Books finished, January 2010

I've nicked this from a chap called Roo Reynolds, whose own blog I stalk. Here are the books I've finished this month:

"The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart" by Jesse Bullington
Reviewed this for Vector, so I'll blog that later this year. But spectacularly not my cup of tea and I struggled to find anything nice to say. Sorry, Jesse. Amazon's reviewers clearly like it.

"The Story of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster" by John Field
A rather dry, worthy and partisan history of the buildings most people refer to as the "Houses of Parliament" - you can tell Field was a teacher. Some periods in history are lavished in detail, others barely get a mention. For example, Field abruptly jumps from the Second World War to the end of the 20th Century, with a rant about democracy now and our place within it.

Yet there's plenty of fascinating top facts and insights. There's the appalling comedy-of-errors as bureaucracy and petty politics, committees, inquiries and an ever-changing brief hamper the building of Pugin and Barry's new palace in the mid-Nineteenth Century - and killed off both those men. The frescoes of radiant British history famously came out too dark because of the inclement British weather, while the over-large statues of major British figures were quietly moved elsewhere. It leaves you amazed that we ever had an Empire. You can almost believe the old argument that we took Africa and India more by accident than design.

I was also fascinated by subtle changes wrought on the constitution during the brief reign of Edward VI. His dad, remember, had broken off from the Catholic church so as to get a new wife (which is why anyone from the Church of England who speaks against divorce and remarriage should be beheaded for Treason). During Edward's reign (with my emphasis in bold),

"The 1548 Parliament passed the First Act of Uniformity, which introduced an English prayer book, imposed penalties for non-observance, and ordered the suppression of both images and Latin primers. It was the first occasion when religious practice had been proscribed by a secular authority. The Second Act of Uniformity followed in the 1552 Parliament which required every subject to attend church on Sunday, at one of the rechristened services of morning prayer, evening prayer, or the Lord's supper. This Act was the beginning of 'keeping Sunday special'. It was accompanied, appropriately by an Act for the control of alehouses by Justices of the Peace, when liquor began for the first time to be licensed."

John Field, "The Story of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster", p. 79.

So "keeping Sunday special" was a specifically anti-Catholic measure, not our version of the Sabbath. It's also worth noting that Edward VI did not so much rule himself as governed through helpful "uncle" figures and Parliament - nearly a century before Oliver Cromwell, let alone the constitutional monarchy of William and Mary.

It's packed with stuff like this. Another favourite is in 1842, when the non-parliamentary Royal Fine Arts Commission held a competition for the interior decoration of the new palace, with two notable firsts:

"Cartoons were invited, either of subjects from British history, of of scenes from the works of Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton. The exhibition [of these] was the occasion for Punch to appropriate the word 'cartoon' and apply it for the first time to comic subjects, the magazine's own spoof entries. It was the first time that state patronage had been offered to artists."

Ibid., p. 191.

Field is right that the palace today still feels like a gentleman's club, with arcane rules and traditions deliberately aimed at tripping up the newcomer. He's also good on Lords reform, and the value of individuals of experience and with ostensibly less party allegiance to the scrutiny of Bills. So plenty of valuable research and insight, but the phrasing and grammar could be better, and there are odd concentrations of focus which mean the book loses a few marks.

"Matilda" by Roald Dahl

"It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful."

Roald Dahl, "Matilda", p.1.

I've long meant to remedy the Dr's ignorance of the works of Roald Dahl. This was a perfect place to start, with a small, bespectacled and earnest girl who was reading newspapers at the works of Charles Dickens at the age of five. She was quite enthralled.

It's odd for me reading it again how thrilling and vivid it is, with Dahl simply and elegantly drawing us in to the adventure. It struck not only how black and white his characters are - villains like Matilda's parents and Miss Trunchball are 100 per cent villainous - but that this reflects a child-like view of grown-ups. There's no sense of these adults having once been children themselves - Miss Trunchball denies that very thing - or of their characters and outlooks developing. What, I wondered, went so wrong to turn Miss Trunchball into such a monster?

It also seems of its time, with Dahl sniffy about television and Matilda's dad a brash, conscience-less small businessman, reaping the boon of the Eighties. The plot is about a young girl taking charge of her life and reclaiming a stolen inheritance - just like the Victorian novels that Matilda reads. But it's also about the pernicious greed of its age.

It also seems odd now that Dahl recommends Hemmingway and, "Brighton Rock" to the children readers, and quotes from Dylan Thomas' haunting, "In Country Sleep". And I'm delighted this edition includes writing tips from Dahl, which includes his "constant unholy terror of boring the reader". We're already working our way through more of Dahl, so will blog some more on him soon.

"Family Britain 1951-57" by David Kynaston
I loved "Austerity Britain", which I read last year and singularly failed to blog. This picks up the story, a whopping, fat mash of diary extracts, political journals, news, sport and current affairs, building up an impression of the era. It's utterly compelling and covers such enormous ground. Kynaston's got an eye for details which inform or reflect the worries of our own age - the terror of "coshing" from teenage boys, the fury of the tabloid press, the floods and train disasters and the impact of invading - in this case, Suez - without a UN mandate. The truth is just starting to come out as the book closes, with Prime Minister Eden's explicit lie to the Commons about there having been no secret plot with Israel.

Kynaston's also good at explaining the effect of such moments, such as this quotation from the Daily Mirror on 5 November 1956, explaining why everyone must abide by international law if it's to have any meaning:

"'Once British bombs fell on Egypt the fate of Hungary was sealed,' asserted its leader. 'The last chance of asserting moral pressure on Russia was lost when Eden defied the United Nations over Suez.' Almost certainly Khruschev would have acted as he did anyway, sooner rather than later, but undeniably Suez provide opportune cover."

David Kynaston, "Family Britain 1951-57", p. 688.

The struggles of the British Communist Party to reconcile themselves to the fate of Budapest - and to revelations about all Stalin had been up to - seem another world, as are the worries about coal fires and rationing, or the assigned roles for men and women. It's the world we live in and another planet - something you can experience with this incredible, haunting slideshow of photographs of the 1950s.

Three choice moments from the book to whet your need to read it: in 1952 in Oxford,

"a thrusting Australian undergraduate had stood for secretary of the University Labour Club and, in defiance of the rule against open canvassing, had campaigned on the slogan, 'Rooting for Rupert'. Complaints were made to the club's chairman, Gerald Kaufman, who initiated a tribunal. The outcome was that young Rupert Murdoch was not allowed to stand for office."

Ibid., p.102.

That same year, the forthcoming White Paper about ending the BBC's monopoly on television - allowing the creation of ITV - led to "agitated correspondence" in the Times:

"'This is the age of the common man, whose influences towards the deterioration of standards of culture are formidable in all spheres,' warned Lord Brand. 'It is discouraging to find that it is in the Conservative Party which one would have thought would be by tradition the party pledged to maintain such standards, that many members in their desire to end anything like a monopoly, seem ready to support measures which will inevitably degrade them.' Violet Bonham Carter agreed: 'We are often told the B.B.C. should "give the people what they want". But who are "the people"? The people are all the people - including minorities. Broadcasting by the B.B.C. has no aim but good broadcasting. Broadcasting by sponsoring has no other motive but to sell goods."

