whether the warnings we are receiving are real or spurious, plus action required. In essence, we are unable to rely on indicated fuel state, meaning manual computations are required for estimated fuel burned and remaining, approach speeds etc. At 01:20, Spoons makes a decision to divert straight to Brize - Manchester is now off the agenda as the minute the plane touches down anywhere, it will be grounded as u/s.

Half an hour later, just as we are preparing to divert and advise UK Ops of our plans, the fuel computer comes back online and we have a fully serviceable aircraft once again. But ten minutes later, the computer goes offline again and we start receving warnings of bizarre behaviour (spurious) by both 1 and 2 Engines. We advise Shannon ATC of our status and request, and are granted, a direct routing to Brize, being cleared immediately to descend from 33,000 to 8,000ft. We're handed on to Shanwick ATC who ask us if we wish to declare an emergency, although at this stage, Spoons is confident that we're in no immediate danger and confirms that we are requesting only direct clearance. The cockpit lights are dimmed and all that's visible are the panel lights suspended in the night sky. We watch the moon rise on the nose of our aircraft as we descend straight down for a landing at Brize Norton and we're on the ground by 03:00, back where we started. Mission complete.

Flight Plan: A selection of the flight plans and maps used for navigating our way around the Atlantic and Caribbean (c) Black Rat.

Spoons and Ben write up an incident report back in the squadron ops room, as I relive those initial few seconds when, not knowing the warnings were spurious, I was convinced we were headed for a watery grave. It's too early for me to make my way home, so I take Spoons up on his offer of a bed at his, and head back later on a sunny bank holiday monday.

It's taken me most of this week to recover and given what I've seen and done in the past week, the events at the beginning seem like an age away. It was nice to see my own bed again though, even if I have woken up each morning feeling tired, disoriented and confused (no change there, then! - Ed). I feel privileged that my work has taken me on such a fascinating voyage of discovery, introduced me to some great people, and let me indulge my love of aviation. From an objective viewpoint, it was also interesting to observe the dynamics of flight deck emergencies at first hand, especially given the frequency with which they occurred and the professionalism with which they were handled. It's not unusual, given the severity of the upgrade from which the aircraft had come, but a few days with an RAF ground crew will soon chase down any remaining gremlins in the system.

For me, I now have a mountain of work to write up, copy to file and a couple of thousand images to edit and work up. P leaves me today for a city break to Prague with a friend, so I've a weekend home alone until her return on Tuesday evening. I shall endeavour to enjoy this weekend - make sure you do too. And if you've stuck with this entry to the end, thank you - normal service will be resumed next week.

2.6.05 17:35

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DATING EUGENICS - DATING WEBSITE BANS UGLY PEOPLE

From today's BBC Magazine comes the following story by journalist Georgina Pattinson. It's about a new dating website that admits only the most beautiful applicants via a vicious selection process in which potential members are judged on their looks by existing members of the opposite sex.

Read on:

"Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but a new website has taken networking to Darwinian extremes by banning ugly people. www.beautifulpeople.net is an online club which admits only the most beautiful people - through a vicious selection process. Applicants enter a profile and picture, which sit on the site for 72 hours. Fully signed up members - opposite sex only - are then invited to vote on the applicants' attractiveness. Most people don't make it any further.

Since launching in April, the UK site has been contacted by 30,000 hopefuls. Only one in 15 have got through. Given the site is a thinly veiled singles club, this is dating eugenics. "

Being accepted on to the site is the beauty equivalent of entering in to Mensa," claims Greg Hodge, the marketing director. But he rejects suggestions that he is promoting an unrealistic view of beauty. "Yes, it's elitist - but that's what people want", he says. "And every avenue in life discriminates against some in favour of others".

Like any other network agency, it charges a fee and rejected applicants are told to try again but Hodge is ebullient "All we do is give an accurate representation of what society's ideal of beauty is. You are voted in by your own peers." He cheerfully admits the site is not politically correct but points out that apart from dating opportunities, the chatrooms are filled with people discussing Iraq and Tony Blair".

(c) Georgina Pattinson, BBC News

Well now, look, I'm sorry but isn't this rather defeating the object? What does a person's portrait tell you about their personality? Beauty is a strictly subjective matter, and has nothing to do with attractiveness, sex appeal or that hard to define 'X' factor that says we're a match for someone. Sure, beautiful people are easy on the eye, but as a basis for finding love, or a long-term relationship? Who are they kidding?

