Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

LXXI

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all they Tears wash out a Word of it. (p. 92)

Or, to put it another way, you can’t rewrite history — not one line.

In 1859, a reclusive, privately wealthy scholar called Edward Fitzgerald anonymously published 250 copies of a pamphlet containing his translation in English of 75 four-line rhyming poems, a form known as “rubāʿī”, attributed to a Persian poet, Omar Khayyám, in the 11th century. No one paid much attention to this pamphlet until, in 1861, the lawyer and literary scholar Whitley Stokes happened across a stack of copies at a bookstall near Leicester Square, where the original price of five shillings had been reduced to a penny. 

Having bought one, Stokes showed it to his friends, including the poets Algernon Charles Swinburne and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who duly bought their own copies. Swinburne’s account of what then happened (apparently from p. 188, vol 6, of The Swinburne Letters) is quoted in my copy of the Rubáiyát:

“Next day we thought we might get some more for presents among our friends, but the man at the stall asked twopence! Rossetti expostulated with him in terms of such humorously indignant remonstrance as none but he could ever have commanded. We took a few, and left him. In a week or two, if I am not much mistaken, the remaining copies were sold at a guinea.” (p. x)

Word gradually caught on. Fitzgerald produced an expanded, second edition containing 110 of the four-line poems in 1868, and further revised editions, each of 101 of these quatrains, in 1872, 1879 and 1889 — the latter published after Fitzgerald’s death.

By the end of the 19th century, “more than two millions copies have been sold [of the Rubaiyat] in over two hundred editions” (according to a facsimile of the first edition published c. 1900). It became “one of the most admired works of Victorian literature” and “in the first half of the 20th century was arguably the most influential [long poem] in the English language”, according to Melvyn Bragg, introducing a 2014 episode of In Our Time on The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 

Hector Hugh Munro adopted the pen-name “Saki” after the cup-bearer in the Rubaiyat. Various dining clubs were established in honour of Khayyam: writers JM Barrie, Arthur Conan-Doyle, Thomas Hardy and AE Housman were all members of one. Housman’s friend, the mathematician John Edensor Littlewood bought a slim, pocket-sized volume containing both the first and forth editions as a present for my great aunt on her 11th birthday in 1938, which is the copy I’ve just read.

In 1961, David Whitaker drew from this book when he wrote the BBC children’s serial Garry Halliday and the Secret of Omar Khayyam, broadcast at Saturday teatimes over seven weeks in early 1962. I’ll dig into that more when I write up my notes for the corresponding entry in my Garry Halliday episode guide. But for now, it’s enough to recognise that this little book was still resonant a hundred years after Whitley Stokes first discovered it on that bookstall. 

But why was this slim book of poems such a massive hit in the late 19th and early 20th century? 

It’s effectively a day in the life; the opening rubāʿī describes the start of new day in the early part of the year, the dawn sun touching the Sultan’s Turret in an unnamed Persian town, a cock crowing and — in subsequent quatrains — a group of people waiting eagerly for the tavern to open. The poet wanders this town, enjoying a cup of wine and musing on the nature of existence. 

XLVII

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,

End in the Nothing all Things end in—Yes—

Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what

Thou shalt be—Nothing—Thou shalt not be less.

(First edition, p. 56)

XXIV

Ah, make the most of what ye may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!

(Fourth edition, p, 76)

There was, at the time Fitzgerald published his first edition, a long-standing interest in Persian culture and the wider Orient, not least because of British imperial interests across the east and into India. The Persian language was used by the East India Company in provincial governments and courts until the 1830s. Sir William Jones’s various translations and his A grammar of the Persian language (1771) influenced the generations that followed. For example, the Jones translation of the 8th century Mu’allaqat inspired Alfred Tennyson to write his Locksley Hall (1835). Tennyson was, in turn, a friend of Edward Fitzgerald.

That context is useful but doesn’t explain the particular appeal of the Rubaiyat. What made this text stand out?

Note that in the two quatrains quoted above there’s no mention of an afterlife. The In Our Time episode on the Rubaiyat and Sadeq Saba in his 2010 documentary The Genius of Omar Khayyam explore this issue of godlessness. Fitzgerald published his first edition in 1859, the same year that Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, at a time when there was already much interest in “long time” — ancient, geological history stretching back millions and billions of years, far further than accounted for by a literal reading of the Bible. These ideas were controversial. On In Our Time, the suggestion is made that Fitzgerald couldn’t have published a work of his own (supposed) agnostic, perhaps even atheistic, musings without inviting scandal; Khayyam enabled him to do so at a safe remove. Readers could also engage in such ideas without breaking from the Church.

I can see, too, that there’s an appeal in the world conjured here: a rich culture different from that of the late Victorians, and seemingly more free. The In Our Time episode talks about the wider allure of Orientalism to the late Victorians, notably in the sensuous hedonism of the harem. I don’t think there’s much licentiousness in the Rubaiyat, beyond the idea that the poet says to drink and enjoy wine while we can. But there’s an allure in any different, rich culture in which we can escape and be immersed — like the appeal of Middle Earth or sci-fi or Regency novels. Once entranced, there’s always more to steep yourself in: the history and rules, the minutiae, the power politics in wrangling among other true believers. (The same might be true of the football terrace, too.)

There are often good reasons why someone actively seeks such escape. In Our Time cites Fitzgerald’s close friendship with Professor Edward Byles Cowell; the first edition is in part a translation of the Persian quatrains Cowell found while in Calcutta and sent to Fitzgerald, their correspondence apparently suggestive of how keenly the two men felt their separation. We can read something into this, just as readers of the Rubaiyat could read their own hopes and desires into the tantalising world it conjured. It’s a frame in which things are possible that would not be dared outside.

But maybe the appeal isn’t nearly so immersive. This kind of “enjoy life while you can” stuff is not a world away from “live, laugh love”. That such aphorisms here derive from some ancient, eastern scholar confers authenticity and value to what a cynic might otherwise see as greetings-card wisdom. And there’s also something haunting in this voice from what’s now almost a thousand years ago exhorting us to enjoy our existence and to live while we can.

In fact, we’re not sure Omar Khayyam really said the things attributed to him. It’s not just that many of the surviving quatrains in Persian give no indication of author, but Fitzgerald took a very free hand in translating the texts he had to hand, reordering and rewording them, grafting in bits that sound like the Book of Common Prayer (compare the last quatrain I quoted to the famous “dust to dust...”) and Shakespeare. That might not resonate so much with us now as it did with late Victorian readers. Moulded in their own language, no wonder they felt that this text out of the long past spoke to them so directly.

The real Omar Khayyam — full name Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī — is no less fascinating than this mythic version. 

“Better known for his poetry, it often surprises many to learn that Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) was one of the greatest of all medieval mathematicians,” says Jim Al-Khalili in his book Pathfinders — The Golden Age of Arabic Science (2010). He cites Khayyam’s work on cubic equations in Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, including “both algebraic and geometric methods for solving them systematically and elegantly, using the method of conical sections (which involves slicing through a cone at different angles to produce different types of curves such as circles, ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas)” (p. 122).