Ibid., p. 106.

Just as today, hacking flesh from the BBC might let other people make money - some of them Tory grandees - but does it mean any improvement in telly? There's an argument now that ITV has suffered not because it's up against the BBC, but because commerical television can only flourish and not dilute the quality of its material while it has a monopoly, too.

And though I don't agree with the sentiment, I loved Churchill's masterful analogy for the political divide at the 1955 General Election:

"'Queuetopia remained Churchill's central metaphor for socialism in action - a term designed specifically to appeal to housewives. 'We are for the ladder,' he declared in his election broadcast. 'Let all try their best to climb. They are for the queue. Let each wait in his place till his turn comes.'"

Ibid., p. 33.

In all the book is a window into an age so much like and so different from our own - an expert piece of world-building, to use the science-fiction term. Interspersed with the names of films and performers, brands of cigarette and clothes, sportsmen and commentators and etc., the impression builds into a vivid portrait. It's a place of green smog that stings the throat like pepper and shrouds the stage from an opera-going audience, of "National butter", of the slow, slow end of rationing and the first shifts in public opinion on the medieval laws on homosexuality and on capital punishment. A glorious book and enthralling. I eagerly await the next volume.

Chased

The Doctor Who Restoration Team have announced the contents of the forthcoming DVD of 1965 stories The Space Museum and The Chase, which includes details of the extras, including:

"Last Stop White City (dur. 13' 15") - School teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton were the first people from Earth to travel with the Doctor and his granddaughter Susan in their time and space vehicle, the TARDIS. From their first step into the TARDIS in 'An Unearthly Child' to their departure at the end of 'The Chase', the duo were involved in sixteen thrilling adventures that captured the imagination of a generation. This documentary tells their story. With actors William Russell, director Richard Martin, studio vision mixer Clive Doig and writer Simon Guerrier."

The DVD is out in the UK in March. I've got a few more credits to come on Doctor Who DVDs - for example, as the boss Tweeted today:

"Noel Clarke (@NoelClarke) signed up to narrate challenging doc. Likely release date early 2011. Produced by Guerrier Bros."

I've also received my special edition DVD of Girl Number 9, featuring some particularly good not-walking-into-anything acting from me.

In the mean time, I'm pitching every which way, have a thing to finish by Sunday and got odd bits of work and training cropping up. Shower is still out - will post some pictures sometime - so I've been much better at going to the gym, since then at least I can wash. And I've also got a great long post to write about Something Important, but that will have to wait until next week.

The poseability of Isskar

Alex was off buying toys again when he spotted Play's splendid description of this Martian monstrosity:

"Reaching up to 7 feet tall, Ice Warriors were a large imposing race of reptilian humanoids from the planet Mars whose civilization was destroyed during The Doctor's search for a segment from the Key to Time."

Those last 15 words are wot I did. I matter and am important!

Will scrawl for food

Not dead, just busy with all manner of efforts to be gainfully employed. Freelancing involves a lot of pitching and begging and poking of feet into doors, but in the last few months my hit rate has been down.

Got plenty of work on, and am working every spare moment, but not all of it's very highly paid. Then there's the projects which get cancelled when I'm already well into them, or the fun discussions after delivery where it turns out the bosses can't pay all that they said.

This sort of thing has gone on since I went freelance back in 2002, but it seems to be happening a lot more in the Current Climate. There seem to be far more people gunning for the jobs, and that can even mean the applications process is all much more complicated so as to ward some of these people off.

But a desperate Tweet earlier this week has paid off rather nicely, and I've spent a busy few days pitching stuff every which way. Got some meetings and things coming up, too, so it's all looking a bit more hopeful.

In the meantime, I had a lovely afternoon at the NFT on Saturday, with Bernard Cribbins on fine form as he entertained a packed cinema mostly full of geeks. I think I must have known half the people there, and got to say "Wotcher" to most of them. Also chastely admired a pretty lady two rows in front, before realising it was Channel 4 News' Samira Ahmed.

On Sunday, the Dr dragged me from the typing to go see Sherlock Holmes. Must admit I dragged my feet a bit - I've avoided Guy Ritchie since Revolver [my review of which has vanished from the Internet; I shall look into that]. But it's a smart, exciting and funny film, packed with glorious details, from the works of Conan-Doyle himself and Victoriana. The House of Lords is too wide, and an insider would spot that it's got the wrong walls and ceiling. And Tower Bridge was built in 1894, so some years after Holmes' fateful adventure with the chap with chalk on his lapel. But that's me desperately trying to find fault with the thing. Go see; it's really good.

Oh, and the church down the road is now extolling that Jedward is a lot like the story of Jesus:

Wet wet wet

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

Lost and found (alternative take)

To the NFT last night for the annual Missing Believed Wiped – an evening of odd bits of old telly that have found their way back to the archive. I missed the 2008 event due to commitments, but blogged the one before.

As I said then, it's always an odd collection – and the appeal lies in just than incongruity. Things you'd never see together, and things you'd never seek out, make for a tantalising window to the past.

First was a short film on the Bob Monkhouse Collection – as Jonny says, in large part it seemed a collection of Monkhouse's own appearances. The some 50,000 film cans and videos are of limited appeal to the NFT because much of the programmes already exist in some form. Kaleidoscope have stepped in to manage the collection, which is fascinating as an insight into Monkhouse himself. He used the tapes as research for jokes and people he might work with, but also the mentality behind the collection says a lot in itself. The history of the collection – Monkhouse was taken to court for giving a copy of Goldfinger to Terry Wogan – also reveals a lot about archives in themselves.

This was followed by a collection of comedic bits from the early days of satellite station BSB. As Ian Greaves explained, junking of archives was still going on as late as the 1990s. The material shown in itself wasn't particularly brilliant, but showed early material from Keith Allen and Armando Ianucci – the latter probably the best of the lot.

I thought a lot more of His Lordship Entertains than Jonny did – and more readily saw the debt owed it by Fawlty Towers. The jokes came thick and fast, and there were also all kinds of jokes: word-play, slapstick, farce and character stuff. I loved the two old ladies telling filthy stories (a vacuum cleaner stops us hearing the most saucy bits), and was impressed by how many aged actors were involved. I think it was pushing beyond Up Pompeii, but I'm not sure what it was pushing towards.

