The majority of
women have half a glass too much and let down the barriers a little, then they
wake up in the morning riddled with guilt and think they can reclaim their
virtue by saying “I can’t remember”.
David Niven
in The Pink Panther
Let's
suppose that an incredibly superior race of extraterrestrials have been
observing our earth since way back in the last millennium.
Now,
finally regarding us in such high esteem in terms of our evolvement from tree
climbing monkeys to modern day homo sapiens, they decide to visit our planet
with the sole purpose of forging an intergalactic alliance that’s considered
necessary for the long term continued survival of both of our planets.
And
just imagine if they were to bring along with them the wisdom and knowledge
that would enable us to solve problems that for years, has baffled our most
prominent doctors, scientists and astrophysicists.
They
may even be able to show us how it's feasible for the concept of utopia and
humankind to co-exist. To live in a world devoid of war, famine, illness and
crime as perhaps they have already been doing for hundreds or thousands of
years.
And
so after many years preparing their finest crew together with a specially
elected body of alien beings chosen to represent the ethos of their distant
planet, they dispatch a spaceship on a treacherous mission travelling millions
of light years through deep space crossing distant galaxies, to visit our
earth.
Then
finally one day, after perhaps many months traveling in a means of
transportation and at a velocity we can’t even begin to understand, they enter
our earth’s atmosphere and with trepidation, make a slow and momentous decent
before finally touching down onto the surface of our earth.
But
then, wouldn’t it be a bloody shame if their spaceship arrived late one night
on a bank holiday weekend and instead of landing say, in Parliament Square or
on the lawn outside the White House, they landed instead in a typical English
town beset with bars, takeaways, racial tension and all the other lowbrow
cultural trappings that now mire this once great country.
Hypothetically
speaking then, let us assume that they land somewhere like Torquay, Plymouth or even Exeter where I currently work.
Can
we even begin to imagine the depravity; degradation and decline that would
welcome our visitors when they gather together for the first time on their
observation deck and take a look out through the window for the first
time? Just picture it … a dazzling array of pulsating blue Police lights
illuminating the hundreds of unruly drink and drug crazed revelers that can
pack one stretch of road at any one time.
Groups
of police officers, some carrying Tazer electroshock guns, CS gas spray and
batons, would be strategically positioned as they usually are at weekends, in
an authoritative exhibition of totalitarian might in opposition against the
unrelenting violence and lawlessness that spills out from our pubs and clubs
and onto our streets each and every weekend.
One
officer can be seen pulling back hard on a rope restraining a ferocious German
shepherd from leaping up and pulling away, eager to chase and bring someone
down using it’s jaws as it was trained to do. While high up, sophisticated and
powerful robotic cameras menacingly rotate, roaming up and down the street, searching.
Suddenly
outside a bar, a brawl erupts between two mixed gender groups and in typically
traditional British fashion, verbal profanities accompanied by a series of
goading and aggressive hand gestures are exchanged in a duel tribal display of
urban pre-battle foreplay.
A
women, barefoot with a tattoo inked across her lower back just above where her
thong cuts into her flab, curls her tongue and dispatches a thick green gob
planting it on the asphalt just forward of the enemy. With a fag in one hand and
a shoe in her other, she yells the familiar battle cry often heard in modern
day suburbia, “LET’S FUCKIN ‘AVE IT!” then dashes forward hammering the
pointed heel down hard into a man's head. The ensuing blood that flows from the
entry wound signals to all the others for battle to commence.
Within
seconds, strangers gather around like children at a playground fight and in all
their excitement, takeaway polystyrene containers spill food over the pavement
as onlookers hastily cram as much food as they can into their already gorged mouths.
Meanwhile,
those others who are so completely drunk that they can't even coordinate the
workings of their own legs, somehow manage to advance forward in unhurried
stages dragging one foot behind them at a time. And with their vacant eyes,
gaping mouths and heads listing over to one side, they resemble film extras
from a cult zombie flick.
Just
a little further down the road, a young woman squats in a shop doorway as
steaming urine cuts a jagged path across the sloped pavement and into the
gutter as her friend stands next to her clinging onto a wheelie bin with her
head lowered and waiting in anticipation for the inevitable stomach convulsions
that always precede the thick surge of rancid vomit that dispenses so
vehemently making that well defined splosh sound that we’re all familiar with
when somebody chunders.
By
this time . . . the UFO's alien mission commander will no doubt be scratching his
huge head and looking rather bewildered wondering just where the hell they have
landed. No doubt he’ll be asking himself whether his navigation officer made a
slight booboo when coordinating their flight path.