I’m familiar with conic sections being used to make sense or orbits, whether those of celestial bodies or the rockets and craft trying to reach them, and wonder how much of Khayyam survives in the mechanics of the space age.

Khayyam was also part of a team that, with cutting-edge technology such as the astrolabe, calculated the length of the year with much greater accuracy than the contemporary Gregorian model; indeed, the Jalali calendar devised by Khayyam and his colleagues was still in use into the 20th century. In addition, Al-Khalili quotes a long passage from one of Khayyam’s other surviving works, more reliably attributed to him than his poetry, extolling the virtues of seeking the truth — and acknowledging that people will mock you for doing so. It’s quoted at length because it expresses a sentiment that Al-Khalili recognises now, the voice of the exasperated scientist ringing down to us through the ages.

I can see why this little book of poetry, written by an influential mathematician, would have appealed to JE Littlewood, and why he chose it as a gift for an 11 year-old. It bears a simple, four-word inscription, “Ann, from Uncle John”, and the date. But what he was giving her was a guide to life, and a frame in which unconventional ideas and conversations are possible. And that was important because, as the inscription shows, he’d not yet admitted what was known within the family: that Ann was his daughter.

But perhaps I’m just the latest in a long line to read into this little book what I want to see. 

Blood Legacy, by Alex Renton

This is an exemplary bit of history, the author using his family’s extensive archive as the starting point for a no-holds-barred investigation of their involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, an assessment of its costs (in money and lives) and its impacts through to the present day. 

The cruelty and violence is often hard going. Details are haunting, such as the letter from 1780 dictated by the runaway Doctor Caesar / Augustus Thompson to plantation owner Charles Fergusson seeking justice for multiple grievances. The letter is published in full (pp. 128-30), an astonishing first-person testimony in its own right, as well as for being so rare.

Even more incredible is what the author can then tell us about Thompson/Caesar, who escaped enslavement in Jamaica and reached the UK to make his claim in person — and having done so, then agreed to return.

“It seems extraordinary that Sir Adam [Fergusson, Charles’s brother] succeeded in persuading Augustus Thompson to return to Jamaica, despite all the dangers that awaited him. Extraordinary, too, that Thompson trusted him. You have to conclude from the lure that took the runaway back, protected only by a letter from the Fergusson brothers asking that their manager forgive him, was his wife, his mother and his children. Rozelle [in Jamaica] was home.” (p. 140).

We then follow what happens next, though the surviving archive isn’t clear. By late 1785, Augustus Thompson is in hiding. In January 1786, Sir Adam gives permission for Thompson, if he can be found, to be ‘shipped off’ to another island. It’s the last reference to Thompson we can be certain of; there are then scant records listing men that might be him — none of the details are good.

On the whole, though, this is a history of those who profited from slavery, because it is the owners whose records have survived. Their own evidence is damning. And the point is not that a few landowners got very rich but that everyone involved in the supply chain saw financial benefits, down to those who provided food for the crews on the slave ships. As the author admits, this volume tends to crowd out the voices of those who suffered enslavement.

Where those voices can be included, they are. I was really struck, in the last chapter of the book, when the author attends a press conference at the Centre for Reparations Research announcing new data on the involvement in slavery by different European nations. This is more than just about numbers. The database also lists 94,191 examples of enslaved people’s real, African names.

“Most enslaved Africans lost their birth names, and for 300 years there were no original African names in the slave records at all. You might well argue that the lack of names and places of origin, of the things that give us our identity, helped dehumanise the victims of the trade. It has made it easier to them into statistics. … So these original names are to be treasured.”

He quotes Professor Verene Shepherd, slowly reading out a sample of these names at a memorial service.

“Ekhusumee, a girl, aged two, Maloah, a girl, aged two. Captured from Lagos, both of them. Kangah, a girl aged five, captured from Lagos. Peekah, a girl aged four, captured from Lagos. Coulta, a girl aged three, captured from Lagos. Torquah, a girl aged six from Bonny. Ajameh, aged one, a boy, captured from Lagos. Asemah, a boy, aged one, from Porto Novo…” (p. 322)

In an appendix, the author asks what to do now, in light of this horrific legacy. There are more links and information on the Blood Legacy website. And that’s given me more food for thought...

My great-great-great grandfather William Dutton Turner is listed in the Legacies of British Slavery database. When the British government passed the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 to end the trade in the British Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape, they did so on the condition that the taxpayer would compensate slave owners for loss of property. Some 46,000 claimants received a total of £20 million — about £17 billion today. The Treasury was still paying off the debt until 2015 (all details from p. 250).

Blood Legacy suggests that much of this compensation went to pay off recipients’ mounting debts. Turner was awarded about £5,000, and his siblings and other family members also received money. Turner’s third wife, Mary Power Trench (1815-62) — mother of 12 children including James Trench Turner (1840-92)*, my grandfather’s grandfather — was awarded just over £100 in her own right. Yet, when Turner died on 30 June 1858, he left effects valued at less than £20.

Where did the money go? It clearly didn’t stay in the Caribbean, invested in a new future. Instead, it seems to have largely ended up back in the UK, spurring growth and building on an unprecedented scale. 

* James Trench Turner joined the army, served in India and was one of the members of the Hong Kong cricket team who died in the sinking of the SS Bokhara. His grandson, born in Guangzhou (Grandpa knew it as Canton) on 14 January 1914, was a guest at my wedding 20 years ago last week.

Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward, by Oliver Soden

This remarkable, detailed and insightful biography is a great joy, and in the audiobook version you get the author's impressions of various famous people. The result has been excellent company on a couple of long drives, often making me and other passengers hoot.

Coward would surely have approved the deft mix of comedy and bathos, and perhaps the stylistic flourishes, too. Some bits are related in script form (Soden's own invention, based on documented sources), and there's a final sequence in which Soden vies with (and rolls his eyes at) Coward's other biographers.

I'm especially impressed by the honesty when historical sources are clearly suggestive but we can't know for sure what went on, such as with Coward's early (sexual?) relationships with men. But what really makes this work is the clarity Soden brings. He unpicks the complexities of a whole bunch of different people who often masked their true selves. And he's good on the impact and response to events - whether that's a review, a break-up, a change in legislation. I'm particularly impressed by how vividly he conveys the war: the horror of the Blitz, the work Coward was given (and not given to do), and how that appeared to those not in the know.

Soden briefly covers the moment when, while shooting In Which We Serve (1942), Coward dressed down an actor for arriving late on set, and fired him in front of the whole crew. The story of William Hartnell's tongue-lashing by Noël Coward is also recounted by the film's assistant director Norman Spencer, who says that the role was quickly filled by assistant director Michael Anderson. Spencer expresses shock at Coward's behaviour, and I wonder how Anderson felt about what happened. He later cast Hartnell in Will Any Gentleman? (1953) -- alongside another future Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee -- and I wonder if that was partly from guilt.

