Palma chameleon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Golden Gate

Spent the day at San Francisco's fantabulous Exploratorium, and then walked from there, across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausolito. Knackering, wet and windy - and muggins forgot to take a coat.

• Photos from the Exploratorium 
  
• Photos of the Golden Gate etc.
  

Off to dinner now as a thank you to our landlords, then M. and I fly to LA tomorrow for a weekend's geeky larking.

The long walk

The stunt wife (M.) and I were out of the apartment at half eight this morning to make our 10am boat trip to Alcatraz - see my photos of Alcatraz. Were there for two hours, then had an ENORMOUS lunch of clam chowder soup followed by very rare tuna steak. Om nom nom.

We then walked to the cable car stop, cabled up the absurdly steep hills to the Cable Car Museum, and generally wowed at the big turney wheels. Next, we clambered down the hill to Union Square, had a coffee, and then trekked to a shop called Giant Robot, down 17th street and back to our pad. Got in just after six - a three-and-a-bit hour walk. All sorts of wild buildings and sights along the way. The photos of the walk are tagged "francisco", or you browse through the whole damn lot via the useful tag "san".

See how easy I make it? (I didn't just stuff up the tagging like a fool.)

Tomorrow, close up on the Golden Gate Bridge. And my feet hurt.

Vegas and the Hoover Dam

Having a lovely time. Today's the first day we've not had rain since I got here; and I've spent all day indoors finishing rewrites. But now I am FREE - and can do Alcatraz and the Cable Car Museum and the Golden Gate Bridge before knocking down to LA for the weekend.

Fab weekend in Vegas though: will try to write up my notes on the place before long. But in the meantime on Flickr, there are photos of Vegas and photos of the Hoover Dam.

First past the post

Home from sunny Spain to grey and cold London, though we're told we should be thankful that it is not raining. Shall endeavour to write up where and which we got up to, but am a little pressed for time...

Plenty of post awaited us, including additional presents for the Dr's birthday. The cat seems to have found her a Sony PRS-505 e-book reader which is loading up plenty of dead people now.

I've got my copies of Doctor Who & How the Doctor Changed My Life, plus a glut of emails from the authors who are all justifiably packed with squee. You can also see the latest Benny play there, too. Hoorah!

Scott forwarded me this interesting article on "real" writing as opposed to that wretched, TV tie-in stuff. And a few people have sent sample chapters and scripts and stuff they want me looking over. But the sizeable amount of work I got done in Spain needs writing up more pressingly...

Got lots to do tomorrow then to Cardiff on Friday for the weekend. Will endeavour, where time allows, to wave a tentacle from here.

Solid gold shit, maestro

The Dr and K strong-armed me last night to the Take That musical, Never Forget, together with a coven of beautiful ladies, P. (the DJ from our wedding what likes his nonsense pop) and Unloveable.

The wheeze is that two best mates audition for a Take That tribute band 'cos they need the cash. But the ersatz Gary Barlow is clearly the one with the talent, and the temptation is to pursue his own career at the expense of his friends and fiancée. Along the way there's a lot of singing, jokes and dance routines.

Jason Haigh-Ellery is one of the show's producers and also my boss on other stuff, so I am of contractually obliged to have enjoyed myself. But that was fun. Bouncy, silly, fluffy fun with lots of ladies in the audience shrieking with enjoyment. Some of it is gobsmacking: a special effect at the end of act one, the extra chorus for the song at the end...

The encore got the house on its feet. I didn't know the words or the movements so stood, at least a foot taller than anyone else in the building, like a lemon/ourang-outan hybrid. Our coven of girls squeeed their way out of the theatre assuring each other they'd go back with various friends and hen nights. So a palpable hit, I think.

Have spent today rushing about trying to get things done as we're off on holiday to Spain tomorrow. Spent an age looking for the plug adaptor for my laptop, before thinking to look in the laptop bag. Have written author notes for Doctor Who and the Judgement of Isskar which reveal our initial plan, and those nice fellows at Big Finish have also posted up details of The Prisoners' Dilemma – a companion piece also out in January.

