There’s no point in being embarrassed about it, really; they’ve been the sporadic bane of my life for the best part of a decade now. Sometimes, they shrink to almost nothing, and life can go on normally; but at other times, they swell to an enormous size, and impact severely on my social life, because deal with them is about all you can do. If you ignore them, and hope they go away, they just get bigger. Sometimes I get friends to help me, but in the end, I’m the one who has to live with the problem, which is probably an inevitable result of my editorship.

Sorry, what was that? Ah… I’d better explain that I am, in fact, talking about piles of unwatched video tapes — what did you think I meant, inflamed rectal blood-vessels? Ew, gross… No, I mean the continued, looming presence beside the television set of things that have to be seen. It’s a feature of the living-room that grew out of necessity: if I don’t keep focussed on incoming tapes + laserdiscs, they will get stuck on the shelf and vanish into the crowd, never to be seen — and no “again” about it. But by keeping them in sight, and restricting my choices to them, I know that they will be seen at least once.

This is something of a mixed blessing, in that it’s both limits the choice, and makes it easier. On average, there’s maybe 20 titles in the pile, which is enough to give a broad spectrum of titles for every mood and company. On the rare occasions when I’ve flattened it totally, the enormous range of possibilities that exists if I have my entire collection to choose from, rather than a limited subset, is simply so paralysing that I usually end up going down the pub instead. Where do you start, when you’ve hundreds of titles to choose from? And that’s *after* you’ve already decided you fancy something from Hong Kong.

On the down side, the difference between the collection and the pile in quality is significant. I own films because I like them, enjoy them, and want to watch them again, not for any other reason. Movies in the pile may be there because I’ve bought them — or they may have been foisted on me by acquaintances, or review copies from video companies, and the quality of those is far less certain. It’s a big temptation to cherry-pick the best, but you have to exercise restraint, or else the average quality slowly declines. There are times when you can face what you know will be really bad, and there are times when you just can’t: you must learn to strike when the iron is hot, and the fridge full of beer.

The worst I recall was a spell when the TV was off being repaired, back in my previous home, in the days when this was a one television household: somewhere more than fifty tapes were accumulated by the time the set returned. Since then, they’ve been whittled away, and built up, rarely evaporating totally or getting out of control. But since I got TC out of the way, I’ve been able to make a serious assault on it [didn’t leave the house last weekend!], and at 6:57 pm, I finished watching “Yes Madam ’95”, the only outstanding item — though “outstanding” it wasn’t, being a particularly mediocre Hong Kong action film and perhaps a new low-water mark in Cynthia Khan’s career. That’s not important: what matters, is that the headline at the top is no longer accurate, although “I’ve not got piles” is a far less eye-catching title. Maybe it should have been “My piles have cleared up”?

I doubt it’ll last long, not with a dozen titles on order, but it’s probably worth documenting since it’s only the third time I remember it happening since I started TC back in 1989. Solar eclipses are everyday occurrences in comparison. And now, I’m going to watch… watch… oh, sod it — I’m off down the pub…

Earlier this week Brion James, deliverer of the above line in ‘Blade Runner’, died. It thus seems appropriate to devote this week’s editorial to the cheerful subject of death, though there is more to it than the loss of an under-rated actor. One week after the eclipse (my eyesight now restored back to normal, thank you for asking), and it continues to rumble around my psyche in a vague fashion. For it suddenly struck me that if it HAD signalled the end of the world, my last minutes on Earth would have been spent staring at a small bright dot on a piece of cardboard, and that’s hardly the way in which I wish to end my life. Without wishing to inflict the sordid details on you, the list of possible ways tends to be skewed slightly towards Denise Richards and a large vat of chocolate.

But once you get beyond the obvious, base choices, it is an interesting question, and one where the answer does differ, more than you’d think, from a more general, how-do-you-want-to-die scenario. For example, given two weeks warning of my own demise, I’d liquidise all my assets and blow them, big time — no point saving for a rainy day, when neither heaven nor hell are exactly noted for them. But in the event of mass extermination, this is a less viable option, for who is going to want money? Especially since there’ll be so much of the stuff swilling round as to make it next to worthless.

