Underground movement

Yesterday, I got to walk through the very first tunnel built under the Thames. Built between 1825 and 1840 by Marc Brunel and his son Isambard, it was bought by the East London Railway Company in 1869 and made part of the East London line.

It's been closed since 2007 for major refurbishment and opens again in May as part of the Overground network (which runs about 600 yards from my house). I hope it will then be tweeting.

Yesterday was a last chance to walk under the river. This was, of course, magnificently exciting.


Photo by Nimbos. More photos of the tunnel on Facebook for those as fancy.

Friends indeed

This morning I was wearing my dump hat. The binmen declined to take our rubbish last week 'cos there was a former shower cubicle stacked neatly beside it. So I cajoled the helpful neighbour/boss G for the use of his car.

He's bought a new, shiny car since last time we did this, so there was some careful preparation of plastic sheets. But we cleared his shed and my shower, and all in time to be at work.

Where, courtesy of Psychonomy, this beauty was waiting. It shall take pride of place on my desk at home, next to the baboon.

Domestic bliss

Have been busy this week with a damn load of work - which is something of a relief after a rather desperate January. Has meant some late nights and a wealth of research, but am feeling a lot better now that somebody wants me.

On Friday, I took a few hours off to go to London Zoo with the Dr. It was 10 years since I'd first stumbled up to her and said "You're lovely." As I said this time last year,

"The lesson is, my young padawans, that if you fancy someone, tell them."

Me, "Gallifrey and nine", 19 February 2009.

We'd adopted each other animals at London Zoo - I got the Dr an Asian lion, she got me a lady gorilla reputed to stink of garlic. The Asian lions were best, all snuggled up in a pile, watching us visitors languorously. We also liked the baby monkeys and the owls. I took a picture of the Dr playing with the tiger-paw gloves, and realise now we should have bought them.

We were home well in time for the live EastEnders, which was all rather manic and brave. M'colleague Lisa Bowerman says that audio drama separates the men actors from the boys, and the same seems to be true of live telly. Turned over to BBC Three after, to shout at the obscenely indulgent behind-the-scenes thing. Managed about 20 minutes.

Instead we put on another True Blood - we're now five episodes into season 2. It's much stronger than season 1, with more screen-time and plot for the other characters around Sookie and Bill. The Dr loves the comedy vampires. But it is all having an effect on the cat.

Yesterday I wrote a comic strip and two (very) short stories, which I hope will be approved by the Masters. Then I went out to see Ghosts, a play by Ibsen reworked by Frank McGuinness, starring Lesley Sharp and Iain Glen. It's a brilliant play about the shadow cast over a family by a long-dead father - who remains a constant presence though never appearing in person. A very deft bit of writing, and Sharp and Harry Treadaway (playing her son) were incredible. Not entirely convinced by some of the accents, though. Glen seemed to be playing the vicar as Abraham Lincoln.

Today, I was interviewed about my Being Human book and am writing more stuff, while the Dr is finishing her William Morris embroidery by attaching it to a cushion. Later we shall eat the kilo of best beef what I bought as a treat.

But perhaps our most exciting news is that we have a bath. It's been five weeks since the shower was pulled apart. B&Q's promise to deliver our purchases "within three weeks" turned out to be not entirely true. Their promise to ring us with a date of delivery, and to let us know why things were delayed, was not entirely true either. The Dr chased and chased - and spoke to some helpful, apologetic people - and the stuff was finally delivered on Thursday. Well, all except the end panel for the bath which we hope will now come next week.

The delays have meant our helpful Man has taken on other works, but he was round late last night getting it set up so that we can at least have a wash. It stills needs plenty of work, and there's a sink to be put in, but we're both skippy with delight.

Wet wet wet

A practical post today. Yesterday, my Daewoo DH-6100P HDD/DVD recorder would not eject a disc. It would try to play the thing but get caught up in a weird loop of cogitation. I tried restarting the machine but that only meant it came on again thinking, "Ooh, a disc" and hit the loop before getting to the stage where it would let me eject. What a clever bit of design.

Googling, Jimlad on AvForums had had the same problem, and I dared to follow his method of taking the bastard thing apart. A little to my amazement, that proved easy enough and the thing is now working. The Dr got to watch the end of Season One of Poldark and of Being Human before the latter's 2.1. Hooray!

I am always in frustrated awe of those who can actually make and fix things. And it's even more enraging when people who can do things don't.

Some 18 months ago, I spent about more than a month and a lot of money getting my bathroom fixed so it wouldn't leak on the people downstairs. It didn't work, and last September we were dribbling again. The Man - my sister's handy significant other - poked about a bit, muttered about cowboys and made a temporary fix.

Today he was back again to do things more finally. We thought we'd remove a couple of rows of tiles, let the dampness dry out over the next few days (we'll be using washing facilities at the gym and a mate's house), then reseal it all double-strength.

Only it never proves that simple. Anything we probe in this house reveals amazing corners cut - as we discovered weeks into living here with our boiler. The tiles round the shower turn out to have been fixed to a painted wall. The paint appears glossy and plastic, so water will run off it, but that also means its like the tiles have been fixed to glass. You put your finger under one tile, and the whole wall comes away.