Till Death Do Us Part was pretty ropey, with – as Jonny says – the best bits all Dandy Nichols as Else, who tellingly took no part in the topical bits. It was a surprisingly cheap show – all set in Alf's living room but for two brief scenes in front of blown-up photos, and with lines only for the regular cast of four. It was an uncomfortable episode too, not because of the words “coon” and “wog” so much as how much of the programme was given over to Alf's ranting. The cool kids might roll their eyes at his prejudice, but there was little in the way of counter-argument, and the last joke depends on Alf being clumsy rather than being wrong. The viewing notes expressed surprise that “some viewers actually agreed with Alf”, but the episode is all about him having his say.

Both these episodes seemed to be about the loss of the old Empire – Ronnie Barker's Lord Rustless having to open up his stately home as a hotel rather than flog it to the National Trust, Alf horrified by Britain losing it's place as a first-rate nation. But there were also lots of odd little details I loved: Rita (Una Stubbs) laquering her handbag, or having to boil a kettle to do the washing up. And Else, who lives in Wapping, has apparently never before been to Downing Street or Buckingham Palace.

(The ever-wise T. also pointed out that Mr Quill himself, Bill Burridge, is one of the non-speaking crowd at Downing Street. Frank Gatliff – Badger, butler to Barker – was obviously Ortron in The Monster of Peladon.)

Jonny didn't sit through part two of the event, which was all music from the 60s and 70s. The only extant episode of Time for Blackburn from 1968 had a very quick-edited performance by The Who of “The Magic Bus”, that made the women sat next to me dizzy. There was an odd interview with Jonathan King at a record industry do, and a plug for a “psychedelic pantomime”. But mostly it seemed a sub-Top of the Pops, with Blackburn barely bumbling along through the links, at one point explaining that he was always up himself.

We next had a selection of clips from Look! Hear!, a regional youth programme from the 1970s. The Dr almost exploded when a young, jumper-wearing “Mike” Wood introduced Black Sabbath, years before he followed in the footsteps of Alexander (mostly with his top off). There was also a glorious live performance by The Selecter, when the kids in the audience took over the stage. Somehow, a camera was ready up in the lights to look down on the action.

There were then two episodes of Top of the Pops. The first, from 1976, reminded us how old the presenters used to be, and how hokey the sets. Pans People managed to be sexist and yet not quite sexy, and we cheered at a bit of E.L.O. But mostly the music was pretty execrable – as Dick Fiddy said in between episodes, that's why we needed punk. I thought the Dr might tear her ears off during a performance by R and J Stone of “We Do It”. But the episode also ended with the Bohemian Rhapsody video. How odd to see something so familiar in context, and see just why it blew all competition from the water.

I'd forgotten how awkward the audiences always were in these things, nervously watching the cameras for their cues. But it also surprised me how multi-racial the music programmes were compared to so much other telly of the time – something I've been researching recently for a work thing.

The second episode was from 1967, in ropey black-and-white that kept coming to pieces. Fluff Freeman introduced “See Emily Play”, Pink Floyd fronted by Syd Barrett (who I thought looked a lot like Benjamin Cook). The picture flickered and snowed, the sound dropping out and then dropping back in. I'd love to see a reconstructed version, but this warped and warping effort took me right back to all those nth generation videos of old Doctor Who that made up a lot of my teenage life.

There was then a bit more warped footage from later in the episode – Ray Davies (introduced as “Dave” by Fluff), and Procul Harem's “Whiter Shade of Pale” with a lead singer dressed for no reason at all as a stereotypical Chinaman. It was sometimes a job to tell what were original video effects and what was the tape going weird, and Fluff seemed to commentate from another glacial age. How strange for a programme – and a time – to be so cool and so square all at once.

After, there was just time for a beer and to say hello to the many, many like-minded chums, but we ducked out of festivities in favour of just getting home while there were still some trains.

Beyond the sea

To see Darker Shores last night, a Victorian ghost story by Michael Punter. After a spooky night in a guesthouse by the sea, Professor Stokes (Tom Goodman-Hill) calls in spiritualist Tom Beauregard (Julian Rhind-Tutt). The house seems to be haunted by its dead master, but both men are haunted too...

It's an effective, spooky drama with plenty of clever effects. Like "The Woman in Black", it conjures a compelling atmosphere through some very nifty stagecraft. The performances were also excellent - though I worried at first about Rhind-Tutt's American accent. The Dr loved the frock coats and the all-black Victorian set.

It's a richer story than "The Woman in Black", the characters vivid and well-drawn, and each with a credible history that blends into the story. It's also a lot funnier than "The Woman in Black", and had Things To Say. It seems nothing Victorian can get away these days without a mention of Darwin, though the play pressed the fallacy (as discussed on QI just last week) that Victorian churchmen hated Darwin for linking us to monkeys. The church had long-accepted that the Bible was metaphorically not literally true, but holy folk were troubled by the essential cruelty of evolution.

I also felt the play cheated in its final revelation, introducing something in its last scene that explained the mystery. How much better to have placed all the pieces before us well in advance, and then still delivered the surprise.

But still, a splendid night out. Sadly, it's closing in just a couple of days. I hope it is put on again.

Afterwards, we stalled in the bar for another beer, surrounded by Famous Actors. One of them, at least, I'd met before (and signed an autograph for his son), and another I sort of know through other people. But I never know the etiquette of these things and so kept timidly out of their way. Also, I was too busy discussing the career of K9 with Psychonomy.

For the second night running there were no trains home from Victoria, so we took a circuitous route via Balham and Babylon and bus, getting in about midnight for a crumpet and some tea.

Being cold

The first copy of my Being Human book, The Road, arrived yesterday, in all its lovely paperback glory. The book is set for release on 4 February, but will probably be seen in shops before then.

By a nice coincidence, in the evening it was Being Human Live at the Curzon in Mayfair, where we got to see the first episode of the new series - on Sunday on BBC 3 at 9.30 for you ordinary mortals.

No spoilers here, but cor that was exciting. The event also had cosplaying vampires and stalkers tumbling about as we waited, and the shiny famous actors up on the balcony, waving at the mob. After, there was a drinkie with the lovely BBC Books lot and then a long trek home.

This morning, the Man came to look at our leaky roof and concluded that it's not leaking. Instead, the snow on the concrete tiles has conjured condensation, which is collecting in pockets of the felt, and then dribbling out. So we've put plenty of cardboard down and will monitor the situation. I bet you're thrilled by this, but it's been quite the drama here.

Who. Am. Iiiiii?

Had an appointment at that hot-bed of terrorism University College London this afternoon. Got taken for lunch in the Senior Common Room - by someone both senior and common - and admired the paintings.

As we left, I noticed this plaque in honour of a local celebrity, but can only assume it was researched on Wikipedia. Where is the mention of "The Rapture", or those four episodes of Sarah Jane's Adventures?

Thence with Nimbos to the Wellcome Collection for a nose round their free Identity show, which runs until 6 April. In eight rooms - with doors which are hiding - we learn of nine lives that illuminate what makes us who we are.

There were plenty of top facts and things to ruminate on. One caption explained that the publishers of the first version of Pepys' diary (Latham and Matthews, 1983),

"took advice on whether they were likely to be prosecuted under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act by printing for the first time Pepy's reference to his wife's menstruation."