A new adventure with the Seventh Doctor as told by his companion, Ace.

Two prisoners meet in a prison cell. Zara is searching for the segments of the Key to Time; she was only born yesterday but already she’s killed hundreds of people. Ace is more ambitious: she was going to kill everyone on the planet.

What have they got against the people of Erratoon? They go peaceably about their simple assignments, beneath their artificial sky. They share their meals and leisure time and they never ask questions. Are they even real?

Ace and Zara will only survive if they can trust each other. Or perhaps if they sell each other out... If not their awful punishment is to become just like everyone else.

Since I'm in Spain, I sadly won't be attending the Blake's 7 convention this weekend, though many of my colleagues on the new audio series will be. Ben Aaronovitch, James Swallow, Marc Platt and Alistair Lock will be appearing alongside a great wealth of the original TV show to celebrate its 30th birthday.

It's apparently 30° in Malaga at the moment. Bliss. I will endeavour to post from the pool.

How you get there

Who knew Liverpool has a spaceport? It’s conveniently on the edge of the Mersey, looking out across to the Capital of Culture, nestling about halfway between the two tall towers that ventilate tunnels under the river. The art deco building looks like something out of Dan Dare, but there’s no rockets or spaceships or evil Treens on show. Just a Doctor Who exhibition.

We passed the spaceport on Saturday morning as we made our way to the building next door, the Seacombe ferry terminal. As a treat for my brother-in-law’s 30th birthday, we were off on a cruise down the Manchester ship canal – all 36 miles up to Salford.

Yes, it’s up – the five locks we went though lifted us a total of 17 metres. And since the working ships take precedence over a pleasure cruise like ours, there was a lot of hanging around to get into the canal in the first place. We spent more than an hour shunting around in front of the Eastham entrance waiting for the tide, as one such heavily laden ship in the lock needed the Mersey to be deeper.

When the sun peeked through the clouds, it was all very pleasant. But there was a general grey drear and biting gale from the east that meant our red faces owe us much to frostbite as to suntan. We resorted to whisky and crisps and canoodling to keep back the cold.

There was also plenty of waving to be done; the workers on the boats we passed and on the docks and quays, people even coming out of their canalside houses to wave as we went by. Perhaps that suggests the quietness of the route. My late grandmother could remember a trip down to Cornwall sometime in the 1920s, and people coming out their houses to gawp at the car going past. Perhaps it's also to do with the canal being a gentler, more amenable way of getting about than your usual 21st century haste.

The canal was opened in 1894 – the same year as Tower Bridge in London – and all along the route there’s evidence of the extraordinary Victorian engineering. The Dr had fun taking pictures of the various bridges: ones that swung apart to let the masts of ships through, or built up so high over the canal the mast could duck under them.

There was also a constant commentary: not always audible outside on deck, where the gale blew it all about. They turned up the volume, which only made it like shouting below deck. And a little off-putting when you went to the toilet, which had it’s own set of speakers. The lady speaking gave a broad, industrial history – including what industries line the canal today – but tactfully ignored any mention of how vehemently Liverpool opposed the canal in the first place. And maybe there was a bit too much pointing out of things we could already see: ducks and heron on the water, or yet another bridge.

(J. also objected to the idea that traffic on the M60 overhead would all be going to the Trafford Centre.)

The main industry today seemed to be things of power: coal for the coal-fired powerstation, or colour-coded pipes full of gas. And much was made of the canal’s green credentials. It had been neglected after the Second World War, and not just from the impact of bombing. The huge number of planes built in the war meant that airfreight was cheap in peacetime, and quicker than going by boat. But these days, the cost of petrol and environmental concerns mean that the canal is on the up.