Water has wormed its way through to this slick patch, and leaked right through the plasterboard into the wall behind. This means an interior wall with damp, which is something of a bad thing. We'll set heaters on the wet bits and try and get it sorted. We'll also need more tiles.


And, just to add to the joys, on the adjacent wall, the bottom tiles came off to reveal a dark hole. The shower mechanism and pipes turns out to be hidden behind a false wall that loses us maybe four or five inches of bathroom - enough extra space to allow us to fit a bath, though we can't afford anything nearly so fancy. It's all tided up now - the Man is very good - but I find even sat here in the next room tapping away that the darkness is looming.

New road

Amazon now have a cover up for my Being Human novel, The Road. The series is back on BBC Three on 10 January 2010 at 9.30 pm. The book should be out a couple of weeks after that; Amazon are saying early February.

In the meantime, there's a world of fine video and gossip at the Being Human blog.

My book is, I think, the first time this 'ere blog has actually got me work - I got invited to pitch for the thing after my squee about a screening. On the off-chance anyone is listening, I'd also love to write for The Muppets, True Blood and James Bond. All at the same time.

My hovercraft is full of eels

Gratuitous pimpage: here's a nice place to stay in Eger, Hungary, where you could also explore the fine castle and volcanic baths.

I never did write up my own splendid trip there in May, but I did read a book about its history.

Good day writing today; one outline agreed, got to pitch for something else, and have been working on the Novel. Now off to the doctor's. (Not the Dr's or the Doctor's.) And also have a cheque to pay in. Woo.

Belgium and the master detective – not Poirot

Had a fine weekend in Brussels, sampling beer and museums. It was a little odd how quiet the museums were, and how many had bits closed or empty or being moved.

Comics are a big Belgian thing, with huge great murals of favourite characters painted on various buildings and a huge Tintin in pride of place at the Gare Midi, where the Eurostar comes in. The Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinee showcases a massive range of original comic artworks, profiles of major figures in the genre, and lots of stuff about Tintin. Found the shop a bit disappointing, partly because so little of the comics on offer were available in translation, and partly because the souvenir things were all madly expensive. For a museum devoted to the subject, it didn't seem to be trying too hard to spread the word.

The museum is housed in an old department store designed by Victor Horta, and we also had a nose round his beautiful Art Nouveau house. Horta and his contemporaries went a step further than William Morris, applying the elegant curves of his furniture and interior design to architecture itself. The Dr's a big Morris groupie, so Horta's house was perhaps the highlight of the trip.

It's a tall, multi-story terraced town house, the insides scooped out to maximise the light. Even on a dreary grey day the glass roof and yellow furnishings filled the place with golden glow, so it felt warm and homely. And for all the rich elegance of the construction and furnishing, I could easily see small children and cats gamboling about the place; a practical family home as well as a work of art. There were so many lovely little features, like the flip-round urinal in the master bedroom.

Afterwards, we toured nearby streets on the trail of other houses by Horta and his mates. There were several gorgeous, decorative frontages – though they're private houses now so we couldn't peak inside. I'd love to know how the interiors work for their modern owners, how much has been remodelled and how well Ikea furniture fits in those elegant spaces.

In fact, we did a lot of walking, pottering around, our route linked together by the places and bars of interest as listed in the Rough Guide. (The Dr, the seasoned traveller, swears by the Rough Guide and has a whole shelf of different editions and countries.) There was some really very fine beer along the way – the 9% Chimay Blue brewed by the Trappists, the 8% Kwak in it's distinctive, round-bottomed glass that needed its own special stand, and the traditional Timmermans Geuze Lambic which is full of yeast and bits of dandruff, tastes more like cider than beer, and wasn't really me.

Then there was the food. We sampled a skewer each of strawberries dipped in white chocolate, which was quite difficult to eat without looking filthy. There were freshly grilled waffles and cream, a bucket load of mussels, and on our last night a really good meal in Le Kanoudou Resto.

Belgium seems to have played some kind of piggy-in-the-middle for most of its history. It was at the heart of disputes between Catholics and Protestants and their relevant empires, and was at one time referred to as the Spanish Netherlands. There's still a certain tension between the French and Flemish-speaking populations, so we tried to offend no one by only speaking English. In 1830, the poor lot got lumbered with Queen Victoria's uncle Leopold as king, the other European nations again deciding what was best for Belgium. Leopold did okay, it seems, but his son Leopold II is probably best remembered for the country's total disaster in bossing someone else around for a change.

We took the tram out to the palatial Museum de l'Afrique Central, which is about to close and be re-fitted with a slightly less racist elan. The place was built on the profits of the rubber trade and Leopold II's internationally censured colonies in the Congo. And inside it's like a stepping back into another age.

