Low Flyer

Happy New Year to you, too, CJ. Hope you didn't indulge yourself too much - you've got writing to be getting on with...

I expect we'll survive the hiatus somewhow CJ. Perhaps we'll wander off and find a better story though - I guess that's a risk you'll just have to take. In the meantime, thanks for a great chapter - lots of progress with Trevor and the family. You better have some brilliant scheme for rescuing Henry and getting rid of Basingstoke though. I like Ret2ak's version - not a cliff-hanger in sight so I assume you like it too. Have a great Christmas and New Year and many thanks for all your writing this year, LF

An excellent chapter - I loved all the family interactions. I have no idea how I'd react if I were ever placed in Trev's situation vis a vis his mum and dad, but I think he's handling it all remarkably well. And, re your current campaign to avoid the King of Cliffhangers award, I make no accusations or insinuations, but you're not doing yourself any favours with this last line: Lisa’s face froze, the color draining from her cheeks. Her fingers loosened their grip on her beer, which slipped silently from her hand, falling to land with a thud on the deck, its contents erupting and splashing her, which she didn’t even feel. I'm just saying... LF

I don't know about cliffhangers in stories, but I'm hanging here on the edge of a precipitous amount of anticipation waiting for the next chapter of Circumnavigation Mister James....

You know, in these days of equality, that's a fair point.

So, just to be clear, for the next two weeks, you're going to be forcing us, regardless of the consequences, to read twice as much of Circumnavigation as usual? Isn't there something in your constitution about cruel and unusual punishments? And at Christmas too...? I guess we'll just have to make the best of it... An excellent chapter. I think I might feel a little disappointed if the circumnavigation of the title turns out to be of Australia and not the globe, but I can see how it might fit the overall story better. To be honest, I'd like to see Trevor staying in Australia with Shane so there's a definite upside as far as what I want goes. There aren't that many loose ends left (Basingstoke and Bridget/Sanchez) so maybe the return to the US might just be a travellogue. Not a problem from where I'm sitting, but it's not what the story's about so I can see why you mightn't want to write it like that. Pity that that Navy guy didn't make a more strenuous effort to track down the cause of the radio blip... I think you were just toying with us. Playing with our emotions, if you will. Something else we'll just have to put up with.

Well, I didn't see that coming at all. One bad guy down, but still quite a few to go. It seems that Bridget really does think that Aries sank all those years ago. Wonder what she'd do if she realised that Kookaburra is Aries... And when will Trevor have reaoson to go snooping around the depths of Kookaburra and come across whatever it is. What's Lisa's problem? Is she just being protective of Trevor? Maybe it wasn't the case when the story is set, but there's a perfectly good bus service to Perth airport from the city centre or, at least, there was 18 months ago. He was lucky to get the taxi for $15 - it was about 3 times that when I was there, so I took the bus!

I'm just thinking out loud here, but is there any chance that George isn't corrupt at all but that he's working under cover to expose Bridget and Sanchez? Maybe he thinks that Gonzalez is the rotten egg in the department which is why he's looking at his actions suspiciously. Perhaps there never were any drugs or, if there were, George whipped them out before Bridget gave the suitcases to Lisa. I mean, they have to have gone somewhere.

You'd have thought that Henry might mention it to Gonzales if he had removed drugs from the luggage Bridget gave to Lisa, wouldn't you? And, yes, I thought it a bit daft for George to be calling Australia on the office phone. It's hard to imagine that their system wouldn't log an international call. I suppose the drug squad do make international calls more than most policemen, but it still creates a trail that you'd think he'd want to avoid. It occurred to me that the Aussies would have more problem with the tortilla chips - they have very strict rules about taking food into the country. You're not even supposed to carry food between states - I remember seeing bins on railway stations in Western Australia for passengers from the east to dump food into. There are some exceptions - chocolate is OK, for example - and maybe cooked and sealed foods like the chips are OK too. I haven't tried.

You can be sure that if it was the NASA managers and Senators going into space themselves then they would have already sorted out this mess Oh you cynic, you...

Interesting, CJ, about Americans and the metric system. The NASA story reminds me of an older one when a 767 ended up as a glider because the fuel was ordered in kilograms and loaded in pounds, or something like that. Anyway, they had half the fuel they thought they had and, unsurprisingly, ran out en route. I consider myself bilingual when it comes to measuring - I was taught metric in school but used imperial virtually everywhere else. I'm happy enough in either system though there's no denying that metric is easier when doing sums. Since I was at school we've gradually moved to the metric system though a lot of people still think in imperial, especially for things like people's height or weight (using stones, rather than pounds, of course). We buy petrol in litres but still want to know how many miles we'll get to a gallon. For a while, the government actually made it illegal to sell goods using imperial measurements. In response, shops sold milk, for example, in 2.27 litre cartons (which, by an amazing coincidence is 4 pints). There was always an exception for beer, though - it was sold in pints (and proper British pints, rather than your wussy American ones... ) It's a mish-mash at the moment but we'll switch fully to metric sooner or later. Kids these days think in metric far more than I did and it'll just spread, though they still know, roughly, how big an inch is, for example. They need to to talk to us old crumblies...

