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.

The Star Outside my Window, by Onjali Q Raúf

Ten year-old Aniyah is a star hunter, an astronomer, thrilled by the discovery of a new star in the night sky. But she thinks the star is her mum, whose heart has ascended, and is determined to ensure that the star hunters at the Royal Observatory Greenwich give it her mum's name. As she sets off with her friends from the foster home on an epic quest to Greenwich, we realise what Aniyah and her five year-old brother do not: their mum was murdered - by their dad.

I rattled through this exciting, emotional story full of high stakes. It would be wretched to quibble the practicalities of the journey Aniyah and her friends undertake - is there really a bus from Victoria coach station to Island Gardens, and could you get all that way without anyone checking you'd paid? - or the physics of the star that passes close to Earth. It's certainly never easy, and Aniyah and her friends show incredible daring along the way. The conclusion, in which Aniyah must face the awful truth that she's evaded so long, is beautifully done.

For all the awfulness, the book is peppered with kindly adults - the amazing foster mum Mrs Iwuchukwu who has tragedies in her own life, kindly superhero actress Audrey Something, and helpful astronomer Professor Grewal. The other foster children all have their histories, too - and in the case of all but one of them, that makes them keen to support Aniyah whatever it takes. That really got me: people inspired by their own experience of crisis to help someone else through theirs.

I also liked the resolution for the "villainous" character, Sophie - explaining her insecurities and returning the thing she takes from Aniyah without her ever quite apologising. It's a remarkable adventure but Raúf ensures that it feels credible to the end. The story wraps up the plot about the star satisfactorily but I find myself wondering what becomes of all these characters afterwards - always a good sign in a book.

Raúf explains in the end section the inspiration for the story - the murder of her own aunt Mumtahina, which also inspired her to set up Making Herstory - and is careful about warning readers in advance of the subject matter.

"The author of this story does not like to link the word 'Domestic' to the word 'Abuse'. This is because the word 'Domestic' implies that abuses happening inside the home should remain private, even when they constitute a crime, whilst also making many people too embarrassed to report abuses. However, as the prevailing term, she has used it throughout this book for clarity." (footnote to the dedication)

So this is a lively story about a very difficult subject told with flair, insight and sensitivity. 

Arrival of Moon

The Moon - A Celebration of Our Celestial Neighbour is a new book published by Royal Observatory Greenwich to accompany the Moon exhibition that opens on 19 July. It's a lovely book full of extraordinary archive material and learned scholarship.

Oh, and there's also my essay, "So What If It's Just Green Cheese? The Moon on Screen." I've got in references to Doctor Who, The Clangers and James Bond, among others.

• Buy The Moon - A Celebration of Our Celestial Neighbour from the RMG website

The Moon - A celebration of our celestial neighbour

I've an essay in The Moon - A celebration of our celestial neighbour, a new book edited by Melanie Vandenbrouck. 

In July it will be 50 years since the first crewed landing on the Moon and this book accompanies the forthcoming major exhibition at Royal Museums Greenwich - where I did my GCSE in astronomy all those years ago. Full blurb as follows:

Official publication for the Royal Museums Greenwich major exhibition The Moon, marking the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s ‘small step’, with the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Written by the Royal Observatory’s leading astronomers and moon experts, this landmark work explores humankind’s fascination with our only natural satellite.

Highly illustrated with 180 fascinating colour and black and white photographs this book is a treasure trove for all amateur and professional Moon watchers.

Sections include:

A constant companion

Learn how we started to observe the Moon, how we used it to mark time and navigate, how lunar lore developed across the world, how the Chinese developed calendars and predicted eclipses. See how the Moon has influenced African art, and also acted as a muse for artists in other parts of the world in a variety of media.

Through the lens

Once the telescope was invented the Moon was observed, drawn and mapped and highly detailed artworks were also created. When photography came along the Moon was an early target until we eventually landed on the Moon surface in July 1969, 50 years ago. Today we can process images of the Moon to show it in extraordinary colour.

Destination moon

We have travelled to the Moon in stories for a long time, using fantastical machines and strange substances. When film arrived we transferred the stories to that medium and the space race was on long before we ever made it in person.

Nevertheless, we have satarized our satellite, we have reported fantastical events in our newspapers and artists have used it as a subject in many different styles of artwork. The Moon and space programmes have also influenced fashion, toys and culture.

For all mankind?

Scientists have investigated what it is made of, how its craters were formed and its origin and great steps have been taken since the Moon landings. Meantime in cinema and television Moon topics continue to appear. Poets have long been influenced by it and this continues today, science fiction is still flourishing. Artists also continue to use new media such as video and others have created a series of works. The Moon has not escaped geopolitics with various treaties being signed in relation to space debris.

Marek says "no"

Here's Dr Marek Kukula - my co-author on The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who - on Doctor Who: The Fan Show answering questions about science, and saying no to Steven Moffat.