Some of the world's most attractive people aren't what you'd call conventionally pretty - personality defines a woman for me. A passion for life coupled with experience reflected back through a twinkle in the eye are what set my heart racing, not the prospect of meeting someone who in a picture looks 'pretty'. Are we becoming so socially inept that this is what meeting potential partners has been reduced to? Whatever happened to getting out there and actually talking to people?

Your thoughts?

9.6.05 14:22

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A BLOG ENTRY ABOUT NOTHING

I'm void of inspiration at the moment; my imagination is lacking, I have no muse, my motivation has fled. After one of the most fascinating months in my career insofar as assignments and travel go together, I've been sat staring at my screen thinking "What now?"

It's always this way with me. I've spent the past week in hibernation from the wider world, locked in my office with the curtains drawn, the lights down and my focus sharp and, well, er...focused! Yes, I've been staring an immovable deadline in the face with four major features to write and some 2000 images to be worked up, edited and whittled down to a manageable number. So, as I've had my professional writing head on, I suspect that my inspiration tanks are dry and need topping up again. Any ideas, world?

Still, on the bright side, I've cleared the decks of outstanding work and can let up a bit on the self-imposed pressure that's been driving me. All I need now is something to blog about.

I'm currently reading the brilliant War Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres, a journalist with The Times. It's a wonderfully written account of how the newspaper's then Los Angeles correspondent suddenly found himself plucked from a facile world of showbiz parties, to be embedded with the U.S Marines for the assualt on Iraq in 2003. Ayres, a self confessed coward 'from a long line of cowards' writes convincingly of his sheer terror at finding out he's to be a war correspondent, but it's a role he eventually makes his own. He was sufficiently accomplished to be nominated as Foregin Correspondent of the Year at 2003's British Press Awards, but his self-deprecating account of how it all came about is well worth a look.

Another recommendation if you're bored with the usual radio stuff is to take a trip over to the Daily Source Code, home of a daily audio blog post by Adam Curry. Adam is a key player in the development and promotion of Podcasting, a method of publishing sound files to the web. The technique has enabled independent producers to create self-published, syndicated 'radio' shows and is currently known to be causing some consternation amongst conventional broadcasters with regard to its potential for completely reshaping how we listen to broadcast media. Forget the hype though, and just listen - the link on his site loads the broadcast straight to your default media player.

Oh, and sorry about the picture - it's got nothing to do with anything I've just written about, but seeing as there's no common narrative stringing the words together anyway, I don't see anything wrong in utilising a picture that's of no relevance either. The image above is from the series I shot on my recent assignment to the U.S/Belize/Bermuda. It shows the setting sun reflecting off Cumulonimbus clouds at 33,000ft somewhere over the Atlantic.

Before I go, here's a heads up on a great advert currently being brodcast on British television. It's a new one extolling the virtues of Sir Richard Branson's railway and Virgin's new Pendolino trains through use of a plethora of movie stars (both dead and alive). The ad cleverly melds together a host of vintage movie clips into a convincing film that shows the eonymous railway children (Sally Thomsett, Jenny Agutter and Gary Warren) gasping in amazement as a Virgin train thunders past. On board are Cary Grant and Eva Marie-Saint in a scene from North by North-West, the two old ladies from Hitcock's The Lady Vanishes, as well as Hercule Poirot and a little later, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in a scene from...oh, ask Luda - she'll tell you!

The ad represents a stunning achivement in terms of technical know-how and the post-production is simply breathtaking. Oh, and whoever was responsible for tip-toeing through the legal minefield to secure the rights to use all the clips deserves a medal - that alone represents a feat warranting entry to the Diplomatic Service! If you're wondering what all the fuss is about, have a look Here - I've uploaded a copy of the ad in .wmv form to a fast server where you can see for yourself.

15.6.05 12:05

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THE FUTURE'S BRIGHT...THE FUTURE'S...

Something had to change; working from home is all well and good, but it's so easy to lose perspective with no work colleagues in the immediate vicinity to bounce ideas off. With nothing in the immediate future to occupy me - and plenty of time on my hands - I realised how subjective I'd become in terms of my industriousness (or rather, my lack of it!)

