S01E10: Time Capsule

[theme music]

I'm Alan Partridge, this is my podcast. From The Oasthouse.

It's funny, the things you hear when you've handed in the first nine episodes of your eighteen-episode podcast series to Audible and you're in Audible for a marketing meeting and you take a comfort break and you're in the toilet stall and you overhear a couple of sound engineers chatting at the urinals. [big breathe in]

They were talking about podcasts, and one said a recent episode of a podcast about dads called "Take My Hand" had made him cry. Well, I just hooted! My laughter echoing around the cubicle like a squash ball around a squash court when you do a shot called a Boast Shot. Honestly, I'd have wet myself if I hadn't sat down to relieve myself anyway, because the idea that someone would cry at a podcast was the funniest thing I'd heard for ages! 

I finished up quickly, or as quickly as I could, strode out to wash my hands and said "Which one of you is the podcast crier?". The ginger-haired one with the big ears raised his hand, I slapped him on the back leaving a wet handprint on his shirt, and I laughed again but his friend told me, he said he'd cried at podcasts before as well! 

Stunned, I canvassed the opinion of four other men who entered the lavatory, and they admitted that they cried at podcasts too but insisted that these were actually some of their favourite moments! Yeah, it turns out that every day, up and down the country, hundreds and hundreds of people are listening to podcasts and crying! Hey, that's cool! You know, people want to make podcasts designed to elicit tears, that's their lookout. Feels a bit cynical to me, bit manipulative, and not really my kinda thang. My podcast is really just me doing things I'd be getting up to anyway, and recording them. Feels a bit more honest to me, but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, today you join me in my loft as I attempt to compile a simple 'time capsule' of memories and snapshots of my life for my grandchildren whom I have never met. Pieces of me that will hopefully echo through time. And to anyone who says "Hang on that sounds suspiciously like the type of podcast you just said you don't do!". I say again, I was going to be doing this anyway and I just happen to be recording it. 

So yeah, no biggie. Just looking through my loft, seeing what's there. Might pop a bit of music on actually just to pass the time. I was thinking about doing this before, and composed a bit of a ditty on the piano. Yeah, it's this. [presses play and simple, rising piano chords play]

Yeah, yeah, I'm just looking through my loft to see if there's anything that might interest my grandkids when I get a bit older, or shuffle off the old mortal coil. Both grandkids come from the seed of my son Fernando. One's a lovely little fella! The other's a girl.

The male, well, that's little Jack. Jack will be responsible for carrying on the Partridge name, Jack's coming up to 5 and is the absolute spit of his father! Then there's little sis Ruby, 3 going on 13, she's also a dead-ringer for her dad which does look a bit weird, but I just think of her as a handsome girl! I adore them both, with Jack being my slight favourite because of the thing about carrying on the name. 

Denise is not going to be producing any grandchildren soon, that's a- it's a lifestyle thing. People say "Oh, you never know!", but I do, I do know, it's a lifestyle thing. She lives in Hebden Bridge.

I tell you, when Jack rolls his eyes I could be looking in a mirror! But of course I'm not, I'm looking at an Instagram video. Never actually met them, but that fine, it's absolutely fine, loads of grandparents haven't met their grandkids. Loads of parents haven't met their kids! Their grandma, my ex-wife, she's met them, of course she has. Nanny Carol they call her, and my god she doesn't mind telling you. Nanny... Nanny Carol! Nanny Carol. Sounds like one of those Christmas movies you don't want to watch. 

But I have to make do with Instagram. You know sitting in my office flicking through their holiday snaps over a cup of coffee. Or even better, there's a family friend I still talk to who forwards me stuff that they don't put on social media. The other year I got a twenty minute video of a birthday party and that was lovely! I put on a party hat to watch so it was like I was there almost, and then I realised there was a clown off camera so I paused the video, put on a red nose from Comic Relief '99 and pretended it was me, and I was making them all laugh. That was a good one. 

But yeah, as a rule I try not to dwell on it. In fact I decided to extract myself from that virtual world because I was advised it wasn't hugely healthy by... a man I sometimes pay to chat to. [mock-exasperated] Hmmm! [mechanical click of a stop button, the piano background music stops]

I wrote a letter to Fernando asking if I could meet the grandkids on account of today being Father's Day and I ain't got nothing in my diary. And also coincidentally, is the anniversary of the first time I met, chatted up his mother which led to the spawning of this wonderful clan which I've been a very happy spectator of.

Anyway, just thought, it's a good opportunity. [clicks tongue] Yeah, it was the last roll of the dice really, I put everything into it, even put a small bag of sunflower seeds because Fernando and I used to grow them at the end of the garden, thinking he might like to do the same with his kids because sunflowers they are resilient, you know, no matter what they make their way to the sun. Everyone like sunflowers, I had thought but seems not. No reply as of yet, fair enough. They get on with their lives, I'll get on with mine. Yep. Yep, yep, yep, yep yepyep.

