The mighty Mekong River, which appears on the bottom of the Vietnam map like a vast hand-print, starts its journey somewhere in Tibet and travels through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before spilling its muddy lifeblood into the South China Sea in the vast sprawling delta whose name was always in the news in the 60?s. The good news about the delta for a cyclist is that it?s very flat – the bad news is that there are ferries and numerous rickety bridges to be negotiated as you travel across it – oh yeah, the place is riddled with malaria too. This means I?ve been taking malaria tablets for weeks. I had been warned that the side effects of the tablets might include sleeplessness and a speed-like state involving vivid hallucinations. Sadly none of the above occurred – even after I listened to a Hawkwind album at very high volume with the lights turned down.

The end of today?s ride saw us parking our bikes in Can Tho and we greedily gorged ourselves on pizza from the hotel bar – today?s packed lunch had been so awful it made me want to rush back home and stick a five star recommendation on the window of my local Subway. We were excited it was New Year?s Eve and a stage had promisingly been erected next to the swimming pool. Someone was yelling loudly into the PA. ?Is that what ONE TWO, ONE TWO, CHEW, CHEW, sounds like in Vietnamese?? I asked. No-one seemed to know and no-one got the joke either. It seemed there was a chance of a good poolside frug tonight. I wasn?t optimistic about hearing the latest 12? mixes from New York or London later on but I figured that at least some nostalgic Bee Gees or Michael Jackson might be on offer. From such dreams are terrible disappointments conceived.

2001 was on it?s last legs as we convened in the bar for our New Years bash. All the girls were wearing the outfits they?d had made in Nha Trang and all the boys were wearing what they?d worn the night before and the night before that. As I nursed my aperitif I became vaguely aware that a musical something was obscuring the Billie Holiday CD playing in the al fresco bar area. Suddenly it hit me – I was listening to a karaoke version of a Kenny G tune! Out by the pool a local man with a suspicious looking rug was cajoling the G-sters notes out of his aging horn. The already insipid backing to Kenny?s tune had received the requisite karaoke treatment and been further emasculated. Like diluted water such a thing seem impossible.

As we moved outside to our tables Kenny?s pal left the stage. No-one clapped. I felt the need to lift up my spirits and went to check out the buffet but the food was as listless and as brown as the waters that slipped by a few yards away and I quietly wondered if things might have been improved had our German chef spent less time chatting up the guests and more time in the kitchen. Then it dawned on me that the large and attractive crowd of young and nervous Vietnamese beside the stage were not revelers who?d crashed the hotel to get on down with the unquiet Americans. Something much more terrifying was afoot. It seemed they were all fanatical, card-carrying members of some local karaoke club with fabulously appalling musical tastes. They not only intended to karaoke their way to 2002, they were going to do it in public and had actually planned ahead – a programme of stunning New Year musical moments had been printed up and placed on every table. Mr. Gorelick?s #1 fan (Far East division) had three more appearances scheduled before the midnight hour. Wham?s ?Last Christmas? was to be performed by a ?duo? – ?Feelings? required only a ?soloist.? A martial arts display was scheduled after ?Close To You.?

I made my excuses and slipped away. As I turned out the light in my room I heard the opening lines of ?Let?s Twist Again.? ?Come back Rod Stewart all is forgiven,? I thought as I tumbled off to sleep.

Before leaving Los Angeles I cracked a joke saying that I was ordering a handle-bar mounted napalm launcher for my cycling trip in Vietnam and I chuckled as I talked about ?gooks? and scenes from Apocalypse Now. As I struggled up the pass to Dalat today I deeply regretted those careless comments. Perhaps my failure to scale the toughest hill I?ve tried to cycle up (5,210? of vertical climbing inside 20 miles) was divine retribution for my careless and unnecessary comments.

Certainly there are moments when you cycle along a dusty road between the rice paddies and watch pitifully simple houses glide past that you think of the fear young GI?s must have felt as they walked here 30 years ago waiting for an ambush from ?Charlie.? As you look up the valleys and see the rugged green hills you can practically hear the sound of chopper blades and you expect Norman Greenbaum?s ?Spirit In The Sky? to kick in and set your heart racing.

But nothing prepares you for the happy smiling faces of the people of Vietnam. As you cycle past, lycra-clad and helmeted looking like a visitor from another planet – and believe me most Americans are from another planet when compared to Nha Trang or Ninh San – you are constantly waved and smiled at. Children appear from shacks and behind trees giggling and yelling ?Hello, hello!? When you reply or wave back they scrunch up their faces and laugh with glee. By rights after decades of war and misery you?d think the vast majority of people in this country would despise anyone looking vaguely French or American i.e. me. But they don?t. How can they be so welcoming to us when we dropped more ordinance than in WW2 onto their little nation which is about the size of New Mexico? And who thought we could win a war here anyway? Why didn?t they fly LBJ in and give him the one hour cyclo tour I had the other day? Any man in his right mind would instantly have realised that our ideals and values are not necessarily suited to other countries and cultures – especially this one. More importantly he might have realised that a war here was simply unwinable.

This trip is teaching me a lot about colonialism and the missionary spirit that sent Europeans over vast distances to educate the ?savages? in the errors of their ways. I?m starting to feel strongly that might is not always right. The European soldiers, merchants and land grabbers of the last millennium, whether they were British, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch or Belgian did more harm than good in Asia and Africa. Arguments that the British left their justice system and the French their culture look suspiciously like straw-clutching justifications for centuries of exploitation, cruelty and subjugation.

As I struggle up today?s hill (both real and imagined) and finally reach the plateau that leads me to Dalat every smiling face, every unusual custom, every peculiar clothing choice I experience tells me that diversity is good and surprising and stimulating. We may not approve of their politics or their traffic sense or their plumbing and personal hygiene but that just makes them different – not better or worse.

We?d spent the morning sightseeing – walking about 6km between two pagodas somewhere outside Hanoi. The bus had ferried us there and back and we eagerly stared out at the chaotic traffic we?d soon be cycling through: there are 78 million Vietnamese and 50% of them have mopeds, it seems the rest have bicycles. It?s a fascinating living experiment in 2 wheeled transport in which the participants seem to care little for the niceties of traffic lanes, hand signals or actually ANYTHING except pointing their vehicle in the desired direction. But even the wonderful free-form traffic could not prepare us for the afternoon?s main event: a cyclo tour of old Hanoi.

