Sport 23: Spring 1999

Till Someone Loses an Eye

page 168

I was woken by my flatmate's
alarm. Her room lies across

from mine, and her alarm is a meditative
tape by an Indian Guru. His thickly

accented evocation of bubbling
brooks and Places

of Peace went on
and on as she slept off her

late night. I told my friend Giovanni
about this, and he suggested the violent

drowning of the Guru in one of his
Series Of Still Pools. He told me

that a German company in Italy
marketed an alarm that was voice

neutralised. The TV ad had eager
people in pyjamas sitting up

and chirping, ‘OK Mr Brown!’
to stop it beeping, then

bounding out of bed. A friend of Giovanni's,
whose mother bought one, regularly shouted,

page 169

‘Shut the fuck up!’ through the bedroom wall, while
she slept through everything.

Anyroad, I'd been following a young, sprightly,
and occasionally goofy Ed

Hillary around Te Papa on his first
visit there. (It was closed to the public,

like Disneyland for The Prince Of
Pop.) I was trying to jot down the great

man's impressions
as he dictated them to me, when I came

across someone representing Bill
Rowling sitting at a Formica table

in the kitchen. Seeing as we
were back in time, I knew

that he was dying. He had a terrible,
pale, dirty

brown complexion. Dreams are
in colour. I asked ‘Bill’ as he rose

in greeting, how he was
going. He said, ‘Not too bad,’

in a wise Indian accent,
and he meant it.