Friday 19 June 2015

I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper

It started in reception.

I was waiting on a lift. My driver was running late.

So I took in a map that is adjacent to the door. I’d taken cursory glances at it before but never looked at the detail. The map is of Khobar. It is several years old and – as a result – significantly out of date. I noted that the Corniche was still a work in progress but that all the key roads were present. Landmarks such as key hotels and the pepsi cola factory were all marked.

So I looked at the junction close to Silver Tower; close to where I work. And that is when I saw it.

The map contained line graphics of some of the key sites and – sitting at Silver Tower – was a picture of a space shuttle attached to it’s three fuel tanks.

Map


I asked my driver about it but my question was lost in translation somewhere.

And I forgot about it.

Except that, on occasion, something would stir it back to the front of my mind. The slow dawning that the “Space Travel Agency” – a disappointingly normal travel agent – that is still close to the cross roads may not have just been an obscure name choice but be based on a landmark that has now gone.

Those countless occasions where I would wake with that Sarah Brightman/Hot Gossip song as an incurable ear worm.

I have lost track of the number of taxi drivers I have asked about this mythical space shuttle marked on the map.

No one could answer me.

But then I stumbled on something online. A photograph taken of Silver Tower back in the mid noughties. In front of it was a sculpture. A sculpture of a space shuttle.

I was excited.

Before I go on, I need to provide some perspective. Some background. I need to explain why I had this obsession with this detail on a map.

As a kid, I loved the idea of space travel.

Didn’t we all?

I was brought up in an era of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Dr Who, Blakes 7 and Mork & Mindy. Space travel was in my blood. Popular culture seemed to obsess with it. The moon landings and Apollo missions had created this fervour for space. For the opportunity. It seemed that the Western World had become utterly obsessed. Anything and everything looked for the space angle. Even James Bond was going there.

Dr Who was a staple, but I was one of the millions that was hooked and dragged uncomplaining into the Star Wars franchise. It was bigger. It was bolder. The sets didn’t wobble as much. It always felt like I was like looking into the future. A future where two powers both believing that they were right and the other wrong fought for supremacy.

Like the cold war.

In the days pre-video and before the films had had their UK TV premier, I was lost in the books, magazines, sticker albums, merchandise and figurines that allowed the re-enactment of the battles and key scenes. More. The lack of exposure to the movie content, it all encouraged the use of imagination to create new story lines, new epic battles and new chapters of my own each day.

I was a sucker for the space ships.

I “wowed” at the weaponry.

And Carrie Fisher made me feel funny inside… Even more than Suzi Quatro or the blonde one from Abba did. Utterly smitten.


Suzi. The Blonde One. Carrie.

Dressed in white with the silly hair ringlets, dressed for the winter exploits in The Empire Strikes Back or – obviously – the bikini scene in Return of the Jedi. I’d have done anything for her.

And then, in real world, came the Space Shuttle. The first reusable space craft. It was new. It was sleek*. It was sexy**.

Back in 1981, my family foreshortened a holiday outing so that we could get home in time to watch the Shuttle’s initial launch. We gathered around a TV in the lounge of a small hotel in Uckfield in Sussex with several other holidaying families to watch history being created. Looking back at the footage today, it all seems a bit tame. A big lump of metal being strapped to a load of inflammable material, pointed at the sky and someone chucking a half smoked cigarette into the mix to create ignition.

In 1981, it was bloody magic. It tapped into all my fantasies of travelling the universe with improbable space hardware and weaponry saving planets and getting the girl. It felt as if all the Science Fiction that I was buying in to really could be the future. Everything felt slightly tangible.

Alongside my plastic Star Wars models, suddenly models of the space shuttle were being introduced into the mix.

And, whilst my fascination with the shuttle and space travel may have waned over the years, for a while I wanted to know everything about the missions. Who was on them? What they were carrying? How the future was being shaped.

But, back to Khobar. Khobar in 2015.

It got me thinking. Why would a statue/model of a space shuttle be constructed in Khobar and – having gone to the trouble of doing so – where is it now?

The “why?” answer is simple to find. Google and Wikipedia quickly explain the cultural reference, so I won’t dwell on it. National pride.

In 1985, Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, a Saudi Arabian Air Force pilot and member of the Royal Family flew on STS-51-G. A real life Saudi astronaut.


It also led me to references that show that the statue still exists and that it has just been moved. Which led to me having an adventure to relive part of my childhood, a few weeks ago.

It started on a Thursday evening as I wound down for the weekend and got chatting with a friend – Marian – online. Aside general chit chat and catch ups and Bugsy Malone, I explained that my plan for the weekend was to go searching for the lost space shuttle. It was my mission to find it. Bless her, Marian wouldn’t be drawn. Even when I started to explain that I was going to dress as Han Solo to conduct my mission, she wouldn’t rise.

I guess she liked Luke Skywalker more.

On the Friday, the sun beat down and I couldn’t face the walk the length of the Corniche from home to reach my goal. OK, the white shirt could cope with the sun but my choice of a dark waistcoat, tight, tight black military twill trousers with a red trim and black boots was not conducive to the climate.

So I flagged a cab.

The cab driver was hairy. Not just the de rigour “taxi cab beard”, but really, really hairy. Our communication was limited. The driver’s English was not good and I found that our interactions became foreshortened, direct and punctuated with gestures for directions. And guttural barks. Somehow we grew to understand each other.

We reached our destination. A traffic island just behind the main Corniche road. The space shuttle stands forlorn and slightly grubby surrounded by Date Palms.

I instructed the cab driver to pull over and wait at the roadside while I jumped out and snapped some photographs. Traffic was scarce. The roads were deserted. But the cab driver was nervous. Twitchy. He feared what would happen if the Police arrived and challenged me or him while I was isolated in no man’s land. But I was mission bound; I oozed confidence. I assured him that we wouldn’t hang around to be challenged. I knew that his white Hyundi maybe old, maybe past it’s prime, may have a few scratches, dents and war wounds but I knew that the crate could out run any other car on Khobar’s roads that day. We were safe. Invincible.





Disappointingly plastic and weather beaten. Its logos are faded and peeling. A plaque that presumably explained its significance has been stolen leaving a sad looking semi-pillar of concrete as its lonely companion.

Pleased to find it, it seems a shame that the national pride that must have influenced its commission has been allowed to fade and decay. But, still, the shuttle is there. Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud's achievements are still remembered.

Out of the way, but not out of mind.

Thankfully, my faith in the speed of the cab was never put to the test and my taxi driver drove me back home without incident.

By chance, it was only when I returned home that I stumbled over the news that Sarah Brightman's voyage into space to sing has been postponed… Hey. Such a shame... She deserves it...

Here is my ear worm...





Notes:

* OK. Not as sleek as the sports shoe shaped reality drive craft described in Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but sleek none the less.


** Ditto