So, we’re at war. Funny, it doesn’t feel like it. And I speak as a veteran of several wars-by-proxy — I survived both Operation Desert Storm, and the Falklands Conflict (or at least the media coverage thereof), and those were REAL wars in comparison. Even though Kosovo is at relatively close range in comparison, there isn’t the same sense of…well, theatre. For good war is like good cinema; you need characters to empathise with, and a plot which will provide narrative thrust for the heroes’ actions. All this seems sadly lacking in this case; all you’ve really got is a load of Balkans being cruel to another load of Balkans. From the humanitarian point of view this is reprehensible; from the aesthetic point of view, it’s the rough equivalent ‘Friday the 13th Part VIII’ — nothing we haven’t seen far too often before. Am I the only person suffering from genocide fatigue?

It’s also kind of hard to work out what we’re going to accomplish here, since we are dealing with 600 years worth of conflict. A couple of days of bombing isn’t going to counteract that, no matter how many speeches Bill Clinton and Tony Blair make. Whatever happened to “hearts and minds”? We don’t like them killing each other so…we’re going to do it for them. I’m not entirely convinced by the moral argument apparently on view here.

Part of the problem is that NATO is now an organisation without an enemy; it’s as if James Bond suddenly discovered that SMERSH and SPECTRE had given up. He’d be left desperately casting round for alternative enemies. Looking at ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’, this means resorting to the sort of evil genius – no, make that Evil Genius – which is entirely unconvincing. And, for Jonathan Pryce read Slobodan Miloso…ok, so I’ve suddenly realised I don’t even know how to spell the bugger’s name. [You never had this problem with Hitler] And he certainly doesn’t seem to be coming across as more than lukewarm on the IQ scale, though the “evil” [*DR* Evil to you!] is predictably being pumped up. Last month it was Glenn Hoddle, this week it’s someone who sounds more like a tennis player than a threat to Civilization As We Know It.

We’re a bit lacking on the hero front as well. At least in Desert Storm, we had Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf; I’ve no idea who’s running the show this time, and I doubt whoever it is will be remembered in the same breath as General Patton or Montgomery. This is actually probably very sensible, since there’s not much glory to be had leading the combined armed forces of countries whose population totals 500 million or so, against…some Mig-29s and a bunch of enthusiastic ethnic cleaners. You are *expected* to kick serious ass; for professional soldiers this is the equivalent of a 3rd round tie in the FA Cup, away at a non-league side. Keep quiet, get the job done and pray you don’t screw up.

The script in this particular conflict also needs some tightening up, since we have the plot equivalent of a long-running soap opera: Bosnia is having an affair with Kosovo, but Serbia comes home early and finds them in bed together. Meanwhile Croatia is demanding to be taken seriously as an actress, while Slovenia is off opening a supermarket somewhere. Unless you’ve been following the story during, oh, the past couple of centuries, it’s understandable if you want to flip over from Newsnight to the Channel 5 documentary about striptease, or even The Weather In Norwegian.

All told, this is the military equivalent of ‘The Avengers’ — something that probably seemed a good idea at the time, but which in a few years time will be looked back on with raised eyebrows and a “What WERE we thinking?” expression. Because it’s , which is mere empty posturing and a chance to use up a few Cruise missiles before their sell-by date. It’s not often I find myself in line with the hardcore of the German Green party and Tony Benn, but pardon me if I opt to wait for the video of this one.

You are actually very lucky to get an editorial this week. It took a significant effort of will to prise myself out of the bedroom, where I have been spending far too many hours lately. Much as I’d like to leave it hanging like that [Y’know, those goddamn supermodels just won’t let go…], the real reason is largely to do with two Playstation discs: ‘Music’ and ‘Metal Gear Solid’.

The former is pretty much what its name would suggest; it’s a music generation program which lets you plug together riffs and rhythms into something closely resembling…well, the disturbing thing is, closely resembling about 25% of the charts. Even as someone with no musical training or ability (I gave up the recorder at about age 12), within an hour, I’d come up with something which would not seem out of place at the Ministry of Sound. It’s kinda like the musical equivalent of magnetic poetry: it simplifies things by making the basic choices for you.

Of course, you are somewhat limited: techno it’s good at, trying to create a Strauss waltz or (heaven forbid) country-and-western would be a but more laborious. However, it does allow you to generate your own components and even musical instruments, though without a real keyboard, you’d probably be quicker actually learning to play one. As a bonus, you can also generate pop-promos for them, though these are sadly limited to the sort of flashing lights they usually warn you about at the cinema, rather than babes wrestling in mud [Yes, I saw the thing about Duran Duran on the TV; wasn’t it fab? Ah, the 80’s — they’re the new 60’s…]

At this rate, I’ll be on Top of the Pops before the end of the month. Or at least, I *would* be, if it wasn’t for the alternative distraction provided by ‘Metal Gear Solid’. This game is heavy-duty: you play an 007 type operative called Snake who has to, oh, the usual: rescue hostages, disarm terrorists, kill nuclear missiles [I may have got the last two mixed up, I really should pay more attention. The major step forward in gameplay is that unlike Doom/Quake, it is a Very Bad Idea to get involved in firefights. You die. Repeatedly. It doesn’t help that the control are a little tricky to use; for some time, my major method of attack was to lie on the ground and crawl at my opponents.