For one thing, the entrance lobby is full of statues of helpful white folk bringing civilisation to the black savages. The exhibits are of stuffed and mocked-up wildlife, with – I felt – the indigenous people grouped in with the flora and fauna. There's an argument that the museum merely shows the attitudes of a previous age – Tintin and the comics in the Comic Museum showed a similar racial stereotyping, and Tintin and the Congo these days comes with a warning. But just seven years after the museum first opened, the 1904 Casement report attacked the abuses in the Belgian colonies – so much so Leopold II gave them up.

There was a small exhibit on the history of the Congo, and another on Stanley – whose archive the museum now holds, and who denied all the stuff being said about abuses (I must read Tim Jeal's biography of Stanley, which is staring at me on the shelf). Though, too, a few of the captions in the rest of the place admitted perhaps the whole enterprise hadn't exactly been a Good Thing, it hardly scratched the long and complex history. We'd like to go again after the re-fit, though the Dr wasn't sure how radical that would be...

Got back yesterday and having waded through the emails I rushed out to the Albert Hall to hear AN Wilson and Steven Moffat discuss Sherlock Holmes with Matthew Sweet, with suitable passages from the canon read by David Warner. It was a lively, funny and insightful natter, available on iPlayer for the next few days. Steven let slip a few clues about his forthcoming, modern-day version which will star Benedict Cumberbatch. He also said something interesting about the problems of setting Sherlock Holmes in period, where the background details become more important than the adventure.

Later this month, I've got to give a talk at the Royal Observatory about the proper science in the sci-fi nonsense I knock out, so I'm nicking that.

Glass of vino with some chums afterwards – some of whom I'd not seen in an aeon – and then curry. Was a bit starey-eyed and tired after the long weekend, but don't think I did anything too foolish. Or at least, no more foolish than normal. Now pelting through a big thing that needs writing that's not yet been announced, while on Thursday I think I have to be a policeman. More on that in due course...

What’s brown and sounds like a bell?

The splendid fellows at the BBC Archive have posted lots of films and photos of the Palace of Westminster’s clock tower, also known as Big Ben. A medal – and cake – to whoever came up with such a brilliant idea.

(As I've blogged before, the bell is 150 years-old this year, and Big Ben’s own website has a feast of good stuff, too.)

Speaking of things politic, have been catching up on a week’s blogs, much of them bothered by MP’s expenses. Impressed by Peter on expenses and then on transparency, and Web of Evil on expenses and earlier on ID cards.

(Hungary was fun and sunny; photos on Facebook and will blog more the far side of a few pressing deadlines…)

Something something eggs

I seem to keep saying this: it's all been a bit manic of late. Sort of finished a big thing as-yet unnannounced on Friday and sent it round the houses for corrections and approval. Then sped up to Victoria to get more material for the very thing I'd just finished. Had a beer with P. in the grotty pub in the station, where we swapped gossip and discussed Government policy.

Then home for fish, chips and mushy peas in front of Quantum of Solace. Much more intelligible and splendid second time round; perhaps the smaller screen size helps, perhaps it's 'cos I already know where it's heading. But the edit is still so frenetic it's an effort to keep up.

On Saturday, with the typing done, I dismantled my office in preparation for the new floor. This took pretty much all day, and ripped two holes in my trousers. I unscrewed and delegged the fitted, too-low desk but it wouldn't come away from the wall. It seemed to have been fitted with a combination of glue and magick. Decided I'd wait for the expert: at least if the builder should pull the whole wall down, I won't be the one feeling silly.

The Dr arrived back from a day's teaching to marvel at my efforts. We then schlepped round to M. and N.'s house for a nice fish tea. Some excitement at the mussels still being alive when we arrived. I imagined them shrieking "Help me!" like that bit at the end of The Fly.

Having done the shifting chores on Saturday, earned an unusual lie-in on Sunday. The Dr even brought me tea and Jaffa Cakes in bed, where I idly glanced through the paper. Margaret Drabble thinks writing a spell against depression, and workaholicism and alcoholism go often hand-in-hand. I suspect there's something in that; not sure it's something good.

Then up, and amid the mess of office furniture and files now heaped around our living room, I laptopped a rewrite of a pitch and did some general edits on Friday's writing. Still a few bits to add and tweak, but the end is nearly in sight. Then perhaps there might be an announcement.

Will also be able to announce something else next week, the first in a new foray for me. How exciting this mystery must make my tawdry existence sound.

Then to St John's in Smith Square to hear the Exmoor Singers do Bach's St Matthew's Passion. (The apostrophication like Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, but with less monsters and more singing.) My chum (+ neighbour + boss) G. was one of the singers, and even got a line of his own. We saved our whooping for the final applause.

Psychonomy was also in attendance, and without a programme for the first half was making up his own words. Apparently they featured Nick Griffin and something perhaps about eggs. In part two, he could follow the words in German and clunkily translated English. He didn't think much of the arias, but otherwise thought it Good.

Me and the Dr have been to a few versions of the thing; for my own future reference, the Dr would like the aria after Peter's denial to be playing when she snuffs it.

Erbarme dich, mein Gott,
um meiner Zähren willen!
Schaue hier, Herz und Auge
weint vor dir bitterlich.
Erbarme dich, mein Gott.

(Touch my willy, God,
Or I will cry!
See here, My heart and eyes
Want to drink buttermilk.
Touch my willy, God.)

