Pedro (? - 2023)

Pedro, by Nimbos

This morning, we took turns to say goodbye to Pedro, our grumpy, once-chonky cat, before the Dr escorted him away on one last trip to the vet. 

A few weeks ago we thought he'd been knackered out by the hot weather; he wasn't unhappy, just listless. When the rain and chill hit, he didn't recover his energy. Then he was losing weight. I took him to the vet last week already expecting the worst. They found him full of cancer and he went downhill quickly. We'd booked him in for a final trip to the vet later this week and this morning had to bring that forward. He didn't even need the injection - in one last, typical act of defiance, he died as they were preparing it.

Oh, that cat.

Why 'Pedro'? I've been asked this a lot over the past five years. The rescue home where we found him in the summer of 2018 had a simple labelling system; each new cat they received was given a name beginning with the next letter in the alphabet. When this scrawny character arrived at their door, they'd just had a cat given a name beginning with 'O', so next in sequence was 'P'. They already had a 'Pete', hence 'Pedro'. The home assumed we'd come up with something more suitable soon enough but seven year-old Lord of Chaos was horrified by the idea we would dare to change his name.

It was a good name for quite a character.

The first time I took Pedro to the vet, sometime soon after we adopted him, he managed to make his feelings known by spraying piss through the slots of his carrying case, soaking me in the process. He then reached out a claw and caught my arm, so I arrived at the vet covered in piss and blood.

This delighted the vet, not least because Pedro had clearly got it all out of his system. So she picked him up and made soothing noises, and he pissed all over her.

Blimey, he could sulk. Rain and snow were obviously our fault. Woe betide anyone who sat in his chair (it's my chair, where I do most of my work). Or obstructed his comfy seat on the back of another sofa, where he could half slump on top of the radiator. Or if there was anything in the way of where he liked to laze beneath the front window. He declined to use a cat flap; you'd be summoned to open the door.

His grumpiness was matched by his greed. Pedro's dinner time was 5.15 each night, so from about 2 he'd trot after you hopefully, his forlorn wail of a not-meow more fitting a cat one-third his size. But Pedro was a survivor, having lived for some time on the mean streets of Streatham before we found him at a rescue home. You could see those survival skills in his scavenging and thieving, and the way he'd go crazy at the barest sniff of a plastic box full of chow mein.

Or duck. Or tuna. Or roast dinner. Or cheap sliced ham. 

Pedro was also affectionate - and not just when we were eating. Until recently, he liked nothing better than to sleep at the end of our bed, on the Dr's feet. If it was cold, he would move gradually up the bed, sometimes reaching the pillow. When the children were away - at school or overnight somewhere - he'd often curl up in their beds. If I was watching some hokey sci-fi late at night, he'd cuddle up, particularly enamoured of the twirling coloured lights in a star field or space battle. He weathered, usually with patience, a lot of cat squeezing and love.

What a lot of love we doted on that cat.

20 years as a freelance writer

Dr and me, about 2002

Twenty years ago this evening I took the Dr - though she was not then a Dr - to the pub to pitch a modest proposal: I wanted to jack in my job as an account manager in a contract publishing company and go freelance. I thought she would be horrified; in fact, she was relieved.

The idea wasn't entirely out of the blue. I'd begun to get some paid writing work - my first feature in Doctor Who Magazine, a few things for Film Review, the odd bit of copy for the customer magazines in my day job, such as the listings magazine for ITV Digital. When ITV Digital went into administration in March 2002, it hit my workplace hard. I expected to be made redundant but the payout would have covered bills for at least a couple of months. If ever there was a moment to make the leap into freelancing, this was it...

Except that I didn't lose my job and instead got promoted. I threw myself into new responsibilities, extra training, last-minute work trips. My birthday plans were cancelled so I could go to a meeting in Leicester; delays getting back from Barcelona meant I missed the wedding of some close friends. These were among a whole bunch of frustrations at work - small stuff, petty stuff, stuff that wasn't really about the job in the slightest but all about me. It took months to admit my disappointment at not having been made redundant.

So I looked into money and I talked to people. There were those in my day job who said they would employ me as a copywriter if - rarest of rarities as freelancers went - I delivered what I was asked for and on time. People who'd been made redundant from my work had since found jobs elsewhere in publishing and some could offer me work: updating spreadsheets, fiddling with Flash animation, even things involving writing. I also knew - or now introduced myself to - people in Doctor Who fandom who worked in publishing of one sort or another. Some couldn't offer work but gave useful advice: who to pitch to, what to pitch, who might be good as an accountant...

By the time I took the Dr to the pub on 15 July 2002, I had a list of potential employers and a budget based on needing to pay £600 in bills each month. She didn't need to see any of that. Next morning, I handed in my notice and later emailed everyone I could think of seeking work. My notebook from the time is full of lists: people to contact, ideas to send them, responses received and how I would follow those up. Hungry, for pages and pages and pages. Enough people were generous, or at least took a chance on this green, eager dork, that I picked up enough jobs to get by. I've been getting by ever since.

Mostly, it's been fun - more like larking about than working, for all the hours put in. I've had a very broad-ranging career, doing all sorts of varied stuff in very different media. Some jobs have been joyous, some very challenging but rewarding. I've worked with many brilliant, talented people. There is loads I'm really proud to have been part of. But freelancing has always been precarious - and just now publishing is in a worrying state. 

This week, Eaglemoss went into administration, taking with it my regular job on the Doctor Who Figurine Collection. Seven books I've worked on are currently in limbo, my work on them either entirely or mostly done but no publication date in sight because of... well, everything at the moment. Some projects aren't cancelled but stall; they're put back a few months or a year, as is the date when I can invoice for the work I've done on them. 