Instead, you creep around, waiting for guards to pass, security cameras to swivel the other way, and generally engage in the sort of tedious stuff usually cut from Bond movies in favour of dry one-liners, cool gadgets and the stroking of white Persians. Running away at top speed, for example, is a crucial part of MGS. Yet despite – or perhaps because of – this, the end result is remarkably addictive: albeit with the odd impulse to hurl your Playstation across the room on occasion, but this is merely the mark of a good game.

There are really two options at this point: sacrifice, say, the next month to living a hermit-like existence in an effort to get it finished as soon as possible, or lock it in a cupboard and throw away the key. [The third possibility, playing it in moderation, is clearly ludicrous and will not be discussed any further] But whichever option is chosen, if things are quiet on the TC front, at least you’ll know why…

I was going to devote this week’s editorial to the strange case of the Labour MP caught by the police, perfectly innocently, in a thinly disguised whorehouse. What he was doing in there if he WASN’T having sex doesn’t bear thinking about. Now, that’s what I *call* a fact-finding mission. However, I don’t think there’s anything more that needs to be said — except that like Joe Ashton, it’s time for some more creeping and crawling, I reckon. Only mine is round a nuclear base, rather than to Tony Blair…

Technology is a terrible thing — particularly when you have to try and live without it. Five years ago, I managed to survive totally happily without the Internet, but to lose it now would be a total disaster, in ways from the cultural to the emotional. And even worse is having to live without a VCR; the mere prospect of this sent me scurrying to Tottenham Court Rd, wodge of cash in hand, to buy a replacement.

For my beloved Grundig multi-system VCR was clearly on its last legs, and the time had finally come to put it out of its misery. It had been a relatively swift decent into recorder senility, starting with occasional flickers into b&w when playing British tapes. These gradually became more prevalent, until it was finally turning every PAL cassette into something looking like a 40’s film noir. This, in itself, wasn’t terminal — it still recorded fine and, after all, I never watch that many PAL tapes these days; I could resurrect my trusty and ancient Panasonic if necessary (best part of a decade old and still working fine, apart from it’s irregular fondness for ejecting tapes with the venom of a West Indian fast bowler).

However, things continued to degenerate. When you rewound a tape, it would stop, then switch itself off. You’d put it on again, it would whirr…then switch itself off once more. Taking a tape out required a combination of patience and savage button-punching, to the extent that the eject button was on the verge of caving in. And then the motor really started to give up, mangling the speed of tapes so that they either sounded like the Chipmunks or secret messages from the Mysterons. Any one of these could have been rectified by a visit to the repair-shop, but all three convinced me that Mr. Wallet needed to pay a visit to Mr. Bank Machine.

The thing about Tottenham Court Road is that you have to go there with a firm knowledge of what you want: it’s not Curry’s or DIxon’s. The shop assistants there can smell fear or ignorance, and will pounce in a wolf-like manner, sending you home with several boxes of not-strictly-necessary technology, a raped credit-card and a vague sense of unease. Keep repeating the mantras which will convince them you have a clue about the subject: in Dixon’s, “Does that come with a plug?” will awe the typical spotty Saturday assistant, but on TCR, “Is that NTSC 3.58 or 4.43?” is closer to your starter for ten. Look knowledgeable, write everything down in a notebook and NEVER SMILE. [Women can try batting their eyelashes, but I suspect these guys are immune to anything up to the level of Catherine Zeta-Jones]

So I come home bearing another Panasonic beast; multi-system, six-heads, stereo, for 300 quid [and a fake address on the receipt — last time the house bought a VCR, someone tried to burgle us shortly after. Though the security on the house is now one step short of requiring visits from UN inspectors, I’m taking no chances]. It should now be a simple case of removing the old one and connecting up the new one, no?