The smell of the Daleks

M'colleague Dr Marek Kukula and I have written a couple of blog posts to spread the word about The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who. Here's two of them:

• "What do Daleks smell like?" for Sci-fi Now Magazine
• "Where is planet Vulcan?" for the Royal Observatory Greenwich blog

Remember, there are a bunch of events next week to launch the book, and here's me talking to the Starburst Bookworm podcast (series 3, episode 19 if you are catching up from the future) and to Croydon Radio.

ETA here's another blog post:

• "The science of crashed spaceships" for the Royal Observatory Greenwich blog

Top Trumps: Space

Unleashed on the world tomorrow is a new book I've written - Top Trumps: Space, published by Puffin. Follow the link for example pages and more information.

The wheeze is that you get a pack of Top Trumps cards all about planets, spacecraft and other cosmic stuff and a book of extra facts and activities as a bonus.

It was a joy to work on: the nice editor sent me the images of the cards, and then I had full freedom to fill the book with my favourite bits of space oddness, gleaned from the GCSE in astronomy I studied at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich all those years ago.

It's especially thrilling because me and my younger brother were keen Top Trumps combatants (often mixing up packs, so we'd have majestic battles between dinosaurs and racing cars - which you can make work by comparing "Second category down" and so on).

Here's the book's blurb:

Play and discover with Top Trumps Activity Books!

This awesome fact-filled Top Trumps activity book is packed with amazing info on the wonders of space. Why is Mars called the 'red planet'? What are Saturn's rings made of? And which heavenly body is the biggest? Find out all about our solar system's planets and stars...and find out which is the most awe-inspiring of them all!

With cool activities plus 20 free Top Trumps cards to create your own fun tournament!

Read more cool Top Trumps titles! Top Trumps: Baby Animals, Top Trumps: Deadliest Predators, Creatures of the Deep and Top Trumps: Dinosaurs are also available from Puffin.

Published by Puffin, 1 May 2014. 32pp, ISBN-10: 0141352361, ISBN-13: 978-0141352367.

Victorian dinosaurs

Earlier this week, the Dr pointed me in the direction of Professor Joe Cain's splendid talk on the dinosaur sculptures at Crystal Palace, which you can watch here:



It's a great talk with some amazing insights and pictures - including of the insides of the dinosaurs. I love those dinosaurs and visit them a lot. (They've also appeared twice on the cover of Doctor Who Magazine.)

Then, last night, Nimbos and I attended "Planet of the Dinosaurs", a talk at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, where Dave Hone, paleontologist from Queen Mary gave a history of the dinosaurs as, on the vast Planetarium screen, Earth's continents shifted before our very eyes.

My favourite fact of the evening was about the very well preserved fossils found in Liaoning province in northern China. Paleontologists have not only found the remains of small, feathered dinosaurs, they also know the fauna and weather. In the cool drizzle, dinosaurs would have run through the magnolia blossom and between rhododendrons. Exactly the plants and weather of a Victorian garden - or the Crystal Palace.

Troodon formosus and Magnolia by John Conway

Sarkastic

An afternoon in Greenwich seeing chums. Greenwich Park was busy with workmen and tractors dismantling the Olympic arena, which meant the pathways were all hemmed in and there are great gouges in the ground. Difficult to not feel a pang at what's been done, despite the success of the Games.

Also had a chance to nose round the newly restored Cutty Sark. I'd last been there in 2004 for a wedding, with a disco on the low-ceiled upper deck. I had to dance between the steel girders that came down to my shoulders. How strange to return to it in its new glory - and be so disappointed.

First, it's £12 for an adult ticket, which is pretty steep and made me glad I was visiting on my own. You'd expect some pretty good interpretation for that money, but no. You pass through the expensive gift shop, up a ramp into the lowest part of the ship. There, a few of the beams are labelled - which would be quite useful if you knew your nautical structural terminology.

There are then what look like stacked crates of tea, with brief captions explaining the history of tea in the UK (introduced in the 1650s, made fashionable a decade later by Catherine of Braganza and then the essential British drink when, to counter Dutch traders smuggling the stuff, the tax on it was significantly reduced). There's also a short film about the Cutty Sark itself, and more about its owners and the races its raced in.

You then move upstairs to the level I once danced in... and it seemed a little bare. I read everything to be read and it took less than 10 minutes. I guess that might have been different if the place had been crowded, but there was nothing to hold the interest for more than a moment: a display about the type of sheep that were traded, a reference to the opium wars (rather glossing over what the British inflicted on China to protect its own trade).

The deck affords amazing views of London - with the Shard and the London Eye clear even on a nasty day:

View from the deck of the Cutty Sark, looking west up the Thames

I nosed around the small, cramped rooms and there was a fun projected film of a sailor explaining his work. But again, it was all a bit sparse, with little to excite the imagination or encourage further investigation. I love an obscure top fact, and there was nothing for me.

I took the lift down to the lower floor (the lift building is built on the spot where the TARDIS lands in Dimensions in Time - the philistines) and emerged into what I thought was an expensive cafe. There's something odd about the way the coffee bar dominates one end of this otherwise eye-popping space, the gleaming, copper bottom of the ship hanging in the air above you. It gives the space a cold and corporate feeling, like the ship is merely an expensive bit of art in the lobby of some faceless multinational.