But yeah, so that done, that done and dusted, we move on. So the time capsule I'm sort of designing is sort of me signing off. Clearly, I now have a free afternoon, rolls eyes, no it's fine! And the chap I talk to said it might be a good idea to do it, to close the box, sort of close the lid on that part of my brain. And even though I'll never know them, at least one day they might get to know their old grandad a bit. Yeah.

[sting: rising synth chord]

At the end of last week's episode, I promised that I would repurpose From the Oasthouse into a True Crime podcast, and look, in more forensic detail, at the trespass and intimidation I've suffered at the hands of an internet troll. Well, I was as good as my word and recorded almost seven hours of material, including dramatic reconstructions and interviews with neighbours, setting the whole thing to library music called 'Sinister Beats 1' and 'Moody Suspense'. 

But after playing what I'd recorded to a trusted friend, he said it didn't work on any level. I agreed that the material was poor, and decided not to turn From the Oasthouse into True Crime podcast, and have placed it in an encrypted file which can never be opened.

[sting: descending synth chord]

And people said, "What are you going to include in the time capsule? If you want people to know about you just give them recordings of your TV shows or your radio archives". I said "Nah nah nah nah, it's not about me telling them I'm a broadcaster, It's me saying to them, 'Guys, I'm your grandfather. I'm a father. I'm a son. I'm a husband. I'm an estranged husband. I'm an ex-husband. I'm a writer. I'm a thinker. I'm a rambler, I'm a dancer, I'm a joker, but I'm not a midnight toker'"!

Sorry, I'm getting confused with the Dave Miliband. But I'm not a midnight toker and, if I find out you are, I'll be really disappointed! Dump the doobie, bin the bifta, pick up an anorak, go out the back door, across the field, down the hill, through the gate and stop at the fence and take in the view! If you haven't got any binoculars, I've hidden some inside the middle seat cushion on my sofa. One of you can use them but put them back where you found them and be careful! 

What you see over that fence is a living Constable landscape! Enjoy it. Nature is God's gift to all of us, we must defend it, nurture it and that means not building affordable housing on the green belt! They shouldn't be spreading into the countryside! Stay in the city but go higher! If you build high enough, the people at the top will be able to see the countryside anyway, they don't need to visit it!

So, no, the capsule isn't about 'Alan Partridge' the brand, it's about 'Alan Partridge' the man. You see, my notion is that the grandkids will come up here when Fernando and his wife are clearing out the house soon after my death, but they've forgotten inside is an angry dog in mourning. As soon as they open the front door, Seldom will be off like a shot into the woods, running at full pelt for miles and miles. Eventually, finally, out of breath, he'll settle beneath an old oak tree because there, buried beneath the ground, in the chosen place will be Alan Partridge. Seldom will lie there, on the grave of his master, like Greyfriars Bobby but bigger and angrier! But he won't be disturbed, for no child has climbed that tree in nearly fifty years, the last one being a young Alan Partridge. It has remained unclimbed ever since.

Meanwhile, inside the Oasthouse, Fernando and his wife are busy. They'd have thrown the cheap pine armchairs into a skip, put all my clothes into bin bags and said "Dump them outside a charity shop!". Fernando will have spotted the Mouseman chairs downstairs and thought, "They're worth a few quid!", while in my office his wife will be taking down all the little framed drawings that I'd made, remove the drawings and bin them, but keeping the frames.

With their parents busy, Jack and Ruby will be left to play upstairs and soon enough, bored of jumping up and down on the bed which they shouldn't really be doing anyway, they'll peer up to the landing and spot the hatch in the attic. The ladder that was fitted to the hatch came off when I was trying to slide down it many years ago, I forget why. But that's better! Being ladderless would make the hatch all the more enticing, and having to get a ladder from the garage would merely stoke intrigue even further!

What could possibly be up there? As their heads pop up through the now open attic entry hatch, the Time Capsule Experience will begin. First they'll scrabble around for light switch. "Here it is!", click. "Here's another switch!", click, voom! The lights come on and 'Choo choo!', a model train on a track, a pointless gimmick? Don't think so! The train would trundle forward and as it enters the tunnel it triggers a video screen, a 60" Sony Bravia flickers to life and on it, my face. Let me play you what they'll hear me say.

"Hello, Pop Partridge here. Sorry I'm dead. Oh, by the way, if my grandkids didn't find this and you're just the estate agent valuing the property, what'd be terrific is if you just leave the loft as you found it and let my grandkids know that I did this for them and suggest they come up. And also if you bump into my son just tell him, sorry we never reconciled, I know my career meant I was a pretty crummy dad but, you know, I always say there's no rewind button on the cassette player of life! Not even a Pause.