It's not as if things were easy before the cost of living crisis, COVID, Brexit, paper shortages and whatever else made them harder. In many cases, freelance rates have barely risen in two decades. That's had, I think, a corresponding impact on the demographics of people in publishing.

What can be done? Well, that's been much on my mind. Last week, I was elected chair of the Books Committee of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. I've 20 years experience of knocking about through this industry, and of being knocked about. As Leela says in the Doctor Who story The Robots of Death, "If you're bleeding, look for a man with scars." Hello, that is me.

Doctor Who: Chronicles - 2007

The latest issue of the Doctor Who: Chronicles (from the makers of Doctor Who Magazine) is focused on the year 2007, which in a weird, sci-fi wossname is now somehow ancient history.

For his article on the Doctor Who books published that year, Mark Wright spoke to me about writing The Pirate Loop, the one with the space-pirate badgers. The Dr still thinks that book is the best thing I've ever written, so it's been 15 years all downhill.

The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey

I've been meaning to get to this mystery novel for years. The Dr is a fan of Josephine Tey, and also of Nicola Upson's series of novels in which Tey is herself the detective. 

Some time ago, we watched the 1988 TV version of The Franchise Affair, which was the last TV work overseen by Terrance Dicks and the second of two adaptations of Tey that he produced for the BBC's "Classic Serials", effectively putting this mystery writer in the same bracket as Dickens, Bronte and Thackeray. I wonder why, of all mystery writers, Dicks chose her to make canonical... 

Robert Blair is a partner in a legal firm whose "business is mostly wills, conveyancing, and services", based in the smallish town of Milford. One morning he's rung up by Marion Sharpe he has seen around the town and asked to sit in on an interview with the police. Blair heads to the Franchise, a sizeable house now past its prime, which Sharpe and her mother have recently inherited and where they live in genteel poverty. Then the police arrive with a 16 year-old girl covered in bruises. She says the Sharpes kidnapped her, held her hostage for weeks, and inflicted ruthless beatings...

It's refreshing to have a mystery that's not a murder, and the general feel of the book is unsettling intrigue. It's as much about how the neighbourhood reacts to these two women from the Franchise, and there are plenty of shrewd observations, such as when Blair speaks to a waitress. 

"'We were all discussing that case on Friday [says the waitress]. Imagine beating her half to death like that.'

'Then you think they did?' [asks Blair.]

She looked puzzled. 'The paper says they did.'

'No, the paper reports what the girl said.'

She obviously did not follow that. This was the democracy we deified.

'They wouldn't print a story like that if it wasn't true. It would be as much as their life's worth. You a detective?'

'Part time,' Robert said.

'How much an hour do you get for that?'

'Not nearly enough.'

'No, I suppose not. Haven't got a union, I suppose. You don't get your rights in this world unless you have a union.'

'Too true,' said Robert. 'Let me have my bill, will you?'

'Your check, yes." (p. 130.)

In this, there are hints of a generational divide, and an inrush of Americanisation, perhaps the result of the recent war. The book was first published in 1948 (mine is a battered copy from the following year), but there's little on the war specifically - no mention of Blair having served, for example, or that some of people's strange behaviour may be the shadow of trauma.

In fact, it's all rather lightly played, and straightforward. Blair remains convinced of the Sharpes' innocence and even falls for Marion. I was braced for some last twist or reversal that never came. It's a comic novel in many ways, with something of Wodehouse in the reactions of Blair's maiden aunt.

"A fortnight ago you would never have dreamed of putting a parcel of fish down on polished mahogany and forgetting all about it." (p. 162)

But I really felt for the Sharpes, facing prosecution and a violent response from their neighbours. I think that may be because I'm also deep in research at the moment about a real court case, the one brought 40 years ago by Mary Whitehouse against the director of the National Theatre production, The Romans in Britain - of which more anon.

And so I think the thing that really lingers from this is Marion Sharpe's sympathy at the end of the novel for the mother of her accuser, a connection felt across the gulf of the two sides.

V for Victory, by Lissa Evans

Entirely selfishly, I bought this for the Dr's birthday so that I could read it. It's the third in a trilogy, after Crooked Heart and its prequel, Old Baggage - both of which I adored. 

We pick up with young Noel Bostock and his adopted aunt Vee - though she's neither of those things officially. Now going under the name Mrs Margery Owens, she and Noel bugger on through the chaos of north London at the fag-end of the Second World War. At any moment of any day, a V2 might fall on them and it's exhausting - not least because the chores and home-schooling must still somehow be done. Still, there's romance kindling in the air for each of them. And then they both stumble into people who know something of their past - and might expose their secrets...

As before, there's a wealth of telling historical detail worked deftly into the breezy tale, which I knocked through in a matter of days. It's so teeming with life and emotion. We really feel the outrage of Winnie the Warden discovering that her harrowing real-life experience has been filletted by her sister for a sexy novel. Or there's Noel's infatuation with a girl who's moved away:

"Noel recognized Genevieve Lumb's neat but forceful handwriting. Even the thought that she had licked the envelope was quite physically stirring." (p. 53).

The remarkable thing is that these extraordinary, unprecedented times feel utterly real. But it's also a delight to spend time in the company of good people just trying to get by, despite all the crap going on. 

I was especially moved by the ending, where Vee and Noel face some tricky emotional stuff relating to his biological parents. It's so perfectly done, so impossible to describe here without spoiling. At one point, Vee wonders what might have happened if she'd not made a connection with this awkward teen at a critical moment, how nearly he might have been lost. But we leave them happy, the war over and a new world on the horizon. After all the devastation, what survives is the love. 

