The Night of Brian

The titles roll.

The whistling refrain on the bright side of life fades.

I take the DVD out of the machine and put it back in its box.

'He's not the messiah. He's a very naughty boy.' Manel mimics in a Spanish accented falsetto. Laughter erupts. Admittedly, most of it's coming from Manel himself.

I open another bottle of wine. Rioja. I distribute it evenly among six of the glasses, almost emptying the bottle in the process. The seventh glass is still half full with Vichy water. That glass belongs to Louise. She hasn't touched a drop of wine all night.

Every time one of my female friends refuses a drink I tend to assume that she's pregnant. Especially if she's English.

'Are you sure I can't tempt you?' I say, proffering the bottle.

'No, really, I don't want any,' and with that she places her hand on her boyfriend Felix's knee, who puts his hand over hers.

Pregnant. Definitely pregnant.

Kitler pads slowly into the room clearly feeling sorry for herself. She climbs up on the sofa next to Julian, who begins to make a fuss of her. Then she does the rounds jumping from friend to friend. Everyone's pleased to see her. Now and again she catches my eye as if to say 'see how they love me?'

When she reaches Louise, she settles on her lap. Louise worked as a vet's assistant back in the UK and has a way with animals.

'She's still wheezing,' Louise says, looking into Kitler's eyes, while tickling her under her chin.

Then Lauren leans over to touch Kitler's nose. 'Poor Kitler!', she says, 'What's causing it? Is it all the pollution or the fact that Lishman is somewhat insufficient in the dusting department?' And with that she runs her index finger along the sideboard, turning her hand to show everyone the evidence of a badly-kept house.

'I assure you, Lauren, that Kitler's condition has nothing to do with dust,' I say mock defensively, 'It's much more likely to be caused by the...' I stop mid-sentence. I promised myself a night off tonight. Not to think about all the bad things.

'Is it the reptiles?' Manel jests in absence of my words, causing an avalanche of suggestions.

'Or the Pladians?' chimes in Felix.

'The Rothchilds?'

'The Clingons?'

'The Templars?'

'The Queen of England?'

'The masons?'

CRASH!!!!!!!

Kitler knocks the almost empty bottle of wine off the table and runs as fast as a wheezing cat can down the corridor and into my room.

I tell people not to move while I get the brush and shovel and begin sweeping up the broken glass. As I do so, Felix says 'You were about to say something a minute ago, what was it?'

'Nothing,' I respond, 'Another bottle?' I say brightly as I walk into the kitchen.

'Hey Lishman!' Lauren shouts, 'What were you going to say?'

'Nothing, nada, now't.'

'Yes, you were,' say Felix and Manel.

'Yes. You were going to say something,' says Louise.

'No, I wasn't. I'd finished,' I say. But now The Life of Brian is back in full swing.

'Oh, no you weren't,' they chorus.

'Oh, come on. Tell us before you go,' pleads Lauren.

'I wasn't going to say anything. I'd finished,' I insist, walking towards the kitchen.

'No, you hadn't,' says Manel.

'What won't he tell?' says Felix.

'He won't say,' replies Louise.

'Is it a secret?' asks Lauren.

'No,' I say.

'Is it?' says Manel.

'Must be. Otherwise, he'd tell us,' reasons Felix.

'Oh, tell us the secret,' they all shout.

'Leave me alone,' I say, grabbing the wine and opening it.

'What is this secret?' whispers Manel.

'Is it the secret of eternal life?' says Lauren.

'He won't say!' says Felix.

'Well, of course not. If I knew the secret of eternal life, I wouldn't say,' says Manel.

'Chemtrails,' I finally admit. 'I was going to say Chemtrails.’

'What?! Chemtrails are the secret of eternal life?!' says Felix.

'He's making it up as he goes along,' they all chorus, as I pour out more wine and fill up the crisp bowls.

'Wow. If you lot could remember history or something useful as well as you can Monty Python, we'd really be a force to be reckoned with,' I say.

'Here we go,' sighs Manel, 'Debbie the downer!'

'Better that than Debbie the dumb downer!' I retort.

'Anyway, who's for a game of shithead?' I say trying to change the subject. We clear the table and I deal out the cards.

I'm sure this is not representative of society, but out of the seven friends I've gathered here tonight, three are convinced by the chemtrail phenomenon. From the others, three waver between acceptance and denial. The other, Manel, thinks we're all sadly deluded conspiracy theorists. If I include myself, you could say that half of us are chemtrail believers. So if sanity is statistical, as mooted in Orwell's 1984, then I'm in good mental health this evening.

Louise, one of the believers, asks if I've made any headway in my investigation. I explain my recent findings. Namely the 65-year-old Catalan real-estate lawyer, Jordi, who's embarked on his own independent chemtrail truth campaign - which took the form of several letters to the Catalan Government. He began his campaign without having read anything on the internet. He discovered chemtrails because he has a good memory and noticed that these weirdly persistent vapour trails that criss-cross our skies are not normal. In fact, Jordi didn't even know the term "chemtrails" before I spoke to him a few weeks ago.

This sparks a fairly animated discussion. They all recognise the difference it makes when a sober professional man like Jordi asserts something unusual,compared to when a conspiracy analyst does the same.

'You never give up do you Lishman?' says Manel.

'No. Never,' I say.

'I respect you for that,' he says seriously.

'Cheers Manel.'

'At least your insanity is kind of consistent. I know where I am with you.'

'Deal the cards, Manel.'

We open another bottle of wine, play cards and talk on into the night. It's the usual kind of discussion bringing up all the world's ills, citing lots of info and data. The conclusion, however, always seems to be the same: an apathetic 'but what can you do?'

I get the same sense researching the New World Order. It's a global campaign of softkill, hardkill, shock and awe. Eventually the truth, rather than setting you free, paralyses you. It's too big for most people to comprehend never mind act upon. I mean, 'where do you start?'

And what's worse, you waste so much energy trying to convince your friends and loved ones that the New World Order even exists, that you don't ever get round to tackling it head on.

Meanwhile, the NWO moves on inexorably with its agenda.

So does the evening:

'The answer,' I say, rather incoherently out of the blue, 'is to choose your mission, focus. Basically compartmentalise ourselves and hit the monolith on many different fronts...'

'No, no, no,' interrupts Manel, 'the answer is......

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
[whistle]

The others join in:

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
[whistle]

Reluctantly, I join in, too.

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
[whistle]

I'm laughing now. Kitler comes back in the room and jumps on my knee.

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
[whistle]

Solutions # 38: Guard your sense of humour with your life. It's one of the things that separates us from robots.