Richard Peters -in the Sai Kung Country Park

I’ve been 'en-Googled'. To be more precise, I’ve been captured on Google Maps.

I’ve made it! The world, fame fortune finally beckons. I’ve been en-Googled. To be more precise, I’ve been captured on Google Street View.

(In best Copper-giving-hevidence voice) Hi was hprohceedn’ down the Sai Sha hroad hwen hi hnoticed a p’culiar hvehicule a-hcommin’ hin the hopposite dirhection. Hi hsmil’d hand hwaved hat the said honcoming Google Street View Car a-thinkin’ to miself, “Ghosh, hugh har a luckee, luckee hso-an-so to ‘ave hyor picture htaken thus”.

Go to Google Maps and type in Sai Sha Road.

Drag the little yellow Street View man onto the left hand side of the road and, making sure you are travelling in the right direction, follow the road up the hill towards Ma On Shan until you get to the first village on your left. I’m coming down the hill waving furiously in me little silver Mazda. 

Life in the 80s

Last night we attended an 80s Party. For clarification purposes, let me state that this was not a celebration of octogenarians, but a remembrance of all things circa 1980-90.

A decade is a long time, of course, and there’s a lot that went on during the 80s. Jigging about to Spandau Ballet's Gold and Marc Almond’s Tainted Love got me reminiscing. But instead of trawling through the golden oldies of yesteryear, here’s my review.

I remember when the 70s were finally over: An insufferable romantic, I stood in the yard of our North Audley Street basement flat and, like some moron, looked sorrowfully up at the ever-pinkish London midnight clouds and plaintively wailed as Big Ben clanged, “Oh 70s where hast thou gone?” I remember the strange sensation that we were onto something new, modern and exciting: Who knew where it would take us.

So, I started the decade living in Mayfair. My Mother, sister and I were living in such splendid surroundings courtesy of my Uncle Bruce who at that time was a rising star in property development. I attended the Purcell School of Music in Harrow-on-the-Hill, so each day walked up Baker Street to get the near-empty Metropolitan Line trains out of the heart of London (everyone else was packed into trains going in the opposite direction). Mum worked at the big Marks and Sparks at the bottom of Baker Street (now gone). My sister worked at John Jones Frames just off Bond Street framing the pictures of the great and glorious including the large portrait that appeared behind the opening doors each week on This Is Your Life (but she could never tell who and was sworn to secrecy).

We had moved to Knightsbridge and then to Chelsea before Mum moved to Lynton in North Devon in 1983. I stayed with my mate Dan’s family in Harrow for the last few months of school. These were great summer days full of cricket, girlfriends, naughty lunchtime trips to the pub and partying. We were young, free and penniless!

I remember thinking that 80s fashions were really crap. Part of that was my highly opinionated adolescent appreciation of all things under heaven, but part of that was the plain obvious. Pixie boots? Off the shoulder dots and stripes t-shirts? Asinine ‘Frankie Says’ sloganeering? I mean, come on…

There are, of course, those for whom this was their best time of it. Not I. I was trying to make something of it in London when my mother broke her arm and she asked if I would come down and help run the creaking ghostly guest house she had at that time. A fiery autumn turned into a bleak dreary winter of daytime TV and long tramps across Exmoor. Although this aspect was nice, having no money wasn’t. I hitch-hiked everywhere. Or walked.

The 80s were momentous. Thatcher began her process of privatisation and the Miners went on strike. President Reagan deployed nuclear weapons across Europe and the Greenham Common lesbians struck camp: the Cold War was in full swing, the Soviets fought a terrible war in Afghanistan, the Ethiopian famine provoked Live Aid (I gave £5, ya know) and Zimbabwe became independent. Mount St Helens erupted, Chernobyl poisoned half the world with lethal radiation and the Challenger Shuttle exploded live on TV! Communism crumbled across Eastern Europe and the Tiananmen Square protests were mercilessly crushed. And much, much more...

I took Flavia to see Life of Brian, Sam to The Meaning of Life and Rosie to Gandhi (and Amadeus with me Mum).

I met Brenda at Tim Welch’s 21st birthday party. I don’t think we thought much about each other at first. We both liked Jethro Tull. She said she had some friends who’d like to see them at the Albert Hall, I thought I could get tickets. Time elapsed. I wrote and explained my fiscal embarrassment which meant I couldn’t get tickets. She replied that her friends were thinking twice about an expensive trip to London. And so began 7 months of letter writing during which we realised we would be married. We knew we had to wait until we had both finished college in Hull and that was difficult –Hull’s terrible! For some reason getting married is an extraordinarily important and urgent thing to do when you’re young. But wait we did and on November 1st 1987 we finally got hitched in St Albans (because it was the most central spot for our families). Phew!

I got my first computer –an Atari ST! This baby enabled me to put together electronic music: Wow! Many nights were filled with little compositions, big band moments and quirky electronic ditties that pleased me at the time. Sometimes they completely disappeared into the eternal nether-regions of "disk error", sometimes they saved. I still have a tape somewhere.