(On 25 November 2009, when we recorded my Doctor Who audio story The Guardian of the Solar System, the two actors were required to read in lines as Hartnell's Doctor. Jean Marsh, who had of course worked with Hartnell, advised Niall McGregor to play him as Noël Coward. Which was more helpful than my recommendation to play him as Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss.)

Philip Streatfeild

I should also declare a small interest. Soden contacted me in 2021 about a family connection: my grandmother was the niece of Coward's (probably more than) friend Philip Streatfeild. Sadly, the original, faded photograph of Streatfeild I once found among some old family papers seems to have been mislaid; it was in a terrible state when I unearthed it. But I was able to share what my late father told me, and the result is a footnote in the book that would have delighted him - and has really pleased my mum.

From the index of Masquerade
by Oliver Soden

Soden, in turn, sent me a link to a page about Philip Streatfeild on the Dulwich College website, which includes a poignant letter written by my great-great-grandfather.

In conversation with Fatima Manji - video

You can now watch the video of my interview with Fatima Manji about her book Hidden Heritage, conducted yesterday as part of Macfest.

It's a fascinating book. Among the many stories told, I was much taken by the fact that Abdul Karim, known as the "Munshi", taught Queen Victoria,

"to speak and write in what was then known to Britons as 'Hindustani'; essentially the Hindi and Urdu languages. She learned the Nastaliq writing system of Urdu which itself derives from Persian." (p. 137)

In 1902, her son the Duke of Connaught spoke Urdu when he welcomed dignitaries from India and elsewhere to commemorations relating to the coronation of his brother, Edward VI. As I say in the interview, my grandfather also had to learn Urdu while serving in the British Army in India in the 1930s - he apparently had three months to learn it before undergoing an exam with an Indian examiner; if he failed, he got sent home. Grandpa was then encouraged to learn a second Indian language and learned Pashto, which was of use in his time in the North West Frontier. He was still reasonably fluent in the early 1990s.

But as Manji argues,

"Victoria's enthusiasm for Urdu, her passion for art and culture of the Orient, and her defence of her friend Abdul Karim are admirable. They are under-reported inspirations in Britain's history for us to draw upon. Yet they cannot whitewash her presiding over a repressive, destructive colonial empire. Ultimately it is the structural, and not the personal, that determined the fate of the millions she ruled." (p. 151)

I'm also struck by the story of two Indian brothers fighting on opposing sides in the First World War: Mir Dast was awarded the Victoria Cross by the British; Mir Mast was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans. Oh, and Manji also speaks to my friend Vinay Patel about his 2018 Doctor Who episode Demons of the Punjab (p. 111).

Doctor Who Magazine #581

Bit late on this as I've been away, but the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine boasts an extraordinary cover by Oliver Arkinstall-Jones, and a lovely tribute to Bernard Cribbins by Russell T Davies. How lovely, too, to see my former colleague Mark Wyman back in the pages of DWM.

There are a couple of things in this issue by me, too. First, me and Rhys Williams detail the studio sets used for Episodes 1 and 2 of The Abominable Snowmen, recorded on 15 and 16 September 1967 - the latter the day on which my mum and dad got married. Rhys and Iz Skinner have then recreated this set-up in CGI. Truly, the set designers made those old TV studios bigger on the inside.

Then, to accompany the series of articles by Lucas Testro on writer Donald Cotton, including his original, hand-written drafts for 1965 story The Myth Makers, my latest "Insufficient Data" infographic is the Trojan horse as designed by the First Doctor. Ben Morris' illustration, of an outline scratched into an ostracon, is a delight - and more real history than myth.

Journeys into Genealogy

I'm a guest on the Journeys into Genealogy podcast with host Emma Cox, talking about my efforts to research the history of my own surname as the descendant of refugees, and also sharing some stuff about my current work in progress to uncover the life of David Whitaker, first story editor of Doctor Who.

Podcast website: https://journeysintogenealogy.co.uk 

Also available on:

• Apple
• Spotify  
• Stitcher 
• Tune In 
• Pocketcast 
• Deezer 
• Google podcasts 
• Amazon Music and Audible 

Kindred, by Octavia E Butler

"'There's worse things than being dead,' I had said." (p. 283)

Prompted by a recent discussion on the radio of Octavia Butler's Kindred, I reread this book that has haunted me for decades. It's about Dana, a 27 year-old black woman living just outside Los Angeles in 1976, who keeps finding herself back in the early nineteenth century, on a plantation near Baltimore owned by her ancestors. One direct ancestor, Rufus, is the no-good, controlling and unpredictable son of the owner, and Dana realises that he will someday force himself on a slave called Alice, and have a child from which Dana is descended. Until that happens, she must do more than merely survive in this appallingly hostile environment - for all his faults and cruelty, she must keep Rufus from harm.

The title, then, is a pun on Dana's dread for this relative with whom she is somehow bound. As with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, we're never told quite why she travels in time, nor how Rufus can summon her back from the future when his life is under threat. She can only return home, briefly, when her own life is in danger - which happens frequently enough. There's then what happens with her white husband Kevin while she's away, and whether she can transport things or even people with her that might help her survive. It's full of incident and shocking twists as Butler explores the territory: the practicalities against escaping; the state of medicine at the time; the way other black people of the time treat this trouser-wearing, educated black woman; the necessary pragmatism when you don't have any rights and live under constant threat of violence.

It's so brutal, and Dana and other characters under such unrelenting threat, that I stopped and started through it, sometimes only managing a few pages at a time - it's not exactly the right thing to go with lockdown-induced anxiety. Yet it's also a very timely read, exploring the legacy of slavery on us today. The 1976 "present" is no coincidence, where at one point Dana - back in her own time - is torn over celebrating the bicentennial. She refers to the "older people" of her own time who do double takes when they see her with her white husband. There's a sense, too, of how much easier life is for him - in the past and present - compared to what she endures.

I've read a fair number of time-travel stories, many of them addressing race to one degree or another, but this is direct and unflinching, and as much about the haunted now as it is then. Dana is left mutilated by her experience, physically scarred by the past as she lives in the present. We end with her revisiting the places where she was once trapped, looking for the house she once lived in, the grave of the man she was linked to, any trace of the slaves - the people - she knew. There are hauntingly few clues as to what became of them, which implies its own awful story. The implication is that she - and we - continue to live in their shadow.

A few years ago, I researched my own family history and learned that the Guerriers were among the first refugees, arriving in London in 1677, though the paucity of records means we can't be sure of the lineage until 1730. But other branches of my family include those descended from slaves and those descended from slavers. The database of Legacies of British Slavery holds a record for Mary Turner (née Trench), born 9 July 1815 and my great-great-great grandmother (or: her grandson was the father of my grandpa, who died in 2007). On 17 October 1836, Mary was granted £100 13s 8d as compensation for the emancipation of five slaves she owned in Clarendon, Jamaica. Her father received much more. That weighs heavily and I am keen to read Alex Renton's new book, Blood Legacy.

"'You probably needed to come for the same reason I did.' He shrugged. 'To try to understand. To touch the solid evidence that those people existed.'" (p.295)

Dad

Yesterday, we buried my father. 

