大象传媒 - Shropshire - Features - The Eventful Adventures of Morris Telford -

On reflection, it's been rather an exciting day.

As we sped towards the base, a few of us got a bit over excited at finally finding contact with civilisation.

You have to remember that some of these people have been trapped in a pseudo-religious dictatorship for the past few years of their lives and it's the first time they have had contact with the outside world for ages.

This overspill of excitement happened to manifest itself in the waving of arms and whooping.

Those arms were holding guns and when the arms holding the guns waved, the guns tended to wave as well.

The waving of guns was interspersed with the occasional high-spirited gunshot into the air as a sort of polite announcement to the military base that we had arrived.

The arms, waving and occasionally shooting the guns, were attached to burly, bearded men on speeding snowmobiles.... and in retrospect, I can see why an American soldier might jump to the wrong conclusion and perceive us as a potential threat.

There might have been the odd high-spirited grenade too.

So we arrived at the base in a flurry of snow and gunfire, and the American soldiers returned fire, took cover and set their dogs on us.

It was as the dogs were bounding towards us...

...As their blood red gums and dagger teeth rasping with carefully trained clouds of anger in the Alaskan cold...

...As the Americans fired random shots at my friends...

...As the snow sleds turned to a halt and set up a defensive line a bit like the old wagon trains used to in cowboy films...

...As Trent dove in front of me to cover his wax brother from any harm, that I realised my moment had come.

This was exactly where and when I was supposed to be.

I might not have had the world changing effect I had intended to have these past 37 weeks.

I might not yet be able to address world leaders and give them an interesting half hour presentation with overhead projectors and different lumocolor highlighter pens on how to achieve world peace in three easy steps.

I might not have touched everyone yet with the importance of living life the Shropshire way, but right here, right now these people believed in me and I wasn't going to let them down.

I pushed Trent aside and walked across the icy no-mans land between the line of snow sleds and the barbed wire perimeter fence.

I held both my hands in the traditional Salopian gesture of peace and goodwill, thumbs extended to the heavens in recognition of the late, great Clive of India's spirit of adventure, index finger and middle finger pointing forward in memory of Thomas Telford's architectural vision and two remaining fingers closed to represent the two values of Shropshire life we hold most dear, honesty and good quality gingerbread.

I do have to admit that to the eye of someone unfamiliar in obscure English hand gestures this might look like I was pretending to wield two imaginary guns.

The important thing is that my lone stand, my personal bravery and my complete lack of consideration for my own personal safety sufficiently confused the American military personnel and they stopped shooting.

This gave Trent and the others chance to surrender.

Which is just as well because I was bleeding quite heavily from a bullet that had gone straight through my left shoulder and once I could see that everything was working out just fine I allowed myself to pass out.

I woke up about half an hour ago in a lovely clean white linen bed, with my palmtop in the bag by my side and Trent strapped to a bed just across the room from me. I look forward to asking the doctor when I can charter a flight out of here.

Not only do they refuse to arrange my safe passage back to Shropshire, but also they have told me all sorts of things about my friends. Some of which I suspect may be fabricated.

Trent is strapped down on some sort of sack truck in a manner not unlike that of Anthony Hopkins in those sheep films and is being shipped to a patisserie manufacturer's headquarters where he is wanted regarding a multi million pound cake recipe fraud case.

'Lost Hope' was not Steven Watson's first attempt at megalomania. He is wanted for an incident in 1989 when he convinced an entire town in Virginia that he was the reincarnation of Caesar Augustus.

He ruled them for three years, was going to lead the world into a new age of prosperity and fun with the people of Lynchburg as world leaders. But after they built a coliseum, an eighty foot high statue of him wearing a toga and renamed the town "Watsonville", he left with all their life savings.

I guess he must have used the funds to set up Lost Hope.

The funny thing is, the people of Watsonville still believe in him. They have annual chariot races, call all their firstborn sons Steven (and the girls Stephanie) and line the streets every Thursday awaiting his triumphant return.

"Watson Thursday" they call it, which oddly enough is exactly what my Mother used to ask when I was flicking through the Radio Times on a Wednesday evening.

The FBI, CIA, NSA and probably lots of other people in suits with concealed weapons have been looking for him for years.

Another of our number, a quiet but disturbingly twitchy individual called Bacon (who looks like he's constantly getting electric shocks), is apparently an eighty seven year old Soviet scientist.

They say he holds the key to an ecologically friendly renewable energy source that would make petrol, diesel and oil obsolete and so several major companies have a price on his head.

I remember once when I was a young boy, the local prophet, Bruce Foresight, grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me in the eyes and cheerily said, "You'll die in a cold place without your Mother". I wonder if this is what he meant?

Imagine the blockbuster film 'Con Air', although with less gratuitous violence, more convincing dialogue and the Nicholas Cage character played by a Countdown fan with a Shropshire accent.

Trent staged a seizure. He has an uncanny ability to foam at the mouth like a rabid dog. He says all he has to do is imagine eating an underdone Victoria Sponge made with poor quality ingredients and it sends him into a frenzy.

So we called the guards, who unstrapped Trent while the rest of us nipped out the door. Then a couple of us nipped back in... there were some thumping sounds... and Trent came with us too.

It was all very violent and not at all the way I would have liked to do it, but they left us no choice.

Then as luck and foolish, secret military base design would have it, there was an aircraft hanger full of exciting looking planes just next door to the infirmary.

We picked one with silver wings and flew straight through the hanger doors... Then we all got out and picked another plane because we had just broken the first one driving it through some metal doors.

Fortunately one of our number, a wiry Texan called Phil Newman (who has some sort of skin condition that makes him look like an inside out Clare Raynor) is an excellent pilot and is heading, as best he can, towards Shropshire.

Although his navigating skills seem to consist of looking out the window a lot and asking people where the sun is.

The plane has all sorts of gadgetry on board and is conveniently invisible to radar - very handy for crossing international airspace.

Trent found a flight manual in the cockpit. Apparently the plane is called 'Air Force One", which struck me as a very pedestrian name... So we re-christened her "Morris One" and aimed for Shropshire.

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