Haunting north

The removals people said they'd be here between 8 and 8.30 this morning but arrived just after 7.30 while I was still drinking tea in bed. So the Dr raced into the shower while I hauled on last night's clothes, and then we were in full boxing mode. They parked their enormous lorry in the middle of the street and none of our neighbours objected. I think that's a mark of how friendly things are here - or how pleased they are to be rid of us.

Tomorrow, we move from our house of nine and a half years, and from London where I've lived since October 1999. We're moving north for a new chapter and new life. The children are already there. So it feels momentous and yet anticlimactic. I'm glad to be going and sad to be gone.

With the house over-run by boxes, the Dr and I went for lunch round the corner at our local - the first time either of us have been in a pub since mid-March. It was strange to use the new app to order drinks and food, all part of the careful, socially distanced provisions to keep us and other punters safe, and yet otherwise pick up as if we'd never been away. And then having caught up with landlord Colin after all these months, he was busy when we had finished, so there was no chance to say goodbye.

The week has been full of notable lasts: my daughter's last day at the nursery that's been a fixture in our lives since my son started there in 2013; the last time mowing the lawn yesterday; the last time past the old landmarks. What with everything going on in lockdown, and some personal stuff too, I'm all a bit emotional at the moment, haunted by things past and things to come.

Doctor Who Magazine #535

Out today, Doctor Who Magazine issue #535 includes my interview with Feifei Ruan, the illustrator and visual storyteller who created the extraordinary images used to promote Doctor Who in China.

I'm also a page 3 model, with my photo and short biography carefully placed to scare off readers of a nervous disposition. The Dr and the Lord of Chaos were commissioned for the special photo shoot, which included this dramatic moment.

The Shed

It has taken months and been painfully more expensive than expected, but I now have a shed/office up and running, and my daughter no longer needs to share her bedroom with my rubbish. Here, for those who've asked, is the whole saga...

The original plan was to convert the old, World War Two bomb shelter at the end of the garden, which had been used for storing the lawnmower and old pots of paint. I was really keen to keep the bomb shelter, not least because of its place in history. This part of London was heavily bombed in the war - the pub round the corner, my daughter's nursery and the swings we go to all the time are all built in place of houses that were lost.

Although the shelter looked large and imposing from outside, the very thick brick walls meant it was pretty small inside. Those walls would make it difficult to add a window or electricity. And the heavy-set concrete roof was leaking, which would be complicated to fix.

Exterior of World War Two bomb shelter
in our garden in January

Interior of World War Two bomb shelter
in our garden in January

The compromised roof, letting water in

So, in January, and a little guiltily, we arranged for builders to come and unbuild it. It took two of them, all day, with a huge pneumatic drill and sledge hammers, just to take the roof off.

Day 1 of demolition

Day 2 of demolition

It was exhausting work. The builders got through at least one pneumatic drill, and would retire wearily at 3 pm each evening. It took longer than expected, so they were then off to other jobs, coming in when they could to destroy another section.

By the end of the first week, we'd also hit a snag: the back and right-hand walls of the bomb shelter were supporting the walls behind them, so would have to stay. There was also the issue of how low the bomb shelter sat in the ground, which had meant there was always a problem with damp.

End of second week of demolition

The builders suggested using some of the rubble they'd cleared as the base for a platform on which the shed could sit. It saved money to use the broken bits of brick - but was still an expensive addition to the plan. We tightened out belts, and as well as the platform they installed panelling to tidy the whole thing up, too.

Construction of platform for new shed 

Our cat, Stevens, supervised the construction of a step up to the platform. The crappy weather may also have done something to the concrete mix - the edge of the step is already beginning to crumble. So we might have to have another go later in the year.

Paw prints in the step

After three weeks, the builders finished with the platform complete.

Platform completed, February

With them done and gone, I was ready to order the new shed from Woodside Timber. It would not arrive for another month - in March - so we had time to tidy the garden a bit, and attempt to book in an electrician for the next stage.

The Dr, in a tiara, tidying.

A nice electrician we'd used before came round and established it would be really tricky getting a cable out to the shed, as it would need to go under the floor in our kitchen, through the back wall, under the patio and then under the garden. Not one of these things would be easy.

But by happy coincidence, she was due to be working in the next few days with our old friend, the nice bloke who fitted our kitchen and converted our loft, who we'd booked to insulate and board the inside of the shed. She said she would talk to him about exactly what could be done. I heard from him soon after, and they'd talked through who would do what. We were go - in principle, or so I thought.

In March, while I was talking at the Bath Taps Into Science festival, the shed was put up by the nice people from Woodside Timber - exactly fitting the platform for it. Hooray!

The new shed, in March

I was then on holiday - at a wedding in Vietnam, and then with the family in Majorca - and we hit the Easter holidays. So we were well into April before the nice bloke was free to put in the insulation and board. As agreed with the electrician, he put the wiring in - but didn't connect it up to the mains - and got a cable running from the shed to the house. It helped that he fitted our kitchen all those years ago and knew where everything sat. But it was still a fiddly job.

Then we hit another snag. Yes, the electrician had discussed with him what needed to be done. But she'd not actually quoted for the job because she knew she was too busy to take it on. Me and the nice bloke had both thought she'd given each other the go ahead. Oops. So I had to dash round looking for another electrician. More time lost. The soonest anyone could come just to quote for the job was now May...

In the meantime, I got on with painting the inside of the newly boarded shed, with the Lord of Chaos helping when the mood took him. Once the paint was dry, he also decorated it, on the theme of an aquarium - with added monsters.

Lord of Chaos at work

 Lady Vader also wanted in on the action, though her work is more abstract in nature.

Lord Chaos and Lady Vader at work

Towards the end of April, I made a whistlestop visit to Winchester for the christening of an old schoolfriend's new son, and was able to steal some off-cuts of carpet from my parents.