"And, oh yeah, and if there is a heaven, tell him I will always watch over you. If it's practical. Hopefully though, you are my grandkids in which case welcome to your time Capsule, lots to get through! So whack your iPhones on aeroplane mode. If you need the lav, go now, there's a bucket in the corner. Do pull up a beanbag. Apologies if they're a little dusty, this room was set up in the year 2020, I was going to use a caption actually at the bottom of the screen saying '2020 Vision' which I thought was good, a good title. 

"But with any luck though, you're not seeing this till at least 2030. Fingers crossed I've got longer, I would- I'd love to have got longer, at the very least to see the rollout of 5G but either way, if there's dust, there is a Hoover in the cupboard, bang it on, give it a quick once-over. If it's not there, that means that it's been taken by my cleaner, in which case please contact the agency I booked her through Total Cleaning Solutions in Norwich because she will need to either return it, or face legal consequences... or pay the equivalent value. Right so that's the admin, on we go! Let me tell you about my favourite meal, eggs! Or eggs and-" . [click of a Stop button]

In terms of the time capsule itself, well I kept things simple and I chose one that uses hardware developed at NASA. Made of a super strong UV-resistant polymer, the capsule is watertight and airtight so no moisture can get in to perish the comestibles! I put it in some Ella protein balls, I was given a box of them and I just don't like them. 

"So spill the beans Partridge, what are you putting inside?", well, some items are important to me personally, others will be items that just give an idea of life in 2020. For the latter, I've put in a copy of The Telegraph, The Express, The Mail and the Mail on Sunday, I want them to know there are different points of view. Then it's just what I put in from my own stuff, which is why I'm in the loft. It's like the saying, 'Give me the contents of a loft and I will show the man', because I'm scanning the loft space now and truly all of life is here. A lot of death as well, actually, there's been must be... two hundred dead bluebottles up here, strewn across the land like a kind of a... fly Somme, or a sort of Jonestown mass-insect suicide.

[theme music sting]

Excuse the huffing and puffing, I'm actually mid-rummage, what have we got? Got a ring binder here, must have had that since 1970, full of bank statements, might find that, er, let's have a look... on the 10th of May 1998 I took out £40 from a cash machine, just gives you a sense of my life, you know, the sort of thing I used to get up to. So the bank statements are going in. 

[Alan starts a hacking cough]

Sorry, breathed in a dead fly's leg then.

What's inside this bubble-wrap, let's have a look... ah! Shower head, not sure... still in its box... not sure how useful- actually that's always useful, no I I I I'll pop it in. I'll Pop it in. Pop it in in a second.

Hang on, hang on a second. Is that... sorry I just heard someone on the drive, just gonna pop my head out of the Velux window. 

No, it's not my drive, it's the neighbour. Looks like he's come out to empty his bins. He always looks around... don't know why but it's very odd. And I've not seen his wife for quite a while, it's very disturbing what I'm seeing now. I'm going to lock the doors tonight. Yeah. Yeah.

Why would you tie bin bags together with plastic tape? And he borrowed my hedge trimmer about two weeks ago. Oh, there's something really wrong here, he just looks pale. It's a big wheelie bin. It must be- it must... it must be six or seven bags he's put in so far. And as I say, I haven't seen her for, for about- oh no, there she is. Oh. Alright.

Where were we? Let's have a look. [heavy rummaging] Hang on... oh look at that, my Airfix model of a Lancaster Bomber, I've not seen this for years! Well, I must have put this together in the summer of '65. I used to run around the garden imagining I was dropping a bouncing bomb onto German reservoirs and 'Boom!', the dam would collapse and the valley below will be flooded, with consequent loss of life. My ex-wife used to see it packed away and say "What are you keeping that for? It's not like you're a kid anymore", and I'd say, "What are you keeping your wedding dress for? It's not like it fits you anymore. It didn't really fit you on the day!".

Pack of four sets of white underpants here, from the late department store C&A. Never worn. They're good pants these are, as long as the elastic hasn't perished... because elastic does that unless it's vulcanised. No reason not to vulcanised panty-rubber, it's only the elastic that renders the pants obsolete... unless you're particularly filthy. Oh my god, there's a shirt here still in its box! It's got big, fat, round collars, the shirt is maroon and it has bright white stitching. My god, let me try and read what's on the side [blows and then wipes off dust] it says... 'Tootal Shirts. Ten Penny Round Collar'... my god! This must be from about 1973!

What's this? It's a golden trophy, it's not real gold, golden trophy for being brand ambassador for mouthwash giants Corsodyl for a record six years, that was a good time. Happy memories, made some good friends at Corsodyl. We'd come out of a meeting giggling ourselves silly. Yeah, our heads really close to each other. Big, big fresh-breath laughs. Pink gums! Big fresh gobs! Put that in.