Pepys' contemporary Robert Hooke, meanwhile, kept a diary from 1672-80 that was limited to "terse observations of fact" - though he did helpfully use a "Pisces" symbol to mark days on which he ejaculated. On the wall behind these extracts played diary extracts from Big Brother.

The exhibition deftly mixes up the lives as lived by people, and the pioneers and theorists transforming how we (think we) live our lives. There's the impact of IVF has on a family of twins, and people who've campaigned and had surgery to change the gender-labels affixed at birth.

I was also impressed by the room shared by Sirs Francis Galton (inventor of eugenics and the fingerprint) and Alec Jeffreys (pioneer of DNA profiling), and the wealth of detail about phrenologist Franz Joseph Gall - including how much he was mocked in his own time.

A set of stairs also leads up to the permanent exhibition on Wellcome himself, packed with the odd things he collected. I loved the caption on Hiram-Maxim's Pipe of Peace:

"Hiram Maxim (1840-1916) invented the machine gun and also a patent inhaler (his Pipe of Peace), which he devised to treat his bouts of bronchitis. His friends worried that this invention could damage his reputation. As he said: "It is a very creditable thing to invent a killing machine, and nothing less than a disgrace to invent an apparatus to prevent human suffering."

Pipe of Peace and Maxim Inhaler by Sir Hiram Maxim
English, acquired before 1936
Medicine Man exhibition, Wellcome Collection, London.

When I grow up...

... I want to be Peter Anghelides.

But you shouldn't be here at the same time, with him

How splendid that Doctor Who Confidential caught the moment that Matt Smith met Russell T Davies – the latter trying not to be in the way. Naw.

But it occurred to me after a Spitfire or two that there was no sign of Tennant and Smith being there at the same time. And that films of more than one Doctor are rare. Excluding Doctor Who itself, this is what m'colleague Will Howells reckons is the definitive list of multiple Doctors in film and TV:

• Escape (1948) – William Hartnell as “Inspector Harris”, Patrick Troughton as “Jim – a shepherd”
• Would Any Gentlemen...? (1953) – Hartnell as “Detective Inspector Martin”, Jon Pertwee as “Charley Sterling”
• Dial 999 ep 1.16: “50,000 Hands” (1959) – Hartnell as “Jeff Richards”, Troughton as “Tramp - uncredited”
• All Creatures Great and Small ep 3.4: “Hair of the Dog” (1980) – Troughton as “Roddy – uncredited”, Peter Davison as “Tristan Farnon”
• Jude (1996)- Christopher Eccleston as “Jude Fawley”, David Tennant as “Drunk undergraduate”
• Mrs Bradley Mysteries ep 1.1: “Death at the Opera” (1999) – Davison as “Inspector Henry Christmas”, Tennant as “Max Valentine”

Sex and the City

To Wilton's Music Hall last night to see Fiona Shaw perform TS Eliot's The Wasteland single-handed and without a blindfold.

The venue was extraordinary – a 150 year-old music hall round the corner from the Royal Mint (and a stone's throw from where I worked 10 years ago). Stripped back to the brick and in desperate need of funding, it was a treat just to get through the door. Try the splendid virtual tour.

Shaw was extraordinary, nimbly skipping her way through Eliot's mash of tangled voices. The lighting was also exceptional, with sudden darkness or eerie shadows cast in perfect time. Brilliantly simple, brilliantly effective.

It's an odd poem, all odd, jangly bits of imagery and overheard snippets of speech. The Dr argued it's mostly about shagging and life in London (the title of this post is from her). As we schlepped our way back across Tower Bridge afterwards, she wondered whether her tastes in poems have been shaped by the ancient Greek stuff she's read, where it's all about the metre. I nodded along as if I understood.

I'm never sure with this sort of poetry whether it's very, very clever or not clever at all. There's bits I really like. The simplicity of the “Death by Water” section, for example, in which tall and handsome Phlebas has drowned offers no comfort or meaning. It's haunting because he's so bluntly gone.

There's also probably something clever going on since he'd died both recently (he is “a fortnight dead”) and in antiquity (he is called “the Phoenician”). I suspect there's also a very clever reason why Iain M Banks got the titles of two books from this section. But I've never understood what that was.

Having seen Stephen Fry talk on poetry back in 2005, I dared speak of poetry as “nuggets of meaning that can’t be said in any fewer words”, and I guess that's what The Wasteland is. But Codename Moose also recently referred me to a phrase in John le Carre's review of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher:

“written with great lucidity and respect for the reader, and with immaculate restraint”.

It's the lucid, restrained bits of The Wasteland – and of writing generally – that really prick my brain. The density of meaning, though, is a swirling fug around that.

Speaking of immaculate restraint, it's Russell T Davies' last Doctor Who tonight. What an extraordinary, glorious, mad-as-badgers joy these 60 episodes have been – a golden age of telly. The range and depth and balls of it all. Thank you, Russell.

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.

A letter from Father Christmas

Hello children. Have you been good?

Father Christmas – that's me, hello! – will only bring you presents on Christmas Eve if you've been good. That's what the grown-ups tell you, isn't it?

In the days leading up to Christmas, you might hear it a lot. Grown-ups say it when they think you're being too noisy or silly, or when they want you to help with the chores. Have you noticed?

Be good and good things will come to you. Be bad and I won't visit you, or I'll just bring you single lump of coal, or even a birch twig for hitting you with. That's the story.

And it's a good story. My name's been used to make children behave for more than a thousand years.

It's a bit like other stories you'll hear a lot from grown-ups. That you have to do well at school or the rest of your life will be ruined. That there's something wrong with you if you don't cheer a particular football team or pop group or politician.

That if you're good you go to Heaven, while people who lie or cheat or make you cry will go to Hell. That life might not seem fair but gods and spirits watch over us who know best.

You can see why these stories keep getting told. It's nice to think that good things happen to good people. We'd like to think stories like that were true. And that's useful to the person telling the story, because it means we're likely to behave how they want.

Some people don't like to be reminded that I'm only a story. They think I don't matter if I'm not true. But stories are how we learn things. They shape who we are and how we behave. So they're very important.

And I love the story of Christmas. How can you argue with a story that says you should be good, that you should help other people and not be greedy or mean? Christmas is a time for catching up with family and friends. It's a time for giving gifts. The grown-ups don't go to work, and there might be parties and games. It's great!

But like any story, Christmas is sometimes used to persuade you to think or do something. Some people will tell you that Christmas is a Christian celebration – that it's the day we remember the birth of Jesus. They might even tell you that 25 December is Jesus' birthday, or that all the stuff about being good and giving good is because it's a Christian celebration.

But Christians aren't the only people who tell their children to be good. And a lot of the traditions of Christmas aren't Christian at all.