Shed now with some carpet

Then there was the matter of burying the steel wire armoured cable running from the shed to the house. This had been the bit of the job the electricians and nice bloke were all keen to dodge. So on a rainy day at the end of April, muggins here just had to get on with it, with spade and fork.

Garden before the trench

The official recommendation was to bury the wire at a depth of 600 mm, which is a lot of digging. It didn't help that very soon I was digging through broken brick and glass and tile - as if the house had been built on a rubbish tip. It was knackering.

Garden with trench

Meanwhile, with progress being made, the Dr was keen to get all my stuff out of what had been my office and is now Lady Vader's bedroom. That mean lugging the enormous desk downstairs and out. I called in a favour, having helped some friends move house over Christmas.

Desk in old office, in sight of the new shed

Desk and chair now in the shed

It was all done in time for the electrician to arrive the next day to give us a quote, as they'd need to see the trench. Job done - but I was a little sore and damaged.

A writer's hand after some real work

Lord Chaos was fascinated by the spoil heap I'd created, which meant a house full of mud. But he also diligently uncovered all sorts of treasures. We cleaned up the bits of broken tile and removed the bits of glass so he could take it all in to school for an accomplished show and tell.

Treasures from the garden

There was then a bit of back and forth with the electrician - he missed the day he was meant to come to quote, then couldn't do the actual work before the end of May. He also recommended a whole new fuse box for the house, rather than just grafting an extra bit on. It made sense, so we gritted our teeth and said yes. It might all be done by June...

At the last minute, he was able to come on the first Bank Holiday Monday, so we were suddenly ahead. I had to dash to the local DIY warehouses to pick up switch sockets and lights ready to be installed. I do not recommend this on a bank holiday weekend. It took almost for ever.

On the Monday, the electrician and his colleague worked quickly through the sunshine. They also signed off the trench I'd dug as being adequate, so - having put down a warning scroll about their being an electricity cable underneath - I could fill in the trench. That was on a very hot day, and probably harder than the original dig. The Dr felt I failed to emulate Poldark.

Not Poldark

After all that toil, I was granted a night out in the pub with some friends. Which was when the Dr discovered our downstairs lights had not been reconnected. The apologetic electrician was back the next day...

With the cables in, the nice bloke came back to fix a few last bits and pieces, and fitted the shelf brackets I'd also purloined from my parents. They had been the shelves in my bedroom in my teens, home to my run of Doctor Who books, most of which I'd long since given away... Putting up the brackets proved fiddly, because the sloping roof created an optical illusion where the middle bracket never looked right. After much swearing and use of a spirit level, we got a shelf up.

The middle bracket is at the same height as the other two

With the brackets fixed, my parents then came to babysit while I was off on a job. They arrived with my old shelves, cut to six feet exactly as I'd asked, and more off-cuts of carpet to fill the remaining gaps.

With shelves done, I began ferrying boxes of stuff over to the shed, in between trying to keep up with the work I'm behind on. Much of it was boxes of stuff that I'd hardly been able to get into in the seven years we've lived in this house. There was a happy afternoon just putting 25 years of Doctor Who Magazine in order, which will speed up a lot of the stuff I'm currently writing...

On Friday, we visited the British Heart Foundation shop in central Croydon looking for some kind of armchair or sofa that would a) fit the limited space and b) suit comfortable reading. We found the perfect thing and - miracle of miracles! - they delivered it that same afternoon. Lady Vader and her Dolly approved.

New old sofa meets Lady Vader's approval

With Lord Chaos off school with chicken pox, we've had a couple of days this week to concentrate on the shed - because he objected to me ignoring him by working on my laptop. Yesterday, we went to collect the box shelves Homebase were meant to have delivered 10 days ago. They apologised for not having a driver available in all that time and generously refunded the £3.95 for delivery.

Lord Chaos enjoyed using the gentle IKEA drill to put in the screws, and fixing the little white round things that hide the screwheads on top. He then contentedly watched me fill the shelves with all my rubbish. Last night, the Dr was delighted to see there was space for my Doctor Who DVDs, too - finally exorcising her house.

There are still bits and bobs left to do: things to unpack, a fan heater to buy, so much of it to reorganise. But it's a snug and cosy space to work in, and I'm now ripping through the stuff that for so long I have been late on. It has been well worth all the effort.

Shaggy

This morning, the Dr and I took our poorly, frail cat Shaggy to the vet one last time, where he was quietly put to sleep. It was quick. It has all been horribly, mercifully quick.

For months now, he’s been losing weight and confidence, no longer daring to go outside in the cold and wet, let alone to brave the domains of Other Cats that he once kept in line. Then, in the last few weeks, he’s taken a sudden turn for the worse and been miserable, too. This morning, there was no fight to get him into his carrier, no resistance at all.

Thirteen and a half years ago, Shaggy was my wedding present to the Dr. Growing up, she’d not had any pets but could never pass a cat in the street without stopping to say hello (she still can’t). The day after we got back from honeymoon, on 14 July 2004, we headed to what’s now Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.

The Dr was jumpy with excitement, so my role was to be the cool, collected one. I reminded her on our way in that we’d been warned not to expect to take a cat home that first day. No, this was just the start of the process. We were interviewed about our past experience with pets (I grew up with cats, dogs and chickens), about the kind of home we could provide and whether there were dangers such as nearby busy roads. They concluded we needed a nice “entry-level” pet. There was a colour-coded system: we were told to look for green cats.

Then we were led upstairs to where the cats were waiting. They were all in individual hutches, inset into the wall floor to ceiling, each with a card giving details of their temperament and background. Older, crosser cats had red stickers. One particularly furious red beast glared at us from its cell. The yellow cats did a better job of imploring us to love them. The green cats hardly seemed to notice us at all.

As instructed, we looked at the green cats. They were… cats. All very nice but nothing exactly suggestive of how we were meant to choose.