[sting: rising synth chord]

[sigh] Alan Partridge and Peartree Productions have been asked to point out that, contrary to a claim made in an earlier episode, TV presenter Ross Kemp does not wear swimming trunks that are too small, nor has he become excessively muscled or, quote, "Gone bananas on his glutes". We're happy to make clear that Mr. Kemp's shorts, while tight, are not excessively so, and revoke unconditionally the implication that Mr. Kemp is, or has at any time, been over-muscled. On Mr. Kemp's suggestion, we are delighted to make a donation to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

[sting: descending synth chord]

Ever sent a tweet from a loft? I have, because earlier I gave a digital holler and asked Twitter, 'What would you put in a time capsule?'. Karl says, "If it's definitely airtight, and I'd want assurances on this, I'd put in Kirstie Allsopp, because she's quite simply unbearable! Either her or Jeremy Vine". No, no no no, Jeremy's not wicked, he's just preposterous. All arms and legs, he walks like he's trying to climb through a window. Woah, hang on- oh, shit! Oh sh- [sigh] I've dropped my phone down the hatch. I'm sorry about that. Let me- let me just... where's the ladder? What's she done with the ladder?

Rosa?

Rosa?!

Why would she tidy away the ladder, who asked her to do that? Rosa! What time is it? Oh for god's sake, It's six, she's gone home. Rosa!

Yes, she's gone, she's gone home. I don't believe this, I'm trapped! I'm trapped in a loft, full of swirling thoughts, surrounded by memories, broken dreams, faded photos. Just a granddad in the autumn of his years. I am trapped, both mentally and physically. I mean, I could jump down, it's only ten feet but I'm nearly sixty, I shouldn't be jumping anywhere!

I mean, the other day I did a star jump at a pitch meeting because I was talking about World in Action, but I couldn't remember the name of World In Action so I just said the documentary with the Vitruvian Man logo which they'd never heard of, so I did a star jump to demonstrate and jarred my knee so badly I had to be helped to the car by a team of the commissioners. It was humiliating!

And if that's what a star jump does, god knows what a loft jump would do! I remember the second time I read Bill Shatner's autobiography, a passage stuck in my mind. He said there's only two things you need to know when you do a fall, tuck and roll. Hmm. Still don't think my knee would withstand it though, it'd just turned to dust like when you prod an old, grey wasp nest with a broom handle.

I could do- I could do a parachute jump fall. If you put your knees together, and your legs together, it more than doubles the strength of both your legs individually because your legs are actually like a splint for one another, if that makes sense. I mean, I know this stuff in theory, it's just the idea of actually... if I get it wrong, I mean, what if... if I jump through and get a compound fracture? Christ, I'd be in agony, looking at my bone sticking through my leg, throwing up thinking, "Oh, no, that's my bone. That should be inside, not outside!", vomit! No, no, no.

Ro- Rosa?!

Oh well, it looks like I'm sleeping here tonight. I guess I could lie on top of the lagging between two joists. Like a sort of well-upholstered coffin. Wedged in like Draclia. Except instead of a coffin-lid, I'd just use a long, fat strip of mineral wool salvaged from another joist gap.

Hang on. Hang on, I can hear a car. I'll open the Velux window again, just push it up and open. Doesn't need a stay, it's got these Hydragas struts. It is a car. Oh my god! I'm saved!

Hello?

Hello!

Hello down there!

There's some kids getting out, who the hell is it? 

Jack? Ruby? Are you Jack and Ruby? Is your name Jack? Is your name Ruby? I'm Alan Partridge, colon, granddad! Grand Alan Partridge!

[a distant infant voice shouting "Aha!"]

That's right. That's right! That's me! 

They know that thing, they- Fernando must have got my letter! I can't- I can't believe I'm being rescued by my grandkids! It's like the end of a really good film!

Is your dad not with you?

No, that's fine, that's fine! Who's the... You're the nanny? How do you do?

Guys, I'm- you're not gonna leave this, I'm stuck up here! There's a key under the erm... I don't want to say, I'm recording a podcast. It's okay, I'll do it in post, it's... it's under the-

[partial theme music sting]

-lean it back, don't make it topple over-

[continued theme music sting]

-there'll be a key, let yourself in the side door near the kitchen.

Okay. You're not gonna believe this, I was up here doing a time capsule for you! Who cares about Time Capsules now, because you're here and what matters is the here and now! So come- let yourself in, yeah okay! 

Oh this is- well there was no- there's no- there's- there's no point living for tomorrow if you can't live for today! 

Okay guys, I'm up here. See through the hole in the ceiling? Grab the ladder there. No, not- get one end each! 

[Jack and Ruby squabbling] 

Listen, listen to me! You don't listen, you're just like your father!

There you go, you see? Just- if you listen it's easy! Guys, there's so much we're going to do. I hope you're feeling energetic because we've got a very lonely tree to climb!

[closing theme music]