It has been a fraught week, trying to anticipate changes to lockdown rules relating to funerals - whether we could go, whether I could stay over or would have to drive a 370-mile round trip in one day, whether we could get childcare so the Dr could come too. On Thursday morning, there were police outside the children's school checking that everyone socially distanced and did not mix households, and so I made sure I had the order of service printed and in the car in case I got stopped on the way down.

But we got there, and on a sunny, cold hillside just outside Winchester we gathered with family and a few friends. It was odd being with people anyway - the small gathering still the largest group I've been in since the beginning of March. And it was unsettling, being with family and Dad's friends but him not being there. I kept glancing round, expecting to see him.

Dad wasn't religious but a former bishop presided, an old friend of my parents' who nicely judged the God stuff. I read a short thing of Dad's various catchphrases which, to my surprise, got a lot of laughs. My elder brother read an email from Dad's brother stuck in the US, and my baby brother followed with a reading that Dad had read at his own father's funeral in 2002. There were other bits and pieces, and we ended with a bluetooth speaker playing Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C - the music Dad had played in the church while waiting for Mum to arrive for their wedding. That music was the only thing Dad had asked for when my elder brother asked him what he might want. Otherwise, he'd not been very helpful on that score. "I won't be there," he'd said.

It was exhausting and emotional, and I stumbled through the business of speaking to people. The rules don't allow a wake but we managed to have lunch and raise a glass of fizz, and then toasted the new grandchild Dad sadly missed by a couple of weeks. And then another cheer at the news Biden was ahead in Pennsylvania...

I made myself go into the room where he spent his last days, where we'd tended to him, where he died. Mum gave me the book Dad had clung to during his last stay in hospital and then when he'd come home, the last book he (re)read - HV Morton's In Search of England, a battered, cherished copy that Dad's mum bought Dad's Dad for Christmas 1936, when they were courting. It seems to be a book all about a lost but almost tangible past... I've also got one of his bright, colourful ties because he didn't want us wearing black at the funeral, and a couple of plants from the garden.

And then a long drive home through an extraordinary sunset, the last few miles down deserted roads as if it were the dead of night not early evening. There were fireworks all around as I got out of the car, defiant celebration that played havoc with the children's bedtime. So it was straight into that and emails and the various bits of work I'm late on. And so it goes. "It's just we've started a new chapter," as Dad would have said.

He was always keen on meeting bad news with something positive, and we've set up a memorial fund in his name with proceeds going to the charity Sense, whose work he knew first-hand:

http://timguerrier.muchloved.com

Liverpool

The Lord of Chaos and I had a brilliant short break in Liverpool, visiting relatives and seeing the sights. It helped that the weather was glorious - in stark contrast to London. In fact, we got soaked to the skin in the short walk from our house to the train station, and were still a bit soggy hours and hours later when we arrived into bright sunshine at Lime Street.

On Wednesday we began with a tour of Beatles-related sites. Mossley Hill, is quite smart, even fancy with its posh bakery and coffee shops, so it's weird to think of young John Lennon tramping to school there. He's not quite the working-class hero of lore.

The Lord of Chaos was more excited to spot the word "poo" hidden in the red writing of the street signs.

We then caught the bus into town for a nose round The Beatles Story museum and took the brightly coloured ferry over the Mersey. On such a nice day - and at half-term - it was all pretty busy, but good fun.

The tour took us past the largest brick building in the world, its 27 million bricks now inevitably being converted into swanky flats. The ferry gave us a good view of how much Liverpool has been transformed in recent years, modern glass and towers dwarfing the older Victorian architecture, the famous skyline peppered with space-age design.

But then there's always been something of the future about the place. The art deco design of the buildings at Wallasey, on the other side of the river, look like something from Dan Dare and have been reclaimed as a Spaceport. I'd marvelled at that the last time I was here, but not ventured inside.

The museum turns out to be great, full of hands-on exhibits that - so rarely in this sort of thing - are not broken. His Lordship was entranced by the toys to demonstrate orbital mechanices and the hurricane machine. We could have stayed another hour.

In fact, his only disappointment was the shop which, after all the perfectly pitched imagination of the galleries, didn't seem as well thought out. There were the usual (boring) pencils, key-rings and whatnot, and some surprisingly expensive Doctor Who merchandise from about five years ago. We decided against £20 for a sonic screwdriver. Then there was late lunch in the Albert Dock, and a trip to a toy shop.

On Wednesday, we climbed the tower of Liverpool Cathedral - a genuine bargain at £5.50 for adults and his Lordship free. What's more, two lifts meant there was only 108 steps to climb - but those on a staircase looking out and over the dizzying spectactle of the bells.

The view from the top was amazing, and we spent a happy time leisuredly working our way round twice, spying out all the details. 

I failed to take pictures of the various other things we got up to, such as our trip to the very well run Storybarn, or much note of the various lovely bookshops I nosed round looking for something suitable as tribute for the Dr. (I am quite delighted with the 1893 third edition of Eric Brighteyes that fell into my arms in an Oxfam.)

And then, pottering about in Mossley Hill again, his Lordship spotted Roman numerals on this post box. It's apparently one of the 271 letter boxes made during the short reign of Edward VIII in 1936. It is a great help to have a pair of eyes at the right level to spot these things.

Lady Vader

It has been an eventful week, with the Dr giving birth to a beautiful baby girl who, online, we'll call Lady Vader.

Given our history - assured, despite our best efforts, that we were unable to have children at all, then the birth of a baby girl who lived just eight days - it's nothing short of miraculous. There have been months of stress and terror, and of trying not to hope. Even when she was born, the Dr had to stay in hospital longer for tests (on the Dr not the baby) just to be sure. But now here she is, keeping us up until four in the morning demanding to be held.

We are all a whirl of emotions - though had been warned by people who've been through similar loss that the relief of a healthy baby would be mingled with sadness. But generally, cautiously, happy...

The Lord of Chaos is extremely pleased to be an older brother - and took great delight in helping choose her online and real-life names.

Actually meeting the baby has been really good for him, too: until now, all the worry and tension clouding the house has been around some abstract quantity. Now there's a real, mewling creature to tiptoe round. And when she cries, he knows - thanks to a magnificent book - to resignedly sigh, "Stupid baby!"

All this baby stuff has meant I'm a bit horribly behind on anything else - what my friends are up to, what work I should have finished, what it's like being out in company. But on Thursday, the Dr and Lady Vader wanted to sleep so I was dispatched from the hospital early and got to the launch of the Cartoon Museum's ASTOUNDING exhibition, Doctor Who: The Target Book Artwork, running till Sunday 15 May.

While there, me and m'colleague Dr Marek Kukula were accosted by this random punter insisting on a photo:

Doctor Who: 1983

Episode 602: The Five Doctors
First broadcast: 10.30 pm on Wednesday 23 November 1983 (US); 7.20 pm on Friday 25 November 1983 (UK)
<< back to 1982

The Raston warrior robot decapitates a Cyberman -
for Doctor Who's birthday.
The Five Doctors

A lot of our response to Doctor Who is informed as much by how we first see it - who we're with at the time, the mood we (and they) are in, the stuff going on in our lives - as the programme itself. A wise chum told me he'd realised this about a recent season: his least favourite episodes were all the ones he'd watched on his own.

