The Chances Of.......

Tuttle Jnr now knows how The War Of The Worlds ends.....

After years of avoiding any form of listening to my favourite (and my first) LP, he finally gave it a proper listen this weekend, but in instalments. I made the mistake of introducing TWOTW a tad too early, 5 years too early in fact. Tuttle Jnr had nightmares of the Red Weed, Tripods and even the sound of (Gary Barlow's) Forever Autumn on the radio. Richard Burton's voice always played on his mind too.

Tuttle Jnr has listened to A LOT of Harry Potter over the years on cassette with the classy Stephen Fry (not as classy as Burton of course) narrating. And recently I have been playing excerpts form TWOTW on the car stereo through my MP3 Walkman. Each trip to the swimming pool, scouts & the shops just edged him closer to the speakers dying to know what happens next. He was desperate to know what it was going to be like to live in "The Brave New World"...... Whether the Artillary Man had actually died...... The Parson??? So track one it was last Friday (we missed the beginning of Children in Need cos we drove THAT slow from swimming in order to listen to TWOTW)!

The tension was building up tonight because despite me telling him what happened at the end all those years ago, he sh!tted himself that much that he'd actually forgotten! He was disappointed that the, underground, Brave New World was only a "strange dream". And when our microscopic allies, bacteria, minute, invisible bacteria ended the war peacefully, Tuttle Jnr found it exceedingly satisfying. Simple, but effective. Awesome. He loved the sound effects and ended up asking the same old questions I used to ask way back in summer of '81.

One day we'll both listen to it in full, no talking, no interruptions and plenty of popcorn and milkshake and beer for me.

Tom (I-can't-even-feed-my-kids-with-Peanut-Butter-butties) Cruise? Who the f*ck is he?
Speilberg? Who?

Bring on H G Wells, Jeff Wayne, Justin Hayward, David Essex, Phil Lynott, Jo Partridge, Chris Thompson, Julie Covington and of course Richard Burton...... again & again & again......