Imagine a comfy steel chair suspended between two bicycle wheels. Behind the chair is a bike seat, 2 pedals and a third wheel. This is a cyclo and you sit in the front while some poor bastard pedals his heart out behind you and points you directly at the 3 million residents of Hanoi all hell-bent on cycling, mopedding, running, walking or driving somewhere before tea-time. Some of them are going your way – most of them aren?t and they?re carrying a mind-boggling collection of cargo as they pedal and scoot hither and thither. Favourite moped cargo option: the rest of your family – all four of them. Typical cyclo option: a battered three piece suite including sofa, 2 easy chairs and footstools. Possible bicycle option: 20 metal buckets, a full length mirror (in it?s frame) and a pig. When it comes to the ?Remarkable two wheeled cargo options? section of the next All Asian Bicycle Olympics I expect the Vietnamese to be the clear winners – they will sweep the gold in both artistic and technical categories.

And every moped has a horn which, it seems, is directly connected to both the throttle and the brakes and every cyclist could care less. And so you start your tour amidst the cacophonous honking and buzzing of 2 stroke engines. You approach the Opera House where 3 different weddings have simultaneously reached that picture-on-the-steps moment and five roads meet at one point. There are no traffic lights and, as there doesn?t appear to be a single traffic cop in the entire country, the thousands of travellers converging on this junction just merge, swerve, dodge and avoid and somehow come out the other side. The locals emerge nonchalant while the tourist Johnnies (i.e. me) emerge breathless and aghast with eyes like saucers and heartbeats like Gattling guns.

You start to notice that a piece of pavement and a wall is a perfect location for a haircut; a rebuild on a Honda 50; a post-abattoir meat dressing station or any number of other occupations that might normally require a license, a sense of hygiene or some form of specialized work surface more complex than a dusty flagstone with an adjacent gutter of stagnant, oily water.

You turn a corner and suddenly you?re in old Hanoi proper. One street is full of stores selling nothing but cheap plastic toys; another is filled with leather jacket shops; two blocks are populated entirely with businesses manufacturing headstones – the marble is cut, carved and polished on the pavement while pedestrians carrying live ducks step over the cables running to the water cooled power saws whose fluids pour into the gutter. Another area is filled with steel-working businesses – gratings and steel doors are being manufactured on the sidewalk while chickens, dogs and three year-olds play amongst the welding torches and rusty steel shavings. The front of a one room shop is all business – manufacturing plant, storage facility, sales office and showroom, whilst the back of the tiny establishment serves as granny flat, TV room, kitchen, laundry space and bedroom. So much activity is going on it?s truly impossible to absorb all the tasks that are simultaneously being accomplished in such close proximity.

Then you notice the faces. The people are busy, focused, happy, talkative, smiling and productive. You are so astonished and mesmerized by it all that you realise it is more stimulating than anything that could be dreamt up by the star performers of the combined R&D departments of both Universal and Disney Theme parks. Like a goldfish with lock-jaw your mouth has been open in awe and wonder for an hour and you step from your cyclo wishing you could do it all over again – those 60 minutes were as spectacular and as breath-taking as ANYTHING you have witnessed in your entire life!

We touched down in Hanoi at 9pm – the airport was shiny, brand spankin? with clean toilets and deserted. Is there is a more misleading way to enter Vietnam? It was pitch black outside and the headlights of our cab picked out the occasional cyclist as we made our way into the city over dusty, rutted roads and under a half-finished freeway. I?d been wearing the same underwear for 40 hours and was eager to catch a bath and fall into bed.

However once we?d checked in we decided that perhaps we should catch a beer in the hotel bar. Employing the tactic of a Scottish friend I ordered a Vietnamese beer (when in Rome etc.) but it was a Heineken promotion night and a can of Holland?s finest was all the attractive waitperson would serve us. I hadn?t been in town 10 minutes and I was failing the tourist test already.

I studied the band and the motley selection of Euros and Yanks watching them. I could have been anywhere in the world. Was this what I?d travelled half the way round the world for? The chubby band-leader bent sullenly over his piano which needed tuning as badly as Michael Bolton once needed a haircut and the singer sang phonetically: ?I lef tmy har tin Sanf rancis co…? The violinist soloed, Grappelli-style, over a version of Desperado that was easily three times longer than the original version. It was time for bed.

Last night I sat in my house with my old pal Brian and discussed at great lengths the intricacies of Joni Mitchell?s music. Yes, this is what musos get up to when the sun has gone down and the nights are closing in.

This morning I got out of bed, turned on my computer and learnt that George Harrison had died. My heart took a dip and tears filled my eyes but it was hardly a shock, the waves have been filled with rumours of his illness for months.

As I sadly made my breakfast I realised that last night?s discussion and this morning?s news are umbilically linked together for me. Quite simply without the Beatles I might never have become a musician, have abandoned traditional job opportunities and made my way to America. For those of you who weren?t there in those ground zero months of ?64 when the Beatles first appeared they swept across the public consciousness like a fast moving plague of teenage joy and bravado. The western world had seen nothing like it and their sudden power to captivate all who encountered them was so awesome that it nearly overwhelmed the remarkable freshness and agility of their music.

For the first time since it exploded their music is frankly starting to sound a little dated now. So many subsequent fads have come and gone and the arrival of computer assisted recording and a thousand other sonic breakthroughs have finally placed their music into history rather than something that is entirely now. This has always been inevitable but its a tribute to their brilliance that it has taken so very long to happen. But if you look at the footage of them playing onstage their energy, enthusiasm, rebelliousness, joy and sex remains undimmed and is just as captivating, if not more so, than this week?s lively Strokes video.

John was my favourite Beatle, he was the one whose bubble gum card I cherished as an 11 year old. I still have that card tucked into the corner of an original Dezo Hoffman Beatles print in my office. For me George was just the smiling one who played his Gretsch somewhere up by his chin and played those extraordinary guitar solos – check out Can?t Buy Me Love – Phew!

But this morning, George, along with dignitaries, heads of state and music fans the world over, I salute you. You were an integral part of The Fabs and uttered one of the most memorable post Beatle-era lines: “As long as John Lennon remains dead there will be no Beatles re-union.”

Sadly George?s death has now made that prediction a certainty. Isn’t it a shame?

It?s official – I?ve directed over 250 music videos. Which was the REAL quarter millennium gig depends on your counting method, but it seems I am now the most prolific music video director of all time. What does it all mean?

Well, nothing really. From an artistic perspective any decent critic would ignore a purveyor of quantity for a producer of quality though my irreverent pride smiles mischievously at the ?never mind the quality feel the width? relevance of my personal landmark. A kind peruser of my resume could conclude that I have certainly directed some videos of amazing resilience and supposed relevance however a more skeptical evaluator might also start referring to an aphorism that mentions monkeys, typewriters and the complete works of Shakespeare. Let?s be honest the Vinnie Vincent Invasions, the Great Whites and the The Verve Pipe clips are hardly pinnacle achievements are they? Quite simply I?ve thrown so many darts at the rock video wall that it was inevitable that some of them would lodge firmly in the bullseye of the collective consciousness. How or why a one-time Sewage Division photocopy clerk has managed to create such a body of work I?m not quite sure but I confess I?m immensely proud of my achievement.