Then they let some green cats out, one at a time, so we could get a better idea. One dark-haired cat with both green and yellow stickers was set down on the floor and wandered nonchalantly off, barely glancing our way. The Dr had his card and asked why he’d been called “Shaggy”. The person showing us round grinned and clapped her hands. It made us jump – and Shaggy, too. His thick, long hair all stood up on end, an endearing scruffy mess.

Sensing our interest in this ridiculous creature, it was suggested we pick him up. The Dr was nervous, so I went first. Shaggy immediately collapsed into my arms, snuggling up like a baby. That did it for my cool composure.

Now it seemed that we might get to take this purring fur-bag home with us that same day. That was, if we could sign all the paperwork and buy up all the equipment we needed before Battersea closed for the evening. There was a bit of a scramble and some crossed wires, but finally we were in our cab home – cradling our new cat.

Back home, we did as instructed and shut ourselves in one room before letting Shaggy out of his carrier. The idea was not to scare him with too much at once: he could get used to one room at a time. (Years later, our surviving cat, Stevens, was so terrified on her first evening with us that she spent the night clinging to the top of a door, and only came down to pee all over the floor.)

Shaggy was never shy. He immediately took charge of the room – our bedroom – and was then scratching at the door. Within an hour or so he’d taken charge of our flat. And that night, we were woken by his happy howls on discovering the mouse problem we’d inherited from our previous tenants. Shaggy, for all he was a beautiful, soft fluffball, was a very practical mouser.

He was always a character. When one friend came round to meet him, Shaggy playfully climbed on to a potted plant in the front room and – brazenly staring all of us out – proceeded to crap in it. He was fascinated by frogs, scooping them up from the old pond at the end of the garden and bringing them into show us them leaping around. When the Dr was bedridden with sickness, he helpfully dropped a frog on her head.

In short, we’d hoped for a good entry-level cat and Shaggy was magnificent. Affectionate, cheeky and rarely ill until these last few weeks, he’s given us a very easy ride. He’s been quick to warm to friends and neighbours (I discovered he’d been getting second breakfasts across the road each morning). More than that, he’s seen us – the Dr especially – through plenty of tough times over the years, always knowing when to pad softly over for a cuddle and that deep bass purr.

He had such a close bond with the Dr that we worried how he might respond to children, and so got a second cat in part to prepare him. But Shaggy was just as affectionate with the interloper cats and then with the children, snuggling up to them and suffering their clumsy but well-meant attention. One friend used to guarantee good behaviour from his daughter with the promise of visiting Shaggy.

For our own Lord of Chaos, Shaggy has always been part of the family, and they had one last cuddle this morning before school. His name is one of Lady Vader’s few but well-practised words. It’s hard to tell how much they take in what’s been happening or how it will affect them. I suspect the main issue they’ll have to deal with is their tender parents.

We knew Shaggy was getting on in years. He was a kittenish 15 months-old when we acquired him so would have been coming up to 15 years now, somewhere between 75 and 90 depending how you calculate cat years. That’s not a bad age, and it’s not been a bad life – doted on by the Dr and spoilt rotten when I wasn’t looking. You could tell when he wasn’t happy, and that’s been mostly rare: when we didn’t share prawns or tuna; when we were ever packing a bag he couldn’t climb into; in his long war of passive aggression against my mother-in-law; in these last few weeks.

This morning the Dr and I went with him to the vet, and soon it was all over. We buried him with his favourite pink mouse toy in the garden, in the corner he’d always made his own because it caught the sun.

Dr on Today yesterday

Yesterday, the Dr was up early to get to BBC Broadcasting House, where she was a guest on Today and talked to John Humphrys about Different Perspectives: Archaeology and the Middle East in WWI - a Heritage Lottery Fund project looking into the lives and stories of great archaeologists who became spies during the war.

The Dr was there representing the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, and was interviewed alongside Dr Roderick Bailey, a historian specialising in unconventional warfare in the world wars.

You can hear the segment 2:41:15 into the Today programme of 14 November 2016.

Front Row on HG Wells

On Monday, I was a guest on Radio 4's Front Row, where learned academic Fern Riddell and I discussed the legacy of HG Wells, who was born 150 years ago on 21 September.

• Listen again to Front Row from 29 August 2016
• 2015 documentary I produced for Radio 3, HG and the H-Bomb 
• Trailer for 2011 Doctor Who DVD documentary I produced, Alls Wells That Ends Wells

In the studio, we also got to meet Debbie Horsfield, writer and producer of Poldark, which is back on tonight as a special birthday treat for the Dr.

Sorry for the lack of updates. We're just back from a nice family holiday on the Isle of Wight, and I'm about to be lost in a blizzard of deadlines.

"Grief is never healed"

"Memento mori: grief, remembering, and living" is a piece by the Dr in the latest issue of the Lancet Psychiatry - March 2016, vol. 3 no. 3, pp. 210-212 (you can read it for free but need to register with an email address).

It's about the Victorians taking photographs of their dead children, and why, and how today we shy away from grief. It is informed by the death of our daughter.

At Nine Worlds

Mostly for my own convenience, here is my schedule for the Nine Worlds convention from tomorrow, all in County C&D:

Friday, 11:45 - 13:00
Doctor Who - The Doctor Changed Your Life: how did that happen?
What influence, large or trivial, has Doctor Who had on your life? Has it changed how you see the world; ignited new interests; made you unwisely stick with chemistry all the way through high school because you really wanted to be Liz Shaw when you were seventeen? What has your experience been of the fandom? What does being a fan of Doctor Who mean to you?
Panel: Simon Guerrier (mod), Amy, Sarah Groenewegen, Hamish Steele

Friday, 18:45 - 20:00
Doctor Who - Science! Why does it matter?
Doctor Who has often been described as a science-fantasy show rather than a science fiction one, but there's been many an attempt to get some proper science in there. Does getting the science right matter? Can we forgive the moon being a giant space dragon egg? Why doesn’t the Doctor call himself a scientist these days? Has the science, or lack of, in Doctor Who inspired or disappointed you?
Panel: Duncan Lawie (mod), Abigail Brady, Simon Guerrier, Marek Kukula

(At the same time, the Dr will be in Connaught A with the panel Historical Heroines: the women from history that we admire.)