In fact, there was plenty of economic joy on show. Liverpool’s Liver building and twin cathedrals are overshadowed by splendid new skyscrapers. It reminded me and the Dr of Sydney; the huge and sturdy Victorian buildings dwarfed by the shiny new tier. But maybe the modern architecture makes all cities look too much the same: this could have been Cardiff or Bristol or Canary Wharf too.

And at journey’s end there was Salford, with its Imperial War Museum and Lowry Centre, and the building site that will soon be the BBC. Again, it felt Canary Wharf and Cardiff, shiny and groovy with plenty of posh drinking and eating, but no different from too many other places. Were it not for the accents of the deferrying passengers, we could have been anywhere.

We trammed into town to join more of J.’s chums (including the Yemayan Ambassador from page 91 of The Pirate Loop) and had our second curry in two days. Made the last train back to Macclesfield, and were home for the last half-hour of Moonraker.

Journey back to London the next day took as long as the canal trip; there are no trains through Macclesfield this whole week – I assume they’ve closed the line at half-term because working commuters take precedence over paying customers merely using the train for fun. So we went via Reading (and beer with H. and J.), and enjoyed screaming children and a girl who wept into her mobile that the boy she’d dumped and told to go find someone else to snog had only gone and done that.

Blimey, we thought. How long ago that teenage stuff now seems. And like the canals and railways, we struggle against the laws of physics to fend off our decrepitude. It is back to the gym tomorrow…

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.

Sydney rocks!

We are now in Sydney, and have had a nice time wandering about and looking at things. The Botanical Gardens (the green bit to the left of the bridge and opera house in the pics) is chock full of all kinds of different and exotic trees. And they are chock full of bats!

You'll have to wait till the Dr gets her film developed for pics as they were too far away for my mobile. But cor it was like the trees were ripe with fat, black and burnt fruits. And then they'd yawn and stretch their bin-bag-like wings. And they look all russet and hairy and would probably be nice to cuddle...

Then on to the Domain (the green bit behind the Botanical Gardens) and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The building itself is a lot like the Art Gallery in Edinburgh, and housed some fun archaeologically-correct stuff by Alma-Tadema and his mates as well as some fun contemporary and aborginal artworks.

I was especially impressed with this fella in the entrance lobby, and asked special permission of one of the staff to take his picture. As te staff fella said, it was almost as if he'd been sculpted to have his picture taken on a mobile. And them whiskers are sure something to aspire to.

We meandered into Hyde Park, enjoyed the buses and signs to Lewisham, Sydenham, Croydon, Dulwich and Chiswick, and I suggested that a fountain-sculpture of Theseus presenting his meat and two-veg while about to stab the minotaur was all a bit Torchwood, being all blatant sex and monsters. The Dr days there's quite a lot of that in antiquity, and I now have visions of spin-off show Torchwood 2000 BC.

Down Market Street and along George Street, we stopped off to take a pic of the Dr in front of Challis House. Apparently this long-bearded bigwig bequethed lots of cash to local educational somethings. The Dr was rather pleased.

Like Melbourne, there's the same two-tier feel to the place; heavy, blocky Victorian and later building in the shadow of brand spanking new skyscrapers. The Dr kept thinking it looked like Manchester, and the colonies also look like Britain's trading posts in Bristol and Edinburgh and what of London wasn't bombed. You have to remember that it's not that Oz was built in the image of Britain, but that all these colonial towns and cities were influencing each other. Bristol and Edinburgh, London and Manchester are all a brick-and-mortar dialogue with the rest of the world.

Or maybe I have sunstruck myself.

Thence to the Museum of Contemporary Arts, just a stone's throw from our hotel. Lots of aboriginal bark paintings and some depressing documentaries about just how well the native population has been shafted by us Westerners in the last 200 years.

Yesterday we did a wine tour which was entirely splendid; with just me, the Dr, A. and J. being driven round by the helpful Neil, who chatted and advised and bent the whole day around our unhelpfully faffy whims. Started at the Chandon estate and drank fizz. I'd assumed that any French-owned wineries in the Yarra Valley would date from the nineteenth century, with refugees from the phylloxera epidemic that ate up European grapes. Turns out this place only opened in 1985, part of a general expansion into the southern hemisphere (Brazil etc.) and all related to demand.