A number of years ago a friend of mine worked as a production assistant on the ?Walk The Dinosaur? video by Was Not Was. He then set off on a round the world trek and sent me a postcard from Shanghai where he?d visited a disco and seen hordes of young Chinese doing the ?Walk The Dinosaur? dance as Don and Dave?s song blasted over the PA. It was the first time I truly realised how much power I have at my finger-tips. I am old enough to have bought ?I Wanna Hold Your Hand? the weekend it was released yet young enough to get a buzz out of shooting Staind this last week. I think I can now reasonably conclude that I have had some part in the evolution of this wonderful thing called rock n? roll that has been the central force of my life and there?s a wonderful ?Bloody hell!? feeling about that. It?s the same feeling that Carson Daly talked about after he interviewed Michael Jackson on TRL last week. What?s a one-time counter clerk doing interviewing the King of Pop?

What life-lessons can I dispense from the rock video front-line? Perhaps the greatest is that film-making is a collaborative art. Certainly no-one has been there to watch me in the cold, dark hours writing countless concepts and sketching endless storyboards but I have been helped in my journey by many special people who have travelled the world with me to create this massive pile of video tape. If you look at the ?dickfilms? page on my site you will see the same names appearing over and over again: Nina, Vance, Liz, Brian, Declan to name just a few. Those 250 videos represent millions of hours of work yet I?m the guy who gets the name-check and the web-site. Doesn?t seem entirely fair does it? If you are someone who did one of those hours of work can I say a belated thank-you?

It?s perhaps significant that I?ve reached this milestone in the same week that Propaganda, the company I co-founded, has finally closed its doors – proof perhaps that people endure though companies can fail. I?m in a hotel room thousands of miles from home preparing to shoot video #252 and once again I find the need to remind myself what a privilege this is.

Please go and see Amelie.

If Hollywood made movies like this; funny, intriguing, idiosyncratic, human, observational, wonderfully if misguidedly romantic and beautiful, the world would truly be a better place.

A recent journey took me back to England for a week and I was stunned again by the proliferation of vehicles there. By and large cars in the UK are about 30% smaller than in the US but with a population a fifth of the USA crammed into a space about the size of California, and many of them car owners, you can tell that there?s likely to be something of a problem on the roads.

To compound this problem many thoroughfares in Britain were designed to cope with horse drawn carriages or pre-war levels of traffic and no amount of modernisation can solve the congestion. The great North Circular Road is a good example: a sort of English semi- Peripherique that takes traffic round the northern suburbs of London. Parts of the North Circular are four lanes wide, beautifully surfaced, and perfect for speeding round the city but suddenly within a few hundred yards the road becomes a simple two-lane blacktop making its way over a bridge and squeezed between sets of dirty houses that must be hell to live in.

No matter what time of day you?re travelling you are doomed to find yourself in a major jam in most British cities, and the constant modernistaion and upkeep of the roads doesn?t make travelling any easier. Then of course you need somewhere to park. Any city street, town or village in England is now invisible below chest level: all you can see is an endless length of shining metal, glass and rubber. But while the cars get faster and more luxurious the average travelling times get slower…and here?s the conundrum.

While prepping for a recent job I decided to check out the work of a director who seems to specialize in car commercials – mostly for the British market. One commercial shows a car hurtling across the desert in a race with a massive train to see who will be first to make the level crossing. The car wins of course. In another a 60 year old Dennis Hopper driving through the bleak terrain finds himself driving alongside the 25 (?) year old image of himself from Easy Rider. Conclusion: drive this car (a Peugeot I think) and you?ll be an Easy Rider free to go wherever you like. In a third, which was at last in a city, Steve McQueen had been brought back from the dead to race some nimble little number through the streets of San Francisco to park in a garage along with his hog. At the end of the spot the bike disappears inferring that with this car in your carport you won?t be needing a Harley and a biker chick to get your kicks. Ironically the traffic in San Francisco is now so bad you?d need a permit and a whole bunch of traffic cops to get up to the kind of speeds we see in the commercial.

My point is we?re all buying into a big pile of car-doo here. How many of us actually get to drive down the endless grey ribbon with the warm wind in our hair and our foot on the floor? If you live in Europe you?re more likely to be stuck in traffic than zooming down the open highway. Even if you live in Arizona or New Mexico and have an endless stretch of road in front of you you?re not really allowed to drive over 65! None of us will EVER live this automotive dream!

The car represents so much to us all: prosperity, success, status, freedom, nostalgia, power – but are we really getting any of this? If only public transport were better. It?s more sociable, you can actually WATCH the scenery go past and you can read a book. Oh yeah I think trains are really sexy too. Ever got it on on a train? Fabulous!

Consider the knife. Not the black-handled or serrated object you keep in the drawer with the bottle openers, wooden spoons and spare garage keys and use for cutting bread, chopping vegetables and chasing serial killers from the house when you?re starring in a horror movie, but the simple everyday piece of flatware. The everyday knife is made from one piece of steel, has a rounded nose and is perfect for slicing eggs in two, and pushing mash onto the end of your fork. However it is so singularly useless as a cutting implement that any self respecting household also has steak knives (specifically designed for cutting meat) in a drawer somewhere.

Now imagine, if you will, the average flatware knife?s younger, less developed sibling – the one with the slimmer handle, and the far shorter but equally useless blade – and you would have in your palm the typical airline knife, perfect for dissecting rubbery chicken and smearing greasy margarine on tasteless puck-sized bread rolls. I ask you to imagine the airline knife because you probably won?t be seeing one any time soon. Since September 11th I?ve flown seven times and been presented with steel forks and spoons and PLASTIC knives!

Which raises the question what has happened to all the steel knives? Are they being quickly melted down into shrapnel and shipped overseas to be lobbed into likely looking Afghan caves? If so your average AK47-toting Taliban dude must be wishing the 9-11 Nineteen had used hamburgers or band aids to terrorize those unfortunate passengers two months ago.

Now, call me unsentimental, but your average airborne commuter has a thicker skin than a piece of perfectly cooked tenderloin – and if the average household flatware knife won?t cut a steak what damage do the FAA believe an airline knife is going to do to my neck? That fork I?m using to spear the elastic yardbird while I desperately try to saw through flesh with a plastic knife, is far more dangerous than the airline knife which has now gone the way of the 8-track stereo and the Vanilla Ice fanclub.

WINNERS: 1) The people who manufacture plastic knife, fork and spoon sets. They?re making a killing (oops) and can melt down the brotherless forks and spoons to make more useless knives. 2) Cows. No sharp knives on planes means fewer in-flight steak / dining options.

