What's That Coming Over The Hill?

April Fool's Day - yet another 'special day' I actively dislike. I think I was stung at an early age (details may follow) and have abhorred this day since I was a pre-teen.

Surely there's no need for a centralised day of tomfoolery any longer. The World Wide Web and Email have put paid to that; almost every day some bogus piece of trash bares pops up and provide a moment's titillation for those sad enough to require a moment's titillation to brighten their lives. For a moment.

Everywhere I've been online today there's been some wag doing their fooling duty. Most of them completely tedious. Please, cyberspace generation, grow up!

Occasionally you do get ones that are a stroke of genius; so much so they grow beyond myth and become accepted as crazy fact. My all-time favourite by a country mile is one from a few years back which claimed that the US state of Alabama had passed state legislation decreeing that the value of pi is three, not 3.14159265358979323846...

This was in line with the text in the bible (I Kings 7:23) which states that the alter font of Solomon's Temple was ten cubits across and thirty cubits in diameter, meaning that the ratio of circumference to diameter was three, hence - according to God - pi must be three (this would not explain why God decided to craft every other perfect circle in the universe to a circumference/diameter ratio of 3.14159265358979323846...).

The nub of this spoof is that it is perfectly believable; although by claiming this I am not accusing the populace of Alabama to be dumb rednecks - it could have been centred upon demographic of bible-bashers. If people are willing to believe that the Universe was created in six days, and that the world became populated thanks solely to the jigging and poking of one dude and one dame, and that Noah sailed a boat with 20 million critters upon it (none of whom died or got eaten, as generally happens with critters - plus, as Eddie Izzard spotted, how come so many people were wiped out whilst fish and floaty birds got away Scot-free?) I'm sure they're dumb enough to think the value of pi is up for grabs.

This April Fool's has now passed into Urban Legend, which is cool.

My own aversion to April Fool's Day stems from my naivety and desire and willingness to believe - but then I was only (I think) twelve at the time!

I was alone in the house and (just for a change) watching TV. I was waiting for the interesting stuff (probably Top of the Pops) to start at seven but was half-watching the light-news/entertainment magazine show, Nationwide (I was still too callow to have the hots for Sue Lawley). My quarter-interest was piqued by a segment introduced solemnly with a "some viewers may find some of the images contained within the following report disturbing".

This seems extremely embarrassing and ridiculous now, but bear with me and remember I was twelve (and a young twelve):

The report followed complaints by locals of "strange-goings-on" at a Government Research Facility. A Crack Nationwide reporting team was dispatched but were denied access other than a brief hand-over-the-camera-lens interview that stated nothing of any dubiousness was occurring. But! The Crack reporting team broke into the establishment and filmed:

(...please don't laugh...)

A living, breathing, Tyrannosaurus Rex!

Oh, I wanted to believe. I so wanted to believe mankind had managed to resurrect our Jurassic friends. In fact I wanted to believe so much that I did! Ignoring the rather obvious date of the report, the unlikelihood of said event, and the general crappiness of the "filmed" dinosaur (these were very much pre-Jurassic Park days - Doctor Who was still be chased by men in rubber suits).

In fact I wanted to believe so much that I spoke to my dad about it once he'd come in from work. Which at the time was a rare occurrence.

Of course none of my school-chums believed it. But I wanted to believe it *so* much that I stood as the lone supporter of such insanity.

April 2nd popped along and Nationwide showed a still of a playful T-Rex (and very, very obviously fake) with the "leader" of the Crack reporting team's head in its rubber-toothed jaws.

It broke my heart. It wasn't that I felt embarrassed by my devotion to the hat-stand notion that some Brit boffins had found a way to resurrect dinosaurs (although the following morning at school was notably hellish, more so than usual). It was the disappointment that something so wonderful was simply a jape. My dreams and illusions of running from the school bus whilst being pursued by Pterodactyls and Dimetrodons - shattered. How cruel is it to do something like that to a child?

If only I'd had a Michael Crichton moment and worked out I'd just seen the catalyst to a best-selling thriller that would be turned into a ground-breaking film followed by a decidedly lacklustre sequel and a slightly better third movie (and, apparently, a fourth, on the way).

My dad didn't let me forget about my foolishness for another seventeen years (until we stopped talking to each other altogether). If he ever felt I was out-smarting him in a group setting, he would say "remember that time Brynley thought they'd brought T-Rex back to life" and then go on to recall my foolishness whilst I sat reddening and sinking into my seat.

Needless to say, nothing foolish happened at Chez BrynT yesterday...