Jesus was born in a place called Bethlehem, which doesn't have reindeer or holly, and where it doesn't often snow. Those things all come from northern Europe, and pagan traditions in winter. At the darkest and coldest time of the year, the people in northern Europe would keep themselves warm with a big party and stories.

Early Christians joined with the pagans, mixing their stories up together. That helped the pagans to become Christians. Christmas was just one of the stories the Christians took over for themselves.

Some people might tell you that I – Father Christmas – am a Christian, too. That my other name, “Santa Claus”, comes from a real man, Saint Nicholas, who was a Christian bishop in Turkey.

But again that's just part of my story. The way I look now, in my fur-lined clothes, with my big belly and red cheeks and even my laugh, that's all part of north European – and pagan – traditions. Ho ho ho! I have more in common with a woodland spirit called the Green Man than with the real Bishop Nicholas. He wouldn't have driven a sleigh or climbed down people's chimneys.

Other people have used Christmas – and me – to sell fizzy drinks or stationary. Shops and charities and holiday companies all use Christmas to make us give them money. There are Christmas films and TV programmes that show us how we should behave – with families all together, eating Turkey and pulling crackers.

It's such an established story, told again and again, that it must feel strange and sad if you don't take part. I sometimes get letters from Jewish and Muslim children, wishing I would visit them, too. And sometimes, with their parents' help, I do.

How could any one be upset by that? I'm a nice, friendly, generous character who helps make children behave. I'm so familiar even adults can feel warm and cosy when they see me.

But I'm not real. I'm a story. And I'm a story for children. I can't think of anything more important or valuable to be. I'm happy being a story.

I'd worry if grown-ups still thought I was real, not a game of let's-pretend. And since I get used to shape how people behave, there's a risk that sometimes I might be used to make people do bad things, or to convince them of things they normally wouldn't believe.

Would you trust a doctor or teacher who told you they believed in Father Christmas? Would you vote for a politician who did? Would you follow one to war? If someone on trial said they believed in Father Christmas – or that I told them how to behave – would you let them go? Or would it worry you that a grown-up still behaved because a children's story? That doesn't sound very grown up at all.

What is being a grown up? I think it's knowing that a story isn't true just because we like it or want it to be. When someone tells you a story, watch they're not trying to change how you behave. And just to make things tricky, this is a story too. Right now, I'm trying to change how you think and behave. Ho ho ho!

I love the story of Christmas – and stories generally. Just remember that they're stories. You shouldn't need to be told to be good, should you?

Merry Christmas. And I hope to see you again this evening. Do leave me a mince pie.

Love from

Father Christmas

Signs, portents, types

On Saturday, I was at the launch for Rob Shearman's "Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical", with a whole bunch of mates. The venue is also used for comedy, and I admired the cheery signs:




On Sunday there was curry with the folks and thence my first go on a Wii, at which I played table tennis and cheated at fencing. Here is my wii-persona, which the Dr designed herself. Note the beard where I'd not shaved for a few days:


On Monday I did writing while ice fell from the sky. Was meant to meet chums for a Christmas drinkie but there were no trains into town. Apparently the Dr and Codename Moose were barefoot in the pub, socked socks and boots on the radiator. I sulked on a drizzly platform for over an hour while the information board just said "Delayed". Gave up and had fish and chips and mushy peas.

Glad I'm not traveling this Christmas, and really sorry for the younger brother who was meant to be in Hungary by now.

Yesterday, me and Codename Moose recorded a thing for something as-yet unannounced, and then went to the pub. Hatched plans and discussed projects before I stumbled home.

Up late today full of cold, and schlepped out across the ice to the postal depot to collect some parcels. I've received copies of both The Panda Book of Horror - in which I've got a short story - and the Blake's 7 CD I wrote, which sounds all splendid.

Am also in receipt of Fluid Web Typography - A Guide by my chum Jason Cranford Teague, which the Dr has already pinched. It looks very fine indeed, and my beloved Gill Sans gets a mention. Though there's no mention I can see of Divide By Zero - Tom Murphy's splendid free fonts, which include my favourites "Tom's New Roman" and "Douglas Adams' Hand". I've stuck this post in Trebuchet.

Digital Spy continues to post videos of me and other fine fellows discussing David Tennant's Top 10 moments as Doctor Who - I'll update that original blogpost with links to each one. I'm also among the luminaries looking back to Christmas Eve 1999 for Paul Cornell's blog.

New road

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

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

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

Radio GaGa

I got interviewed by Phil Hawkins for his Sunday Soundtracks show on North Cotswold Community Radio, which will be broadcast from 4 p.m. this afternoon. My bit should get played around 4.30.

The 78 Steps

After the adventure of The 39 Steps, dashing South African Rhodesian hero Richard Hannay finds himself caught up in the Great War. Greenmantle, first published in 1916, begins with Hannay convalescing after service at Loos, ready to take on a new and vital secret mission.

As Hannay's boss, Sir Walter Bullivant, explains in the first chapter, the Germans have got the Turks on their side under Enver. What's more, Bullivant's own son has died delivering vital intelligence on that the Hun is up to:

“Kasredin cancer v. I”

Hannay must find out what the bally-flip this message might mean. He soon recruits his old chums Peter Pienaar and Sandy Arbuthnot, and a new character, the American John S. Blenkinson, to head for Constantinople. It takes half the book and a pile of adventures to get there, where they discover that the prophet Greenmantle is about to unite the Moslem world under the Kaiser – and against the Brits. Horrors!

As with Hannay's earlier adventure, it's a gripping read packed with incident, villainy, pluck and extraordinary coincidence. The threat of a united Islamic world might also suggest something more; that it's relevant today. Indeed, in July 2005, Radio 4 put off broadcasting the second episode of an adaptation after the London bombings (it was transmitted later that year).

At the time, Charles Moore in the Telegraph muttered about this decision. Quoting several chunks of the book – which he himself called “unimaginably silly” – as evidence, he thought it might teach us something useful about the Middle East and the people who live there. Because, you know, it's like a text book, with Hannay an exemplar for relations with other races. Only, um, in no way whatever.

Hannay himself is a problematic hero for modern readers. For example, there's the bit where he takes over the engine room of a boat on the Danube. The captain, Hannay says,

“liked the way I kept the men up to their work, for I hadn't been a nigger-driver for nothing.”

John Buchan, Greenmantle, p. 136.

Later, Hannay and Peter Pienaar are feeling low and their whinge about the war is quite striking – but not very heroic:

“'Europe is a cold place,' said Peter, 'not worth fighting for. There is only one white man's land, and that is South Africa.' At the time I heartily agreed with him.”

Ibid., p. 164.

It's from this authoritative, enlightened protagonist that we are told about other races and nations. The character of Blenkinsop – a brash, fat, hypochondriac windbag who speaks of himself in the third-person – was apparently a bid to encourage America to join the war. He's keen to join Hannay's mission because,

“My father fought at Chattanooga, but these eyes have seen nothing gorier than a presidential election ... I did think of some belligerent stunt a year back [to get involved in the war]. But I reflected that the good God had not given John S. Blenkinsop the kind of martial figure that would do credit to the tented field. Also I recollected that we Americans are nootrals – benevolent nootrals – and that it did not become me to be butting into the struggles of the effete monarchies of Europe ... I have never seen the lawless passions of men let loose on a battlefield. And, as a stoodent of humanity, I hankered for the experience.”

