The Crazies

Did anyone else see this film on TV last night? Was anyone else getting a bit scared? I was.

The story goes like this: a plane carrying chemical weapons crashes into a lake, the water supply to a little town becomes infected, people start going crazy, the infection becomes airborne, the army come to isolate the town and destroy it. 

In amongst all this are the sheriff and his wife, who is the town’s doctor. They are not infected so they try to escape.  Given that every place they go is filled with crazy people, do you find the following behaviour acceptable?

1. Sheriff guy walking down a street, hears a noise in the funeral parlour place, runs inside to find out what’s going on. Runs inside a funeral parlour. What on earth? If there are people being all crazy just in the streets, it’s probably going to be worse in there. Leave it alone. He inevitably gets attacked by the crazed funeral man. 

2. Sheriff and wife get to their house and are packing up some things to take on their escape. Wife starts wandering around in the baby room cause she’s pregnant and was going, “Sob, sob, this was going to be the baby’s room.” Ok, we don’t have time to be pottering about at leisure having emotional moments, for starters. Secondly, there are crazies everywhere. Everywhere. Sure enough, there’s a crazy in the baby room who ties wife up. Sheriff hears a noise, goes upstairs, almost gets killed by a crazy.

3. As they are driving, a helicopter goes overhead. They pull into a car wash to hide. There is a whole crazies attack then the helicopter blows up the car, without them in it, phew. They then choose, of all the routes they could choose, to walk out in the big wide road, in plain view of any other helicopters waiting to blow up anything that moves.

4. They reach a police checkpoint and the deputy, who is with them, says he’ll create a distraction and they should escape under the bridge. Yep, fine, all goes to plan. Then they run off down the middle of a road surrounded by grass and shrubbery and make no attempt to hide.

5. They get to a gas station. He’s like “Stay here.” So she stays there. Outside. Alone. And he goes inside. Alone. Two stupid things happen next. Wife starts wandering around, looking round corners and in old trucks.  As you do when there are a load of crazies loose. Sheriff, on the other hand, instead of grabbing the nearest food and drink and getting out ASAP, starts having a little wander.  He’s poking about, having a little nose around in a leisurely manner.  Cause that’s what you do when the crazies are hanging around, right?

6. They find each other again after a little scare and they’re sitting in the cafe bit going “Phew. We found each other again.  Phew. Close one.” Then he goes, “Stay here,” and walks off and she’s all like, “Yeh, no big deal.  Only that every time we separate, one of us is attacked.” So she starts walking all around again, as though she’s at the park, kicking through the autumn leaves, not a care in the world. A crazy finds her but her and sheriff manage to reunite and find a truck to drive to get away. Again, they drive down the middle of the road, in plain sight of everyone. 

After this last silliness, they do manage to escape but not due to any stealth or clever planning on their part.

Ridiculous, right? I mean, everyone knows that when the crazies visit town and the army are trying to decimate you, you stick together and stay under cover. Surely?

Well, if the crazies visit you today, take my advice.  You won’t regret it.

The comedy dog

When my friend, Lucy, and I moved to Namibia, we went to work on a volunteer-run project that has been going for years. It is a bit strange because, just before you arrive, fresh-faced and excited, the volunteers from before you, worldly-wise and infinitely superior, leave and you just step straight into their shoes. You inherit everything from their life; their home, their friends, their job, their pets….

As so when we turned up with our backpacks as big as ourselves at the door of our new home, we were greeted enthusiastically by a big golden floppy-eared dog called Diaz. It was lovely. I’d only ever had a dog once and that lasted for about a week. (I’ll admit that it’s because I was terrified of it so I think my parents had to return it to the pet shop. As I recall, my brother was having great fun with it.)

She was so funny. Her personality was a cross between a small child and an old lady. Before we had become aware of her peculiarities, she would fall asleep on the floor, her legs twitching in her dreams. We’d be going ‘ah, look, she’s so cute.’ Then she’d urinate. It must have been something about the cold tiled floor or something. She didn’t do it when she slept outside. We’d be reading books in the front room, enjoying a mid-afternoon siesta, perhaps. She’d sneakily fall asleep without us noticing. And she’d do it again. Our mop was well-used, let’s put it that way. I don’t even want to go into the time when she fell asleep on the sofa….

One time, we had been asked to house-sit for a friend who was going out of town for a few days. She had three dogs. We knew Diaz wouldn’t get along with them so we thought we would leave her behind. She was prone to staking out the school where we worked and barking incessantly so we knew we couldn’t let her see where we were going. As she was originally a street dog and adopted by the volunteers at the project a few years before us, she was more than adept at fending for herself. Plus, everyone knew she was the volunteer dog and when they saw her around town, she would get fussed over and sometimes fed better than us! We’d be munching through our fiftieth plate of rice and sweetcorn and Diaz would be getting fed burgers at a restaurant in town.

So anyway, we thought we’d leave her behind. Easier said than done. We shut the door which led down the steps into the garden and started walking down the road. It was only to the end of the road, then up the little hill half way, then a right. Very close. We’d be there in two minutes. We got four steps into our journey and Diaz was there next to us, panting away, her excited eyes asking where we were going.

“No, Diaz,” we told her and opened the door to the garden. She ran in and we locked the door again. We started walking, and again she was next to us. She could jump over the garden wall…. This time, we locked her in the garden and ran for our lives, hoping to get away before she got over the wall. She got over, of course, saw us and came along for the run. This was proving very difficult.

We eventually employed a technique which consisted of throwing sticks and things for her to fetch then ducking around corners and hiding inside porches. We must have walked halfway around the town trying to lose her! We kept on thinking we’d done it, she’d found another dog to play with, we’d get on our way again and then we’d see her rounding a corner in front of us and we’d have to backtrack quickly and hide inside someone’s porch or a shop for a while, waiting for her to pass. Needless to say, we were late to our friend’s house and Diaz found us anyway.