LOSERS: 1) The environment (again). Plastic, plastic and more plastic. Though most plastic items are washable people will just discard the knives and add new ones to the existing washable steel fork and spoon sets. 2) Airport Wolfgang Puck Pizza Parlors (their pizzas are greasy and served uncut). When you try and cut one of their pizzas you break 5 plastic knives (See Winners #1 and Losers #1) and then accidentally send your pizza frisbee-ing across the terminal into a terminally bored Home Guardsman. Look out for the up-coming news headline: ?English Music Video Director held on terrorism charges for assaulting one of America?s finest with tasteless, fattening faux-Italian eating product.?

Until pencils which could stab, laptops which can k-o as effectively as a brick and forks which can spear a passenger as easily as a coq-au-vin are outlawed I think it?s worth pardoning the unloved airline knife and releasing it from its death-row melting pot.

There?s certainly been enough written about the terrible events of September 11th and I suppose like the rest of you I have spent many hours trying to process those terrible images that were pounded into our heads on that sunny morning two weeks ago.

As we try to understand what has happened to us all, and believe me it has happened to all of us, there is one thing of which I am sure. This is just another test that has been given to us and we will show our strength and our freedom and our humanity (or god forbid our lack of it) by how we pass or fail this test.

Tonight I opened a letter written by William F. Schulz, the Executive Director of Amnesty International which had this to say. ?The best that is in us knows that the guilty (underlined) deserve to be punished – not those who share their names or their language, their skin colour or their religion…blind hatred corrupts the hater…the greatest power evil has is to entice the innocent to mimic its practices.?

May we all have the courage to be tolerant and patient and understanding enough in the weeks to come to pay heed to these words. Be Safe.

If you were an entrepreneur I?d wager you?d gladly invest in a business in which people would wait silently for 30 minutes to buy $3.95 worth of merchandise from bored counter clerks who wander absently away from their desks leaving but one colleague to deal with a line of 25-30 frustrated customers. This is an operation which has a store in every town or village in America yet complains in a rather whining tone that it is losing its core business to upstarts with brightly painted vehicles and smiling operatives in matching brown short / shirt outfits.

Of course we?re talking about the US Postal Service.

I needed to send a package of receipts and other paper-work to my accountant across town – a distance of six miles. Unfortunately the package weighed more than a pound and since that nasty Unabomber business a few years back this meant that I couldn?t put the stamps on the package at home – I had to go to the Post Office.

So I parked my car in the ?20 minutes parking – Post Office customers only? parking lot and joined the end of the line. A mere 30 minutes later I was able to purchase my stamps and leave. The line behind me had now extended to over 30 people.

Irony #1: There?s a notice in the USPS parking lot that warns you that if you spend more than 20 minutes in the aforementioned parking spots you?ll get your car towed. Have you ever spent LESS than 20 minutes in a Post Office? This must surely be the next profit centre for the USPS – they could rightly tow the car of every customer who visits their establishment. Turn a $5-00 profit on every towing and the USPS would be on top of the Fortune 500 in no time.

Irony #2: Lance Armstrong, Mr. USPS himself, recently rode the 2,500 miles of the Tour De France at an average speed of 24 miles an hour. Now if, instead of standing in line for 30 minutes to get stamps, I?d given Lance my package (which would easily have fitted in the back of his USPS cycling jersey) he could have ridden to my accountant?s office AND BACK in the same 30 minutes! Now I know why the USPS is sponsoring a cycling team…

Irony #3: When I emerged back into the sunlight blinking and weary I was relieved to find that the USPS parking operatives were thankfully as slow as their desk-bound counterparts and were still trying to find a tow truck to remove my car. Then it hit me. If I?d just split the package into TWO envelopes, which would have each weighed less than a pound, I could have mailed the package from my home!

But then I?d need stamps for that wouldn?t I?

Dear Web,

Perhaps you can answer a question that?s been troubling me for some time.

Whilst cable-surfing in the last few days I?ve seen ads for a new movie with Tim Roth in it called ?The Musketeer.? If you?ve not seen the trailer you still know what it looks like: dashing French swordsmen wearing long boots, capes, pointed beards and floppy hats engaged in much swashbuckling. This particular flic seems to be about one of the three famous French swordsmen. But here?s the problem.

If they?re known as the Three Musketeers how come they?re famous for their swordsmenship and not their prowess with muskets?

Anybody know the answer? And while we?re talking about conundrums – how is it that seeds, when planted, know which way to grow? It?s not like each seed has ?this way up? written on it.

This morning, as I took a cab from my hotel to the airport in Paris, I passed along the Avenue de la Grand Armee and suddenly remembered that a number of years ago I would walk along that street every morning with my guitar in hand to go busking on the Metro. The reasons for my residency in Paris are too convoluted to discuss here but let?s just say I?d travelled across the briny because of a gas platform in the North Sea, Zola?s L?Assomoir and a long forgotten Hall & Oates album!

I was sleeping on the floor of a tiny bathroom of a friend of a friend who worked in a hotel close to the Place de la Porte Maillot. He would return from duty at 3am with a variety of eager girls who would use the bathroom as I pretended to doze in my sleeping bag before leaving their underwear behind and indulging in noisy sex with my host in the small room next door. It was a less than perfect arrangement to be sure but I was grateful for this stranger?s generosity which enabled me to prolong my time in Paris as I searched for work.

Each day I would find a pitch in the tunnels of the Metro and would sing Buffy St. Marie?s Universal Soldier and Randy Newman?s Mr. President as the passengers hurried by, the centimes trickled into my guitar case, and I kept an eye out for the police. My daily living expenses amounted to 15 Francs and I?d found a Vietnamese Restaurant on the left bank where I could eat a three course meal and get a glass of wine for 6 Francs. Today, as my cab sped smoothly towards the airport, I realized that my hotel bill for last night alone would have kept me strumming in Paris back then for over four months! It was one of many signals I?ve been receiving about how things can change and the relative price of what we value in our lives.

For instance…this morning I ate a hearty breakfast in the warm sun outside a cafe on the Avenue Kleber while I read about thousands of forgotten soldiers starving and freezing to death in Antony Beevor?s fine Stalingrad. I have just read the chapter in which the besieged and desperate General Paulus frustrated by Hitler?s intransigence dispatches a highly decorated tank commander to tell the self appointed military genius the truth about what was happening to his glorious army in the frozen wastes west of the Volga. The young captain eventually realized that Adolf, cosseted in his world of warmth and sycophancy, ?had lost touch with reality…he lived in a fantasy world of maps and flags.? The oddly mustachioed leader?s only concession to his beleaguered troops was an order that champagne be no longer served at his dining table!