Drove round a few places and tried all kids of lovely stuff. Many growers have been able to see the affects of climate change on what they're producing; atypical weather in recent years that's unheard of in a century of records. Last year's harvest was badly damaged by completely unexpected hale! It also means that some vineyards are having to rethink what grapes they grow.

The oldest vineyard in the Yarra Valley is a nineteenth century escapee of ignoble rot. Yaring had lots of nice stuff, but by that point we were rather well oiled and instead tried some Boules outside in the sun. I even managed to win one of the three games I played, no doubt due to the genetic heritage.


Oh, and one last pic. This is typical of the full-body horrors to be found on the packs of cigarettes over here. None of your big-type Helvetica, just screaming bloody nightmares.

You may need something nice to look at after that. And Brilliant-Looking by Candlelight has an all-squeeing post about The Pirate Loop, with fun pictures and joy and everything. Which is nice.

There's also exciting news from T. and I. back in Blighty. But I do't think we're meant to mention it yet until Everyone Has Been Told. So we have raised a glass of fizz to them but kept our lips firmly sealed...

Grey

It is a bit grey and cold here in Melbourne today. I am in an internet caff in St Kilda - and the locals queue up to tell you that there was no such person as St Kilda, so it's all a bit of a paradox.

On Friday we went to Melbourne Gaol, which is a pretty harrowing experience and devoid of happy endings. The gaol is based on the panoptic model of Pentonville (as are many of the older prisons in the UK), with the idea being a) securing the maximum number of prisoners with the minimum number of guards and b) breaking the prisoners down by means of isolation tactics. A lot of the time as an inmate, you're not sure if you're being watched - the same principle on which a lot of CCTV works.

We were delighted to find the anti-masturbation gloves that had apparently become a highlight of the tour after a Billy Connolly programme. But mostly each of the open cells described the girsly life and despatch of an executed inmate, usually with a cast of their dead bonce. Again and again the inmates were non-English speaking, and/or convicted on the most scrappy circumstantial evidence. Several of the convictions have since been over-turned.

Worse was realising that the prison's official flagellators and executioners were other inmates. Ned Kelly was hanged by a convict imprisoned for flooding a street with sewage and other public nuisances. This meant that the hangings could be rather botched; the whole point of hanging is, done right, it causes immediate death. Getting it wrong either leads to a slow garotting and asphixiation, or can tear the head clean off.

So was using inmates to do the dirty work a way of not getting your hands dirty, or a way of making the prisoners complicit in the system?

We then went on a tour of the jail cells used up until 1995, with a bolshy actress dressed up as a policeman being very strict. She divided us from people we were with, so we explored the cells with strangers. She called us "it" if we stepped out of line, and she alluded to all sorts of gruesome miseries that had happened in the cells. Again, it's all about authority breaking down the individual, but also you pick up very quickly how to play the game. Do as you're told, don't make yourself noticed, and you might survive...

Needed some beer after all this institutional stuff, and hooked up with some buddies later on. I have also done a lot of reading, which I shall write up another time. Pip pip.

Yet to see the upside-down moon

Hello from sunny Melbourne. It rained yesterday, which was good as I ended up having some urgent rewrites to do on something as yet unannounced.

What did get announced on Saturday was that I am writing for the new audio Blake's 7 series. Mine is about the adventures of Jenna Stannis prior to her meeting Blake. I sat on a panel with producer Andrew Sewell, new Blake actor Derek Riddell (from Ugly Betty and Dr Who versus ninjas and werewolves) and moderator Andrew Cartmel.

In fact Saturday was a VERY long day, with no end of panels and signings and just chat. The Dr was a bit impressed by how hard everyone works at these things, and she's already talking about how next year we'll go visit San Francisco, so I think she enjoyed herself too.