Moving away from the coffee bar made for a better effect, and as I stood underneath the huge vessel, it reminded me of the Saturn V rocket on its side at Cape Canaveral - the same scale, the same sense of travel as adventure and art.

At the end of the room was a strange display of figureheads, which might have been more appealing if there'd been more about what each represented, or how their role changed over time. It's nice to look at but tells you nothing of note.

You climb the steps at the end to a viewing gallery, but then have to double back and return to the coffee bar to make your way out - through the expensive shop. I was there less than half an hour, and read all the captions. The worst thing is that I love the Cutty Sark - it played a part in my first date with the Dr all those years ago, and was a landmark when I lived down the road. I even had the Slitheen sail it round the Mediterranean in a Doctor Who book. I already adored the ship; it took a lot to be left so cold. A costly disappointment.

The Ordeal

It’s 20 years since I took my first GCSEs - four of them, a year early, what with going to posh school. Tomorrow morning, me and Nimbos and a motley gang of heroes sit GCSE Astronomy, which we’ve been studying at the ROG since September.

It’s been a really interesting course. I’ve looked through a telescope for the first time, ordered a robotic telescope in Las Palmas to take pictures of galaxies for me, and had some nice nights out in the pub. But there’s a massive amount to keep all in my head and I’d forgotten my keen terror of exams.

It doesn’t help that exams are so entirely counter-intuitive to a hack like me. I spend a lot of my life having to write authoritatively about complicated subjects, which means reading up on them quickly, distilling that simply and then doing check upon check. I try to use at least two reliable sources and then get someone expert to read it over anyway.

This very process got me on to the course. I asked television’s Marek Kukula to read over my first draft of Doctor Who and the Cold Equations. With great tact he explained my grasp of the complex stuff was quite good, but my basic maths and physics was appalling.

Too often as I’ve revised my scrawling notes and gone through past papers my first thought has been, ‘I know where to find the answer to that’. I know exactly which book has the best looking Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, which photocopies unpick the Equation of Time and which magazine details all the things the Huygens probe found out about Titan.

The freelance skill, hard learned over years, is to know where to check these things and not to rely on my memory. Or that’s what I’m telling myself as I jangle in terror at the coming ordeal.

William Herschel's telescope

Space school today was on identifying constellations, and I've drawn spidery diagrams of such things as Boote, Canis Major and the the big and little bears.

Since I was at the Royal Observatory, I also took advantage of the sunshine to snap some pics of William Herschel's 40-foot telescope, which I mentioned in my recent post on the origins of the Big Bang theory.


The caption in front of the telescope says:

"This is the remaining section of a 40-foot (12m) reflecting telescope, built for the astronomer William Herschel, who became famous for his discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781.

The telescope was the largest in the world and cost over £4000, paid for by King George III. Completed in 1789 and erected at Herschel's home near Slough, about 30 miles (45km) west of Greenwich, it soon became a tourist attraction. Some people likened it to the Colossus of Rhodes, and it was even marked on the 1830 Ordnance Survey map of the area.

Sadly, the Herschels did not use the great telescope for much serious astronomy since it was difficult to set up and maintain. William's son had it dismantled in 1840. Most of the tube was destroyed when a tree fell on it 30 years later.

You can find out more about William Herschel's work in the Weller Astronomy Galleries in the Astronomy Centre on this site."

NB you might want to do that before 8 March 2011, while it's still free.

Last year, I also posted about another telescope in London, the Monument.

Big Bang theory

"Your maths is correct, but your physics is abominable," said Albert Einstein (in French) of a 1927 paper by a Catholic priest.

Abbe Georges Lemaitre, from a small university in Belgium, had published 'A homogeneous universe of constant mass and growing radius accounting for the radial velocity of extragalactic nebulae' in the Annales de la Societe Scientifique de Bruxelles. Lemaitre - who had previously worked with Arthur Eddington at Cambridge and then Harlow Shapley at Cambridge, Massachussets - proposed the idea of an expanding universe. At the time, Einstein and physicists generally believed in a "finite, closed and static" universe, a "cosmological constant" - despite the fact that his own theory of relativity suggested otherwise.

But Lemaitre,

"derived the relation for an expanding universe to be between the speed of a galaxy receding from an observer and its distance from the observer. Lemaitre also provided the first observational estimate of the slope of the speed-distance curve that later became known as Hubble's law when the American astronomer Edwin Hubble reported his initial observations on galaxies in 1929. These two important properties of the universe were proposed two years before the measurements that would begin a new era in astrophysical cosmology."

JP McEvoy, The Universe - From Ancient Babylon to the Big Bang, pp. 190-1.

When Hubble published his observations, Lemaitre sent his own paper to Eddington and Einstein quickly confirmed that his theory "fits well into the general theory of relativity". There were still lots of questions to be asked about what drove the expansion, and several notable physicists were still skeptical (the "Big Bang" was initially a term of contempt for the idea), but Lemaitre has been called "the father of the Big Bang".