A few days ago I ate a delightful lunch in the peaceful town square in Gergy. As I munched on my quiche I studied the war monument and read the names of those from the town who had died in the last two great wars. A fellow rider, whose mother was the youngest survivor to escape from Auschwitz, quietly pointed out a separate carved monument with a list of names upon it and the ominous legend: ?In memory of those who died, victims of Nazi barbarity.? The soldiers who?d died in WW2 were listed on the main monument so one could only conclude that this was a reminder of some unknown civilian atrocity.

What does it all mean? Perhaps it?s just a simple sign that we must be grateful for what we have and remember that all things are relative.

A post script…One day I met Randy Newman. As I shook his hand I told him that by playing his song over and over again on the Metro all those years ago I had managed to pay my rent and buy my evening dinner every day for a couple of months: I wanted to convey my long overdue thanks. He frowned, withdrew his hand from my grasp and turned away without saying a word. Perhaps when being thankful you only have to think about it…not everyone wants to deal with it!

I went to see Pearl Harbor last night to see what all the fuss was about.

They say making movies is like going to war and there is certainly a tremendous irony in the fact that a film of one of the most emotive, damaging and brutal events in 20th century American history probably required about the same amount of man hours and had more planning than the original event itself. And the reason we make war movies and then go and see them is that they are the height of drama – we are fascinated by the extremes of the human condition: the harsh, cold violence of bodies being ripped apart in the pursuit of justice and glory intercut with the warm, soft inter-twining of emotions and flesh in the pursuit of happiness and redemption.

But for all this Pearl Harbor disappoints…and then lingers. I think it disappoints for two reasons. Firstly the story is not very good. It?s OK but it?s hardly got the focus and the majestic sweep of a David Lean epic has it? The actual attack at Pearl Harbor was over in an hour or so, consequently every film-maker who has approached the subject attaches it to some other tale to give it a human aspect (Tora! Tora! Tora! would be the exception). In Michael Bay?s movie the story rambles so far and wide that there are scenes in England and China – the characters are forced to do voice overs while they write soppy love letters to each other half a world away. I?ve written enough of these letters in my life to know that even for the two people involved the letters are a shallow and frustrating substitute for real human contact. To boot the love triangle was reported in such detail in pre-release that there were no surprises for the audience in ANY of the plot points until after the last Zero was making its way back to Yamamoto?s fleet which happens about 2 hours after the movie?s started! That?s a tough call for a film-maker to overcome, and let?s face it if you go to see a movie called Pearl Harbor it?s no shock when the Japs start wrecking a lot of American hardware.

Secondly the film fails to achieve a human perspective and I think the prime example of this fault is the much discussed bomb-POV shot seen in the trailer where we watch the Japanese bomb fall from a great height and hurtle downwards towards the doomed Arizona. Supposedly Michael had the idea for the shot in a dream and it?s certainly a cool gag…but it?s also a product of the smart bomb generation. Those futzed images from the Gulf war that we saw of a bomb?s view as it hurtled towards Saddam?s installations and then went to black as the bomb and camera exploded were truly frightening, but mostly because they were anonymous and you never saw a real person – those few seconds of footage were the end result of the most expensive computer game you can buy: not a $200 Playstation but a half billion dollar jet and a million dollar bomb. But the thing which must have made Pearl Harbor (the event) so horrifying was the perspective of the guy standing on deck looking upwards at 500 pounds of perfectly engineered high explosive hurtling towards his head first thing on a Sunday morning. In short I want the sailor’s perspective not the bomb’s.

And here?s the thing I really don?t understand, and yes I am British so maybe there?s a detail I?m missing here, Pearl Harbor was an astonishingly bold and successful attack on the American fleet which, if I?m not mistaken, is a Naval unit. Now Michael Bay has made much in the press of how he wanted to tell the story of Pearl Harbor really like it was for the people who were there, so why is most of the story about a couple of ARMY flyers? (If they were members of the USAF I apologize, they do make reference to being Army pilots in the film, but my point still sticks). When is someone going to tell this story from the perspective of the hapless matelots about to take a dive, a sort of Das Boot on Battleship Row? And no, I don?t think Cuba Gooding?s short moment was that story.

And while we?re talking details here…am I the only person who has an issue with two FIGHTER pilots being sent on the Dolittle raid as pilots of twin engined BOMBERS? This is rather like asking Lance Armstrong to race across town on a Harley to deliver an urgent message because he?s the only guy who?s won a bike race that we know of.

Interestingly the night before seeing Pearl Harbor I watched an A&E documentary on Iwo Jima. The footage was poorly shot (I guess it?s difficult holding the camera steady when 20,000 Japanese people are shooting at you), the film was in black and white, the music was sparing, the voice-over was from a subdued former marine (Gene Hackman) and some weary and emotional old geezers who actually spent time in the foxholes of that ugly little island, but it could not have been (literally) more gut wrenching. Listening to a man describe how he watched his best friend try to hold his intestines from slithering all over the beach as he stumbled across the lava ash to his death is very disturbing. And this is what war is really about – the biting horror of continuous personal tragedy. We don?t need the detail but watching Kate Beckinsale trying to get her shit together seen through blur tar lenses as brutalized men stagger into the hospital at 60 frames per second does a disservice to her acting, the horror of the men who survived and died and us viewers who may only ever see war through the eyes of a film director. Michael, please don?t approach a scene of this magnitude with the slow motion soft focus approach that we use for soap commercials – it makes it tougher for us other video / commercials guys to get taken seriously as directors!

I?m disappointed at the end of the day for Michael, for Disney and for all of us. The much vaunted $130 million budget could have made 10 really great smaller movies or another Lion King movie and some spare change over for good deeds. If you want to see the truth about Pearl Harbor watch Tora! Tora! Tora! – though it too is overlong – it?s historically much more accurate, there’s genuine tension in the build up, there are some flying, crashing scenes that are REAL, truly awesome and better than anything in Bay?s movie, the Japanese admirals get to walk AND talk and Yamamoto?s ?sleeping giant? speech is delivered with true regret and poignancy. If however you want romance and human intrigue with your sinking battleships rent From Here To Eternity.

And death? It doesn?t need to be in your face and blood spatteringly graphic to be truly upsetting and frightening and terribly resonant. Rent Roger Spottiswode?s Under Fire and watch the way in which one of the lead characters is dispatched in an ugly, little incident seen through Nick Nolte?s eyes. This, I think, is how war feels: wasteful, unnecessary, uncontrollable, tawdry and usually pointless.

After a frantic two week spin through the Caribbean and Southern Atlantic I found myself one Sunday evening at 7pm kneeling on the floor of a wine and general foods store in the downtown section of Rio.