So a lot of the warm, cosy love I have for The Five Doctors is personal and from context. That first evening it was shown was a big event. I was allowed to stay up late to watch it with my siblings, and they drew the curtains and turned off the lights to make the experience more like a cinema. It was the last Doctor Who story we all watched together as it went out.

When I watch it again now, I still feel a thrill of memory for that long-ago evening, that particular, personal circumstance. But it's not just that. As I've grown up, become a writer and tried typing my own Doctor Who stories, I am ever more in awe of the script.

First, consider the brief given to the poor writer. Imagine you're the one that script editor Eric Saward came to.

You have to write a 90-minute TV movie extravaganza, with five leading actors all playing the main hero - so they get 18 minutes each. They all need to drive the plot, be heroic and have the best lines, and you'll need to consider the potential clash of egos on set. Oh, and the fact that one of those actors is dead.

In addition, the story should feature lots of old monsters and companions. The production team can't confirm availability of some of those companions until very late in the day, but each Doctor will need pairing up with a companion from their time on the show. And lastly, it needs to thrill a broad, general audience tuning in for the special event, as well attempting to satisfy fans. (PS the script editor especially likes the Cybermen.)

Bloody hell, that's a lot to cram in - once you've assembled the cast there's hardly room for a story. In fact, it seems to have defeated Robert Holmes, generally regarded as one of Doctor Who's best writers - if not the best. "The brief was too heavy," Saward later admitted of Holmes' involvement. "He didn't think it would work."

Saward is speaking on Terrance Dicks: Fact & Fiction, a 2005 DVD extra on Horror of Fang Rock. The documentary covers Terrance's time on Doctor Who but especially his ability to step in when things went wrong. When two stories collapsed in 1969, he co-wrote the 10-episode The War Games and saw the Second Doctor off in grand style. He then script-edited the next five years of the show - all the Third Doctor's adventures - taking a series facing cancellation and returning it to rude health. In 1977, when the BBC objected to his Doctor-Who-meets-vampires story (because it would look like it was mocking their big adaptation of Count Dracula), he quickly knocked out one of my favourite stories, Horror of Fang Rock. Basically, he's a good man in a crisis.

Terrance himself is modest about his contribution. He says on the Fact & Fiction documentary that he's often asked:

"'Were you aware you were making classic television?' Our main plan was not to have have to show the test card."

He's rightly proud of this unshowy professionalism and recalls a moment from his time as script-editor. A director called from the rehearsal hall to say there was some problem with the scripts. Terrance called back and spoke to the director's PA.

"I said, 'Tell him to ring me when he's free. And tell him not to worry because whatever it is I will fix it.' ... That just came out and I thought that sounds bloody conceited. But I thought after five years, having hit most of the problems on Doctor Who, I'm fairly confident that I can fix it."

When given the brief for The Five Doctors, Terrance's solution was simple, effective and brilliant. He treats the problem as a sort of game, and makes that game the plot. Just as he has to gather Doctors, companions and old enemies, so does the villain in the story.

I've been discussing this with my chum Jim Smith, who says that "Terrance talked once about a game where you have to take objects out of box and extemporise a story around them. The story does that, with all ingredients brought out like the prestige in a magic trick. He also (perhaps unconsciously) works that image into the story, with Borusa's gloved hands pulling the figurines of the characters out of the box and putting them on the board."

But - without disagreeing with Jim - it's far more clever than that simple game supposes. The Doctors all have their own plots to follow and don't meet up until the final scenes (and a single day's filming) which provides a neat structure for the story but also avoided potential spats between the leading men. There are even separate entrances to the Dark Tower so the Doctors don't bump into one another early.

More from Jim: "I love how the Third Doctor recounts an establishment view of Rassilon, the Dark Times and so on ('old Rassilon put a stop to it') while the Second, a more anarchic and less establishment figure, regales the Brigadier with conspiracy theories of how Rassilon invented and played the game before he banned it and how he may still be alive inside his own Tomb. At least some of which turn out to be true."

The Five Doctors is packed with brilliant moments: the Doctors being chased by black triangles; the fizzing insides of a Dalek; the Doctor running away from his own people at the end. There are nice continuity fixes, too: the fact that a Time Lord can be given a new regenerative cycle when his first one is used up; the Third Doctor meeting the Cybermen (the only Doctor at that point not to have done so). And so much of the dialogue sparkles: I particularly love “I am the Master – and your loyal servant”.

Jim says: "I love that the Master takes his mission seriously. When he rages at the end that 'I came here to help you Doctor, a little unwillingly but I came. My offers were scorned! My help refused!' he's actually telling the truth and no one - not even the audience - believes him."

"Then," Jim goes on, "there's Terrance's use of imagery from Browning's Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came - see from versus XXXI. This seems like a stretch until you remember Fang Rock's indebtedness to The Ballad of Flannen Isle."

Terrance dodges round one of the Doctors being dead by having an actor stand in for William Hartnell - but also, tastefully, starts the story with a perfectly chosen clip of the man himself. Midway into the story, the replacement First Doctor is paired up with the current Doctor which again works structurally as well as practically (there's less of a potential clash with a for-one-night-only Doctor). All the Doctors have great moments of wit, intelligence and courage and get some brilliant lines.

Then, after a draft of the script had been completed, one of the Doctors decided not to be involved. That should have spelt disaster but Terrance fixes things deftly, again using archive footage to fill the gap and also reworking the other Doctors' roles. Watching it that first time, I wished Tom Baker had been in it more but never suspected he'd not been there at all.

If the Doctors get the best bits, the companions are less well served, just tagging along in his wake, asking questions that prod the plot along. I wonder how much that's due to them still being swapped round at the last minute, or to the constraints of squeezing in so many people.

There's an effort to mark out their characters but it's all a bit sketched in and glib. Susan sprains her ankle as if that's something she always did (it isn't; she did it once in The Dalek Invasion of Earth). Jim: "Which was, of course, one of only two First Doctor stories Dicks had novelised. Did he flick through it for research? Or just remember novelising that moment?"

Poor old Turlough fares worst, getting very little to do: he draws a picture, worries in the TARDIS then has to stand still not talking. Jim: "I like his 'Die, it seems' gag. And 'Big, isn't it?' about the bomb. Black humour is key to Turlough, I think. So we get that if nothing else."

There's no mention at all of Kamelion, the robot companion introduced in the previous story.

Other things niggle. It's a shame that the Eye of Orion is clearly the same location as the Death Zone (though that's not an issue with the script). A thrilling scene where the Third Doctor rescued Sarah from the Autons was changed to a cheaper one where she falls down a steep slope; a good fix on paper but the way its shot doesn't make it look very perilous (and again not an issue with the script).

