Bucky even tried to spin me around and propel me along the street—instincts alone made me tense my muscles and become immovable. Bucky sagged back—he had always been the toughest fittest guy in school and me a rather flabby tangle foot—the transformation to this rock-hard monolith was not easy to absorb. Then I relaxed myself, turned and started to walk, tall and mighty, while the skinny suited Bucky Buckland fell in beside. Bucky’s sense of relief when we were some distance from his office building was physically measurable in his facial muscles and breathing.
    I strode out with long arm-swinging strides while Bucky shambled along beside me, fiercely resisting the urge to fall into step.
 “Are you ashamed of me, Bucky?” I asked with a slight chuckle.
 “Me? Ashamed?”
 “I can face the truth, really.”
Bucky smiled. They were heading up toward the City Watchhouse where there weren’t any decent pubs that I knew of..
 “Yeah, alright. You got me. I’m a snob.”
 “I apologise for the uniform,” I said, “I would have worn civvies if I had any that still fitted.”
 “Doesn’t make any difference to me,” Bucky said, “But some of the people I work with have some funny ideas about uniforms. They like to beat up on the people wearing them.”
 “The Government of this country, Bucky, has gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to teach people like me how to deal with people like that.”
 “Actually, I was hoping to avoid that sort of incident.”
 “So, where are we going, Bucky?”
 “Don’t worry. I’ve got a brief engagement up here and might interest you. Then we’ll have that beer.”

Workmen digging a new London tube tunnel unearth a five million year old Martian spaceship, complete with mummified Martians, in Quatermass and the Pit, easily the best of the films involving the stoic super-rich scientist and a superior Hammer film. Andrew Keir plays the man himself, with James Donald as an incredulous archaeologist, Barbara Shelley to do the screaming and Julian Glover as the stiff-backed army officer who doesn’t believe a word of it, not even when the Martians incinerate him with their death ray. It turns out that the now extinct Martians have been responsible for all the manifestations of the Devil—the location is Hob’s Lane, Hob being yet another name for Satan. Anyhow, they unleash a massive demonic energy field which threatens to burn up London until Donald shorts it out with a crane. All fine stuff, that did not deserve it’s US renaming as Five Million Years to Earth.