With all my outstanding work cleared, it's been so easy to let time run away with me; an hour becomes two, becomes three and oops, there goes the morning. Have lunch, make a couple of calls, send an email or two and oh, what's that, a link someone's sent me? Check it out, surf somewhere else, download a few videos, and...oh! Where did the day go?

Something changed in me this week though; In part it came about through reading War Reporting for Cowards, Chris Ayres' brilliantly written account of his time in Iraq, and something which I blogged about on Wednesday. That book really struck a chord with me, stirring emotions that had laid dormant since I left Baghdad last April. I'd forgotten so much; fear, like pain, is a meaningless emotion when it's over and we forget how it feels. I forgot the feeling of being the only unarmed occupant of a vehicle headed into harm's way. But reading his account of being under fire brought home the emotions I felt at the one time in my thirty seven years when I honestly thought I was going to die - the futility of it, the pointlessness, the frustration of not being able to say goodbye to the people I love.

Ironically, when it happened was also the time when I least expected it. I'd previously been in myriad potentially harmful situations in Iraq, any one of which could have ruined my day - under small arms fire, in a convoy under RPG attack; I'd been on the receiving end of bomb blasts, mortar attacks and incoming rockets. None of them, at the time felt close enough to alarm me unduly. Oh sure, they did at first; I had plenty of time to think about how it would be, the things I'd like to do before I died.

I imagined I'd pour myself a huge drink, listen to some music, make some calls as I readied myself for the moment. But as Ayres says, "If drunk-dialling is bad, imagine death-dialling - that could really get you into some trouble in the morning if you were unlucky enough to survive whatever you thought was going to kill you". But when it came, it wasn't on my terms; I was on a rooftop at midnight, stood talking to two U.S Army soldiers, without my phone - and there wasn't a gin and tonic within a country mile of my position.

Death, when I confronted it, came in the form of a rocket attack on my final night in the city; two rockets from a salvo that had been sent with unerring accuracy for once. I heard the familiar 'whoosh' although this one, unlike all the others was more of a "Whooo.." - I didn't get the "...sh" part, because that's a sound made as the rocket passes overhead and this one didn't - it landed close enough that I could see it's trajectory, just enough time to think "Oh fuck".

Actually, that's a lie; I actually managed about "Oh F-!" before the rocket exploded with terrifying and horrific force. The noise, when it came, consumed everything. I'd heard the low boom of exploding rockets before, but I hadn't been on the receiving end of one; I felt this noise more than heard it, a sound so loud and powerful, it threatened to shake the flesh from my bones. The shock wave lifted me up and threw me across the roof like so much litter in the wind. But no sooner had I picked myself up, than the next one came in - and this one was even closer. In fact, it wasn't just closer, it was close enough that I saw it land. As it plummeted earthwards, I knew; That's it - Boom, you're dead! This was the one with my name on, and I knew, there'd be no tearful farewells, no angst for the things I hadn't done, the successes still to achieve; there'd just be some 'pink mist' and I'd cease to exist.

Except it didn't happen. The rocket landed and became what, in army vernacular, is 'unexploded ordnance'. A dud. It failed to go off.

Parabola: A rocket launch illustrated via timed exposure clearly shows the parabola - the shape a free-falling body takes through the air. Picture courtesy of NASA, but it's not disimmilar to what I remember seeing on that fateful night in Baghdad.

The two soldiers and I looked at one another...and laughed. Not a giggle; not a smrik, or a snigger as if hearing a brilliant joke; we were consumed with full-on, hysterical laughter and a happiness so pure - it was childlike. It was the joy of feeling the wind on my face, feeling my fingers and toes; the elation of simply being alive.

When people find out that I was out threre, the one thing I can guarantee they'll ask - above anything else - is, "Were you scared?" They want to know about death because they're scared of it, they think it's hard. But they're wrong. Death isn't hard. Life is, though and we know all about that. We know all about the forks in the road and the difficult decisions, the troughs, the disappointments, the struggles - but death is unknown and we fear what we don't know. No, I didn't want to die, but it didn't scare me - after all, what's to fear? The hole? One minute you're there, the next you cease to exist - compared to living, where's the difficulty?