And yet, the idea had been proposed 150 years previously. Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove's Trillion Year Spree refers to a footnote in Erasmus Darwin's 1791 verse discussion, The Economy of Vegetation.

The footnote explains Darwin's response to William Herschel's own "sublime and curious" ideas about the construction of the heavens. Herschel had discovered 1,000s of star clusters (and the planet Uranus) with his telescope. (You can see Herschel's 40-foot telescope at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and visit his house in Bath.)

According to Darwin, Herschel had observed that there were proportionately fewer stars around the clusters, and concluded that infinite space had first been evenly sprinkled with stars but that, through gravity, they had "coagulated" together. Herschel also observed that the stars were moving round some central axis (that is, that the Milky Galaxy is slowly turning), and concluded that they must "have emerged or been projected from the material, where they were produced."

"It may be objected, that if the stars have been projected from a Chaos by explosions, that they must have returned again into it from the known laws of gravitation; this however, would not happen, if the whole of Chaos, like grains of gunpowder, was exploded at the same time, and dispersed through infinite space at once, or in quick succession, in every possible direction."

Erasmus Darwin, footnote to Canto I, line 105 of The Economy of Vegetation (1791)

I didn't know much about Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) until reading Trillion Year Spree, whose authors - taking their lead from Desmond King-Hele's The Essential Writings of Erasmus Darwin (1968) - devote three and a half pages to him. Hele, they say "lists seventy-five subjects in which he was a pioneer".

"Many inventions stand to Erasmus Darwin's credit, such as new types of carriages and coal carts, a speaking machine, a mechanical ferry, rotary pumps, and horizontal windmills. He also seems to have invented - or at least proposed - a rocket motor powered by hydrogen and oxygen. His rough sketch shows the two gases stored in separate compartments and fed into a cylindrical combustion chamber with exit nozzle at one end - a good approximation of the workings of a modern rocket, and formulated long before the ideas of the Russian rocket pioneer Tsiolkovsky were set to paper."

Brian Aldiss with David Wingrove, Trillion Year Spree, p. 35.

Darwin's long poems with their awkward rhymes might often seem "daft" to us now (though Aldiss and Wingrove cite some of his deft lines), and his reputation was damaged by parodies in his own time.

"Parodies of his verse in George Canning's Anti-Jacobin, entitled The Loves of the Triangles, mocked Darwin's ideas, laughing at his bold imaginative strokes. That electricity could ever have widespread practical application, that mankind could have evolved from lowly life forms, that the hills could be older than the Bible claimed - those were the sorts of madnesses which set readers of the Anti-Jacobin tittering. Canning recognized the subversive element in Darwin's thought and effectively brought low his reputation."

Ibid., p. 36.

He was also eclipsed by his grandson Charles, though Erasmus's Zoonomia, published in two volumes in 1794 and 96,

"explains the systems of sexual selection, with emphasis on promiscuity, the search for food, and the need for protection in living things, and how these factors, interweaving with natural habitats, control the diversity of life in all its changing forms."

Ibid., p. 36.

Erasmus acknowledged that these "evolutionary processes need time as well as space" and "emphasizes the the great age of the Earth", contradicting the "then-accepted view" of Bishop Ussher's that the Earth was created in 4004 BC. (Aldiss and Wingrove admit that "the Scot, James Hutton, had declared in 1785, thrillingly, that the geological record revealed 'no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end'.")

Aldiss and Wingrove call Erasmus Darwin "as a part-time science-fiction writer", though I think they rather overplay the case for his,

"prophesysing with remarkable accuracy many features of modern life - gigantic skyscraper cities, piper water, the age of the automobile, overpopulation, and fleets of nuclear submarines".

Ibid., p. 37.

But perhaps Darwin has a part to play in sci-fi. The authors nominate Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as the first work of science-fiction, a book that Shelley herself claimed to be the result of a nightmare in 1816, following,

"late night conversations with Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori, Byron's Doctor. Their talk was of vampires and the supernatural. Polidori supplied the company with some suitable reading material; Byron and Shelley also discussed Darwin, his thought and experiments. At Byron's suggestion, the four of them set about writing a ghost story apiece."

Ibid., p. 53.

I find this all fascinating and have been meaning to write it all up for months. Note to self to investigate Darwin further. I also see you can visit Erasmus Darwin's House in Staffordshire.

Telescope cherry

Of no interest to anyone else I am sure, but yesterday I looked up at space through a telescope for the first time.

My astronomy GCSE course has attempted this before, and again last night we trooped up to the famous 28" inch refracting telescope (the one used by Karen Gillan in Doctor Who Confidential earlier this year) only to find the view again obscured by clouds. The proper astronomer and our teacher filled time, explaining the history and mechanisms and testing our new-learnt knowledge. We waited and waited, and used a clever gadget called a 'window' to check if the sky might be clearing, but eventually decided to troop back into the warm.

