Not just a comedy

Lost Museum has got 5 stars from Doctor Who Review. "It excels on every level," they say. Hooray!

That said, they also gave 5 stars to the previous Benny play:

"The Kingdom of the Blind is another triumph for Jacqueline Rayner. If only she could write all the Bernice plays."

Doctor Who Review: Kingdom of the Blind

Yes, if only.

As requested, I have sent Tom at Dr Who’s Magazine a picture of myself. The Doctor vetoed me sending any silly ones, which made finding something quite a challenge. Even when I'm actively not mugging like a loon, I still look like I am. (This may just be an excuse, though.)

Too unshipshape to manage Liadnan's birthday last night, which I only found out about last minute anyway. Glad he's taking it so well, and not slipping into a miasma of despair and glum poetry.

Oh, and received word that my friend the PVC Diva has set up a secondary LJ wossname, Thrifting Divas, for "them that likes charity shops and thrifting." Didn't realise she LJ'd in the first place, so have spent a happy time catching up with all her news.

I like charity shops, but only really for books. Too much a ridiculous shape to fit most cast-off clothes.

Off to the pub tonight, but It Is Work. If I keep repeating that, maybe I'll believe it.

I must be unwell

"Much of the story of Fitzrovia is of talent blighted, promise unfulfilled and premature death through drink."

Michael Bakewell, Fitzrovia – London's Bohemia, p. 5.

We've got lions

Plus-oned the Doctor in to see The Constant Gardener last night. As well as rather liking that Ralph Fiennes, she was born in Kenya and knows much of its politics and whatnot from her parents.

Having "Nairobi" in her passport can cause problems. One week before 9/11, I took her on a day-trip to Paris (I had a full-time, proper-type job back then) where we quaffed wine, looked at nice windows and art, were dismayed by the response to a fire alarm, and staggered back to Gard du Nord a bit pished.

The Doctor continued ahead through passport control while I struggled with my bag. She got stopped and had her bag searched. The officious squit scrutinised her passport and asked "Why were you born in Nairobi?"

"That's where my mum was," she replied, bless her. Humour is bad in these situations.

Anyway, by this time I had turned up, figured there was a bag-searching thing going on, and had helpfully plonked my satchel beside the Doctor's, the flap wide open to show off my poor choice in books. The squit glanced at this, then at me.

"Is she yours?" he asked.

"Oh yes," I said, helpfully.

He nodded. "You can go."

The Doctor fumed all the way back to Waterloo. (Good name for our link to France, that. And you see a pub called "The Wellington" as you come out the exit, too).

I talked about the book of Constant Gardener a couple of months ago, and will one day enthuse here about Tsavo's lions. In the meantime, this should be the Kenyan national anthem. Forget Norway.

Foul play

Less is more

Long day of writing which hasn't produced very much. Have decided against most of what I've managed. The Thing is, on reflection, much better as it was...

Started three or four different attempts at a blog entry, too. Even dared to just paste in an old fanzine article from years ago. Reading the thing again (to take out people's names), what I remembered as witty and literate turned out to be rather lame.

Guess it's a good thing that I can see when my writing's a bit shit. Hum ho.

Circuits and rings

People get weirdly proprietorial about weddings.

The Doctor and I (hitched 18 months ago) planned something entirely easy and hassle-free, and were both amazed by how difficult a few people wanted to make it. We've since burned bridges with people who weren't able to just turn up and have a good time, but there were all sorts of questions about venues and guests and food and music and last-minute changes to attendees... We spent months only dealing with people who couldn't (or wouldn't) come, and sorting out stuff that weren't working.

A month before the wedding, all that changed. I rang in from my glorious, surprise stag bash in Budapest to see how the hen night had gone. We were both wide-eyed and excited to discover that most of our chums were really up for the party. And that – disparate and unlikely a gang as our mates might be – it might all just work out fine.

As it did, too. Ours remains the best wedding I’ve ever been to.

