Roger Moroney: Nothing like a good mystery

Rocks mark the location where a metal monolith once stood in Spanish Valley, Utah.

When I first watched that remarkable cinematic tale called 2001 A Space Odyssey I sat in awe.

Along with being sat in a comfortable seat of course.

It was the start that finished me. The apes charging about arguing about nothing in particular … until they happened upon a huge monolith.

A massive thing, which Stanley Kubrick's special effects and engineering crew must have spent many days manufacturing.

Computer special effects today could build one in 17 seconds. In the context of the film it was a shining and stark declaration that someone, something, somewhere (with extraordinary skill and intellect) had visited before the human kind, let alone the ape kind, had ever been thought of.

That word "monolith" … I like it because it sounds both powerful and creepy.

At this point I must digress … was it the ape creatures who first came upon the monolith or was it the blokes on the moon later?

I could look it up on some website but I haven't time as I have to get the cats wormed.

My memory is like an average lager brewed in 2017 … past its "best by" date but still reasonably effective.

But anyway, whatever, the monolith mystery re-emerged 19 years after Stan's sci-fi epic was built.

For someone planted one in a national park in Utah in the heart of the USA.

Were they Republicans or Democrats?

Must have been Republicans … for this shining, showy, mysterious and meaningless thing was in time removed from its position.

But then another one appeared … on a hill in northern Romania, wherever that is.

What is going on?

I suspect this 'copycat' build-a-big-mysterious-thingy is kind of tied in with that fad, years ago, of eerie crop circles.

One would emerge and another would follow. I like creepy stuff, so I (sort of) erected a monolith.

It is in the garden, and I used a shovel to embed it, which was handy because my monolith is actually the shovel.

The only other slab of metalware available was a rusting length of old guttering, which is not terribly exciting for alien pursuers to come across.

So I entombed the shovel and waited for Banksy or Dick Frizzell to call by under the cover of darkness to decorate it but no-one came.

Now back in the US of A it was reported that "four men" went to the site in Utah and pushed the monolith over.

"This is why you don't leave trash in the desert," one reportedly stated, anonymously online of course.

So it was left lying, and they simply left.

As for the monolith discovered in Romania, I daresay it is now on eBay.

I thought about looking it up but with my lack of i-skills all I would have achieved by mangling the wordage required would have been to book myself in for a mammogram next Thursday.

I like a mystery.

Roger Moroney

Like where did I leave the car keys … or the car for that matter.

And how come I have many socks but no matching pairs?

So my monolith stands tall and confrontational in the garden.

It stands with mysterious dignity … something I have always found difficult to achieve.

I have however often stood with mysterious instability.

I see my monolithic spayed, I mean spade, as my invitation to aliens.

Folk from faraway galactic worlds who are constantly on the watch for "invitations" to call by and have a couple of ales.

As long as they bring a few that's fine and dandy, but they cannot take my monolith.

When they shove off it will be without the shovel.

I have just had an idea, now there's a first.

If I put a clock on the monolithic shovel … and attach my long-expired passport … I could become a time traveller (insert groans now).

I love a good mystery, and with any luck you three or four good folk who have decided to spend good time in my corner of the literary garage do as well.

You will be perplexed … and wondering … what the hell is he on about?

It's always a mystery.

Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist and observer of the slightly off-centre.