The Music of the Spheres

Captain's Log - Day 13

This morning the moon gradually filled the cockpit window.

Its stark beauty is incredible. We have been pulled in the tail of the meteorite and will now land precisely on time, 40 years to the day since we first landed on the moon.

I have my speech all planned – in which I will thank the dwarfs for their sterling efforts over the years and wax lyrical on the indomitable spirit of the citizens of Homeward.

This evening we broadcast an eve of landing message back home, in which I reminded the audience of Homeward of the importance of being the first to have landed on the moon and the great achievements we have made on it since that date.

Later, I looked out at the earth and the heavens revolving around it in sublime harmony - the music of the spheres. A serene order, just like that which I have created for the inhabitants of Homeward. But there are always those who wish to sound a discordant note.

I have been listening to a series of plays by one of my fans Mister Frank Cottrell Boyce. Full marks for effort - he is not as good as the great Sir Ernest Wiseman - but who is? (although, somewhat immodestly, I have to say that there our those who have remarked on how I reach those peaks with my own plays)

The series is called 'One Chord Wonders'and they are about those dreadful days when 'punk' music was popular. Indeed, Beaver Hateman claims to have invented the genre.

My 'Crystal Jubilee' celebrations of 1977 (the anniversary of my purchase of Homeward) were ruined by his antics. I had decided to hold a garden party on the lawns of Homeward.

Just as the band struck up 'Hail to Uncle' a discordant racket drowned out the band. Beaver was holding an open-air punk concert as (he claimed) an anti-dote to my self- congratulory back-slapping.

Dreadful - all screeching guitars, spiky hair, and the wearing of plastic bin bags. Beaver kept screaming 'Anarchy in Homeward".

I knew then that educated people would never again be able to face the universe with any of their previous serenity and certitude.

Later, over dinner in the mess, we imagined what life would had been like if Beaver had got to the moon first? Goodness knows how he would have squandered its resources in pursuit of the high life?

The Badfort Republic of the Moon? The Dwarfs would partying all the time on Black Tom !!!