My prone position was not because I was looking for a hidden bottle of claret on a lower shelf, though a nice glass of wine would not have gone amiss at that moment, but because we were trying to open a packet of Doritos for the commercial we were working on. When you?re shooting a commercial you use extra-sexy camera-friendly product bags to entice you, the customer, to purchase said product. Camera-friendly these items may be but user-friendly they?re not. We just couldn?t get the bag to open properly and the situation had become so tense that here I was on the floor holding my monitor so that our actors could hold the bags in the perfect position for our shot – God forbid the bags would open right and it would be out of focus or off camera!

Eventually we figured we?d done it and delightedly I called a wrap, uncoiled myself and walked outside to where our crew and equipment had spilled across the street. During our internment at the foot of the Pepsi machine tables and chairs had been placed in the road and excitement hung in the air.

Then the drums started – a happy, frantic, frenzied rhythm rattled across the street as five drummers emerged from a store across the way, marched into the road and set the scene. That they were setting the scene was in no doubt – repeatedly they looked over their shoulders to see, one assumed, if the rest of the contingent was ready.

It?s warm in Rio in April and just as well because when the ?contingent? appeared the most substantial piece of clothing they wore were the feathers attached to the back of their heads! Their outfits, in different colours, were identical and presumably supplied by some company that specializes in producing quarter-sized, guilt and sequined edged bras and bikini bottoms so insubstantial they would have trouble doubling as a ribbon for that last tiny stocking-filler on Christmas Eve. The ?contingent?, like all good contingents do, came in a variety of shapes and sizes and two members in particular caught my eye. The first was a smiling, happy, enormous girl with thighs as thick as the trees in the rain forest. The two pieces of ribbon she wore were ridiculously small and I have to say I felt she was mammarialy challenged though she possessed an impressive barrel chest like the ones I?d seen proudly sported by Brazilian truck drivers. Perhaps ?post-op? is an unkind term but this was certainly not a girl to take home to Mum – this was someone you?d want at your side in a bar fight! My eye was quickly diverted to a beautiful girl at her side in white bits of guilt encrusted stringy things. She was slim and willowy, gently curvaceous, her mouth was – well just what young women?s mouths should be like – and those heels pushed her legs up wonderful and taught. She turned her back towards us and the white stringy bit that split her back-side in two left nothing to the imagination. And when she started wobbling her butt – well this is not the place to describe such details!

The girls shimmied left and right, the drummers drummed and I found I had a beer in my hand and I was whooping and hollering with delight just like everyone else on the crew. The job was done – it was at last time to relax. The drum beat changed – something was about to happen. What I had not anticipated was that something was about to happen to me!

I?d like to think that behind my back the discussion had gone something along the lines of: ?Nigel?s been working hard, let?s get one of those cute, virtually naked girls to dance with him.? At this point however some joker must have chimed in: ?Even better let?s get the 200 pound chick in the blue thong who?s been bench pressing Chevvys all week to shake her booty at him in public!?

And so the girl who re-defined the word Amazonian dragged me in front of the crowd and proceeded to dance with me – or rather dance at me. She shook a manly hip. I shook a manly hip. I started to worry that she was doing a better job of it than me. And then she ran towards me and just as she took off I realised my fate – I was supposed to catch her! Bulbs flashed, my puny biceps strained and the crew collapsed in hysterics as I staggered around the street with the only Brazilian girl I have ever hugged, her massive legs wrapped tightly around my waist.

The next morning I took a relaxing bike ride along Copacabana and Ipanema beaches and round the lagoon to watch the flying fish. There was much mirth pool-side on my return – I had completed a comprehensive cycling tour of Rio with glitter from my eager dancing partner still attached to my neck where her arms had nestled as we gallumped up and down the street the night before.

And the sexy girl in white? She danced with Chris, my AD. Story of my life!

Here we are staying at the Copacabana Palace Hotel for the second time in two weeks and I hadn?t had the time to even cross the road and visit this famous patch of sand which Barry Manilow eulogized about so eloquently. Out of deference to one of the greatest living American singer-songwriter / sweater wearers I felt that we had to stop working for a moment and a stroll was in order.

Nina (producer), Chris (AD), Daniel (DP), Eric (exec producer) and I picked a sand-side refreshment booth and ordered some chilled libations. Within moments the first of many hawkers visited us with their wares – though as it turned out these ones were quite unique: two girls with painted faces and hairy legs who were part of a musical theatre group raising money for their troupe to visit kids with Aids and provide entertainment – they had even printed up cards in the usual languages (French, German, Spanish, English etc.) to tell people what they were up to.

Being film-makers, i.e. self-involved skinflints, we shrugged our shoulders as if we didn?t speak any of the above languages (and let?s face it with 2 Yanks, 2 Brits and an Aussie, 3 nationalities with dreadful reputations for grasping foreign tongues, we weren?t telling too much of a fib) and Nina pretended we only spoke Japanese. Strangely this cunning subterfuge was remarkable for its complete lack of success and soon we were each being handed cards full of useful information about our star signs…in Portuguese!

I am an Aries. The bad news is I am supposedly Impulsivo, Imprudente, Agressivo and Extrovertido: not looking too good is it? But luckily I am also Instintivo, Intuitivo, Sincero and Voluntarioso. But I am also Batalhador. This worried me a lot and I had to finish my drink and return to my room pronto (not an English word but I understand what it means) to look up Batalhador in my pocket sized Langenscheidt?s Universal Dictionary – Portuguese (attractively priced at $7.95 from Borders and in a travel-friendly yellow plastic cover). As I scurried along the beach I wondered what it could mean. ?Batal? obviously referred to some kind of war-like activity involving the lopping off of limbs and other extremities with sharp cutlasses that flashed in the rain with Mel Gibson nearby in a kilt…he had a painted face and hairy legs too just like the girls from the theatre group, I was starting to see a pattern developing. ?Hador? had me stumped. As I climbed into the lift (elevator in American – you see my grasp of languages isn?t THAT bad) I decided a Hador was some kind of hat or protective head gear. I therefore concluded that subtly hidden amongst the list of revealing Arian personality traits was a suggestion that I should be wandering the streets wearing a crash helmet.

My luck was out. I?d saved cash on the purchase of the dictionary and my luggage was lighter for its compactness but Batalhador was nowhere to be found. Then I had a breakthrough. I?d studied Latin at school (I got the lowest grade possible) and lived in Germany as a child and as a teen and so I knew that some foreign languages like to combine shorter words to make bigger more complex ones. We even do it in English: quarterpounder, asswipe, buttmunch, dickhead etc. Perhaps Batalhador was compounded from more than one word?

I?d struck gold. I soon discovered that a ?Batel? is a skiff – which as we all know is some form of small sailing vessel often mentioned in Hornblower books. OK so I was looking for ?Batal? but they didn?t have that either. ?Hador? is likewise absent…but ?dor? means grief!