Jim drew my attention to one odd script thing in the scene at UNIT HQ: the sergeant doesn't know who the Doctor is and won't let him in, whereas Colonel Crichton tried to have the Doctor invited to the reunion and failed. So he certainly knows of the Doctor. When the Doctor gets into the office, the colonel dismisses the sergeant and lets the Doctor stay because either he knows who this Doctor is by sight (they've never met, but he may have seen pictures or whatever) or he accepts Lethbridge-Stewart's recognition of him as reason enough. Then at the end of the scene the colonel says:

CHRICTON:
What the blazers is going on? Who was that strange little man?

SERGEANT NOT-BENTON:
The Doctor?

CHRICTON:
Who?

Which, as Jim said, completely reverses their positions/knowledge. On the DVD commentary at this point, Terrance says the joke wasn't his but Saward's. And it's not in Terrance's novelisation of the story, either.

Whatever the case in that scene, Saward clearly helped improve the story overall. He suggested that it was too obvious if the villain turned out to be the Master. He also thought the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane needed to face one more obstacle before reaching the Dark Tower. To answer that, Terrance came up with the one new monster in the story, in a scene that typifies what makes The Five Doctors so brilliant.

The Raston warrior robot is a budget-conscious creation - a non-speaking actor in a simple costume. Its sensors are primed to detect any movement, on which it fires arrows and bladed discs. Again, it's making a game of the problem: the Doctor and Sarah Jane end up playing Blind Man's Bluff.

DOCTOR:
Freeze, Sarah Jane. If you move, we're dead.

And then a troop of Cybermen arrive...

Cor. No wonder this scene was most often used to promote the story. Simple, cheap and thrilling, it is perfect Doctor Who.

Next episode: 1984

"What claptrap!"

My clever uncle Bob has updated his website with details of his latest musical choons. We've swapped notes on our current activities, and in doing so he fondly recalls old-skool, old-man Doctor Who made with cardboard and copydex.

My chums at the BBC Archive are celebrating Doctor Who's 45th birthday with a clear-out of old bits of paper. Learned fellows at the BBC wonder if science fiction might work on the telly and slowly tease out the basis of what might just work as a show...

Here, in 1963, is CE Webber nailing the magic of Doctor Who back before they'd even come up with the TARDIS (except for it's “light-resistant paint”).

“Evidently, Dr. Who's "machine" fulfils mary of the functions of conventional Science Fiction gimmicks. But we are not writing Science Fiction. We shall provide scientific explanations too, sometimes, but we shall not bend over backwards to do so, if we decide to achieve credibility by other means. Neither are we writing fantasy: the events have got to be credible to the three ordinary people who are our main characters, and they are sharp-witted enough to spot a phoney. I think the writer's safeguard here will be, if he remembers that he is writing for an audience aged fourteen... the most difficult, critical, even sophisticated, audience there is, for TV. In brief, avoid the limitations of any label and use the best in any style or category, as it suits us, so long as it works in our medium.”

CE Webber, “Dr. Who” - General Notes on Background and Approach, 1963.

Clever old Red Scharlach notes wryly, of the Audience Research Report for the very first episode, that fans have not changed a great deal in 45 years. The BBC have made a lively, exciting and fun TV show with astounding, broad appeal? What in the name in jibbering flip were they thinking?

These documents are well-known to us fans who stuck it out in the Dark Times; they were picked over in the First Doctor Handbook and the pages of DWM, and then used in the excellent Beginnings DVD documentary. But how fab to see the original bits of paper, tatty and scribbled on and real.

Batsha sengathi yizibhanxa

Hooray for my cousin G, who asked a favour of a waiter on my behalf. I now have the opening line of something mammoth I am writing.

Well, not exactly mammoth but along the same lines.

And no, none of this means anything to you, dear reader. But right now it's everything to me.

Foom!

The sister is back from Oz for six months and we had a summons back to the ancestral home of the Guerrier clan yesterday. It should only take an hour and half to get down there, but there's always something, like trains being diverted via Switzerland or the end of the world.

So we were a bit cautious. At about eight in the morning the Dr, who is better at getting up at the morning, fell into the shower and I went to answer the insistent buzzing of the doorbell.

"Are your lights working?" asked the man from next door. And they weren't.

"Eek!" added the Dr from the shower, where the water was all icy cold. The boiler and lights rely on power not being cut.

So we boiled pans of water and washed the old-skool way, then headed out to see if there might be such things as trains. People texting to tell me I had no power quickly used all my phone's battery, but not before I snapped the darkening of the sky.

Later, we'd discover that Sydenham Park substation had caught fire, thieving the lights and hot water from quite a lot of South East London.

In the meantime, we traded information with strangers - yes, in London! - and as we passed his house our friend M. called down to us for what titbits we had gleaned. There were lots of people out, making the best of it and the nice weather, and lots of burglar alarms and fire engines.

"How like Survivors," I thought.

There were no trains - at least none that were stopping - so we tramped on to a bus and enjoyed the acrid stink of the previous night's vomit, all dried and steaming in the morning heat. Finally found Waterloo and narrowly missed a train to the parents as I queued for tickets. Ng.

A nice few hours with lots of family I'd not seen in ages (even L. who lives just up the road), and then we tramped back again on a train that said it stopped only at London but which stopped every moment it could. And still no trains where we live, so we had to get one sort-of near. Spent the whole journey back looking for signs of electric life: working traffic lights, the glow of people's doorbells, the signs above shops...

And, after more than seven hours travelling, we got home to find our power back on. A block away they were still going without, as we found when we thought we'd enjoy the last of the sunlight with a sly pint of beer. Schleped back across the postcode to another pub, and discovered R., who was also without power. Had a beer in the candlelit Dolphin, where the power came on just in time for last orders. It looks like everyone had their power back by the end of the day - well done everyone involved.

R. said he'd seen a two-car family making the best of it: in one car, a child had a laptop plugged into the dashboard and was watching cartoon; in the next child's parents were, with the same method, sharing a DVD.

Not the end of the world, then, but for a moment - and despite the nice weather - it did feel like a rehearsal. A timely reminder of how much we depend on the fizzing electrons in the wall. I'm rather stuck in my hackery without a working computer - yes, there's still paper and pens and notebooks and stuff, but blimey it's so much harder. And I'm already a little behind on a project or two, and was despairing of how this week might go anyway.

And, since I'm in a jolly, apocalyptic mood, how likely does the looming energy crisis mean this is just a foreshadowing of things to come a lot more?

We all fall down

Just back from a weekend in Sheffield with family to find plenty of actual and potential offers of that there scribbling in by inbox. Which is good as on Thursday I learnt that the three-month gig that’s lasted nearly three whole years is finally coming to an end. At the same time, I’m well into my final production and editorial duties for Big Finish.

Spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons trekking up and down different bits of the Burbage valley and its environs, trampling bracken and weasling through the huge rocks. Nattered and climbed trees and braved a strange ginger cake called Parkin, and discovered we were just a short drive from the village of Eyam (pronounced “Eem”), which I’d been reading about on the train up.