Ayres writes eloquently too, of the confused emotions on getting his ticket out of theatre; the paradox of the coward in him wanting to flee whilst he felt he hadn't been there long enough, done enough to warrant leaving. Robert Capa, the Time-Life combat photographer says in his autobiography: "The war correspondent has his stake - his life - in his own hands and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his own pocket at the very last minute...Being allowed to be a coward, and not being executed for it, is his torture" Getting out was mine; The soldiers didn't have the chance to leave, and even if they did, they wouldn't. Soldiers get court-martialled for cowardice; journalists get a suite at the Marriott Hotel in Kuwait and a Club World sleeper seat with British Airways.

I've digressed again. But it was that - reading Ayres' book, the stirring of emotion that it awokened within me - that motivated me this week. "What was the point of surviving, if all you're going to do is waste the time you've been gifted?" was the question my mind challenged me with. And I didn't have an honest answer. So I did something about it.

I've been published around the world. Foriegn newspapers, magazines, periodicals and no end of specialist UK titles - but no broadsheets here. And no really high profile magazines, either. Oh, plenty that you can pick up in W.H Smith - but only if you're interested in the subject matter within. I decided to do change that; make it happen.

I feel like I've received a new lease of life this week. I've got the bit between myself and I've taken the first steps in marketing myself properly. On monday, I joined a web forum run by, and for freelance journalists. A place to swap tips, advice and information, share experiences - and it's fired me up. I've been inspired and I have a list of proposals ready to fire off at the broadsheets. I'm going to write a book - enough people have prompted me to do so, and the time has finally come to find an agent and do something with the material that I've got here resembling a manuscript. It might come to nothing yet, but hey - the way I'm feeling, anything can happen. On Wednesday I found out that one of the magazines I write for is going bi-monthly from it's current quarterly publication plan. Best of all though, is that my new-found enthusiasm is paying off. I made a call on spec last week to the editor of a major magazine and we talked for a bit. Yesterday, I emailed her a proposal...and she mailed me back by return with a commission. It'll me my first piece in one of the UK's higher profile magazines and I'm not stopping now.

What a way to finish off the week; Friday has always been my favourite day but today it just got even better. It's going to be warm and sunny this weekend, so make them count - I hope you enjoy yours as much as I'm planning to enojy mine. x

17.6.05 13:38

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TOUCHING

Just one word to sum up Saturday's finale of the new series of Doctor Who: Brilliant! I was a late convert to this - it utterly passed me by until I caught a few minutes of Episode 8, the one in which Rose (played convincingly by Billie Piper) goes back in time to meet her father just moments before his death. I was blown away by the what I saw; the acting, the scripts, the photography, the sheer scale of the production and its attendent attention to detail. Stunning. After sitting capitvated throughout episode eight, I set about watching every previous episode (what did we do before Bittorrent came along - Saturday's episode was up online just hours after broadcast) and haven't missed one since. Stunning.

I missed Saturday's broadcast, waiting until today to watch it - and I wasn't disappointed. What now, though? Do we really have to wait until Christmas to see how David Tennant will fare in the role that Christopher Eccleston so convincingly made his own? Gah!

The weekend's record-breaking weather wasn't wasted (bright and sunny all weekend in London and the South East with a high yesterday of 92deg. F, fact fans) with P and I taking a train into the city on Saturday afternoon. Alighted at Marble Arch and walked along Park Lane to Brook Gate and the new War Memorial for Animals.

I'd been meaning to come along to this since it opened on November 24th, but time and circumstance had somehow conspired against my doing so. Well, we had time on our hands this weekend and no excuses, and I'm glad we made the effort. Bearing the inscription, "They Had No Choice", the huge memorial, designed by David Backhouse, comprises a portland stone wall representing the arena of war alongside sculptures of two mules bearing battle equipment, a stallion and a dog.

They Had No Choice: Two mules walk away from the viewer towards the wall, representing the arena of war. To the left, the wall sweeps around with other animals featured upon it in bas relief. (c) Black Rat.

The momument honours all of the animals that have served and suffered in Britain's name through various conflicts and they are all there, depicted in bas relief upon the wall. From the horses, requisitioned from private owners in their millions to die upon continental battlefields, to the mules silenced for the Burmese jungle by having their vocal cords severed. The donkeys that collapsed under the weight of amumintion and the dogs that ripped their paws raw digging for survivors in the Blitz or had half their faces blown off searching for mines - but carried on to find more. They are all remembered - the camels and canaries, the elephants and oxen; the messenger pigeons that flew home bullet riddled and on one wing; and even the glow worms, by whose gentle light the soldiers read their maps in the First World War.