Once we'd watched the telescope get put to bed and trooped down the steps and outside the Moon couldn't have been clearer - the tease. So the intrepid Nick who organises our group quickly found us an 8" inch reflector built by Meade: a bucket-shaped thing about the length of my forearm.

As the experts put this contraption together, Nimbos and grabbed a cup of tea and were then out in the cold again to queue up for a look.

The waxing gibbous moon looked shiny bright to the naked eye and, as thin cloud occasionally brushed over it, produced a glowing halo. This is due to icy crystals in the wintry cold atmosphere, which refract moonlight. The centre of the halo is bluish, the edge of it red - for the same reason as the different colours of the rainbow.

Looking through the telescope was something else entirely. At first I could see nothing but a white blur - as we'd been queuing the Earth's rotation had moved the telescope a bit. The helpful astronomer adjusted the setting and then - oh blimey - I saw.

A curved, gleaming surface of white, splotched with little craters, so bright it looked like plaster of Paris that had not quite set, the splotches made just a moment before I looked. The edges of these feature cast long, distinct shadows, picking out the details. The surface rippled slightly, as if I was looking through clear water - an effect of Earth's atmosphere refracting the light, something astronomers call 'seeing'. But another world, and in plain sight, tantalising, just out of reach.

Once we'd all wowed at this incredible view, the astronomers moved the telescope and trained it on Jupiter. With the naked eye, the huge planet looked like a bright star, hanging at about five o'clock below the Moon. Before we'd ventured out into the cold, we'd look at it using the free - and cool - Stellarium software which gave us an idea of what to expect: Jupiter in a line with its four largest moons.

But to actually see it! I took a moment to realise what I was looking at - the telescope flipping the image upside down, a reflection of the Stellarium cheat. A murky, stripey ball hanging in the darkness at the centre of the eyepiece. To the left (in reality, to the right) three bright stars - just the same size as Jupiter appeared to the naked eye. On the right, another star.

These moons, first seen by Galileo 400 years ago, transformed our understanding of our place in the universe. For more than 2,000 years the assumption had been that the Earth was at the centre of everything, that the celestial bodies looped slowly around us. Galileo tracked the positions of his four Galilean moons and showed why they moved and sometimes vanished. Now here was evidence of Moons circling something else: proof that we're not at the centre of things, the first sign that we live and toil on an insignificant sticky rock circling an insignificant star.

That is, except for something that's not insignificant: we look up.

A day out

Have spent most of the last week sheltering indoors, stuffing myself full of food and booze. J. and J. put on a splendid spread for Christmas and we watched The End of Time Part One on their ENORMOUS television. Otherwise, we've been at home, the Dr slaving in the kitchen while I have wrought what must be writ.

Amongst the house-guests, the Baldrick-in-law and his Bird were here the last two nights, and today I escaped the current OpenOffice document for a day in the cold and rain.

We bussed to Lewisham and got to sit in the very front seats of the DLR to Greenwich - a quite special treat. There's not a lot to see of the Cutty Sark at the moment - it's all boxed away - but the signs said it would be back and better than ever in 2010. Which is the day after tomorrow.

We followed the river a bit, which even at full, slopping tide seemed less wet than we were. Then we slunk through the Water Gate and nosed round the Old Royal Naval College.


There's a gap in the two wings of the Hospital so as not to spoil the view of the river from the Queen's House (where me and the Dr got married and the Doctor told Leela that the Rani had two time-brains). You can also just see in the picture above the Royal Observatory up on the hill, where I did various bits of work this year - and from whence I took a similarly drizzly grey photo looking back the other way in May.

We had a nose round the Chapel (in the left-hand wing of the College, through a door nestling behind those nice columns) and the Painted Chamber (in the right). The Dr pointed out that the bit of road running just in front of the columns is used in all sorts of costume dramas.

Having dazzled our visitors with this High Culture, we ambled to the pub. The Trafalgar was full of smart people enjoying a Private Event, so we snuck down the alley to the Yacht, for a pint or two of Doom and a Big Ben Burger.


Yes, that's a good hunk of a BURGER plus BACON and CHEESE and TOMATO and SALAD and an EGG. Hardly even touched the sides.


After we'd filled our faces, we queued in the rain for a Clipper to Waterloo, gazing through the steaming windows at the grey-shrouded landmarks passing by. And then home.

They are not children, they are monsters

I remember when working bank holidays meant time and a half. Not any more.

On Thursday and Friday I was ensconced in a recording studio watching my Blake's 7 audio plays come together. The fantastic cast (which will get announced shortly) battled with a script full of physics and Lagrangian points, and I couldn't be more delighted.

Having done a fair bit of audio stuff for rival company Big Finish, it's odd seeing how another company does it. There were more of us in the room behind the mixing desk, and there were generally more takes per scene. Both days we were pushing the six p.m. deadline.

Also, at one point I read in a few lines and saw how it felt from the other side of the glass. You play the scene, try not to stumble over the words, and then wait in weird silence while the masters deliberate. There's a particular skill in a director being able to articulate clearly how they want the scene done differently next time.