Passion According to Saint Matthew, BWV 244 (1727)
Translation S. Guerrier (2009)

Beers after, and then home to thick slabs of cheese on toast. I left the Dr watching EastEnders and No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and fell to bed about half-midnight.

Up this morning to wash and shave in time for the arrival of S. the builder. He sussed the issue of the desk in five seconds, and undrilled some screws I'd not even noticed. With a clunk the desk was severed from its moorings. We'll need to replaster and paint, but we should have a wooden floor down by the time I get back tonight. Then I'll need to source a new desk. One that might actually fit me.

Life is manic and also a bit expensive. So you'll have to wait for the apoplectic rant about Clive Staples ****ing Lewis. Consider it a blessing.

Floored

Here for the record is a picture of my new living room, showing the shelves built last month and the floor put in on Friday. Hooray to S. our handy workman, who's done such a splendid job.

(Compare to these pics from the beginning of February).

I've now got to shlep the stacked furniture back in there; it's currently all heaped around me in the office.

Bedroom was done Tuesday/Wednesday. The office needs doing next; but I've got a thing to finish writing before I can take my old desk and bits apart, so it might not be till later this week. And then we need new carpets on the stairs and landings. Hoping they do something acrylic that won't be eaten by moths and magic that won't clog with cat hair.

Am feeling grown up and tired and poor.

Palma chameleon

Arrived in Palma on Sunday evening, guests at the Mallorca Marriott Son Antem Golf Resort and Spa. They rang up a few months ago on the basis of all the Marriott's I've stayed in over the years, offering a cheap break on condition me and the Dr sat through a pitch from them. We thought what the hell.

Surprised by how rude a lot of the passengers were on the Easyjet flight, barking and snapping at the staff as if they thought they were going first class. We taxied to the hotel to find it was packed out with golfing Germans. So the hotel offered us one of their three-bedroom villas with a bathroom each. Just the downstairs was bigger than our flat at home, with a jacuzzi bath and a telly in every cupboard.

Perhaps this was part of the pitch they were going to make us - it just seemed to good to be true. We unpacked, we bought some food and we sat outside and read The Graveyard Book. When it got too cold to be outside, the Dr cooked and I discovered our tellies oddly got BBC One and Three. So we got to watch the finale of Being Human.

Got up Monday and collected our welcome pack: a bottle of wine, a map of Palma and Mallorca, some coupons for the spa and other Marriott hotels, and a list of restaurants and beaches. The nice bloke reminded us of the pitch we'd have to attend the next day, and when I told him we'd not taken the hire car gave me advice on parking in Palma anyway.

After a healthy breakfast, we grabbed a taxi in town. The sun was out and we basked under it, in view of the striking cathedral, La Seu.

It's an oddly blocky oblongs, tall flying buttresses kept in tight, so it feels more like a mad design from a fantasy movie rather than a real gothic building. The Dr was especially excited that Antoni Gaudi had worked on tidying the place up at the turn of the twentieth century.

We made our way up the steps and made our way round to the left of the cathedral, in between it and the Almudaina Palace. The front of the cathedral could almost be brand new: immaculate pale stone framing the darker, more weathered medieval original. I struggled to get the grand majesty of the front into the frame of my mobile.

It was just €2.50 each to get in and we shuffled into the darkness. Yet the strangest thing about La Seu is that its so beautifully light.

Gaudi, we learned from the book we bought afterwards, unbricked the windows and brought in electric candles, part of a general movement in the church in the time to build up the response of the congregation, a movement which led to Vatican 2 in the sixties.

Of course my phone doesn't pick up on half the subtleties of the light.

Here's the other side of the main window which I'd snapped from outside. The colours are bright and cheery, not like other so many churches in Spain which I felt seek to cower and terrify.

I realise I've not written up my notes on Seville and Cordoba from last September, but how different this simple grandeur is to the oppressive Catholicism of the Mesquita. The extraordinary thing there is the beauty of the original mosque, and the heavy-handed vulgarity of the Christian imposition.

A lot of Spanish churches proclaim the patronage of the conquistadors and the awful power of the priests. In the Mesquita, that's like vandalism written in stone. And when you take pictures the architectural prowess of the Moors is even more self-evident. The Moorish bits shine in the natural, subtle light; the Catholic bits are dumped in their darkness.

But La Seu is nothing like that. Yes, there's the grotesque, bloody statues of martyrs and sinners alike. But the efforts in the early twentieth century, such as Gaudi moving the choir stalls to nearer the altar, created a whole new sense of space.

They're still working on the place; Gaudi's gold leaves around the altar shrouded by high scaffolding, reaching up into the heavens. Oddly, the workers up there had a radio on, and - muted yet still distinct - Robbie Williams' "Angels" curled round the cathedral.

But there was something about the modern pop music that worked. It seemed to fit La Seu's historic embrace with modern art and design, to engage with the people who come through its doors and the everyday detail of their lives.