Socrates said that bold actions done without knowledge aren't courageous. That if you don't know the nature of the horrors that face you, you're just foolhardy rather than brave in taking them on. He was wrong; that cool logic can't, doesn't apply to animals. For unlike the British soldiers to whose efforts they were so vital, animals were forced into battle. As the inscription says, they had no choice. They could also bolt at gunfire without fear of court-martial. Few did though. So regardless of whether their actions were foolhardly, or brave, there is no question that they were admirable.

To the Future: On the monument's reverse, a dog looks back upon the losses of the animal kingdom as he walks towards the future. In front of the dog is a stallion. (c) Black Rat.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that until November, we were the only Commonweatlth nation without a memorial to the creatures that have died in war. We are a nation of animal lovers. In fact, we're often accused of being more sentimental about our animals than perhaps any nation on earth. So it's all the more extraordinary that this memorial was only erected as a result of private subscription, driven by huge public demand. Over £1m has been raised so far, with some generous individual donations from the UK and America. But extra security, building costs and additional materials mean that another £400,000 is still required. It's a worthy and imaginative way to honour the memory of so many creatures and if you get the chance, do pay it a visit.

From there, we walked to Picadilly and browsed in Waterstones before walking down to the National Police Memorial in The Mall. Designed by architect Norman Foster, the tribute is the brainchild of film director Michael Winner and was unveiled by the Queen in April. The marble and glass column contains a book with the names of 1,600 officers killed since 1900.

The memorial represents the realisation of a dream for Michael Winner who has campaigned tirelessly for a permament reminder of the ultimate sacrifice made by our police ever since the death of WPc Yvonne Fletcher. The project was started by Winner, who donated over £500,000 of his own money to the £2.3m project.

National Police Memorial: The marble-clad memorial is part of a ventilation shaft for the London Underground. It's on the corner of The Mall and Horse Guards Parade (c) Black Rat.

Winner set up the Police Memorial Trust after the shooting of WPC Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in 1984. He was determined that police who had died on duty should be remembered with memorials and has since ensured that 29 memorials to 33 individual officers around the country have been established. This is the first national memorial and it recognises the 4,000 police officers who have died whilst on duty in the last 175 years.

Clad in marble and covered in creeper, inset behind glass on one side is a book with the names of 1,600 officers slain on active duty. The pages are turned periodically. Perpendicular to the marble monument is a glass wall, backlit by the sun in a blue hue to represent the blue light that was traditionally outside police stations to show that officers were always on duty.

Backlit: The summer sun backlights the glass wall, designed to represent the blue light which traditionally shone outside police stations to show that officers were on duty.

By the time we made our way from the Police Memorial, it was gone 18:00. We wandered down to the Thames and walked along the river towards Whitehall before turning back and making for Leicester Square on a whim. There, we discovered we were just in time for the 19:00 showing of Batman Begins. Again, brilliant - if you haven't already, make sure you see it.

When we left the cinema 22:00 was just twenty minutes away so we walked into Soho for some cocktails in the surprisingly quiet Slug and Lettuce, Wardour Street. Suitably sated, it was off to Melate, an Indonesian restaurant just across the street and an old favourite. I've known the owner for over two decades - I first met him when I was a somewhat young and naiive police officer patrolling Soho - but hadn't seen him for maybe seven years. So imagine my surprise when he strolled up to me and said hello!

The evening was only slightly marred by our arriving at 23:50 at Kings Cross to discover that, despite several trains showing on the board, there were no services running after 23:30 (a situation that's set to be the pattern until September, apparently) and instead a replacement bus service would deliver us to our destination. Organised chaos outside on York Way, a mass of people, snarled up traffic and nobody in a position to advise what was going on. Eventually, a bus turned up and we all got on.

Sadly, P and I were sat immediately in front of four very drunk twenty-something girls, one of whom was garrulous in the extreme. No problem there except the timbre of her voice - just imagine the vocals of the bastard offspring of Sandra Dickinson and Joe Pasquale when she's swallowed the contents of a helium balloon and you'll be half way to the reality of how this girl sounded. Matters weren't helped when the bus driver got lost and had to execute a three point turn in a residential cul de sac somewhere along the Holloway Road. Eventually though, we got home and fell into bed at gone 02:00.