Met a whole bunch of people who I'd only spoken to on email, and am doing that again tonight. Ian Mond and Dave Hoskin are both Strains I have employed. Now it's their turn to buy me beer...

Off to the Museum of Immigration first, and have some other museums tomorrow. On Monday we are going up the Yarra Valley on a tour of wine. Mmm. Wine.

I have experimented with the sink and watched water swirl backwards. but still haven't seen the upside-down moon. Oh, and Australian money is brightly coloured and made of plastic.

Right. Off to have breakfast now...

Kitsch 'n' sink

Hello again. It's been a while, hasn't it? I can tell by the length of your hair.

I am almost entirely out the other side of a very busy period, and 20 pages of script from my HOLIDAY. Having not been real for months and months, I'm now getting rather excited. I've not been south of the equator before (or, I think, any further down the planet than Egypt), so 10 nights in Australia and three in Johannesburg is really An Adventure. Connections depending, I shall keep you up to date with my movements.

I am bashing out these words on my funky new MSI PR210 notebook, which I bought specially for the trip. It's a sleek and disturbingly unheavy lovely, though I find I keep missing occasional keys. The compromise was between something small and light for trekking about, but with a keyboard that still fitted my fingers.

After much fangling about, I've also got the wireless wossnames to work. (The technique seems to be to restart your computer continually for two hours until all the wossnames have loaded.) And I'd thought the laptop would latch on to the wireless thing itself, but it needs drivers and a ZyXEL router thing that looks like a USB memory stick.

This means I'm now sat in our rooftop kitchen, the unexpected sunshine rather nice on my back. As well as what remains of the as-yet-unannounced script, I've also had a chance to look over the novel that I'm intending to write while I'm away. Or at least, to break the back of.

It's a thriller that's not a tie-in to anything else, and I gamble that if I mention it here, people will ask me about it. And that pressure will mean that rather than just thinking through the clever plot mechanations, I might actually get the thing done.

Along with the wireless wossname, I've also signed us up to Virgin Media, which has all been going swimmingly. The Dr and I took great delight in watching Ashes to Ashes last night via the Telly On Demand gizmo. Laughed like fool - and was terrified by the clown! What with Torchwood and that Dot episode of EastEnders last fortnight, didn't telly get all good?

We then continued the retro 80s vibe by watching the first episode of Survival. "Weird," concluded the Dr. Though she thought the scraggy black cat (that some friends of mine till insist is called Shomi) was so like our own that I must have chosen him on purpose. Honestly, no. But we do seem to have the only cat ever who really likes having his fur brushed in the wrong direction.

If Shomi is Shaggy, asked m'colleague Scott Andrews, "Does that make Sophie Aldred Velma or Daphne?"

I think Sylvester McCoy would be Velma.

Ándale! Ándale! Arriba!

The gringo who so often harangues me for not updating this thing has started his very own blog. Keep up with his adventures as he explores the dark continent and its pretty girls. And pester him for new posts.

I’m going to be here sporadically until I jet off to LA in the small hours of 13 February. So much work stuff to deliver before I go, and just two weeks’ sand left to drool through the narrow bit of the timer.

“How the Doctor Changed my Life” is about four-fifths signed-off and done. The 25 first-time authors have been doing themselves proud with conscientious rewrites. Most have argued with at least some of my suggestions, though no one has done any shouting. It’s been a really good process all told, and well worth all the effort. Trying to fathom the running order, I’m delighted how strong a collection this will be. Hooray!

Cover to come sometime soonish, I think. Plus news of the book’s bonus features.

Meanwhile, Bernice Summerfield – The Wake is just out, ending my run on 15 consecutive Bennies. A few nice people have said nice things, though I was a bit surprised by two people who thought What Happens to Doggles just comes out of nowhere. I thought I’d nicely set this up in his dinner date with Benny, and earlier in The End of the World’s final scene. Ah well…

I’m also well into writing something that cannot be spoken of, have begun something else that cannot be spoken of, have three short scripts to write up for Codename Moose, a script about carrots to be written by August for John S Drew, and have bought the book about something else top secret which I can pitch for when I’m back from my holiday.

