Of Rustling Up a Good Story

At the beginning of the year as part of my goal setting I decided to change my reading strategy. The idea now is that every new book I pick up to read must be completely different to its predecessor. My last book was "Winning!" by the former England rugby coach, Clive Woodward. My latest is "The Other Side of the World" by Arthur C Clarke. I''ve never read any sci-fi before and I have to say I've been nicely surprised. He writes a great story. It's not as heavy on the brain as I though it might be and, as you might expect, the book takes the reader onto journeys and to places in your mind you might not otherwise get taken to.

Clarke is best known for the classic "2001 a Space Odyssey". I went to see this film a good few years ago in Dublin with a friend. Sat next to us was a guy who was eating a back of crisps. Normally, this would only irritate me but in front of a film that was intended to transport you to another world aided by some of the most wonderful classical music this world has ever produced I found it infuriating. I took lots of deep breaths thinking this was probably me being irritable again. But I wasn't the only one. Unprompted, my friend suddenly seemed to snap and turned to him and said politely "Please would you mind not rustling that bag it's very noisy and distracting?". Caught at the very point of retrieving his next handful of crisps,
the poor fellow was so shocked and embarrassed that he kept his hand in the bag for the rest of the film too scared to take it out in case it made any further noise. Perhaps we were the only two in the history of cinema to come out of 2001 Space Odyssey laughing...