To the right of the main altar is a chapel recently done up in style. The windows are shaded in grey, the gothic brickwork hidden behind cracked plaster that suggests the seabed. I assume its acknowledging the debt that Palma - and the island - owes the sea, and the price its people have paid in those who've not come back from the water.

There's the suggestion of skulls under the altar itself, and amorphous creatures float round the walls, which might be angels or jellyfish. It's a haunting and strange place, and a bold commission for such a church. But I found myself lingering there, drawn by its strangeness, trying to puzzle it out.

I then noticed the organ, set up high above the way we'd come in. Again it's oddly incongruous with the rest of the cathedral. My almost-black picture doesn't quite show how the pipes are arranged. There's a cluster of vertical tubes like most organs, then a line of horizontal ones striking out like a line of muskets or blunderbusses.

I've no idea if that's the intention, but the same thought struck the Dr independently. Perhaps she got better pictures...

There was a fun Victorian monument as we made our way out. I ignored the poor dead bloke on the slab and the respectable chap mourning behind him. To the right was this lady who seemed rather bored by the whole thing. And at her feet nestled a lion with the most marvellous boggling expression:

And lastly, there was a series of portraits telling the life stories of important saints. These can often be excitingly grisly, and sure enough the nearest panel shows a lady looking quite smug about having her head chopped off. Look at the smile on those innocent features. Behold her spurting neck.

I'm never sure in these kind of narratives what the call to action is meant to be. Are you meant to look on this work and feel consumed by outrage that a saint's been killed? Or when you see the horrid things done to them because they did right by God are you meant to think, "That could be me!"? Wouldn't that rather put you off coming back to church?

The sun awaited us outside. We emerged into cloisters with a good view back up at the buttresses, like seeing the tricks done backstage.

We filed out into the medieval streets and wandered a bit, looking in on a nice ornate garden, its pond stocked with bright, happy goldfish. We were making it up as we went along, no idea where we were going.

Then we made out way up the high street in the direction of the train station. It's funny seeing the familiar brand names and shops mixed up with things unique to a city. And I boggled at an advert in a shoe shop, not quite sure what it was trying to sell:

We arrived at the main train station and the Dr remembered something about an old-fashioned train journey that would take us up into the mountains. Had to leave the modern station and cross a road to find what we were after.

The train to Soller first opened in 1912, and still uses authentic wooden trains from before the invention of leg room. We gleefully piled aboard, and spent the hour journey reading and staring out the window at the orange trees and scenery. Once you're out of the industrial bits of Palma its really very beautiful. A young couple a few rows ahead of us snogged every time we went into a tunnel, but the Dr and I are too long married and jaded for anything like that.

The weather was turning when we reached Soller, and we nosed round two small, free galleries showing original works by Miro and Picasso. Then there wasn't much to tempt us but okay enough places to eat, so we paid the €21 for a cab to Deia, where Robert Graves had lived.

Clambered our way to the top of the small, pretty town in the smattering of rain, but couldn't spot him in the graveyard. We found his widow, Beryl, who'd only died in 2003, and wondered whether Graves' grave was somewhere else. The Dr teased me that we'd be able to hear it if we were near; the spinning his response to what I've done to his myths.

So instead we made our way back down the road to his house - now a little museum. We had about half an hour before the one bus back to Soller, so not loads of time to look round. But the keen girl on the gate took us into the garage to watch a short film full of BBC archive material and narrated as if by Graves himself. It was a bit harsh on Laura Riding, but didn't avoid discussing Graves' complicated love life. And dammit, his grave was up in that little church but we didn't have time to go back.

We crossed through the neat garden of orange trees and into his simple house. There was his writing room, there the printing press that got him arrested and deported at the start of the Civil War. The Dr was surprised by the volume of communist literature in Beryl's study - and wondered how Graves could have been welcomed back to Mallorca after World War Two, for thirty years under Franco.

She also felt that if one day our home is opened up to my legion of disciples, she'll leave special instruction not to leave it so tidy. Visitors will have to step over my discarded underpants and around the stacks of papers and mess.

The bus was 15 minutes late, and we were anxious we'd miss the last train back to Palma. We were even more anxious that the double-decker bus might survive the winding, mountainous roads. And then we failed to notice our stop and had five minutes of panic in Porte de Soller before getting back on the same bus which was heading back the way it had come. We were in Soller again in time for a beer and a sandwich, and to buy some home made white chocolate. Then the Dr slept on the train back to Palma and I read two-thirds of The Man Who Would Be King on her Sony e-reader.

We nosed through the dark, atmospheric city looking for places to eat. It was a Monday so most places seemed closed, or perhaps we were just in the wrong area.

We followed our earlier footsteps back to the cathedral, hoping we'd find somewhere, and if not we'd get a taxi. The cathedral loomed beautifully in the quiet darkness and we stopped to take pictures. But our tummies were grumbly.

But still there was nothing open. We passed down through government offices, sporting this sign which I thought was funny. "Bombers" means "firemen" rather than "terrorists".