By the end of the decade Brenda and I were living in Hastings expecting our first baby. I remember watching the terrible news of Tiananmen in 1989 with a tiny Rachel Peters on my lap and wondering if there would be some sort of connection –us and China. How strange life can be.

We bought our little basement flat at the height of the housing price hike and it immediately fell into negative equity. Our first rung on the property ladder snapped under us. Brenda went off to do her Masters at Manchester University. So, we said goodbye to the South and lived with Brenda’s Mum in Bolton for a little more than a year.

And that was the 80s. We came downstairs in our dressing gowns to watch the countdown on telly. At 5-past midnight Brenda’s mum popped her head around the door to wish us a Happy New Year and caught us in flagrante –our first act of the 90s!

A Bad Hair Day for Olympus

Well, you know how it is –a rainy afternoon with not much to do (plenty to do, actually, but would rather not do it) and an hour at the pictures beckons…

Clash of the Titans is a another predictable (perhaps a little too predictable) Hollywood/British remake of that title. Not having witnessed the 1981 Larry Olivier wonder, and aware that Greek myths have rarely made the grade in any Tinseltown production, we nevertheless made our way somewhat open-mindedly to the Broadway Cinematheque. The BC is a great treasure in Hong Kong. As cinema complexes go it’s none-too fancy, but the two shops (bookshop and cafe, the other DVDs and mags) always adds spice and interest to the day, no matter what's on.

Sam Worthington, as the hero Perseus, has recently popped up here and there, mostly as a convincing but inveterate scowler (think of his howling angst-ridden half-Terminator and paraplegic blue Avatar outings). He recently performed in a domestic Australian setting of Macbeth in Melbourne which, by all accounts, was truly one to miss. Based on those performances alone I think I would rather welcome back Russell Crowe, the tender-happy-chappy he must truly be. Put it this way, I preferred him scowling rather than the cringe-worthy half-smile forced at the very end. I didn't really care for his performance and didn't care for Perseus -we knew all along, don't we, that there's never any real danger that the demi-god wouldn't scrape by somehow.

 Liam Neeson needs no introduction, but he clearly put his four pence-worth into the proceedings as a Zeus much troubled by naughty human insouciance: apparently they have stopped worshipping him and have begun tearing down his statues. 

He allows his brother Hades (Ralph Fiennes) to wreak wevengeful havoc by weleasing the kwakken on the next solar eclipse –that’s just eight days away, oh no! This wonderful theme could have been much developed, if the writers had had the courage to discuss even briefly Man vs God.

I must say that the most watchful character is Fiennes, who seems to relish any role in anything he does, his appearances a little over-theatrical, but hey, this ain’t no historical docu-drama!

A word or two about the myths. We often today use the word incorrectly, akin to ‘lying’. Myths in the ancient world, like the story of Perseus, were common and well-known. As the secret love child of a lustful Zeus, Perseus was famous for killing Medusa and defeating the Kraken. But his was really a moral story connected with hubris, accepting one’s fate and overcoming adversity. Rather than being held aloof from human affairs, the Greek gods epitomised human foibles. It is true they were set up as set examples of role models, but they also fought, had sordid love affairs, chased, raped and murdered (with both/either sexes). They demanded a certain respect and decorum and an almost over-religious piety in their devotees which they duly received and reciprocated the worshipful relationship with their boons and astonishing answers to prayer the like of which would amaze attendees at Lourdes. For example, the biggest shrine to the healing god Asclepius in Epidaurus, contained hundreds of little wooden legs, arms, eyes –thankful offerings of just about any part of the body given by those healed at the shrine. Myths may be just stories about the gods, but the Greeks took it all very seriously and were clearly as devoted as any Roman Catholic or Muslim today.

Of course, the real Titans were the sons of Gaia and Uranus who themselves were overthrown by the youngsters on Mount Olympus. These stories stagger out of the Bronze Age, imbued with an archaic mysticism hard for us today to comprehend. War in Heaven? Patricide and cannibalism? Now THESE are great stories which should be in motion pictures!

There is one little appearance of the mechanical owl, Bubo, which apparently appears in the 1981 film. A gift from Athena it leads Perseus towards the Stygian Witches. However, in this version Perseus  merely picks it up on his way to begin his quest and is simply told to 'leave it', perhaps the only nod to the aforementioned film.

Clash of the Titans is not a serious movie, but it tries to be in its’ own meta-world. I think I might have enjoyed the 3D aspect more if I was 10, but the most impressive aspect were the Chinese subtitles -which really stuck out!

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After which, and as a complete contrast, I popped in a cab and made my way to the Cultural Centre for a rehearsal of Handel's Messiah (due for performance on Thursday Night). The Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir are holding sway for the first half and then many are staying to help out with the Oratorio in the second. Tickets still available, etc, etc.

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After which, and as another complete contrast, I thence proceeded to Ned Kelly's in Ashley Road, Tsim Sha Tsui whereupon to chew fat with said choristers whilst listening to the excellent live trad jazz on offer there. Poor Brenda, awaiting in a public bar in Sai Kung for me to finish, swing past, pick up and whisk her off home, when mein host Mike Brown (larger the life proprietor) insisted we have another: an offer impossible to refuse. We return for Round #2 on Thursday...