I?d figured it out: the card held a possible warning about my future: I will come to grief in some kind of boating accident involving a skiff!

If any of you out there speak Portuguese perhaps you could confirm this for me. I don?t have any boating trips planned for the near future but I?d like to know if I should stay clear of the water.

Oh yes, and another thing. If an Aries falls in love with a Balanca (which my dictionary reliably informs me is a scales, balance, swing or rock) I should apparently expect ?uniao ideal, inclusive sexualmente!? Now call me overly optimistic but this has to mean ?a perfect union with sex included.? If you could confirm this or even better provide me with the phone numbers of any attractive single Balancas (Portuguese, Brazilian or otherwise) you might know, I would be most grateful.

P.S. I gave the girls 2 rials.

Cycling in Puerto Rico is a whole different deal than anywhere else in the States.
If people are oblivious to the concept in Los Angeles, there is no word to describe the pathological nonchalance that Puerto Ricans have for something so conventional as a Bike Path! People sit on it, barbecue beside it, dry off over it, fly kites above it and ride suicidally six abreast across it. But the path that stretches East from San Juan is a true gem: it winds faithfully along the shore behind the silver beaches then climbs a headland, passing through dense foliage filled with lizards along the way, leaps over rivers and eventually guides you through a forest all the while keeping you off the road which is peopled by frantic families hunting for an elusive parking spot close to the waves. Much of the forest section is beautifully constructed from freshly hewn timber and takes you gliding a few feet above the forest floor; uniquely designed signs warn you of trees, encased in fencing like islands, on the road ahead.

That?s the good news. The bad is that the planking makes your bike shudder and shake as you ride – I wished I?d accepted the offer of the bike with the sprung front forks. Also there is no exit road when, as happened to me, a bunch of racing riders, six abreast, turned a corner and found a terrified Englishman in a blue Italia biking shirt coming towards them. My right sleeve brushed the heavy wooden railing, and I felt a breath of cold steel as a pedal missed my left ankle bone by a millimetre or two.

Presently a mini-roundabout appeared ahead with no exits – I was at the end of the bike path. I stopped and bought some Gatorade from an enterprising man who had backed his battered Toyota station wagon up to the railing and was selling drinks from an aging cooler. Having started work in my hotel room at 6am I marvelled at how lucky I was to have grabbed this brief respite and looked over the azure waves as they lapped ashore.

All too soon I had to turn for home – I needed to pack and make it to the airport in time to fly to Rio – my first visit to Brazil and a chance to finally visit the city where my father was born.

Last week the President announced that he was revoking America?s involvement in an international agreement whereby the USA, along with other western nations, would agree to limit industrial pollution. He reasoned that following the terms of the treaty would effect the US economy. Well okay he?s right. It costs money to make factories cleaner, machines more efficient, industry less wasteful…but we live in the richest country in the world. Shouldn?t we be prepared to spend that money? Bush is espousing a short term gain at the expense of a long term problem.

I am fond of quoting a statistic for which I have long forgotten the exact numbers but it goes something like this: The USA contains but 2% of the world?s population yet uses nearly 50% of the world?s non-renewable resources! Look at it this way. You and 99 of your best friends set off on a journey with backpacks and you have to carry everything you need with you: food, socks, batteries, condoms etc. One day you suddenly realise that two of the people on the trip are using up half of the supplies you have – sooner or later you?re going to have to start rationing food, clean clothes, sex and use of the Discman because of the greed of these two people. You sit down and talk it out and everyone agrees this is not cool. But then one of the greedy ones, a guy called George, says he?s welching on the agreement because it doesn?t suit him. Doesn?t that strike you as completely unfair?

Some say we have much to learn from the way Native Americans regarded the earth. (Of course we?d have much more to learn from them if we hadn?t killed most of them off and sent the remainder into barren and useless parts of the country). One of their sayings is: We don?t inherit the earth from our parents, we have it on loan from our children. I don?t have kids but I watch with awe the love and compassion with which my friends dote over their little ones as they lift them into their gas guzzling SUV’s to take them to the mall to buy some Evian. Yet that very journey inevitably makes the life of that child irrevocably more difficult.

I am a hypocrite. I have two cars and neither one does more than 20 mpg. I looked at the EV1 before I bought my last car but you can?t buy it – only lease it. Toyota has a hybrid on the market which does over 70 mpg but there?s a waiting list and it is the UGLIEST car I have ever seen! I need to practice what I preach.

Yesterday morning?s paper has a beautiful picture of B15A…the official code number for an iceberg which has just broken off Antarctica. This B15A is the size of Rhode Island! It contains enough frozen fresh water to supply the USA for three years…that?s a lot of Evian baby. The big question is: is this another sign of Global Warming or is this part of a huge weather cycle that has been going on far longer than the human race has been keeping records? We could wait decades before we really know the answer to that one. But it doesn?t take a scientist to figure out that something must be happening to the world.

It is LESS THAN 200 YEARS since Lewis and Clarke first walked across the USA. I believe they lit their first rather smoky fire in Fort Clatsop in 1806. So, when you jump into that comfy seat and fly at 36,000 feet coast to coast through the ozone as you watch Bagger Vance and drink imported, bottled Alpine Water in your disposable plastic glass and get terminally bored by Matt Damon?s golfing histrionics, you decide to look out the window and what do you see? Roads, towns, cities, factories churning smoke and steam that create their own micro weather systems, vapour trails from jets going the other way. Wherever you look there?s something man created and it?s all been done in the last 195 years…most likely in the last 100 years! That?s incredible really. It?s a lot of work, a lot of passion and determination and dreaming and scheming…and a lot of damage too.

Ever heard of the butterfly effect? Supposedly a scientist sat at his computer and tried to figure out what would alter the climate in the Atlantic and the Pacific. He was fiddling around with some figures that pertained to a small part of the rainforest in South America somewhere. He spilled some coffee on his computer (whether it was a single latte or a double decaf is not recorded) and accidentally changed the computer model by the tiniest fraction as he cleaned the sticky brown-ness from his keyboard. The result was astonishing. As if a butterfly had decided on a whim to fly East instead of West the weather on both oceans was changed.

And here?s the point to all this. That butterfly could be a recycled empty coke can, one car-pool ride, one re-chargeable battery, one less chunk of ice in your soda. It doesn?t matter if our name is George or Georgette, anyone of us could make the decision that could save the world.

It?s 5.40 am and I?m cycling east on Olympic when I spot my first fellow rider. We?re making our way to the start of the seventh LA Bike Tour – a massive ride with 10,000 cyclists following the course of the LA Marathon which starts in a few hours time.