Sunday, 10:00-11:15
The Books of Doctor Who: just how many are there anyway?
Over the past fifty years there've been a truly terrifying number of Doctor Who books published. From the Target novelisations of the classic series stories to the New Adventures of the nineties, the record-breaking Eighth Doctor Adventures, and the tie-ins of the New Series. What great stories can be found in Doctor Who books? How have the books influenced your views of Doctor Who?
Panel: Simon Guerrier (mod), Adam Christopher, Paul Cornell, Sarah Groenewegen

(At the same time, the Dr will be in County B on the panel Story Translation and Archaeological Museums: changing environments, changing audiences.)

Sunday, 11:45 - 13:00
Is History a Science? - the view from Doctor Who
In their book, The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who, authors Simon Guerrier and Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, address this question, looking at how history functions in the world of Doctor Who. In conversation with Tony Keen, they will explore these issues further.
Panel: Simon Guerrier, Tony Keen, Marek Kukula

Events for The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who

I'll be at some events to publicise my new book, The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who.

• 4 June, 6 pm
  I'll be signing the book at Forbidden Planet in London, alongside by co-author Marek Kukula and short story writers Jenny Colgan, Jonathan Morris and Andrew Smith.
• 5 June, 7 pm
  Marek and I will be giving a talk at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, accompanied by a Dalek.
• 6 June, 7.30 pm
  I and the Dr will speak at the Northwich Lit Fest on "Doctor Who and the Egyptians".

There'll be more events to come, which I'll post here as they're confirmed. And I've done some interviewed too. I was a guest on the Handsome Timmy D Express last week. 

Briefly, we had a daughter

Early this morning, our eight day-old daughter died, peacefully and calmly, with me and the Dr holding on to her. What follows is mostly for friends in real life, as I've been struggling to manage updates.

The past few months have been exciting, terrifying and surreal, a strange dream from which we've now woken.

Having been shown rather definitively in 2010 that we couldn't have biological kids of our own, we'd moved on, created an identity as a barren couple, and adopted our beloved Lord of Chaos. So the pregnancy came as a complete surprise this spring. We assumed, given our history, that it simply wouldn't work and it was another complete surprise when the hospital rang to ask what we were playing at - as we'd crossed the first important milestones but hadn't booked any appointments or tests.

We were still dubious, and avoided saying anything online, preferring to tell people in person. (Then forgetting who we had and hadn't told, and making a bit of a meal of it. Sorry.)

But as we went to our appointments, all look just fine, and we allowed ourselves to believe it. The Lord of Chaos was relieved to be getting a sister because - he said - he wouldn't have to share so many toys. We bought things for baby and things were bequeathed. I took on loads of freelance jobs so I could afford some time off round the birth. We even worked out how we'd refer to our second child online: as "Minotaur". We looked forward to her arrival.

Then, last week, the Dr was rushed to hospital as - it turned out - her waters had broken eight weeks' early. Friends and grandparents moved at short notice to come to our assistance, looking after the Lord of Chaos and running errands while I dashed to the Dr's side. But the tests showed things were okay with Minotaur. She would just be arriving early - they hoped in 2-3 weeks.

Minotaur had other ideas about that and with very little notice arrived one morning last week. She was swooped on by doctors but everything looking fine. I watched Minotaur being carefully placed in an incubator - like all premature babies - and grinned at her funny monkey face as she blinked dolefully back at me. Much later, exhausted and relieved, I went home to Champagne with my delighted Dad, and began letting people know.

But 12 hours after being born, Minotaur took a sudden turn for the worse. We were told straight away that the prospects were not good. The Dr and Minotaur were rushed by ambulance, all lights blazing, to a specialist unit across town, but we were put under no illusion that things were very grave.

We expected her to die, but Minotaur held on tenaciously over the weekend. There were even small signs of improvement. We let ourselves hope that she would pull through.

But on Tuesday the results of a series of tests proved that Minotaur's condition was every bit as severe as first suggested. There would be no happy ending. And yet, even in that terrible moment there was still some joy: they released Minotaur from her incubator so we could at long last hold her.

I'm grateful to have held her, to have spent time with her away from the tubes and machines, and that at least some family were able to see her, too - and note her eyes and hair being her mother's, and her long skinny feet from me.

Last night, just the three of us had a room to ourselves and we spent the long hours talking, reading stories, clinging on. Minotaur gazed at us dolefully and held the Dr's finger, and knew that we were there. We poured out our hearts to her, and loved her. I think she knew that, too - and that's why she hung on so long. This morning she died.

We are in pieces. But we are grateful to have held her and for so many small moments with her. Friends and family have been incredible - even though there was so little that anyone could do. We're very grateful, too, to the staff at both Croydon University Hospital and St George's Hospital, who so diligently cared for us and our poor Minotaur, making her short life painless, peaceful and something we can cherish.

We will retire now to heal, and try to get back to some kind of normality. A few people I've already been in touch with asked how they could help. At the moment, we need to work this through ourselves. But as our world was tumbling, the charities First Touch and Ronald McDonald House were there to embrace us. You could help them help others like us - and maybe even spare some of that pain - by making a donation.