After finishing on Friday, there was a party to go to, where I saw a whole bunch of chums I'd not seen in ages and the Dr was delighted to be chatted up by someone who thought she could only be 28. Hooray!

Saturday and Sunday I was working at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, as a resident "Doctor Who expert" (their words) getting kids to invent scary monsters. The Observatory had plenty of information on weird planets, moons and space stuff, so the kids chose a place, then tried to think what sort of creature would live there. On an ice planet the monsters might be covered in fur, or have to eat lots just to keep warm...

It was good fun if a little exhausting. And I think generally the girls came up with the bloodier, grislier monsters. I hope their parents don't have nightmares.

Today I have been catching up on the writing - I've got a couple of pressing deadlines at the moment so scribbled lots in my notebook while in the studio. Now trying to make sense of my terrible handwriting, Frank telling the journalists to let him grieve in peace. And I've also got the washing up to do.

Grand Tour 2009

Busy, busy, busy. Lots of different bits of work on and about to go on tour…

Tomorrow morning I’m a guest at Faringdon Arts Festival, reading to children at Faringdon Junior School and then trying to answer their questions. Kids tend to ask more challenging, leftfield questions than grown-ups, so I’m more nervous than normal.

My bit is just for the school kids, but on Saturday afternoon proper TV writers of Doctor Who Paul Cornell and Phil Ford will be spilling their secrets to anyone who’ll listen. Miffed I’m going to miss that.

I’ll be at a guest at the Winchester Arts Festival on Saturday, at the library where I used to borrow Doctor Who books. Me, Mark Morris and Nicholas Briggs will be encouraging three sessions of school kids to write their own monstrous stories and explaining what makes a good monster.

At the end of August I’ll be at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich – the centre of time and space itself, and location for Doctor Who and the Dimensions in Time – as part of a weekend of family activities. More details on what that will involve soon.

Over the weekend of 19-20 September, I’ll be at Regenerations in Swansea, flogging copies of the Inside Story. (How splendid that Gary Russell gets top billing above Derek Jacobi and Davros).

In October I’m hoping to do a thing in Manchester and possibly also in Leeds, of which more details soon. And then, at the end of October I’m at HurricaneWho in Orlando.

If you're able to make any or all of these, do come say hello.

A grey day

This afternoon I was in drizzly, grey Greenwich to discuss a potential project. I lived in Greenwich 2002-04 and got married in the Queen's House. For a couple of years I used to pass through the royal park pretty much every day. There were birthday picnics (and lightsabre fights) on the grass, and a good few parties and nights in the pubs... Happy days - but so long ago.

Nosed around a bit feeling wistful, fell in to Halcyon Books on Greenwich South Street (which the Dr and I fell into on our very first date) and - sighing - lugged myself home.

On the way back I finished David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. It's a massive, meticulous and extraordinary story, packed with lucidity and detail. Baltimore Sun reporter Simon follows a homicide department all through 1988. A small band of put-upon, grumpy and very smart guys fight a tide of stupid, stupid violence.

Simon explains the context, the pressures, the morbid dark humour that helps the cops through it, the toll it takes... There are pages on what takes place in an autopsy or in a court room, the personalities as well as the procedures. It's grueling and sometimes appalling to read, yet utterly compelling.

In a 2006 afterword, Simon lets us know what became of the men involved - and of him, as the book got turned into a TV show ("Homicide: Life on the Streets"), and Simon started writing for the telly (his next book, The Corner, then led to The Wire). Over 600 pages he's made all kinds of clever connections, and here on why he stopped being a journalist in the 1990s, is also the inspiration for much of the dour tone of The Wire:

"Some of the best reporters the Baltimore Sun had were marginalized, then bought out, shipped out and replaced with twenty-four-year-old acolytes, who, if they did nothing else, would never make the mistake of having an honest argument with newsroom management. In a time of growth, when the chance to truly enhance the institution was at hand, the new regime of the Sun hired about as much talent as they dispatched ... I came to realize that there was something emblematic here: that in postmodern America, whatever institution you serve or are served by - a police department or a newspaper, a political party or a church, Enron or Worldcom - you will eventually be betrayed.

It seemed very Greek the more I thought about it. The stuff of Aeschylus and Sophocles, except the gods were not Olympian but corporate and institutional. In every sense, ours seems a world in which individual human beings - be they trained detectives or knowledgeable reporters, hardened corner boys or third-generation longshoreman or smuggled eastern European sex workers - are destined to matter less and less."

David Simon, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, pp. 634-5.

The last leg

So where were we? Oh yes, I was blogging from our hotel in the Sydney Rocks, while the Dr was exploring the roof-top hot-tub. I went up to join her and we enjoyed the view, choosing to ignore the ominous low and dark cloud out to sea.

This proved to be a mistake as it meant that as we went out to meet Dr Who author Jonathan Blum for tea in Darling Harbour, I was only wearing Birkenstock flip-flops, shorts and tee-shirt. And so got soaked when the heavens opened. There was thunder. There was lightning. There was a river of water higher than the pavement. There was me and the Dr diving into a posh wine bar, looking like drowned and under-dressed rats, texting Jon to come join us.