Well, I say holiday; the plan is to take with me my funky new laptop and break the back of the standalone novel I’ve been meaning to write for some years. Have scooped up plenty of useful details for this from some recent reading: coal fires, smoking compartments and something for headaches called venganin…

Spent the weekend at what m’colleague M has described rather well as “a two-day pub quiz”. On Saturday night I thought my all-out blaspheming had led to a strange hallucination. No, apparently, Matt Lucas was not an apparition and saw me and Nimbos "hilariously" breaking some rules… Not sure this is actually better than the thought that my brain had invented him.

Also learnt how to eat hot-cross buns quickly; stuffing them into your mouth leads to dried-out gagging. The trick is to tear off small pieces, which can be swallowed more quickly. You get this top tip for free.

Cloud Atlas

The last few days I have been a Simon Head-in-Air. If I remember rightly, this means I’m due to fall into a canal and drown. And the reason for this is Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Cloudspotter’s Guide. (For those who’ve not been keeping up, here’s what I thought of the novel Cloud Atlas.)

As you’d expect, it explains how to identify the main kinds of clouds. And reading it is like an epiphany – I find I’m looking up on the way to work, or while waiting for buses and trains. As Pretor-Pinney says, it’s a hobby you can take part in anywhere, and for as long or as little as you wish.

The nebulous nature of clouds means several share characteristics or even bits of the same name – alto, cirro, cumulo, nimbo, strato. I got even more list over which combinations merge into which other combinations, and then there’s the huge number of sub-species, features and effects. It’s no wonder the book comes complete with a cloudspotter’s diploma. (There are also copious plugs for the Cloud Appreciation Society, which the author founded.)

Mixed in with the scientific explanations and Latin etymology are a wealth of top facts. For example, I now know where the phrases “cloud nine” and “cloud cuckooland” come from. Yet, as well as the top facts, there’s far too many terrible jokes and asides which can get a little grating. Part of me wonders how much that stuff just pads it out, and how much the author or his editors feared scaring punters off with too much technicalia. The clutter of tangents and silly bits makes it harder to remember the clues to diagnosis. Of course, this is a book to carry with you and refer back to, but I’m a bit annoyed I don’t remember more as I went along.

The penultimate chapter is perhaps the most interesting, as it covers man-made clouds. First there’s the militaro-cloud technologies, as worked on by sci-fi writer Kurt Vonnegut’s brother Bernard. In the movie of the book I imagine him played by Andre Morrell (or his modern equivalent, which would be Ian McKellen). Anyway, back in the 1940s and 50s, Bernard K (not Bernard Kay. See, these asides are annoying!) studied how clouds formed, and that led to seeing if they could be influenced or controlled.

Soon the US Naval Weapons Center took over the funding of this research. According to Pretor-Pinney, this was because it was believed that the Russians were also investigating the same area – though he gives no evidence for this belief. I can’t help feeling it’s a good excuse to do stuff you want to do anyway. Can’t get permission to build atomic bombs, rocket to the moon or stock your museum with other people’s statues? Hell, just say, “But if we don’t, some foreigners will…”.

So what was the result of the militaro-clouds?

“Operational cloud seeding commenced on 20 May 1967 and continued for six years over parts of Laos, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and Cambodia, at an estimated annual cost of around $3.6 million a year. It is impossible to say whether it was really successful in increasing rainfall, since no systematic assessment of precipitation was made after the initial test phase, which itself could not be considered to be statistically rigorous.”

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloudspotter’s Guide, p. 264.

Still, once the story got out that clouds were being developed as weapons, there was a bit of a rumpus. Some laws were passed to technically stamp out any further such projects. But, amazingly enough, the US has wriggled around its own legislation and Pretor-Pinney lists some unsettling developments.