No. Not when the old one [or, in Lovecraftspeak, the Old One] had totally different connections. Two happy man-hours were spent plugging things in, unplugging other things, and debating whether “VIDEO IN” meant into the VCR, or from it into something else. Ah, the joys of home entertainment. Finally, it’s all more-or-less connected, and more-or-less works. But the goddess of technology had one final trick to play on us. Y’know I said my other VCR was a Panasonic? Guess what happens when I hit play on the remote? Yep: *both* machines spring into life, with perfect synchronicity. Still, nothing that a spot of masking tape on the old one can’t solve…

There are some things that you do, then swear you’ll never do again, knowing as you make the promise, that you’re lying: get hungover, move house, watch “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”. To this list can now be added, buying a VCR. It’s over. For now. But they did have some rather nice DVD players… 🙂

Well, that’s that: one-third of my holiday allowance for the year used up by the first day in March. But, really, I can’t complain, having had an utterly fabulous time, both in America (12 days) and Prague (4 days). The reason for this sudden burst of activity was two-fold: an Evening Standard/Daily Mail offer of half-price flights, and the likelihood that, with the Millennium approaching, the company will nail everyone to their seats from about June on. And both holidays were wonderful, albeit in different ways, and indeed, different climates, even if the activities carried out were perhaps not always those of which the Daily Mail might approve…

There is something very, very nice about going from cold, damp and miserable Tulse Hill to somewhere like Phoenix, where the temperature is in the high 70’s, and an outdoor pool is a viable option. In a few weeks, it will no doubt be unbearably hot (as tales of bags of ice cubes being dumped into the pool attest), but at the time, it was unutterably fabulous.

I won’t go on at great length about it all, because much of the activity therein was, while great fun to me, doesn’t exactly make for gripping writing, though eating Hatch Valley Chilli was an experience that will live with me for some time, particularly if I see any nuclear explosion on TV. Generally, however, Playing Goldeneye, drinking Framboise, eating lasagne which bordered on the godlike, and picking up stacks of ultra-cheap laser discs were pastimes which I will treasure closely to my own heart, but not inflict on you.

Particularly worthy of note were spending St.Valentine’s Day firing off 9mm weaponry at a local shooting range. Full details of this will be in the next printed TC, but it’s probably a good thing that I am, in general, kept well away from lethal armaments. I also attended a fight, at which a hockey game briefly broke out: the most surprising thing there was how the referees stood back and let them get on with at, only stepping in when one participant went down.

One thing worth mentioning though, was a return trip to Las Vegas: my first trip there has been well chronicled in the printed TC, but a return trip allows you to take in the place with a little more detachment, and a little less awestruck wonder. I also got to see the volcano on the Strip this time — allegedly it’s pina-colada scented, though I couldn’t tell. Think I probably gambled a bit more this time, and even won a slots tournament: ten competitors, $15 each, keep what the machine pays, and prizes for the top three, which largely solved the gift problem, though don’t tell my family that…

Our major revelation was a machine called ‘Safebuster’, which is one of the rare ones in the casinos with a feature — given the somewhat advanced age of your average slots player, anything more that three-bells-in-a-row is too much for their senile dementia to handle. This one-armed bandit, however, had a combination lock on top, which spun periodically; get the right number, and an X lit up: three X’s = money. However, it was amazing how many people failed to grasp this concept, and would walk away leaving two X’s shining like a beacon. We prowled the strip, looking for these machines, and even took to “predating” in our hotel, like gambling velociraptors. We would lurk in the background whenever anyone aged over fifty played them, waiting to POUNCE if they left too many X’s up. This added a whole new, carnivorous dimension to gambling.

Inevitably, it was something of a shock to leave the warm climes of Arizona (jumper all but unused) and return to cold and wet London. However, at least I had phase two of my break to look forward to. It seemed as if I had hardly caught my breath before I was earning more air miles on the way to the Czech capital.

I’ve been there before as well (again, see previous TCs for details), but I was a little more worried that the place would have lost the naive charm which it had last time I visited, soon after it split from Slovakia. I needn’t have been too bothered, however, as I think the wave of tourists which swamped the city has since subsided. Going in February probably helped a bit too, though the weather was unseasonably clement: we didn’t expect to be in T-shirts.

We had a blast: how could it be otherwise, with beer at 40p a pint? And add to this that this is a land where, at meal-times, vegetables fall into the category of “optional extra”, and you have a land which is clearly close to TC’s heart, even without the undeniably cute locals. We struggled manfully coming to grips with Czech, a language which requires keyboards to have FOUR characters per key, and ended up referring to everything as “hodinky” simply because we liked the word — the fact that it actually meant “watch” was irrelevant.

Just as warped as Czech were the English translations in the restaurants where we ate. Among the items we enjoyed were: Prague Joe’s Style Needle Sack of Mr.Town Councillor Mixed Grill Pretty Prague Girl Style

Our accommodation was great: for eleven pounds a night each, we got an apartment just off the top of Wenceslas Square, which had everything we needed as well as a billiard table. And there was enough going on to keep everyone interested, no matter their interests: classical music, art, history, or simply beers, steers and leers.

If it was hard to come back from America, in some ways it was even harder to come back from Prague, because that’s it over: no holiday for the next four months. My cooking falls well short of what I had out in America, while trying desperately to get service in a London pub compares VERY unfavourably with a place where seats and swift service are the norm. I am therefore embarking on a brief period of mourning — but will no doubt surface once enough absinthe has been consumed… 😉