I?ve cycled through the Canadian Rockies, over the Southern Alps in New Zealand, up to the Golden Triangle in Thailand and across Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula but nothing gives you the same boost, thrill and joi-de-vivre as zipping through the streets of your home town at dawn while the city wakes up and waves and hollers at you in its pajamas!

By accident, rather than clever planning, I?m crossing the street in front of the start as the 6am countdown commences – no pushing through the hordes this morning in the pre-dawn glow, no listening to Randy Newman?s ?I Love LA? being played over and over and over. I wait by the side of the street to let the first guys go past and then slip quietly into the pack (or Peloton as French speakers and cyclists call it) as we head west along Exposition.

All kinds of cycling humanity are here: monocycles, hybrids, street racers, mountain bikes, tandems, recumbents, backward tandem recumbents (!), and a host of bikes that have been sitting in the garage for too long and need some serious work – rusty chains, wobbly wheels, loose cotter pins, unchangeable gears, and incorrectly adjusted saddles are in abundance god bless ?em all . There?s usually a guy on a Penny Farthing too (massive front wheel, tiny rear wheel – the world’s first bicycle) but I missed him this year.

As we turn North on Crenshaw the road widens and the fun really starts. There?s a twinkle in everyone?s eye as we bust a red-light going north on the wrong side of the road and watch the cops smile at us! But the real thrill is watching all the good people who come out to watch the spectacle: the Mommas on their way to church, the Gangstas and their girls, the old men in jackets, the tracksuited powerbroker on his cell phone, the kiddies on their plastic tricycles. Some of them say nothing, bemused as the endless train of lycra passes, others wave and smile, bang toy drums, shout greetings and wave home-made signs of encouragement. I saw the same family twice on the course with a sign saying ?Go George III Go!?

We move north through the ?Hood, slide along the side of Koreatown and are soon passing the elegant homes of Hancock Park. Here?s another joy of the ride – getting to see LA in all it?s varying colour and diversity. You see stuff from a bicycle you never see from a car. By the time we reach Hollywood Blvd., I go past the Thailand Centre, which I must have passed a hundred times and notice for the first time the elaborate shrine outside which I?m sure has been there for years. Half a mile later I see a sign for Barnsdall Art Gardens (what is that? I?ll have to check it out) and right next to it a signpost to let me know I?m entering Little Armenia – who knew such a place existed? Behind the Armenian sign is a taco stand of seemingly Ecuadorian origins and a huge sound system is blasting out a bizarre and wonderful hybrid of Madness (first album ska period) and an acid influenced Mariachi band while a lone DJ raps in distorted Spanish over the top! In this respect this year?s ride is a disappointment – bands and DJ?s usually line the route from beginning to end but the DJ at Hollywood and Vermont is our lone musical accompaniment this year.

With the joy comes a moment of sadness. I was hoping to ride with my cycling pal Kim this year but his home in Phoenix was burglarized two nights ago and he?s had to stay home and sort out the mess. I?m also reminded of the time 5 years ago when my Mother had an operation the same day as the ride and never recovered. Within 72 hours of completing the circuit I was 6,000 miles away holding her hand as her life ebbed away.

And now we?re plunging down Virgil. A TV news presenter friend of mine once told me this is one of the city?s toughest neighbourhoods but all I can see are happy people waving at me, yelping and smiling – for this morning at least the tensions have abated.

I cross Washington Blvd. for the third time and the sound of our chain sets are all I can hear as we approach the USC campus and the end of our ride. It?s just past 7.10 when I clip out of my pedals and hear the strange sound of the volunteers with the hundreds of bike tour medals strung over their arms from red ribbons clanking and cacophonous. I proudly pocket my medal and start pedalling for home.

It was a good ride, I didn?t crash, it didn?t rain and as always it?s over too soon. For the record I was rider #4905 in the very bright red, blue and white Brooklyn shirt on the yellow Ibis Spanky. Average speed 15.6 mph, maximum speed 26.7 mph. See you all next year.

My travels bring me back to Toronto where I?m shooting a video for Svala, a gorgeous slip of a girl from Iceland. Having worked all through the night in a parking lot downtown I grabbed a couple of hours sleep and have just breakfasted on a fine Maple donut from Tim Horton?s – a chain of coffee shops named after a retired Canadian sports star.

As I walked back to my hotel I pondered upon this large and mystifying country and realised I feel very much at home here. Canada has come to mean a jumble of contrary things to me.

It?s a place which has a happy red and white flag that is so ?friendly? that American backpackers sew the emblem into their luggage on International trips so that they?ll be mistaken for Canadians and be left to their own devices. The flag reminds me of the UN troops that beetled along the dusty roads in Cyprus keeping the peace between the Eoka and Enosis terrorists when I was a kid. It?s a country so harsh that crews in B.C. have learnt ways to keep their gear dry whatever the precipitation, a place where when you buy a pair of warm boots the warning tag reads : ?the less active you are, the more boot you need.? (My salesman assures me they?ll keep me warm to -40 but if I?m going extreme, ?you?ll need these other ones which are guaranteed to -70!) It?s a climate so harsh that the coffee spilt on set last night had to be blowtorched off the tarmac so that it didn?t leave a huge stain in the middle of my shot.

Canada is a place whose people have invited me into their homes over the years with an ease and warmth that stuns and shames me. I feel none of the cynicism or resentment that I have detected in my original or adopted countries. The smiles are as wide and as endless as the Northern Wastes and they appear to relish their own culture and those of others with a freshness and an energy that is invigorating.

As a child I remember vividly turning the pages of my Geography book and looking at black and white pictures of a breath-taking far away country which have little to do with the Canada I have experienced: vast log-jams on a river near a busy saw-mill; lines of strange looking long ships with bridges right at the front making their way along massive lock systems between the lakes; a Mountie on his horse in his riding breeches and peculiar hat with the Parliament building behind him. These were idealised 50?s era images of a rich and bountiful country whose men gladly and bravely threw themselves into battles with us British types to keep the world free (!) and were proud to be part of the Commonwealth and be one of the largest red bits on the map of the world in my classroom which showed an Empire as big as the world has ever seen.

Things are very different now. That Mountie is probably in his 90?s, the timber industry here is desperate to find out whether George W. and his team will slap a 20% levy on imported lumber and this morning?s paper has a story on an army that is so underpaid that many soldiers are on food stamps and have to deliver pizzas to make ends meet.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be climbing on the plane to go home. But the happy faces and hard work of Mr. Rosen, Lewis, Sully, Marc, Jordan, Ralph, Mario et al will make me feel humble and warm. There?s a Mickey D?s here just like there is in every damn place now but even the corporate might of the new empires that straddle the globe cannot diminish the joy of travelling and seeing new places and old friends.