Doctor Who: 2005

Episode 697: Rose

First broadcast 7 pm, Saturday 26 March 2005
<< back to 2004

Rose enters the TARDIS for the first time

It's a brilliant scene. Rose and her new friend the Doctor are being chased by a monster. They're stuck in a back yard and the gates are locked. But the Doctor doesn't seem worried, he just strides into a tall blue box. Rose, baffled, follows him into the police box and stops short - just inside the doors. We don't see what she's seen. Then she runs back out again, and runs around the outside of the police box, checking it's not a trick. She runs back inside and the camera pulls back, the music swells, and we see the vast interior, the new TARDIS control room.

It's a brilliant scene but totally ruined by the trailers and publicity pictures released the week before broadcast showing the new TARDIS set.

Publicity is tricky: how much do you show to grab an audience but not spoil the surprises? As Gary Gillatt said of Day of the Doctor this weekend:

Wise words from Gary Gillatt

Perhaps that could only work a show that's already established a popular following, and Rose needed all the attention it could get. That original trailer for the return of Doctor Who is amazing, too. But how much better would the experience of watching Rose for the first time have been if we'd not known what the TARDIS interior looked like until Rose did?

I know the answer to that, because I first watched Rose more than two weeks before it was broadcast, before the TARDIS set had been seen. An early cut of the episode had found its way on to the internet, which I had manfully not downloaded (partly due to it being wrong, mostly due to be not knowing how). But then an evil friend I won't name handed me a copy burned onto a disc, and I was too weak to resist. On Wednesday 9 March, the Dr and I watched it together. Here's what I wrote at the time...

"I just loved it ... [The Dr] watched it too (though she was more excited by the prospect of new episodes of 24, and she's keener on Casanova than she is on Droo). She said she'd not hesitate to dump her boyfriend for the bloke with the time machine, so she could go see the Parthenon ...

The TARDIS looks great; a nice mix of stuff. There's a certain Jules Verne-ness to it, but also various Dr Who elements. The time rotor is from the TV movie, the interior doors from the Cushing films, etc. I love the inclusiveness of that. It's all Dr Who....

In fact, the TV movie has several influences: the rollicking TARDIS-in-vortex shots, the swirl of air when the TARDIS dematerialises... More importantly, that sense of the 'epic'. Old Dr Who was often up-close and intimate, with the Radiophonic Workshop famously speaking of 'inner turmoil'. The TV movie was much more 'Da daaa!' and orchestral. The use of human voices is part of that, but there's also the stings as scenes change. Does that make sense?

Talking to [another friend who'd seen it] last night, we agreed the direction is a bit flat. I loved the Doctor shouting 'leg it' to Rose, but when they're racing from the Autons in that first scene together, or across Dalek Bridge in Westminster, you don't really get a sense of urgency. They're running, yes, but not for their lives. Peter Davison is still best at Urgent Running. Also, as has been said, that spotting-the-transmitter needed one less frame...

[In the broadcast episode, there was indeed one less shot of the Doctor's bafflement before recognising the London Eye.]

But there are some nicely iconic moments: the wedding-dressed Autons, Mickey's head coming off, even the wheelie bin. I think it's a really funny idea, a wheelie bin eating someone. And is Billie's line about breast implants a nod to SynthespiansTM? I hope so.

I like the silliness. I really like the silliness. I will not repeat my views on the difference between stupidity and silliness ...

Rose getting into the car with Mickey and not knowing he's an Auton is cool. We know something is up, even though she doesn't. That's suspense. But it also means we believe in the Doctor before she does.

We get a staggering amount on information: the war, the Nestenes, the TARDIS (the disguise!), the Doctor, the sonic screwdriver, time travel, aliens, diplomacy... And Rose has got family and a life! Bloody hell, she's really got a life back home that matters. It means something. It's still boggling just how much of a departure that is.

Shame that Clive's stash of Who stuff didn't include pictures of Other Doctors - even in a spot-them-if-you-can-in-the-background way. I assumed, too, that all those pictures of the Doctor in the past are from his future. (I like the idea, for example, that he and Rose can visit Krakatoa now, and she'll know he washes up on Sumatra.)

The Doctor looking in the mirror is definitely for the first time - he doesn't know what he looks like, and the 'ears' gag (perfect for Eccles) is a steal from Robot. So, is this his regeneration story, but we've just come in mid-way through?

Not too worried about the 'vanillaness' of the episode [a complaint others had made]. It's pretty straightforward a beginning, but with plenty of room to move afterwards. I think J Morris once said that the TV movie didn't feel like a new beginning, but [in my opinion] Rose does. I want desperately to see more."

Next episode: 2006 

Crossing the Rubicon

On 10 January, 49 BC, Julius Caesar marched his army south over a small river called the Rubicon - and the world changed. It was not the size of the river that mattered but that it was a border. Caesar was breaking a sacred law by taking an army into Rome - that single act is often seen as the pivotal moment in the collapse of the Roman Republic.

Tom Holland's Rubicon (2003) is excellent at explaining why, and charting a hundred years of history to give us the full context. Comprehensive, insightful, dryly witty and full of telling detail, its an excellent book - I only wish I'd sooner heeded all those who told me to read it.

I already knew a lot of the story from studying Asterix books and Shakespeare's plays, and watching I, Claudius and Rome. More recently, I loved Imperium and Lustrum, Robert Harris' excellent Cicero novels, as told by his slave Tiro (who invented shorthand and in some ways the parliamentary reporting job I do now).

There's a reason the fall of the Republic is so well known. Partly, it's because so much of the legal and political systems of Western civilisation are based on those of Rome. That's why the books and TV dramas still resonate so strongly. Harris, for example, makes Cicero's political wheeler-dealing feel entirely modern.