After that, we found a brilliant place called Forn des Teatre on Pza Weyler for wine and tapas. There was gambas in plenty of garlic, and bocquerones and local cheeses and meat. Then a taxi back to our villa. As we pulled up into the resort complex, we felt slightly uneasy. The hotel is lavish and luxuriant, but it could almost be anywhere, a gated suburb outside of the real world. It seemed to have no connection with any of the history or people we'd seen that day. And on balance we'd have been happier living in a small town like Deia than this anonymous place...

So we were a little hesitant as we made our way next morning to the all-important pitch. The nice bloke was there and fixed us coffees, and explained that "timeshare" has a lot of negative connotations, so Marriott has worked up a flexible system with all kinds of options. He talked through them, but it was obvious pretty quickly that none of it was quite right for us. Neither of us really value holidays where you don't do anything.

It was all very genial, and it makes you feel quite adult to be there at all. But I felt a little like we'd been spotted as frauds or children. Afterwards, we went to the spa, and I wondered about the other people there. Did they all sign up to villas? Did they come back here every year?

I could see it would be good if you had young children to have a regular escape. Or if you liked golf, or wanted somewhere to retire too... There's comfort in the recognisable brand of the hotel chain and the high standards of customer service. But it's not just for us.

That night we drank in the hotel bar, enjoying lavish measures of gin. I'd not taken any work with me on purpose, but had made some notes for something I want to pitch someone, and was already thinking about getting back to work. At the moment it's called "Machine code", but I will not speak more of it just yet.

I guess a resort like this is great if you want to get away from the real world, to escape the tedium of work. I can see how you'd judge your success in a job by how much time you can get away. But again, it's not us. I miss writing when I away.

Tuesday looked grey as we packed our bags and I finished Pashazade. We checked out and got the taxi to the Castell de Bellver, overlooking Palma.

It took a bit of time to find our way in 'cos the taxi driver had directed us to a locked door. But then we were into a top-quality castle, with all kinds of clever defences. There were moats within moats and round walls to resist undermining, bridges across that had kinks in them, and other cunning ways to impede access. Inside there were exhibits of Roman sculpture and casts, which greatly pleased the Dr.

We wandered around for a couple of hours quite happily, and then had an easy lunch before cabbing it to the airport and wending our way home.

Carpet munchers

Oh the joyous irony. While I was watching Toby’s lepidopterrific show last weekend in America, moths were busy eating my living room.

We’d put a patch of bald carpet by the window down to the rascally cat – it was right by one of the spots where he sleeps and we’ve caught him worrying the carpets elsewhere. But after the new shelves were put in and all our furniture moved around, we’ve discovered there’s a whole series of distinct bald bits.

Googled carpets and moths last night, and found a depressing account with pictures exactly like our problem.

“When I closely inspected the carpets I spotted hundreds of eggs along the edges of the carpet under a desk. The eggs are tiny - much smaller than a pinhead … When I lifted the carpet there were thousands more along under the skirting board.”

“Clothes moths attack!”, reviewmylife, 14 May 2008.

That post is from nearly a year ago, but a comment from the administrator posted only on Saturday says,

“No, we never managed to get rid of the moths :( My friend moved out of the flat. I don’t know what has happened about the moths since.”

So I called Rentokil at 9 am this morning, and their local exterminator just called me back. It’s not the moths as much as the larvae that are eating through our furnishings, and we need a two-part spray.

We’re to hoover just before they come for the first go, then empty and rinse-out our bagless Dyson. That’s to stop any larvae surviving in the hoover and reinfecting the flat.

They’ll spray all the carpeted areas of the flat. We then can’t be in the flat for three hours. So me and the vindicated cat will be holing up at the stunt wife’s house round the corner.

Then the exterminators come back 10-14 days later. We’re not to hoover in the meantime, though we can hoover just before they come. Again we need to empty and rinse-out the bagless Dyson. And then we hope that will be that.

(Bar the joys of replacing the carpets, which means moving the brand-new shelves which have just been built on the top of them. And no doubt all sorts of other things that will need to be paid for. Oh yes, I was going to buy a new bed...)

Snow, shelves, Sherwood

Snowed in. There are no trains running so I can't get to work. It's like being back in Chicago. Only here we're all taking a duvet day. Means I've a chance to catch up on the hundred things I'm racing to finish. The Dr mutters darkly about how this time next week I'll be San Francisco.

I don't tell her I might be in Vegas.

The inclement weather has scuppered the plan to have new shelves built today; the Man can't hope to reach us. Which is a bother 'cos the Dr and R. spent all yesterday clearing the old shelves out of the way. There are books stacked all over everywhere now, and the old shelves themselves were gone within minutes of being put up on Freecycle. So we have a strange and echoing living room, a good foot wider to the right.

We sat in the tinny-sounding space last night to watch Attenborough's programme on Darwin and the Tree of Life, and then Being Human. Bah! that both shows were on at the same time. Bah! that it took an hour for Being Human to be up on iPlayer. But woo! for such splendid telly. And Moses Jones tonight.

Nimbos and the Dr are thinking of venturing out to take photos and build snowpersons later. I have work to get on with. Spent the weekend finishing something as-yet unannounced. But something I can now speak of is Robin Hood: The Siege. It's a talking book read by the apparently quite dishy Richard Armitage – the Dr has made known her approval of this assignment. The story is set during the BBC TV show's forthcoming third series. Release dates will depend on when that's shown...

