How to make your own, personal rocket

 May 15th – There’s a phrase we use in theatre, well, I do; everyone else just looks at me gone–out. It goes;

“Cross out dog and insert goldfish”.

What this basically means is that either what you wrote down for the Risk Assessment sheet for one show can easily transfer to another, unrelated show just by altering the name of the company on the top or that the newly released film-franchise is just an update of the same old shite that was released in 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9; no better, almost certainly worse. I have little faith in remakes and franchises as all they do for me is bang home a point or sequence that I already knew but then, that’s Hollywood for y’. It’s a place where according to, William Goldman, nobody knows nuthin and the only good risk is no risk. Did anyone really think that Pirates of the Caribbean – Curse of the Black Pearl was, in any way, shape or form, enhanced by Pirates of the Caribbean II? Anyone…? Any takers…? No. Thought not. The first movie was entertaining (fairly) and had an interesting take on the genre with some nice blue-screen work and animations. The second was just a serious of shots of Mr. Depp mugging for the camera and an opportunity for the makers to undo another button on Ms. Knightly’s blouse. That was a prime example of crossing out dog and inserting goldfish.

So, it was with some surprise, nay delight I discovered that, on this day in 1971, Pink Floyd played a concert at London’s Crystal Palace Bowl where the music was so loud it killed fish; a case of not so much crossing out dog and inserting goldfish but of Piscicide of the highest magnitude and posing a threat to any canines in the area too. Years ago, back in the 70’s, I worked for a conservation project as their research warden (come on, keep up). The project was looking at the feeding and breeding ecology of indigenous wildfowl on worked-out gravel pits and one of the jobs we had to do, myself and the two scientists on the project, was to help in the fish management. The gravel extraction meant altering the course and flow of the River Ouse and so at various times and as new pits were opened the required run of river was diverted and we had to electro-fish the stretch of now-defunct river, remove the fish left behind in the damming process and transpose them into the new river course; simples. We used an electro-fishing rod (a metal mesh grid attached to wires that ran to a generator. The mesh was attached to a wooden pole to halt the progress of the shock into the holder…one also had to be very careful not to dip any part of one’s anatomy into the water when the shock was sent; bit like in A&E when they use the heart kick-starter pads). We would dip the mesh into the water, send in a charge of electricity, the fish would be stunned and float to the surface, we’d scoop ‘em up, put them in a bin (with water in it, of course) then move the fish to the new stretch of river and tip them in...unless they were pike, in which case we’d priest 'em and eat 'em…but, on the whole, no harm done, all good…except when we once sent a blast into some reeds (where we knew some perch would be lurking) and a bittern rocketed out them like a Cape Canaveral missile and flew off downstream unharmed but alarmed.
Well, the thought occurred; if I ever get called on to do this kind of thing again I’ll take along a pair of speakers and a recording of Dark Side of the Moon, drop the speakers over the side and hit them fish with a blast of Great Gig in the Sky at volume 7…that’ll be the ‘stun’ rather than ‘kill’ setting. Certainly more entertaining, far safer and we may even get a bittern to boom along with it.