More unsettling, though, is the second part of the same chapter, which addresses the clouds produced by plans. Condensation trails (or “contrails” if you wanna get with the lingo) have been the hot topic of debate for cloudies recently. There’d been some discussion anyway about how they influenced weather systems – affecting other clouds’ formation. And then, when US airplanes were grounded after 11 September 2001, eagle-eyed observers noticed that this pause seemed to have an affect on ground temperatures. Since then, it’s been shown that contrails “reduced ground temperatures during the day and raised them at night” (p. 274) – by as much a whole degree centigrade.

(Yes, that’s quite a lot.)

Pretor-Pinney is good at covering the different possible outcomes of this – it could add to global warming, it could lower temperatures – and also of the problems in trying to tackle it. Getting planes to fly lower would stop contrails forming, but would make them use up more fuel. So whichever way, the environment is shagged.

A little ironically, the final chapter sees Pretor-Pinney jetting off to the other side of the planet to see a cloud formation that’s also been seen over the English Channel. The “Morning Glory” is a miles-long tube of cloud that can clearly be seen cutting across the north of Australia in a wowing satellite image. Turns out that the place Pretor-Pinney goes to see it is Burketown, one of the dusty, ramshackle stop-offs on my brother’s trek across the outback.

Yes, he tells me, everyone talked about the “Morning Glory”. No, he admits, he wasn’t there at the right time to see it.

Egypt in a hedge

On Saturday, I went to see Paul Cornell in Faringdon, about 17 miles out of Oxford. There was quite a lot of lager and a furious game of Spoof (where you have to guess the totals of everyone's 0-3). And the next morning, after a late but hearty breakfast and the minute's silence, I was taken for a quick gander round the local highlights.

We admired the spindly folly, which only got planning permission on the proviso that it also had a wood planted so people wouldn't actually see it. I took a picture of the statue called Egypt apparently "rescued" from the Crystal Palace.

Since I'm usually rubbish at taking photos, I'm really rather pleased with how this one came out. Especially since it was taken on my Sony Ericsson flip-phone. (I have looked to see what make it is, but it doesn't seem to say. "M2" seems to be the type of the battery. But is a black phone, with large friendly keys.)

My host then took me into the churchyard to see a cannonball lodged in the side of the wall. Gobber Cromwell apparently had a battery of guns placed where the folly now stands. Only the cannonball is not the relic of the civil wars - it was put there by some eminent Victorians to make the church more exciting.

Puritanical headwear

A long day yesterday in the fens, cobbling together research. There's this thing I've got in mind that needs me doing some reading. Got to the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon pretty much as it opened and made a lot of notes. The place is about the size of my living room, but free and crammed with useful things. And there's two whole portraits of... what it is I'm interested in. The helpful fellow behind the counter looked up some stuff for me, too. And on the way back to the station I had a quite nice pasty.

Train to Peterborough (where, annoyingly, I could have looked something else up; though I only realised that a couple of hours later), and then a long wait for a train to Ely. Lots of grumbling from lots of people with luggage who were late getting to Liverpool and Stansted.

M. joined me at Ely and we took the scenic route into town, along the river and through the jubilee gardens. Oliver Cromwell's old house is also the tourist infomation centre, a stripey old ex-pub now full of posh jams and chocolate. We paid the £4 each for a tour, and were narrated through wood-pannelled rooms with dwarf-sized interconnections. Made some more notes, watched a film about drainage narrated by John Craven, giggled in the "haunted" room and tried on lots of hats.

(M. took plenty more of me looking foolish, which I'll post when he bungs 'em over.)

We then poked our heads into Ely Cathedral, but thought it all too expensive to go further. Some school girls amused themselves with the floor-set labyrinth and M. explained that the cathedral's tower is the "lantern of the fens". John Craven's film had shown us how Ely used to be an island, and even as recently as 1947 suffered 100 square miles of flood.