Another important factor in the answer is how much warning is given. If it’s a sirens-going-off scenario, then all you’ll really have time to do is put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye, to quote one of those “amusing” 70’s T-shirts. A couple of hours would permit you to rush home to your one true love, albeit only if she was within rushing home to distance (however, see the wonderful ‘Miracle Mile’ for details of the problems this sort of thing can cause) — for the rest of us, it’d be time to get a) on the phone, and b) quietly hammered. Anything more than a couple of days though, presents a bit of a stamina problem there, unless you intend to reach oblivion before oblivion reaches you.

The Canadian film, ‘Last Night’ suggested a nice scenario: given sufficient time, people faced with death go through a series of stages: denial, rage, etc, but eventually end up at a kind of laissez-faire acceptance. Personally, taking this to its logical conclusion, by the time Armageddon arrived, I like to think we’d all be so used to the concept, that we’d probably just watch ir on TV. There’s something to be said for this: never mind the eclipse, here’s the outside broadcast to end them all. Literally.

This would be particularly nice in the event of a rolling apocalypse, moving around the globe with the dawn: “we now take you to New Zealand, where…oops, too late. Hello, Australia!”. Even better still, we could ship those we wished to see die, off to act as commentators; Chris Evans to Tahiti, with Jeremy Beadle and Noel Edmonds also going to points east. It’d be peculiarly comforting to know, albeit for a few brief hours, that the world was free of their inane prattle. Yes, if you look hard enough, there is always an up side to everything, even global annihilation.

There’s probably something millennial about the topic too, though it looks increasingly like Nostradamus was wrong. Kosovo looked like it might have been it for a while, especially after America, with pin-point accuracy, bombed the Chinese embassy (as well as an entirely different country). But while that’s now just become another notch on the bedpost of the Balkans, there’s enough time left for India-Pakistan to blow up. Still, as long as there’s live and uninterrupted coverage…

In years to come, people will ask each other “Where were *you* during the eclipse of 1999?”. Well, it’s perhaps not quite up on the same level as historic events like, er, the death of Princess Diana, but after a long period of ennui leading up to the event, I must confess it wasn’t bad. It probably helped that I’d stoically ignored all the hype, and was thus expecting not very much to happen: no apocalypse (unlike certain French fashion designers, who must now be feeling very silly after predicting the Mir space-station would fall on Paris), no massive display of fireworks, just the moon covering most of the sun for a bit.

So come eleven o’clock, I abandoned my desk and left the building, in the biggest exodus since the last fire drill, to stand around in the streets with everyone else, pieces of cardboard in hand. Not that I need really have bothered, as it soon became apparent that it was a race between the clouds and the moon to see which would cover the sun first. The moon just about got there, though the clouds soon meant that pinholed cardboard was a waste of effort, while those wearing the special shades merely looked silly. It was a nicely communal activity though, I’ve not seen so many city workers standing around being entertained since the Stop the City protest. Next time, though, they’ll probably have worked out some way to make it pay-per-view.

Once the sun went out (or the 96.8% out we got here), that was it. For it really is a remarkably boring event: it’s like a glacier, impressive to see, but not something you’d want to watch. The most surprising thing was how it actually did get significantly colder — otherwise, it was tempting to go up to an overlooking roof-top, and lob a few burning tennis balls off the top, while dangling a colleague, clad in a black cape and wielding a scythe, over the edge. Combine that with a few well-chosen phrases through a megaphone, like ‘The end is nigh…’, and there could have been panic in the streets. However, the logistics of getting a scythe at such short notice proved too tricky, so I went back to my desk, and instead started worrying about whether I was now going to go blind. For to a hypochondriac such as myself, the dire warnings about not looking at the sun meant that I spent the next two days gazing at the wall, trying to work out if my vision was irrevocably damaged, or whether it was just that my contact lenses needed cleaning.