He did, and when the sky had cleared he took us squelching for tea in Darling Harbour. I had a pizza and shared a bottle of fizz, and we talked a bit of shop and to Jon’s wife Kate Orman by phone, and then me and the Dr squelched back to our hotel, cold and damp but well-fed.

The next day was a bit over-cast, but we explored the Rocks and took pictures. Again we were struck by the Manchester-ness of the lower-tier architecture, with sparkly skyscrapers behind.

Not that I'm sure the photo right really shows that adequately. You'll just have to take my word for it.


We nosed round the observatory that’s so very like the one in Greenwich – though they call the time-keeping bollock on the roof a “time ball”.

Bought a postcard of the upside-down Moon.

Thence a long walk to Darling Harbour again for pancakes with Jon, followed by a trek round the Maritime Museum. The Dr dared suggest it’s better laid out and interpreted than the one she used to work at herself, with plenty of personal stories and artefacts to bring the Big Ships And Stuff to life.

Just time for a beer in Edinburgh Castle (a pub) before the train back to the airport, and we got back to Melbourne in time for me to grab a quick beer with the sister’s boyfriend.

On Thursday, I managed to cock-up the trams to Melbourne Zoo, but we got there eventually. Had a great afternoon of cooing at the creatures and taking photos. The highlight was probably seeing the smallish, cuddly-looking Sumatran tigers getting fed. The keepers poked a syringe of milk through the gaps in the fence, and the tigers lapped away like little kittens. They had to chase the syringe as the keepers moved it around, and they were then touching the tigers’ paws as they poked them through the fence. Just the game I play with the Dim Cat at home through the banisters.

Also good were the apes:

The zoo is laid out in regions, so the tigers and apes from East Asia are amongst Asian trees and buildings, while the marsupials are all in a bit that feels very outback. The koalas hid in the tree and it’s illegal in Victoria for people to handle them anyway, so I didn’t take any pictures. The wombats were all cuddled up in the dark, looking snug and comfy. Again I couldn’t get pictures of them.

Then we trammed back into town and made our way to the Ian Potter Centre. There were fun exhibits of aboriginal artworks and a thing on black in fashion which was very goth and the Dr. Then there was pizza, and we bumped into the sister’s boyfriend again by chance, who spared time for a chat as I accompanied him up to the bike shop.

In the evening, me and the English girls (the Dr, the sister and Erykah) descended en mass on poor old Ian and Mrs Mond for wine and clever bloody Joe Lister on the telly. Couldn’t have been a better last night in Oz, with splendid company and many laughs. Ian even showed us the Wicket T Warwick costume he’d been made to wear on his stag do.

Up early Friday for a very long flight to South Africa, where again I didn’t fit. My auntie met us at the airport, and explained the various things we were driving past on the way back to her house. She dealt very well with what were probably two zombies. I was much tickled, though, that they call traffic lights “robots” – and didn’t know that it’s the Czech word for serfdom.

On Saturday, the auntie and uncle laid on an extraordinary trip round Soweto, with local guide Ken Dalgliesh. No, not the one I used to have a poster of. He’s studied and written on the history of the collection of townships that now has a population of 4.9 million, and is also up to his eyeballs in projects to help and support the poorer bits.

So we went to the market opposite the Hani-Baragwnath hospital, biggest hospital in the southern hemisphere, and the Dr and I braved the protein-rich mopane caterpillars that are a local stable. Past the chicken stranglers and heaps of freshly butchered, fly-covered meat, we ventured into a shebeen (pub) to share a carton of the yeasty, frothy Jo’Burg beer which was home-brewed in the days of Apartheid, when the locals were not allowed the “white man’s” beers. It’s thick, heavy, low-alcohol stuff that reminded me a lot of freshly-squeezed milk. The locals seemed very interested in my hat.

We toured through the various areas of the townships. After the fall of Apartheid, the inhabitants were given the plots of land on which they had their small and basic shacks. In the posher bits, they’ve since extended and enhanced these basic facilities, so you’ll see lavish properties and exquisitely manicured gardens bolted on to the side of a crude oblong of breeze blocks. I assume this juxtaposition is better than demolishing such a reminder of their history, and also serves to show how far the inhabitants have come – and in such a short time.

The aunt and uncle were most surprised by the low walls and lack of armed guards and electric fences that are everywhere in their bit of town. Only recently one of their friends was bound, beaten and robbed by a gang described as “militant”. Incidents like that seem pretty regular, too – they and horrendous car crashes are talked about in the way we might talk of a bad morning on the Tube.

Perhaps Soweto is just a safer, happier place with less divide between the well-off and poor. Or perhaps it has always been self-policing, so that no one would dare risk being caught stealing or anything else. I assume we only saw the tourist-friendly bits of Soweto anyway.