Pottered down the high street, which set off alarms bells in me 'cos I grew up in a similar cosy market town. The same genteel, Georgian (I guess) buildings that are now Woolworths and Clinton Cards. Was just about to say that there didn't seem anything for the young folks when we spotted some teens looking bored outside the Spar.

Stopped off at the pub and then a slow journey back to London on a train with an ever-in-use loo. Thence to Nimbos for bacon sandwiches, 'cos we are so daring.

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…

Mike and the mechanics

Am re-watching Michael Palin’s adventure Round the World in 80 Days. It’s, ahem, research for a current writing project, which means seeing things I never before thought of about how these things get made.

Like Verne’s Phileas Fogg 116 years before him (though not actually in real life), Michael has to get round the globe in just 11.4 weeks or forfeit £20. He’s not allowed to travel by plane, and he’s got to make something watchable as telly in the process.

It’s a bit strange to realise he’s now been doing these travelogues 20 years. And it’s also odd to see him not yet the established traveller, taking tips from Alan Whicker on how the job is done.

(Whicker’s advice: only ever speak English, and make sure you’re always comfortable.)

The authoritative baton of BBC adventurer is passed on to the uncertain Palin. I’m not sure whether it’s his doing or just a fact of the times that what follows is a completely different style of documentary. Where telly travel used to be classy and exotic, now it’s a celebration of the primitive and “real”.

We see the hardships and misunderstandings and – famously – the diarrhoea. Crucially, it’s at its best as telly when things are most going up tits.

It’s part of the special character of the piece that Michael must also plot his own course, struggling to find transport that will keep him on schedule. Spurning air travel means how he gets there is as much of the story as what he sees along the way.

The world in 1988 seems a very alien place, at once unsophisticated and innocent. Communications are by chunky, squawky phones and its tapes of Bruce Springsteen on a fat old Walkman that show Michael to be the technophile Westerner. There’s a passing reference to war in Iraq, and they don’t even yet mean Gulf War One.

Palin offers an insightful and generous perspective on the world and we’re with him every step of the way. But the makers seem uncertain of him on this first venture. There’s some oddly judged gags worked into the editing. A sound effect added to the scenes in Venice suggest he’s fallen off the quayside just out of shot.

It’s not needed – there’s plenty of laughs from Palin’s onscreen antics, the unfolding story and all the odd things they really see. The Dr was delighted to see her precious Venetian lions being used by a tramp for a bed.

As I said, a current bit of work means I’m all eagle-eyed for detail about the mechanics of how it got filmed.

For example, at Bombay Michael leaves a dhow (though only old colonials call these little boats that). He’s taken off in a little launch, and we watch him from the dhow he’s just left.

What happened to the cameraman who shot that sequence? Presumably he got a later launch and had to catch up. Or did Michael’s launch come back for him, after they’d filmed that bit?

Often the camera is ahead of Michael. We’re watching from across a busy office as Michael first steps inside. Did they all negotiate to set up the camera, then get Michael to duck back outside the door, telling the workers to pretend they’ve not seen him before?

When buying train tickets in Bombay, we see Michael struggling to find the right queue, and then getting to the window to buy his single ticket. This is a conceit because we already know he’s travelling with his own "Passpartout" – a cameraman, a soundman and their director.

What’s more, we watch him buy his ticket from the other side of the ticket kiosk, looking over the shoulder of the seller and at Michael’s face peering in at the plexiglass.

Presumably the filmmakers have negotiated to get inside the ticket office, and so they must have explained what they were up to, where they were going and sorted out tickets for the four of them.

Because of that trickery, you start questioning other things. They say they’ve not got reservations on the train they want, but are merely on a waiting list. And Michael later tells us that someone’s claimed his seat.

But there’s no footage to corroborate any of that, and when we do get to see him, he’s rather comfy in first class.

It's all a tissue of lies!

Yes, of course I can see how it makes for a more engaging picture. But I’d kind of assumed that documentaries were about veracity. In fiction, you can’t get away with such cheats in your storytelling.