Year of Wonders is based on the events in Eyam of 1665-6. When the first cases of bubonic plague are detected in the village, the local vicar Mompellion convinces the population not to flee. Instead of spreading the disease even further, they will wait it out. Those who agree to this are slowly picked off by the horrific symptoms – two thirds of them are to die. But for Anna Frith, young widow and household help to Mompellion, this terrible suffering and loss will also transform her life…

It’s a gripping page-turner, and Geraldine Brooks is good at supplying enough detail that readers can follow the development and spread of the disease through flea-infested clothing, while the characters never quite make that same connection. Like watching Casualty, we’re glued to finding out which of the characters we’ve just met are to meet grisly ends. Like Casualty, for all there’s a moral dimension to the suffering and social breakdown, there’s also a horrid randomness to the infection and death, which spares neither good nor innocents.

As well as the plague, there’s witch-hunts and the perils of lead-mining, as well as a gravedigger who starts burying those as yet not dead. This packing-in of incident can make the book feel overly contrived at times. And for all Brooks draws strong and memorable characters, and deftly convinces us of the intrigues and scandals of a small community, the cowardly toffs who flee for their lives are too obvious and uncomplicated villains.

Also felt the final section, after the plague, a little too extraordinary, with sudden revelations and reversals that didn’t really fit the cosy, claustrophobic catastrophe of the main part. “This book is a work of fiction inspired by the true story,” begins the author’s afterword, and I felt the novel maybe changed too much of the wondrous-enough reality to fit the convenience and structure of its plot. It’s an absorbing and well-constructed read, but less successful the more it is not true.

We visited the Church of St Lawrence, whose plague display inspired the novel, and passed the cottages that tell you which families lived in them and how many of them died. We poked our fingers into the round holes of the boundary stone, once filled with coin to pay for food from those beyond the quarantine line, the holes filled with vinegar to kill the plague seed that might be attached to the coin.

Home on the 2.27 today, passing the wonky, twisty spire at Chesterfield on the way back to the nearly-done space-age refit of St Pancras Station. Having swapped a plethora of top facts with cousin A. all weekend, was pleased to hear a fellow passenger explain to their spawn how Queen Boudicca and her Iceni pals had bitch-slapped the Romans right where we was shlepping.

There's so little else occupying my head

Devon drizzled with occasional sunshine. Salcombe conspired to have 45 degree slops whichever route you took, but is a pretty, posh-shopped little town. I drank a lot of the local Tinners and answered the same questions from friends-of-the-parents over and over again: living in south London; married for three years; yes, writing pays; no, we don’t have kids yet.

Met the brother of a film star – one I sort of interviewed once – who showed remarkable patience at being always introduced as this-is-Film-Star’s-brother. We bonded over a love of food, and how a bit of exercise keeps the gorging in balance.

Also saw some of an uncle and his family who I’d not seen in nearly 10 years. We have vowed to do better in future, and I hope to get up to see him next month. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite avoid telling my all-grown-up cousin that the last time I’d seen her she’d been toddling. Gather she got that a lot.

Ate and drank and chatted and drank. Then on Sunday to see some of the Dr’s family, who live either end of a steep hill in Cornwall. Ate five Cornish pasties, two lots of trifle and a couple of hefty saffron cake wedgess. Back to Devon for pub tea and more beer, but too knackered to make a bash at the big brother’s which started at about 10 pm.

Wended our way slowly home yesterday, with a brief stop at Totnes castle. It’s a fairly bare, round keep with commanding views over the town towards the curving river. Schoolkids dashed about and shouted, none of them very interested in how a round keep is harder to undermine, or in the politics England post-Hastings. Must admit the extant shell is not the most exciting castle I’ve ever been to.

Having left our nice B&B at 10 in the morning, we finally got home just gone six. Was meant to be eating sushi in town for seven to celebrate J’s latest birthday. Wussed out in favour of an early night… and so was around to help L when she turned up to heft her many boxes and bags from our attic.

Back to working today. Plenty to be caught up on – last niggles on the Inside Story and the boss’s notes on The Pirate Loop. Has been a fun and long-time-coming break, but I don’t half feel like I now need a holiday…

Friends and relations

We have been visited. First on Monday, J. arrived from Bath (and more usually the USA). She had not seen our flat before, nor our William Morris wallpaper and cat, and there was much catching up and gossip over good asparagus lunch. It was the first time J. had been so long away from her two year-old, so it was all quite something.

Once the Dr left with, I did washing up and working, and was on the phone with work things when I should have been collecting my South African cousin. N. and her friend S. are into the last leg of a European tour, and came to me having done Paris and Dijon and Venice and Rome (and also London and Cambridge). We did food and then, when their plans to meet up with other South Africans didn’t work out, took them to the Dolphin. We sat outside in the swish new garden, and pretended not to be freezing.

Yesterday was N’s 20th birthday, and I’d promised her and S. a tour. They’d already seen Buckingham Palace and Kensington Gardens, and we’d agreed we’d do museums if it got rainy but otherwise try to be outdoors. So…

Train to Victoria, tube to Embankment and then the Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridge (east side) over the river. Pointed out that the Embankment is a great big sewage pipe you can walk about on top of, and also Cleopatra’s Needle. By the time we reached the far side of the river, we were looking out for the Anthony Gormley figures stood iconically on rooftops.

Having pre-booked no-nonsense tickets, we were pretty quickly on to the London Eye, sharing our cabin with some very excited kids, keen to point out their estate. Tried to point out things of interest: Nelson’s Column and Downing Street, and the clock tower of St Pancras (made famous by H. Potter).

After that we followed the south bank past the new spangly Festival Hall, the National Film Theatre, the National Theatre and along past the shops and the Oxo Tower to the former Bankside Power Station. This is now Tate Modern, and we mooched around a free exhibition about Global Cities all round the world. N. got a bit weirded by a series of photos of her home town, just showing security warnings (see the Johannesburg section of Diversity).

Out into the sunshine again and across the Millennium Bridge and up the stairs to St Paul's cathedral. Didn’t get the Whispering Gallery to work, but we did clamber all the way to the top for some spectacular views. We were about as high up as we’d been on the Eye, only a lot more sweaty for it.

Had trouble making the low-ceilinged descent, and we moved pretty swiftly through the crypt and out to find a quick something for lunch. It threatened to rain as we ate, but the sun came out again as we headed down Cheapside. I pointed out the Church of St Mary le Bow, and explained about how it works with cockneys. Got sight of the Bank of England, then headed right to Cannon Street, passing the monument to the unknown wanker.

Made our way to the Monument commemorating the Great Fire of London in 1666, though the girls oddly declined the chance to climb to the top. Instead we carried on down river, weaving down between the old Billingsgate fish market and the old customs house, and then getting to walk round the perimeter of the Tower of London, getting up on to Tower Bridge and following it north to Tower Gateway station.