Right. Plenty to get on with. But I'm going to go back to bed.

Stones of London

While everyone else in the world was watching events in Washington yesterday, I was in a posh hotel room working on something that’s as-yet unannounced. From room 641 you get a nice view of BBC Broadcasting House. I love it when work gets me through doors and to see stuff I’d never normally be allowed.

The Victorian magnificence of the Langham hotel is being refurbished in even grander style; our cabs were much confused by having to drop off / pick up from the makeshift entrance round the south. The place has a fascinating history, though I’m most excited by its time as extended offices for the BBC.

“The ballroom became the BBC record library and programs [sic] such as The Goon Show were recorded there.”

Wikipedia, Langham Hotel, London, as of 21 January 2009.

It’s also where those first early meetings were held to create some silly old TV show.

Portland Place, on which these two buildings stand, gets its name from the white stone from Jurassic-era Dorset that’s so prevalent in London’s buildings. The subject of my efforts yesterday was impressed I knew why it’s so prevalent.

“In the years following the Industrial Revolution, the acid rain, resulting from the heavy burning of coal in cities had the effect of continuously (slightly) dissolving the surface of Portland stone ashlar on buildings. This had the interesting effect of keeping exposed and rain-washed surfaces white as opposed to other (non calcareous) stones which quickly discoloured to black in the smoky atmospheres. This self-cleaning property also helped to enhance the popularity of Portland stone in London.”

Mark Godden, “Portland's Quarries and its Stone”, Mark Godden’s Little Bit of Cyberspace Mk II, 2007.

Well, I say “impressed”; he didn’t run out of the room screaming.

No one wants to buy this dump

The Dr sends this clip from a 1992 episode of Spitting Image whose time has come again:



Speaking of houses, my own Doctor Who & Home Truths has had spankingly good reviews in the geek press:

“A science-fiction ghost story, similar to Nigel Kneale's rationalistic hauntings [...] An effective and disturbingly spooky tale, Home Truths lingers in the mind long after the open-ended conclusion, and is one of the very strongest of this latest series of Companion Chronicles.”

Matt Michael, "The DWM Review", Dr Who's Magazine #403, 7 January 2009, p.56.

And:

“a surprisingly atmospheric and menacing tale. Author Simon Guerrier has sensibly realised that these audiobook-style discs are often best when spooky, and packs plenty of unsettling moments into this MR James-style story of an apparently haunted futuristic house. One of the best releases yet...”

Saxon Bullock, “Rated Misc”, SFX #178, January 2009, p. 130.

(That said, my story in Christmas Round the World doesn't get a mention in Andrew Osmond's review on p. 115 of the same issue. Guess that means he thinks I'm one of the “sprouts or socks”.)

The Big Finish website now boasts a trailer for Doctor Who and the Judgement of Isskar – which is out next month.

Clang!

I love a good name-drop, but I love a bad one better.

"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose ... This has always struck me as one of the cleverest lines ever to turn up in a pop lyric. I first heard it one night in December 1968, when Lou Reed took me down to a club in Greenwich Village to hear a new singer called Kris Kristofferson. After we heard the set, we went back to Max's restaurant and I didn't actually meet Kristofferson until nearly three years later, when I came upon him crawling through the dog-flap at Janis Joplin's house, not long after her death, and just before her version of his song Me and Bobby McGee became a huge hit."

Germaine Greer, "Who needs monuments to freedom when you can listen to Me and Bobby McGee instead?", The Guardian, Monday October 6 2008.

It is, as you'll have guessed, the opening salvo for a piece discussing architecture.

Drilling in my head

The Dr and the Other Wife have arrived safely in sunny Venice, after quite an Adventure yesterday in getting to Paris by train. The Dr is speaking at a conference on Mary Severn, the artist wife of Doctor Who's friend Charles Newton. I assume the conference will be a lot like FantasyCon, only with more goths and corsets.

I, meanwhile, have a lot of typing to do. Which is not helped by the stereo drilling from my neighbours downstairs and next door. I still possess the note they wrote in the first week of June saying the building work might take "until Friday". Yesterday, the machines began grinding at about eight in the morning and were still going at nine at night.

(Yes, it's now September. And despite odd flourishes of sunshine, nine is now no longer in the evening but very much at night.)

The building works have been going on so long the dim cat has stopped being bothered. I'm finding them knackering.

But on we slog. And, via Cornell, here is something rather splendid:

That fits

Nimbos, the Dr and I braved the grey drizzle yesterday for a nose round Battersea Power Station – which is open to the public at the moment while Real Estate Opportunities and Treasury Holdings UK attempt to get backing for a major transformation of the site.

I love a nose round buildings like this. My freelance efforts have got me into various bars and back corridors of the Palace of Westminster and other government buildings. I've been on the top floor of 1 Canada Square in Canary Wharf and on the roof and in the basement of posh Eltham Palace. And then there's all the poking about behind closed doors that's part of Open House. It's something the Dr's got me into – her chief delight is in getting into bits of museums and historical sites not normally open to the public.