It just occurred to me to wonder if Bridget left fingerprints on the suitcase. It might, at least, create some reasonable doubt about Lisa and Joel.

Just catching up on CJ's back catalogue and got to this one. An excellent tale with CJ's trademark research showing through every paragraph. I can't help thinking, though, that when it comes to the time of space hotels, even Americans will be using the metric system. Leo will surely be asking for a 6mm drill bit rather than a quarter inch one...?

Aaagh, will no-one shut Lisa up? Once again, despite misgivings about her reliability she's gone telling Bridget everything she needs to know. I suppose we can only hope that they get through the US exit procedure OK and that Greg Fowler might be able to pull strings at the Australian end. I think we're assuming that the Goat won't allow them to "get lucky" and make it into Australia without the drugs being discovered. I wonder if George will tip off the US authorities to make sure that they're caught...? I'm curious about the Kookaburra/Ares. It's all very well to say that she belongs to Ocean Star Charters and, therefore, to Trevor, but what can he do with her? He can't sell her in Australia and he can hardly sail her back to the US, and, hey presto!, Ares suddenly reappears with nary a scratch. I guess their best bet is to continue the subterfuge and make some money from chartering her. Or, is there some method of rehabilitating her? Can she be presented as a "new" boat to the US authorities and simply registered there? If so, how's she going to get there - I can't see Shane sailing her alongside Trevor all the way back around the world. One last thing. Garden Island sounds very safe from the point of view of Basingstoke getting at Kookaburra, but a quick look on Google maps reveals that the only way to the mainland is via a single causeway - Basingstoke need only wait at the landward end and pick the boys up as they drive into Perth.

I read this story a while back and liked it then and liked it again just now when I re-read it. It was reading Ben that prompted me to start on Circumnavigation in the erroneous belief that if it had a spin-off, it must be complete. And so began the week-to-week odyssey that's taken over my Tuesdays for the last several months. Thanks, CJ...

To be fair to Trevor, I think that recent events have adequately proven that nobody else in Greece was paying any taxes in 2006. Why should Trevor be the only one?

Erm, can I just point out that that remark has been taken grossly out of context...

Definitely, but why on Kookaburra?

Gosh! What a chapter - almost all the loose ends tied up. Of course, Basingstoke still wants to kill Trevor and still has a bug on board the Kookaburra, but those are just minor details... Just one quick question - Shane was offered a job on the farm for the time after Kookaburra's gone. Where's she going to? Surely Trevor will now hang around Australia at least as long as it takes to fix Atlantis. In fact, he might even stay permanently - he can get an Australian passport via his mum. His dad can get one because of being married to Rachel. Jim can get one by dint of his relationship with Dirk. Only Lisa and Joel would be left in Florida and they've got each other. Even if Trevor does go back to the US, won't he go on Atlantis?

Sums up a cricket game pretty well. And, CJ, I wish you wouldn't tar all Brits with the cricket brush. Most Scots have better things to do with their time than waste 5 days of it on a game that may well still end in a draw. There's haggis hunting, for example...

You know, cricket is probably the most boring game ever invented - I think Shane's version would be a distinct improvement. At least there would be something happening from time to time.

Shouldn't Aussie slang be upside down, rather than back to front?

I know it with shepherds - "Red sky at night, shepherds' delight; red sky in the morning, shepherds' warning".

Hmmm, to be pedantic, I'd suggest "awry" as a better translation. Or just "wrong" for simplicity. Nonetheless, it's great to see quotes from the immortal bard on the board... (in my entirely unbiased opion, you understand)

Are you sure that Analogue phones were still about in 2006? In the UK they vanished years before that. I bought my first mobile in 1997 and Analogue was on the way out then. It survived longer in the US, I believe, because of the size of the country so it may well have hung on in Australia as well. From what I can remember, an analogue phone is basically a two-way radio so you can make a call on quite a poor signal if you're prepared to put up with the low quality. On a digital phone, the system will decide that the signal is not good enough and cut you off long before you'd probably give up on an analogue connection. The cellular system also limits the effective range of a mobile phone connection. The upshot is that in a small country like the UK, we switched to digital phones quite quickly whereas in the US they lasted longer. Not sure about Australia. I remember looking for a phone to use on holiday to the US which uses different digital frequencies to the rest of the world and was amazed to see that I could still buy a dual analogue/digital phone there. As an aside, one of the last strongholds of analogue mobiles in the UK was for workers on the North Sea oil and gas rigs. With an analogue phone they could get connections to masts on the shore whereas with digital phones they couldn't. None of which, of course, alters the fact that for a very long time, everything Trevor said to Joel or Lisa on the landline in Bridget's guest house was being relayed directly to the bad guys via an old-fashioned bug. This, on its own, should justify the paranoia that Fowler et al are trying to instil into Trevor regarding phone security.