But our tour did include the poorer bits, and we stopped off at a community centre (oddly, built by an American basketball charity) which our guide Ken was very involved with. The smiley, happy children hanging out there quickly threw together a performance of dancing and singing, and were keen to get us dancing too. It was all so impromptu and lively. We also met the old lady who has run the place since its most basic beginnings back in 1954. She’s still the one everyone goes to when approving any new developments or projects.

The main part of the tour, though, was following the route of the march on 16 June 1976, when schoolkids with an average age of 13 protested at having to be taught at least 50 percent in Afrikaans – a language they and many of their teachers did not even speak. The subjects chosen to be taught in Afrikaans were history, geography and mathematics, further disenfranchising the country’s black majority. The kids acted independently of their parents, who they saw as subsumed into the Apartheid regime because they accepted it. And in the Catholic church where many of the kids first assembled that morning, we counted the bullet holes in the ceiling and saw the broken edge of the altar where the camo-wearing South African police had tried to scare them off.

The kids were not scared off, and we followed the route to Vilkazi Street where the police dogs (or, some sources say, a single dog) were set on them. The dog was killed, and then the police started firing into the ranks of children…

One boy, Hector Pieterson, was shot in the back, and a photo of his wounded body being carried by another boy came to embody the massacre. The picture (see the last link) is a classic “pieta” in structure, a tragic emblem that fuelled a tide against the regime. But our guide, though understanding this focus, was keen to acknowledge the other 20 people who died that day – not all of them black – and to talk of the wider context.

We stopped at Vilkazi Street to see the memorial to Hector, and then to the larger memorial with a museum to one side. The museum was full of different perspectives and ideas, if a little text-heavy. It was an intensely moving, fascinating place – so much so that the Dr was quite quiet for the rest of the evening. Seeing it makes it all the more remarkable that the fall of Apartheid didn’t descend into a bloodbath. Those we spoke to all credited that to Nelson Mandela; and they expressed concern that there was still the risk of major violence. There was much discussion (not all of which I followed) about how the BEE policy, despite its best intentions, had widened, not helped, an epidemic skills gap in the country. They await the forthcoming elections with some anxiety.

In the evening we went out to a place near to where my aunt and uncle live for some food. And again it messed up our preconceptions and prejudices about the place. There was a mix of white and black people there, and me and the Dr were both struck by how much more integrated Johannesburg is than either Australia or LA, where the races seemed to much more stick to their own. Even the airport at Johannesburg had hefty tomes trying to reconcile the past (including a book by the Dr’s PhD supervisor); we saw no acknowledgement at all in LA or Australia of their own contributions to racial history. But then I also can’t see the UK producing anything so self-critical on, say, the history of Northern Ireland.

On Sunday, we had a two-hour trip to the 55,000-hectare Pilanesburg game reserve to the north of Johannesburg and spent the day spotting real, wild hippos, giraffes, impalas, zebras, wildebeests, warthogs and what could have been a crocodile but could have been a log. The aunt and uncle apologised for us not seeing rhino and elephant, but we were very happy.

I tried to explain the astonishing vastness of the landscape, like the horizon has been extended twice as far. Various people have told me that once you’ve lived in Africa it gets into your blood, and the mother-in-law still hankers for the continent some 30 years after she left Kenya. I can sympathise. There’s something rich and potent about the brick-red soil, the hugeness of space with its wealth of animals and under the soil in gold and platinum. I guess human beings evolved to best fit this landscape, this climate, this altitude and everything else. We’re already making plans to go back, to see more…

Odd thing. The toilets at the park all offered free condoms. The toilets at Melbourne Zoo had special boxes for disposing of needles. Not sure what this signifies.

My cousin G. took us to a bar in the evening, and made us feel old by not knowing that the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black” was more her mother’s generation than mine. I managed three bottles of Castle beer before we were back to the house for a fantastic spread of spare ribs and some kind of sweetcorn bake.

A quiet day Monday, though we visited the barking mad shopping centre / casino of Montecasino. The whole place is made out like an Italian town, and even the trees and ducks in the river are fake. The ceiling is painted so that half of it’s in “daylight”, the rest at “night”, and I can see when it’s really hot outside it makes sense to hang out in a place like this. But with the constant piped pop music and everything a sell, I was wanting to break out after five minutes. My uncle said it was like the village in the Prisoner – like this was a good thing.

The dire warnings about not bringing your guns into the place, and the security check to get through the door, made me ask about guns in the country. Apparently it's a major problem - people getting shot for beeping bad driving or just for being in the wrong place. Driving is mad too - you don't step on the gas when the lights go green, you pause to let people jump the lights. And the taxi drivers have to be seen to be believed.

After a bit of shopping and chasing the dog round the garden, we made our way to the airport. Plane was two hours late because they’d loaded the wrong baggage on the plane. And then the holiday was all over.

In the taxi from Heathrow, as we got caught up in the tailback behind an accident in Chiswick, I thought how small and squished up the road signs and roads and horizon all seemed. And how pale and cold and unambitious the weather seemed. And how relieved I was to get home and to sleep.

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.