Ibid., p. 18.

It's not exactly the most flattering persona with which to woo a potential ally. I couldn't help seeing him as played by Joe Don Baker in a Hawaiian shirt.

Of most fascination is the book's attitude to the Islamic world. Hannay's mate Sandy is a devotee – he's learned the languages, lived among the different factions and dresses up in the clothes. This, obviously, wins him more points among the locals than the bullying Germans and turns out quite useful at the end.

There's lip service paid to the richness and history of the Ottoman Empire and its people, but it all depends on some clunky assumptions about how easily their affections can be bought or swayed. Sandy wears the right sort of clothes at the right moment, and the whole nation-state switches sides.

Underlying this is some insidious stuff about the personality of your average Turk. Within seconds of meeting his first Turkish officials, Hannay is up in arms.

“It was the first time they tried to bribe me, and it made me boil up like a geyser. I saw his game clearly enough. Turkey would pay for the lot to Germany: probably had already paid the bill: but she would pay double for the things not on the way-bills, and pay to this fellow and his friends. This struck me as rather steep even for Oriental methods of doing business.”

Ibid., pp. 147-8.

It's not just the blanket statements about bureaucracy and corruption that's odd. Hannay is at the time posing as a German, on a boat delivering guns to use against the British. But he's too much of a gentleman to let this cheating stand:

“We had a fine old racket in the commandant's office ... I told him it wasn't my habit to proceed with cooked documents. He couldn't but agree with me, but there was that wrathful Oriental with his face as fixed as a Buddha ... Looking back, it seems pretty ridiculous to have made all this fuss about guns which were going to be used against my own people. But I didn't see that at the time. My professional pride was up in arms, and I couldn't bear to have a hand in a crooked deal.”

Ibid., pp. 148-9.

I'm surprised his comrades didn't put him on a charge for treason. But no, Hannay's too busy playing the game fair and square to think about all the people his actions will have killed. In fact, the last sequence of the book has Hannay and his mates being shelled by the Germans – it's not impossible that they're using the guns Hannay himself delivered. The pompous dick.

Hannay's attitude to the enemy is also odd. The Kaiser – who he meets in the story – and the ordinary folk are all rather decent, but carried along by the fanaticism of a few angry madmen. (A bit like Doctor Who fandom on the internet.)

Stumm is a short, cross, stupid bully who might well have hailed from Sontar. When Hannay is shown into Stumm's rooms, there's also a heavy suggestion about his private life.

“At first sight you would have said it was a woman's drawing-room. But it wasn't. I soon saw the difference. There had never been a woman's hand in that place. It was the room of a man who had a passion for frippery, who had a perverted taste for soft delicate things. It was the complement to his bluff brutality. I began to see the queer other side to my host, the evil side which gossip had spoken of as not unknown in the German army. The room seemed a horribly unwholesome place, and I was more afraid than ever of Stumm.”

Ibid., pp. 94-95.

Perhaps this is Hannay protesting too much. Later we meet one of only two women in the book, the villainous ice queen von Einem. Hannay gets confessional, and it's so peculiar it's worth quoting in full:

“Women had never come much my way, and I knew about as much of their ways as I knew about the Chinese language. All my life I had lived with men only, and rather a rough crowd at that. When I made my pile and came home I looked to see a little society, but I had first the business of the Black Stone on my hands [in The 39 Steps], and then the war, so my education languished. I had never been in a motor-car with a lady before, and I felt like a fish on a dry sandbank. The soft cushions and the subtle scents filled me with acute uneasiness. I wasn't thinking now about Sandy's grave words, or about Blenkinsop's warning [about von Einem], or about my job and the part this woman must play in it. I was thinking only that I felt mortally shy. The darkness made it worse. I was sure that my companion was looking at me all the time and laughing at me for a clown.”

Ibid., p. 212.

Two pages later, having talked to her a bit, he is feeling bolder and I thought for a moment they might snog. But no, his response is more twisted weirdness:

“I see I have written that I knew nothing about women. But every man has in his bones a consciousness of sex. I was shy and perturbed, but horribly fascinated. This slim woman, poised exquisitely like some statue between the pillared lights, with her fair cloud of hair, her long delicate face, and her pale bright eyes, had the glamour of a wild dream. I hated her instinctively, hated her intensely, but I longed to arouse her interest. To be valued coldly by those eyes was an offence to my manhood, and I felt antagonism rising within me. I am a strong fellow, well set up, and rather above the average height, and my irritation stiffened me from heel to crown. I flung my head back and gave her cool glance for cool glance, pride for pride.”

Ibid., p. 214.

It's not just about his manhood being stiff with irritation. There's a whole load of stuff about power and dominance, and which of the races will blink first. A bit later, Sandy helpfully explains that, according to “a sportsman called Nietzsche” that,

“Women have got a perilous logic which we never have, and some of the best of them don't see the joke of life like the ordinary men. They can be far greater than men, for they can go straight to the heart of things. There never was a man so near the divine as Joan of Arc. But I think, too, they can be more entirely damnable than anything that ever was breeched, for they don't stop still now and then and laugh at themselves ... There is no Superman. The poor old donkeys that fancy themselves in the part are either crackbrained professors who couldn't rule a Sunday-school class, or bristling soldiers with pint-pot heads who imagine that the shooting of a Duc D'Enghien made a Napoleon. But there is a Superwoman, and her name's Hilda von Einem.”

Ibid., 231.

The book finishes with our heroes being bombarded by the enemy, and playing a weird game of chicken, refusing to flinch before Stumm and von Einem. The villains' resolve breaks first, and they die in the skirmish of their own making. Stumm is shot in the back; von Einem our heroes try to bury respectfully, what with not fancying her at all.

It's a strange book, full of weird, naïve and convenient assumptions about the people of the Middle East and the things that make them tick. And that would be quite fun had it not proved such a disaster as a foreign policy in the post-war period, and now.

Official "expert"

Digital Spy have posted the first video counting down David Tennant's Top 10 moments as Doctor Who, as voted for by readers.

Among the august and handsome luminaries speaking wisdom is, er, me. I note that none of the other young scamps thought to wear a suit. What has broadcasting come to?

The remaining nine top moments will follow in the next few days.

ETA: nine; eight; seven; six; five; four; three; two; one.

Block heads

The ever-talented m'colleague Mechalex has posted up pictures of his Dr Who / Lego creations.

This pleases me.

All clear?