Yesterday was too hot and humid to do anything too energetic, so we spent the day with P's parents (it was her dad's birthday yesterday as well as being Father's Day). Back home in the aftnernoon to watch the USA round of F1, but I think the less said about that debacle the better, eh? They'll be picking over that particular carcass for some time to come yet.

Hope you all had fun-filled weekends and made the most of the weather, too. What did you do?

20.6.05 12:25

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SUN CITY

Does life get any better than this?

It's still June, a month not generally known for its fair weather, yet London and the South East are still basking in the sort of temperatures more commonly associated with the Mediterranean. It's now almost a week since the rain stopped, the mercury climbed, and here we are with yet another day of temperatures in the 90s, cloudless blue skies and almost no breeze. If it continues, we could become used to this! Okay, so ithere's rain forecast for tomorrow, but the temperature is still forecast to be in the mid 80s with a return to more sunshine at the weekend. Works for me.

It's times like this that I really love working from home. The garden looks pretty, the patio doors are wide open and the sound of summer drifts in to my office - birdsong, grass being mown, the sound from neighbouring gardens carried on a light breeze. There's a punnet of fresh English strawberries in the fridge, alongside a bottle of Champagne and a nicely chilled bottle of Australian Chardonnay; Wimbledon is on TV later and it won't get dark until 22:00.

Spent Summer Solstice evening in London; daughter-less, I travelled up on the train to meet P outside the Vrigin Megastore in Picadilly from where we wandered over to Soho. Found a bar in Wardour St and sat and watched the world go by over chilled Martinis as we discussed our respective days. From there, it was off to Wagamama in Lexington Street for some ramen washed down with a nice cold Sapporo; bliss!

I wanted to get some more images of the Animals in War Memorial on Brook Gate as the light dropped. You get some great effects with low light and slow exposures, and the lighting at the memorial is designed to show it off to best effect. Well worth the visit.

Been busy on the phone and with email all this week trying to pull together a number of upcoming assignments, all of which require lots of negotiation; got a couple of dates in the diary too, with a rather interesting trip lined up for early July; can't say too much at the moment, but there'll be more on that closer to the time.

Oh, and remember the 'Stunt City' TV Ad, which I wrote about back at the beginning of May? It's raced around the globe in a way that its creators can only have dreamed of. Enter the term into Google and it brings back over 300 pages of hits, most of which link to blogs discussing the film in awed terms. The reason I'm writing about it again is because I've discovered another, longer version of the ad as it was originally shot, which I've uploaded for anyone who wants to have a look. It was hard work getting hold of this - every copy out there seems to be streaming media, which is difficult to capture directly, but a bit of tweaking yesterday saw a copy land on my hard drive ;-) This version features a number of extra stunts and is worth downloading if only for the fact that you need to watch it four or five times just to catch all the action occurring in each frame. The quality of this copy is also superior to that of the cut-down UK version and it runs at a higher resolution on screen, so grab it while you can.

The advert was directed by English film director Ivan Zacharias and shot on location in Sydney, Australia over a period of about two weeks. In its original format, it runs to 60 seconds and markets the product Rexona, which is how 'Sure' for men anti-perspirant is branded outside of the UK. The irony is that, according to Australia's Daily Telegraph newspaper, the ad remains as yet unseen Down Under whilst the rest of the world discusses it and the remarkable series of stunts (roughly one every two seconds throughout the film) that make it so watchable. According to the Telegraph's article (published just five days ago), the production team used over thirty locally-employed stunt men - a brilliant coup for Australia which has been reknowned for the skills of its stunt actors since the Mad Max films of the 80s.
Oh, and before I go, is it just me, or is Science from Channel 4's Big Brother a pscychopath? I don't think I've ever seen such an ignorant, arrogant, aggressive and socially inept twat in my life. To my eye, his agressive and abusive attitude has already given the producers more than enough justification to have him removed and handed over to the local police so why do they persist in trying to seemingly engineer his involvement in some full-on physical violence, which is the way things appear to be headed? They're playing with fire here.

23.6.05 11:30

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