Battersea is one of the icons of the London skyline. It's the cover to Pink Floyd's album Animals and the factory churning out Cybermen in recent Doctor Who. (It also appeared in 1964's Dalek Invasion of Earth, with a nuclear power facility grafted on.)

I pass the power station on the train into town. And I got pretty close to it during my corporate parasite days when a client took me to see Cirque du Soleil who'd erected their tent just in front of it. But yesterday's day trip was something else.

The Grade 2* listed building covers a bit more than six acres – one of the largest brick buildings in Europe. The hand-out says that:

“construction of the steel frame commenced in 1929 with Battersea A completed in 1935 and Battersea B, despite the war, coming into service in 1944 with the fourth chimney completed in 1955 ... Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, architect of Bankside power station (Tate Modern) and the red telephone box was appointed architect of Battersea Power Station in 1930.”

The ginormous, functional edifice is full of lovely features. The brickwork include art deco pleats and fiddly bits. Turbine Hall A – the first of two stops on the tour – is still panelled with Italian marble, like some vast tiled bathroom. The tiles have a practical purpose in being easy to keep clean, but they also have a sparkling, palatial effect. Apparently, “despite the war-time shortage, stainless steel was used for Battersea B Auxilary Control Room”.

At it's height, Battersea generated 509 megawatts – a fifth of London's power and about half the output of a modern nuclear power plant. The excess heat was ducted out to heat 11,000 homes in Pimlico across the river. Battersea A ran for 42 years, ceasing generation in 1975. Battersea B wound up its efforts in 1983.

And since then... nothing. There have been plots and plans for years, but the place has been left to moulder and decay. One owner in the intervening years criminally took the roof off the central Boiler House as the start of renovation works that never followed on, and the weather and elements got in.

Yesterday's drizzle and misery matched the sorry state of the once mighty powerhouse. It's a whacking great metaphor in red brick and steel, a temple to the dead king Ozymandias. The great windows are broken, there are huge gouges in the walls. It's like peeking round a ruined cathedral, the dissolution only just done.

At convenient stopping places on the route stood CGI suggestions of how the view might be transformed. There are shops and cafes, offices and homes, an extension to the Northern line and routes for bikes and walkers. In the empty space south of the station itself they hope to construct a vast and green eco-dome, underneath an enormous chimney that – they say – generates all the power for the complex naturally and cleanly.

The design has a Ken Adam feel about it. Or perhaps that's just my response to any grand design effort with curves and circles in it, that is BIG and MAD and COOL. It's an extraordinary, boggling prospect. But then any use of this kind of huge space and iconic site has to be a bit loopy to justify bothering in the first place. And it's far more exciting than just luxury flats and offices, which has been the lot of several other bold architectural efforts in the capital.

I wondered if this strange, impossible-seeming prospect was how it must have seemed to people after the Great Fire in 1666. That had seen the final end of an old church across the river, one used for years as a stable. And there would be young Chris Wren ranting on to anyone who'd listen: “And then on top of that there'll be this fuck-off dome!”

Nimbos pointed out Wren would have gunpowdered any last remnant of the old building before starting work on his replacement. The wheeze of the thinking here is to support and build upon the physical and metaphysical pre-existing structure.

We followed the path to the first viewpoint, a view into Turbine Hall A. Security guards stood dolefully in the rain or what passed for shelter, all smiles and welcome despite the gloom. One explained she had only just finished a four-day stint under heavy sunshine at some music festival in Cambridge. Now she got to shiver all day in a chilly wind tunnel, the sight of visitors glooping through the rain and gravel in their flip-flops only making her feel more cold.

We marvelled at the huge space and potential, and then the sumptuous if dirt-smudged Italian marble still dazzling the vast walls. We took turns to poke lenses through the wire fence, trying to snap all the details for our various architect chums.

Then, back out into the rain and gale, venturing round the building to what they hope will one day be a riverside walk. The wire fence kept us away from the gravelly spoil heaps – with warnings of rats and monsters – and we took shelter behind three porter loos to grab another bunch of snaps.

I asked the Dr to snap the north side of the Thames, to show how different the trees and blocks of flats are to the same spot in an alternative universe where Doctor Who and his friends dared to stop the Cybermen. Not sure you can really see this pedantic point in the drizzly pictures.

Then we poked our noses into the Boiler House, a vast space now open to the air. Again there were telling fragments of its former majesty – the vivid pale blue of what once had been stairwells, struts and supports that had once been different levels.

If the team get planning permission next year, it'll then be another decade before the thing's completed. It's a bold, exciting project, a fine two fingers flicking at the threat of economic hardship. Perhaps it's an all-mighty long shot. But Battersea (and Pink Floyd) long ago showed us that pigs can fly.

Thence to Liadnan and Pashazade's engagement soiree, where I met many new and lovely people, bored them too much about things Droo, and drank rather too much beer. Hooray!

ETA: Churchill Gardens, the estate on the river opposite Battersea, featured in Britain From Above last night.