To the National Theatre last night with N. for a “An Evening with Private Eye”, at which Ian Hislop, Harry Enfield, John Sessions, Lewis Macleod, Katy Brand, Richard Ingrams and Craig Brown performed bits from the magazine. A fun evening, and then afterwards I got plus-oned into N.'s work party and had fine salmon and liver and bacon. Latest and liveliest I've been out in weeks.

Excitingly, the kidney infection seems to be done with – though I've a doctor's appointment this afternoon where I'm hoping to get the all clear. Still battered and tired and stuff, but a whole lot less bleurgh than I was.

Am catching up on things needing to be writ. The Novel now stands at 15,000 words which I'm mostly happy with. Have a script to write by the end of the month, and trying to do bits of the Novel around it. Also got to rewrite some of the Short Film – which includes adding in a whole new character – and perhaps add one last piece of cleverness to a thing we're recording next week. None of which means anything to you, but will be of fascination to me when I look back from the future.

Now some fun free stuff:

The first of Big Finish's festive podcasts includes a competition in which you – yes YOU – might win a copy of the exceedingly fancy Bernice Summerfield – the Inside Story, what I wrote. There are plenty of other things in the competition, too, plus trailers and foolishness from the boys. More podcasts and competitions in the next few days.

(Looking forward to Saturday, too, when the Big Finish luminaries will be at the Corner Store in Covent Garden, flogging copies of Rob Shearman's splendid “Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical” between 12 and 5. Do come along if you can.)

Paul Cornell is also running up to Christmas with festive blogs, and I was enthralled by his new Doctor Who short story, “The Last Doctor”, which is hardcore, old-skool Cornell with its mad sf ideas and woman vicar and beating heart on its sleeve. Sadly, there are no owls.

Pumpkin!

Went with the Stunt Wife to Watford yesterday to see my second Cinderella of the year. The matinee was filled with excited schoolchildren who all got caught up in the shouting, and sang along with the pop songs I was too old to recognise.

My chum Laura Doddington gave a typically understated performance as the Fairy Godmother, while fetchingly dressed as a satsuma. And she seemed to have primed the Ugly Sisters to pick me out from the audience as a possible beau. Ho hum. But what festive cheer.

Speaking of the season, here are some choice stocking fillers. My Blake's 7 CD is now available in shops, either on its own or as part of the Early Years box-set.

ETA: First review says,

"Simon Guerrier's prequel to the revamped Blake's 7 is one of the strongest releases yet from B7 Media."

Paul Simpson, "Blake's 7 The Early Years: Jenna", Total Sci-fi Online, Friday 11 December 2009

And Big Finish have announced that they only have until the end of the year to sell their Doctor Who Short Trips books. They're available for the bargain price of £5 and I am in most of them. I posted earlier this year about the Short Trips books I'm in.

Penge Christmas

Outside a church this morning, as I schlepped down to be bled at Beckenham:


And this on my way home:

Homo satsuma

Not only did I remove the peel from my satsuma in one single piece - as is the Correct Method - but I inadvertently sculpted the shape of a dancing man. In flared trousers. If you sort of squint.

Wiffle

Another review for Vector, this the full version of one published in #260 in August.

Wiffle Lever to Full by Bob Fischer
Reviewed by Simon Guerrier

In November 2005, Bob Fischer braved a Doctor Who convention in his home town, then spent a year at events related to his other favourite TV shows and films.

Having not been wowed by Dalek, I Loved You (see Vector #257), I didn’t expect much of another memoir about watching TV. Fischer seems to model his book on those of Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace: a silly quest that lets him get drunk with new people to his girlfriend’s despair. Yet despite these misgivings, I was quickly engrossed. Fischer has a keen eye for detail, describing a panel of Doctor Who guest actors discussing their other work on Bergerac and Tenko as "like watching a touring stage revival of Pebble Mill at One." It’s exactly what a Doctor Who convention is like.

The book really hits its stride when Fischer attends his second convention – for Star Wars – and starts comparing fandoms. There’s the attendees themselves and the proportion who’ve come in costume. We learn which fandoms are most commercial, or the heaviest drinkers and which have the most pretty women. There’s the different strategies for meeting your heroes: mumbling, gabbling or slapping them on the back.

You sometimes feel he’s trying too hard with the jokes, but I loved his description of the James Bond film Moonraker: it "somehow managed to bridge the cultural gap between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Carry On at Your Convenience".

He’s good at providing background on the films and shows in question, the history of conventions and of viewing habits, too. Having watched Star Trek as a child in the late 1970s, he realises how strange it is that "a generation of seven-year-olds could be intimately familiar with a programme first broadcast almost twice their lifetimes ago." He explains the passivity of watching telly in an age of three channels before videos and remote controls.

It’s also fun seeing Fischer’s girlfriend and family get more involved with his quest. As he says early on, "It’s great to have a passion for your favourite films and programmes, but you have to accept that the rest of the world is unlikely to give a toss." Yet, later on he has to wonder, grudgingly, "whether there’s anyone left in the country who hasn’t emerged from the sci-fi fandom closet … and begin to feel as if some of my exclusive right to geeky cult-TV absorption is being unceremoniously chipped away."

Between each new fandom experience there’s an excerpt from "The Battle to Save Earth", a story Fischer wrote when he was nine. It’s a thrilling mix of his school friends, footballing heroes and bits nicked from Star Wars and Flash Gordon, hanging on the discovery of "a speicail [sic] laser called Bombpower. It can destroy anything." The book is largely an attempt to recapture this wide-eyed, care-free delight. But Fischer’s intelligence and insight are what make it so effective.

At one point Fischer quotes Camus: "A man’s worth is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." He might well have been justifying his Dangermouse DVDs.

Curses

I've been on antibiotics for a week in an effort to kill off a kidney infection. The infection has left me feeling bruised inside and turned my wee an interesting colour. And it's still hanging on, so I've more tests and things next week. But it does explain why I've been feeling so run down these last weeks.

Here, for your entertainment and delight, is a review I did way back in February for Vector.

"Too Many Curses" by A Lee Martinez
Reviewed by Simon Guerrier

Nessy the Kobold is the servant in an evil wizard's castle. She feeds the monsters and chats to the ghosts and avoids the advances of Decapitated Dan. When the evil wizard accidentally gets killed, the castle thinks their curses will be lifted. But their troubles have only just begun.

It's a fun, fast-moving adventure packed full of daft characters and incident. The prose is straightforward and there are plenty of jokes. The chaotic plot, as more monsters and obstacles rain down on Nessy, is all nicely tied up in the end. It's a satisfying – and quick – read. Though there's plenty of icky things going on – belching and vomiting and being eaten alive – Martinez rarely lets us in on anyone's pain. For example, a character has the tip of their tail turned to ice and we don't get any sense of how that feels, how it chills the rest of the body. Nor is there much urgency about changing the tail back.

Perhaps this is part of Nessy's character – we're often told she's a practical soul, more worried about keeping the castle tidy than the various creatures that want to kill her. By the end she's changed her priorities and learnt to take charge of herself. But rather than her character developing all the book, this change comes rather suddenly in a final confrontation with... It would spoil it to say too much more.

