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We got hooked on the TV series "Life on Mars". I relived my youth. I watched episode after episode. Cramming as many into an evening as I possibly could. I would find myself scanning the backgrounds looking for clues as to what life was really like back then. How could we have managed without the internet, mobile phones.
(Sam trying to call a mobile phone number)
Sam Tyler: I need you to connect me to a Virgin mobile number - Operator: Don't you start that sexy business with me, young man. I can trace this call.
and
Sam Tyler: This place is like Guantanamo Bay.
Gene Hunt: Give over, it's nothing like Spain.
And the clothes – specifically one stripey skinny rib sweater that I can feel on my skin now. A hot cold tight nylon itchiness. The cars. The wonder of having no TV in a pub. But most of all the theme song. It has become the music we wake up to. The song that we listen to in the car. So it has wormed it's way into Kepler's life experience in the same way it worked into mine way back when.
I watched him today as we were in the car. I could see his face in the rear view mirror and he looked at me and we both sang. Loudly.
It's a god-awful small affair (a very serious expression going on) To the girl with the mousy hair But her mummy is yelling "No" (he's picking up on the volume) And her daddy has told her to go (sort of sad) But her friend is nowhere to be seen Now she walks through her sunken dream To the seat with the clearest view (rising emotion) And she's hooked to the silver screen But the film is a saddening bore For she's lived it ten times or more She could spit in the eyes of fools (reaching a fever pitch) As they ask her to focus on... (yes! this is great)Sailors fighting in the dance hall (belting it out now)
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy (he loves this bit - no stumbling over words here)
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?It's on Amerikas tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns (why?)
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on...Sailors fighting in the dance hall (here we go round again!)
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Marrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs? (Really really loud. His mouth is gaping and the whole bottom of his face is shaking and shuddering with the swelling emotion of the whole experience and he keeps that level right to the very, very last note.)
So
Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow?
Alyosha asks what that means.
K says "It's not that he grew up to be a cow. It's that he bought a calf and raised it into a cow ... soooh! (ergooh!)... Mickey mouse has grown up a cow.
So A says: Why would he do that – he's just a mouse.
For the milk.
Of course! Why else. What morons we are (this was fully implied in Kepler's tone). In the many millions of hours I have spent over the years listening to that song it never once occurred to me that we were talking about milk. Milk.