DLR’d through all the Docklands developments (passing the new Billingsgate before cutting through the inside of One Canada Square) to Island Gardens, a much more crowded journey than I’d expected to the girls didn’t get to sit at the front – which is the coolest thing. We looked out on the all the new high-rise developments with their expensive views of water, then got out at Island Gardens. Having enjoyed the view of Greenwich, south across the water, we took the foot tunnel (yes more steps), and emerged where the Cutty Sark isn’t.
Took them into the grounds of Wren’s old naval hospital (now the University of Greenwich), and to the bit of street used in Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility. We then headed across the road to the Maritime Museum, and had a look round the bits of the Queen’s House used in the same film, and the Orangery (where I got married). They had then had enough of climbing things, so we didn’t do the steep hill to the Royal Observatory, but crossed the line of longitude as we made our way to the pub. Took them to the Trafalgar (where I had my wedding reception). They drank Smirnoff Ice.

It was about four as we headed back along the river and got ourselves onto a slow boat back to Westminster. We sat out on deck, which was blowy but blue-skied. I pointed out the traffic-light tree just down from Westferry Circus, and good pubs like the Captain Kidd. From the stop at the Tower of London, one of the lightermen took over the commentary, explaining about bridges and buildings. I think my Top Facts were a little more accurate, but his jokes got bigger laughs.

Eventually got to Westminster Pier, and headed back down the Embankment where I got to point out one of my favourite statues: a pilot with broken angel’s wings, commemorating the Fleet Air Arm.

Took the western pedestrian bridge back over to Festival Hall, and met Nimbos for a couple of bottles of vino. Discussed options for the evening, and decided to head home for N. and S.’s first ever go at fish and chips, plus a call to parents. Ended up boozing and watching telly.

N. and S. left this morning – and sneakily left money to pay for yesterday, the minxes. I have washed and tidied but not entirely Dysoned. All in time for the Dr being back from speaking wisdom in Bristol tomorrow… And now, though it was reckoned we would finish work about half eight this evening, it looks like we’ll be here another hour at least… Ng.

You’re going to find it hard eating corn on the cob

My old man’s a doctor, he wears a doctor’s hat.

Well, he’s retired now. And it wasn’t really a hat so much as a head mirror. Which is, as everyone of course knows, a dead give-away that he was an otorhinolaryngologist. That is, a snot doctor.

As well as ear wax, halitosis and nosebleeds, the old man dealt with a lot of colds and flu. Which meant he wasn’t always sympathetic to us when we had sniffles. “It’s probably death,” he’d say as he threw together one of his Jeevesish toddies, “there’s a lot of it about.”

(Hot toddy for when you feel like someone’s stuffed a pillow up your nose: generous two-finger measure of whisky, the same of boiling water, a spoon of honey, a squeeze of lemon and don’t be standing up when you drink it.)

But much worse than the wry sarcasm was when he took your illness seriously. Like Jimmy Nesbitt blinking into Hyde he could gear-change into a terrifying and cool professional, there to conduct your passing. I well remember his enthusiasm for my appendectomy scar – a lovely bit of work, he thought. And though I was bruised all up my body (what with being delicate like a princess) he cooed at the pretty sunset shades. He was less impressed by the junior doctor having had three goes to get the drip into my arm. “You’ve got very prominent veins,” he said, eyeing my arms hungrily. “You could get nails into them.”

Anyway. This morning my dentist was similarly delighted with me. “Ooh,” she said with great excitement, “how have you managed that?”

I have had some pain in one of my back molars for the last few days, having been chewing my teeth to accompany the happy, contented dreams in which I am battered to death by giant and blank-paged copies of the Benny Inside Story. I thought maybe I’d bruised the gum line, or cracked some of the filling. No, I have fractured the whole tooth from top to bottom. That takes some doing, apparently. And it cannot be repaired.

So on Wednesday I’m having the thing wrenched out and then getting the bloody gap fitted for dentures. Have three months with that before we can even think about gold replacements and other gangster accoutrements. But I realise I won’t be able to have this ersatz nasher in a glass of water by the bed at night. The cat would only drink it.

What’s a weekend?

Spoke to the sister this morning, swapping gossip of one sort and another. She lives on the other side of the planet and has caught the natives’ upward inflection. The Dr and I hope to spend Christmas with her in Melbourne, some other projects permitting.

Work continues. Have gone through the proofs of Dave Stone’s novel, The Two Jasons, in time to receive the first draft of our next book, care of Jon and Kate and Phil. The Wake needs a little tweaking and is ready for studio, and by Tuesday I should have all this year’s remaining scripts done. Chapter 2 of Inside Benny is currently 25,000 words, and is coming together nicely. Bit of a blimmin’ mammoth, though. And we’re powering through the short story competition.

Met the writer Colin Harvey last night – or one of them. This one’s the winner of SFX’s own new writer competition, who’s also got a story in Snapshots. He was lucky enough to catch me when I’d spent all day at the typing, and I may have been a little talkative.

We and several other colleagues were in Lewisham’s answer to the Dolphin, ostensibly to pick apart the joys of Gridlock. Nope, everyone seemed agreed it was pretty damn wondrous, and I arrived too late for what had apparently been lots of snitty misery about the end of Life of Mars.

(Though I can sympathise with much of the criticism, it kept me and the Dr entertained and guessing right to the end. And Ralph Brown was, as always, a shiny great treasure.)

Congratulations to m’colleague E., who sneakishly, secretly got himself wed yesterday. Everyone should get married. And, more importantly, they should then have a good party.

E., you’re not allowed to do that bit in secret, okay?

Births, marriages, deaths

Met the Dr in the spangly Young Vic bar Wednesday night, where we shared some giraffes of wine. She also bought me a leatherless present, London: City of Words.

Have already learnt that Caxton’s first English printing press was inherited by the splendidly named Wynken de Worde. In about 1500, de Worde moved it from Westminster to Fleet Street, which remained the heart of English pressing for just shy of 500 years. Good fact!

• More on early English printing

We then ambled onwards to Tas for some Turkish comestibles. It was packed, but the service was exemplary and we had some very good food. Also got through quite a lot of fizz.

Yesterday was somewhat different, and we grabbed a lift from my cousin in Richmond down to my grandfather’s funeral. He was 93 and had been declining some time, but his death (on 31 March) was still a bit of a shock. Lots of family I’d not seen in years, and some wonderful stories too. Most of them entirely unrepeatable.

I’d been tasked last week with ringing round the cousins to gather stories to use in the eulogy. Most featured boozing and swearing. One family friend referred to the latter as “bicycling”, after “Jesus Christ on a bicycle!”

The elder brother – who delivered the short version of all this – had also worked through Grandpa’s own incredible memoir. He remembered Conan-Doyle as “tubby”, went tiger-hunting aged seven, and married my Granny having seen her only six times in daylight. The wedding guests had to take cover in the street from an attacking Meschersmitt.

But for the man who’d been born in Shanghai and lived his life all over the world, the last goodbye was in Basingstoke. We filed out to the thumping Radetzky March, and on to a pub flying the Union boldly.

Then back to the Smoke, and we took our chauffeur out for drinks and pizza in Richmond. More revelries and revelations, and some cheesecake for pudding.

With exquisite timing, my friends P. and A. produced a baby the same day that Grandpa died. Very glad to hear all is well with them. Found myself humming while on the way into work not Radetzky but that one from the Lion King.