The best thing to come out of the eclipse is that it has probably given astronomy its highest profile in this country since the Apollo missions. It was nice to see the venerable Patrick Moore wheeled out on prime-time: as TV personalities go, you can’t imagine anyone further from the grinning and vacuous inanities of Johnny Vaughan and whatever talentless bimbo is working with him on The Big Breakfast this week. I must confess to feeling an overwhelming surge of nostalgia for Magnus Pyke, and the Great Egg Race. Oh, and Tomorrow’s World has never been the same since Raymond Baxter left.

The most amusing thing about the whole event was the frantic bleating of the businesses down in Cornwall, whining ceaselessly about how there weren’t enough visitors and blaming all and sundry for this failure. Except, of course, themselves for jacking their prices up to levels which went beyond the acceptable: after all, it wasn’t as if the eclipse was going to cost the hoteliers anything. It was a simple case of supply and demand and they got it badly wrong — it’s always immensely satisfying to see the greedy get their come-uppance (see also the great house price crash of the early ’90s). Book those camp-site places now for the next one, near the end of the 21st century…

So, there I am: early Monday morning, kneeling on the floor of the bathroom cubicle at work, gazing down at the bowl…and I’m thinking I’ve been here before — usually the morning after particularly alcohol-shaped evenings. But in this case, my mind was clear, sharp and focussed (or, at least, as much as it usually is on Monday morning, which is admittedly closer to fuzzy, blunt and…ooh, look at that cloud), and hard at work stapling together the next issue of Trash City.

This was, admittedly, a self-inflicted injury. I’d come in on the Sunday, intending to make full use of untrammelled access to the copier to knock off the sample copies for the printer, but managed to screw up and leave a dozen pages at home. “No problem,” I thought, “easily knock it off on Monday,” having totally forgotten the…ah, somewhat arresting nature of the TC front cover. Given the recent arrival of a new boss, of uncertain sensitivities (his mobile phone plays the theme from ‘Star Wars’…I’m not sure whether this is good or bad), I thought it best to exercise discretion, and so anyone entering the toilet would have heard sounds of rustling, punctuated by the odd ker-thunk of staples being driven home. The things I do for TC.

It was thus with a certain sense of relief that I stuffed it in the post later that morning. I think this must be what having kids are like; seems like a good idea at the time, but requires a steadily increasing amount of effort, until finally you can wave them goodbye and get on with the rest of your life. I think the worst bit was the proof-reading; every sweep seemed to find more typos, glitches and cock-ups rather than less. This is probably inevitable: by the time you’ve read an article a dozen times, you see what you think is there, rather than what actually is on the page. There’s thus an endless cycle of print-check-scrap — I’m sure I heard the Amazonian rain-forest give a small cheer when I finally said “Screw this for a lark” and went down the pub instead. Of course, I know full well that when it comes back from the printers, the typos will be outlined in neon and tap-dancing across the page to greet me. Such is the life of a ‘zine editor… I hope you’re bloody grateful. 🙂

In theory, this should mean I can kick back and relax. However, I’ve just had a quick attack of paranoia: phoned the Post Office to confirm delivery of the (recorded delivery) pages to Juma, and they said they had no record of the parcel… Panic! However, a swift call to Juma revealed they’d arrived safely with no problem, so I look forward to hearing what the Post Office Customer Services say… Actually, this wasn’t as bad as it would have been in the bad old days of scissors and glue, when there was *one* master — now it’s all electronic, I could just print off another set. Such are the delights of technology.

With that little crisis out of the way, and TC safely in the hands of the printers, all I’ve got left to do is the little things, like trying to remember where I put the envelopes. And the sticky labels. Er, and the subscriber’s list. Such are the problems with 13-month gaps between issues – though this represents a major improvement over the previous 18-month interval! Still, I think I can take this weekend off, give myself (and all the contributors, he adds hurriedly!) a pat on the back, and go down the pub for a well-earned beer: pint of Director’s, please, landlord. Tomorrow, I may well be kneeling on the bathroom floor again…