I assume Too Many Curses is for the same sort of audience as devours Harry Potter. Which makes the swearing a surprise. Sir Tedeus calls people “wanker” several times and there's one occasion of bastard. (Ron Weasley can say “bloody hell” in the movies, but he can't swear in the books.)

There's the same recourse to books and the slow learning of magic as Potter, the same tests and dark wizards and dark humour. There's the same plucky, oppressed underling who must dare to challenge a legendary dark wizard to a duel. There's the same lessons of compassion overcoming evil, and of the hero's reliance on their friends.

But Too Many Curses lacks the emotional depth of JK Rowling. We don't feel for Nessy or her friends. The books ends open enough for there to be further adventures for Nessy, but there's no urgency for them.

Having a go at astronomy

In amongst the research stuff and pitching, I have read some books. Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent (1907) is a chap called Verloc. He comes from an unspecified foreign country where he was up to unspecified revolutionary stuff, though we also know he did some plotting in France. Now he runs a rude bookshop in London, cover for secret meetings with other agitators and anarchists.

Verloc's an odd character, nervy yet ruthlessly cold. It's striking to post-war readers that his first name is Adolf. He's also a pretty terrible spy. But the thrill of the book is in getting into his head – and the heads of other characters – and understanding why he might do such wretched, despicable things.

The book begins with Verloc called to a foreign embassy where the new chap in charge is unimpressed by the titbits of information he's supplied over the years. Mr Vladimir wants Verloc to do something more noticeable. And a simple bombing will not suffice.

As Vladimir explains in a two-page speech, the middle classes are no longer impressed by attempts on the lives of crowned heads or presidents.

“It has entered into the general conception of the existence of all chiefs of state. It's almost conventional – especially since so many presidents have been assassinated.”

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent, p. 35.

Explosions in churches and restaurants are no good either. The papers even have “ready-made phrases” to explain them: they are social revenge or exasperation.

“The sensibilities of the class you are attacking are soon blunted ... You can't count upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely destructive. It must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest suspicion of any other object. You anarchists should make it clear that you are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation. But how to get that appallingly absurd notion into the heads of the middle classes so that there should be no mistake?”

Ibid.

Vladimir quickly dismisses the thought of a bomb in the National Gallery since “artists – art critics and such like – [are] people of no account”. Instead, the best target is science.

“It would be really telling if one could throw a bomb into pure mathematics. But that is impossible ... I have also given some attention to the practical aspect of the question. What do you think of having a go at astronomy?”

Ibid, pp. 36-7.

Thus Verloc is dispatched to blow up the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Conrad was inspired by a real attempt on the Observatory in 1894, ten years after the International Meridian Conference in Washington DC voted 22-1 in favour of defining Greenwich as 0° longitude, or the line between East and West hemispheres. The French abstained from the vote, and French maps continued to use the Paris Meridian until 1911. The bomber in 1894 was French.

But there's no sense of clashing imperialism in Conrad's book. Instead, the anarchists work independently, even against one another. There's a sense that Verloc and his wife are both trapped by their genetic inheritance. We're often given physical descriptions of people as an insight into their characters. Winnie Verloc, we learn, is pretty but “dark” and has madness in her family. Another character seems to have got his political sense from his genes.

“Descended from generations victimized by the instruments of an arbitrary power, he was racially, nationally, and individually afraid of the police. It was an inherited weakness, altogether independent of his judgement, of his reason, of his experience. He was born to it. But that sentiment, which resembled the irrational horror some people have of cats, did not stand in the want of his immense contempt for the English police.”

Ibid., p. 183.

As a result, characters act from impulse not intellect, and the book is a motley collection of stupid, brutal acts and accident. There's the man who trips over while carrying a bomb and whose remains can only be collected by shovel. There's the man who misunderstands quite what's happening and throws himself from a train.

It's a violent, dark world full of twisted psychologies. It's a gripping read, but for all it's psychological richness, and the linking of people's actions to their circumstance, there's a strange dismissal of terrorism as just something mad people do. These villains are feverish, stupid and incompetent. So they're not really a threat.

(It also reminded me quite a bit of David Simon's Homicide, which is full of stupid crooks doing terrible things. And which, oddly, I finished reading in Greenwich.)

Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) is a twisty thriller about a cool private eye in the style of Dashiell Hammett. I was thrilled by the sassy girls who keep falling out of their clothes, and by Philip Marlowe's easy cool, his straight-forward style as a detective matched in the unflashy prose. Also surprised by quite how much of the plot and characters made their way into The Big Lebowski.

I've also read my mate Rob Shearman's Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, a fine collection of weird, longing tales in the manner of his award-winning Tiny Deaths. You've still just time to listen again to Mark Gatiss reading “Love Among the Lobelias”.

And speaking of fine books, the Big Finish sale has the Doctor Who – Short Trips books at £5, and the superb Re:Collections best of at £10. I've got stories in most volumes, and also edited three-and-a-half. So this is your chance to catch up on my works. Sale must end 9 January 2010.

Jamboree

"Jam", the film I saw at BAFTA a couple of weeks back, is now available on the internet for you to enjoy:



It's depressingly accomplished, with a stellar cast and high production values, plus a sparkling script by mate Lizzie Hopley. Support the team behind it by buying a credit on their full-length feature.

I've spent this morning reading other chums' short film scripts and making notes on my own. Now on to the Novel.

Spent the weekend scribbling. Braved the deluge to go see "A Day in the Death of Joe Egg" performed at the Brockley Jack. It's a funny, smart but my-god-depressing tale of a young couple in the Sixties struggling to stay cheery with a severely disabled child.

The Issues and achingly self-aware cleverness is very much of its time, and I've found other plays by Peter Nichols to be crushingly worthy. But the intimate theatre and some nimble direction kept this one zipping along. The play depends on small cast really showing off their Acting, and they pulled off that tricky feat of being heart-rendering and getting big laughs.

Last time I saw it, the ending was different, so this time it wasn't quite the tough-but-uplifting tale I thought the Dr might appreciate. In fact, it ended up pressing some emotional buttons to do with stuff we've been struggling through ourselves this year. Whoops. Had to buy her cider after, during which she our pals M. and K. laughed and called me a twat.

Lunched with the stunt-wife yesterday to celebrate his birthday, thence to R's housewarming, which included a tour of vacated offices and the promise of ghosts. Fun chat with chums - and sober, as I'm on antibiotics all this week. Then home to catch up on season one of "True Blood", which I'll blog about more when I get to the end of the first series.

But just when I think I've seen all the regular cast's bosoms, they introduce a new pretty girl and swiftly take her top off. Quality drama.

"I don't know what buttons I'm pressing."

The Relative Dimensions website has the first of a two-part interview with me - the second half will go up next week.

ETA: Part two of the interview.

ETA: There's also a new Blake's 7 blog post from me.