But it's more than that. The fall of the Republic is a tragedy about a system established for the common good being undone by personal gain. It serves as a warning to the liberal minded and a benchmark for the greedy. It's almost too easy to link the fall of Caesar to that of the last of his namesakes, the Csars, in Russia less than a century ago; or to link the fall of the Republic to what happened in Germany in the 1930s. The Royal Shakespeare Company's current production of Julius Caesar "finds dark contemporary echoes in modern Africa". Or we might liken the fall of the Republic to what's happening now to the welfare state or NHS, or even press regulation - as the Prime Minister did.

Holland doesn't make those pat analogies, thank heavens, concentrating instead on the personalities and culture. He's especially good at conjuring the worldview of the time.

"As ever, [Caesar] loved to dazzle, to overawe. The building and levelling of a bridge across the Rhine had served only to whet his appetite for even more spectacular exploits. So it was that no sooner had Caesar crossed his men back into Gaul than he was marching northwards, towards the Channel coast and the the encircling Ocean.

Set within its icy waters waited the fabulous island of Britain. It was as drenched in mystery as in rain and fog. Back in Rome people doubted whether it existed at all. Even traders and merchants, Caesar's usual sources of information, could provide only the sketchiest details. Their resistance to travel widely through the island was hardly surprising. It was well known that barbarians became more savage the further north one travelled, indulging in any number of unspeakable habits, such as cannibalism, and even - repellently - the drinking of milk. To teach them respect for the name of the Republic would be an achievement of Homeric proportions. For Caesar, who never let anyone forget that he could trace his ancestry back to the time of the Trojan War, the temptation was irresistible. 

... It was indeed to prove a journey back in time. Waiting for the invaders on the Kentish cliffs was a scene straight out of legend: warriors careering up and down in chariots, just as Hector and Achilles had done on the plain of Troy. To add to the exotic nature of it all, the Britons wore peculiar facial hair and were painted blue."

Tom Holland, Rubicon - The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, pp. 274-5.

As a result, we get a sense of why the Romans found Caesar so extraordinary. His "invasion" of Britain was hardly a success, and yet:

"Even the lack of plunder did little to dampen the general mood of wild enthusiasm ... In their impact on the waiting public Caesar's expeditions to Britain have been aptly compared to the moon landings: 'they were an imagination-defying epic, an achievement at once technical and straight out of an adventure story'."

Ibid., p. 276 (the quotation from Goudineau, César, p. 335).

I had some sense of the brutal power of the Roman war machine having read Mortimer Wheeler's The Siege of Maiden Castle, England - read it; it's a brilliant reconstruction based on the archaeology, and informed by Wheeler's own hellish experience of World War One. With similar ghoulish delight, Holland describes over five pages (pp. 277-81) Caesar's siege of Alesia (near modern Paris), where he was vastly outnumbered and facing an implacable foe in the Gaulish leader Vercingetorex.

At one point, with the town starving, Vercingetorex sent the women and children out of the town, trusting that Caesar's army would not kill them. They did not; but nor did they let them pass, and the women and children were left to starve to death outside the town walls, Caesar shaming Vercingetorex in the most appalling way. Yet it's hard not to admire Caesar at this point.

"Outnumbered by the army he was besieging, and vastly outnumbered by the army that had been besieging him in turn, Caesar defeated both. It was the greatest, most astonishing victory of his career."

Ibid., p. 280.

He ought to be a monster, and yet somehow he's a hero. Though that's not quite how the story was depicted in Asterix:

Incidentally, I have a pet theory that Asterix's blacksmith, Fulliautomatix (Cétautomatix in the French original) is based on the famous sculpture "The Dying Gaul":

The Dying Gaul, photo by Jean-Christophe Benoist

The Dr tells me that nineteenth century classicists had much fun pointing out the likeness between the statue and the eminent archaeologist, Adolf Furtwängler...

Anyhow, we were talking about Caesar. The one thing I'd never quite understood was why Caesar decided to break the rules of the Republic, so sacred for centuries, and make himself dictator - effectively a king. Holland shows how previous bully-boys such as Sulla ended up, and suggests that Caesar was more than merely yet another Roman gangster.

He also shows us how shrewd an operator and gambler Caesar could be, playing the system to advance to the top. And he suggests that Caesar's sex life was not wanting. In readings of Shakespeare, and in the series Rome, Egypt is the decadent fallen empire, the temptations depraved and libidinous. It had strategic value because it supplied grain to the Roman empire - so anyone who ruled Egypt had a leash round the throat of Rome. But for all that, I never quite got why Caesar fell for it so completely.

And then Holland opens a chapter with a glorious bit of scene-setting:

"The coastline of the Nile Delta had always been treacherous. Low-lying and featureless, it offered nothing to help a sailor find his way. Even so, navigators who approached Egypt were not entirely bereft of guidance. At night, far distant from its shore, a dot of light flickered low in the southern sky. By day it could be seen for what it was: not a star, but a great lantern, set upon a tower, visible from miles out to sea. This was the Pharos, not only the tallest building ever built by the Greeks, but also, thanks to its endless recycling on tourist trinkets, the most instantly recognisable. A triumph of vision and engineering, the great lighthouse served as the perfect symbol for what it advertised: megalopolis - the most stupendous place on Earth. 

Even Roman visitors had to acknowledge that Alexandria was something special. When Caesar, three days after Pompey's murder, sailed past the island on which the Pharos stood, he was arriving at a city larger, more cosmopolitan and certainly far more beautiful than his own. If Rome, shabby labyrinthine, stood as a monument to the rugged virtues of the Republic, then Alexandria bore witness to what a king could achieve."

Ibid., p. 325.

And it all clicked into place.

I've concentrated on Caesar here, but Holland's book is dense with characters, strangeness and wonder - a history to be savoured, then pored over again.