But
continuing with his assignment, I wonder how quickly his enthusiasm would
diminish when, with his entire crew observing through the window with bated
breath and with live coverage being transmitted back to his own planet, he
climbs slowly out through the departure hatch and as he cautiously descends the
exit ramp, he inadvertently steps on a portion of cheesy chips tossed aside
only moments earlier by a passing drunk. The ensuing skid snatches his legs
away quickly initiating an awkward looking backward flip and he frantically
reaches out with both hands to grab hold of anything he can in a desperate,
futile attempt to save himself from falling. But as he disappears over the
edge, a scream, stifled noticeably by his thick space-suit, can be heard
trailing behind as he plummets to the ground landing heavily with an
unforgiving thud and startling a young man squatting down just a few feet away
having a dump behind the ship’s landing gear.
Nearby,
un-phased by all this commotion, seagulls squabble viciously over a kebab
strewn over the road while the man who once owned it sleeps soundly across the
car bonnet where he fell.
If
then after seeing all of this, the alien ship’s commander then feels compelled
to run back into the spacecraft screaming, "Abort mission” and
blasting-off back into deep space, then in all honesty, could we really blame
him? This being the case, to lose the opportunity of benefiting from the
knowledge and experience of a race far more advanced and superior than
ours, would be nothing short of catastrophic.
Our
only slight hope for salvation would be if by some slim chance, just one of
their crew would notice amid this shameful exhibition of hedonism and social
decadence, a holidaying family of four who after an enjoyable evening out at
the theatre now find themselves, caught up in this hellish situation as they
make their way back to their hotel.
With
the parents having no option but to walk with their two young children through
this ominous gathering of human garbage, the children’s faces who only moments
earlier looked so joyful now look desperately frightened as mummy and daddy
lovingly and reassuringly lift and carry them, pulling them in tightly.
Having
noticed the children’s fear and witnessing the true extent of the parents alarm
and apprehension, perhaps only then would the aliens, who no doubt have
children of their own would then realize that not all people on earth are repugnant as it
first appears and they then mercifully choose to stay on this planet and help
us rather than flee wrongfully mistaking us to be a species unworthy of
salvation.
Perhaps
if within their already successfully proven agenda of race development and
survival this includes firstly a cull, a procedure we already use successfully
when our cows go mad, followed then by implementing a long term reproductive
program based on the contentious philosophy of eugenics, then personally,
speaking as a doorman, I have no problem with this whatsoever.
Renowned
physicist and award winning science writer John Gribbon, put the human race
into perspective using the following analogy. If you can imagine shrinking the
entire 4.5 billion year history of the earth, into a single 24 hour day period,
then dinosaurs wouldn’t show up until 11 o’clock at night and they would be
wiped out twenty minutes before midnight and get this! - humans wouldn’t appear
until just two seconds before midnight and all of recorded history . . . right
back to the pyramids, would take place in the last tenth of a second.
So
then, taking this into consideration, as a species still so young in terms of
evolutionary advancement, when you consider the enormity and seriousness of the
problems and the mess we have created for ourselves as a consequence of our
hedonistic, deviant lifestyles, I guess it’s safe to say we have pretty well
fudged things up already. Perhaps God’s biggest gaffe was wiring up the
circuitry in our brains too swiftly because as our brains evidently developed
and became larger and as we became more inquisitive, it didn’t take too long
before we climbed down from the trees, learned to walk upright and no doubt had
our first cave party.
A
graffiti artist is reputed to have once sprayed on a wall, ‘God is alive – but
working on a less ambitious project’ and who knows, perhaps this is the case.
But I suspect if the truth were known, God is gnashing his teeth for taking
that seventh day off to play golf instead of staying put and completing the job
efficiently.
ADDITIONAL NOTE:
A
study on the popular Caribbean island of St Kitts in which alcohol was given to
monkeys revealed startling similarities between the ways in which humans and
small primate react to alcohol.
The
study involving one thousand green Vervet monkeys showed that the vast majority
drank moderately by stealing alcoholic beverages from the thousands of
holidaymakers who visit the beach bars every day. Also, the monkeys preferred
to have their alcohol diluted with fruit juice and enjoy drinkng only in the
company of other monkeys who are also drinking (and never before lunch). Around
15% drank heavily and frequently, preferring their booze as strong as possible,
while roughly the same percentage either sustained or hardly drank at all. And
about 5 % turned out to be binge drinkers, knocking it back as fast as
possible, getting into fights and then passing out.