It is with great excitement that I write to you, Ms Cress. The blogs are found.
I know. I know. I, too, was at my wit's end. When we never heard anything after just two blogs, I feared the worst. But as you know, hope is the one thing onto which I held. That, and my undying belief in never ending a sentence with a preposition. Unless that word is 'preposition'. Then it jumps over into something of a more philosophical situation wherein one can create reverse analogies apropos chickens and eggs; gods and writers; et al.
But I digress.
We were right to assume that your being in North Korea with a doco crew only some months before he landed in South Korea was part of this mystery. None of us believed they could have made a connection. Simply because there wasn't one. It actually was one of those situations that necessitated the creation of the word “coincidence”. Hence, my use of it now.
Nevertheless, their version of spy-on-everything Echelon - which is basically a spreadsheet program and a box of pencils – found a connection. They found you had collaborated in the 80s. In the art world. Whereas most countries would shrug or even junk-mail you a grant form, up there they know the power of words, imagery and a nice dolly tracking shot. When they looked up both your frequent flyer points and spotted the trip to Mexico back in the 90s, their alarm bells rang. Well...a lone bulb on a wooden peg board next to the word Australia gleamed a dull orange for a moment before using up its saved power. But someone was watching.
The upshot of this preamble is to give you a brief insight as to where he's been and why the blogs stopped.
Although vaguely amusing, his defiant rejection of a day-trip to the Demilitarised Zone in that blog of December 2013 was the third domino in a line of about four dominoes. Why the plural of domino needs a surprise 'e' is utterly beyond me.
But I digress.
One: he knows you. Two: you had just been 'up there'. Three: you collaborated together in the 80s. Four: you went to Mexico together in the 90s. Five: He was the only Australian in an all-British cast of 'Mamma Mia'. Six: He openly rejected the idea of going near the border. Seven: about seven dominoes.
I've managed to hack into the 'Mamma Mia' company records (harder than that clause implies) and discovered that he didn't miss a single show in Seoul. Or Daegu. Or Busan. But if it wasn't him, then who was it? And why didn't anyone realise a different man was playing 'Bill'? I hear it's a smallish role, but it is a lead. Or do we all look the same to them? (You know...the Brits.) The Australian accent is a bugger to pull off. Kate Winslet got damn close in 1999's Holy Smoke, but apart from her it's pretty much a laugh-fest. And, okay, Benedict Cumberbatch sounded okay when he was having a bash at Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate, but even he started hiccupping English Standard every fourth or fifth vowel. This means that the Bill replacement was an inside job. Or Kate Winslet.
I have more information. But I'll have to move to another internet café before I dare write more.
I do hope his cover isn't blown.
The upshot is this: he's alive!