Anyway, watched Panorama last night, and even the Doctor (who stalked round Windsor Castle on our honeymoon, muttering "Parasites!") felt sorry for Charles and Camilla. Practical decisions about venues and guests were headlined in the press as shocking conspiracy. Painful compromises, to ensure things were done "properly", were lambasted as gross impropriety. And then the Pope went and died...

The weekend was fun. On Saturday, the Doctor experimented (successfully) with home-made pizza, and we watched I Heart Huckabees. I didn’t know much about the film – reviews I can remember either loved or hated it, without really explaining why. We loved it, and the Doctor was quick to spot the debt owed to Barthes and the exploration of meaning. I especially loved the wild silliness of it – such as the small kid away in the back of one scene, playing basketball and sporting a cavalier beard and moustache. The sex scene is daft and dirty and wonderful, too. Laughed and laughed from beginning to end, and had to watch the free-wheeling music video twice.

Yesterday, a gaggle of manly, tough men took G. go-karting for his birthday. Meant a fair bit of deviousness, plotting and hanging-around, but the driving was brilliant.

Yeah, I could do this - unlike when I went target shooting last year – deftly over-taking m’colleagues at 50 mph, and no bumps or crashes or facing-the-wrong-ways to lose me points. More practised drivers of cars fared less well. Perhaps they were too worried about knocking their vehicles about. Me, I was perfectly controlled and all over the place. In fact – unheard of for me and physical activity – there was some debate afterwards about whether I came first.

(I deferred, of course, to the chap who signs my cheques...)

Oh, and it was a year ago on Saturday that I got commissioned for Time Travellers. So I've spent exactly a year beavering away from one Dr Who project to the next. Suddenly I've no Who-related deadline looming (immediately, anyway), and I've actually time to write Other Things.

Which is good, because there's this idea I've got...

What have I got in my pocket?

A leaving do last night for M. - who's not actually leaving, just not being full-time any more. M., who teaches and runs tours about art stuff, is always good for odd morsels of story. We chatted about the Courtauld, and its glorious "Don Quixote and Sancho Panza" by Daumier, which I fell in love with on a school trip half my life ago.

M. told me that in the 1830s, Daumier covered a court case as part of his politicising against Louis-Philippe's government (he'd already been to prison for drawing Louis-Philippe on the toilet). As now, drawing was not permitted in the court room. So Daumier spent the court case with his hands in his pockets, which he'd stuffed full of clay. Just by touch, he created busts of the principle characters...

Top fact! Admittedly, couldn't corroborate this story online (though I didn't google very hard). Will probably have to read a book or something. Golly.

(I was also spellbound by "Ratapoil" when I saw it in Washington last year. Brilliantly creepy, it's just the right size to walk off with under your arm, too.)

Settling in

Done, delivered, freeeeeeeeee!

Went to "Look at me", last night, then wine and fish and chips. The night before, as we watched some of her birthday present, the Doctor mocked me for scribbling down a bit that tickled me:

"[Descartes has] become a symbol of a pure intellect, but I find him a sympathetic figure. He started life as a soldier - he wrote a book on fencing - but he soon discovered that all he wanted to do was think. Very, very rare, and most unpopular.

Some friends came to call on him at 11 O'clock in the morning, and found him in bed. They said, 'What are you doing?'

He replied: 'Thinking.' They were furious.

To escape interference, he went to live in Holland. He said that the people of Amsterdam were so much occupied with making money that they would leave him alone. However, he continued to be the victim of interruptions, and so he moved about from place to place. Altogether, he moved house in Holland 24 times.

In the end, he was run to earth by that tiresome woman, Queen Christina of Sweden, who carried him off to Stockholm to give her lessons in the new philosophy. She made him get out of bed early in the morning and as a result he caught a cold and died."

Kenneth Clark, Civilisation, 8. The Light of Experience.

(Wikipedia says that, "letters to and from the doctor Eike Pies have recently been discovered which indicate that Descartes may have been poisoned using arsenic.")

The Sontaran Experiment...

...is pretty damn cool. And as Sarah-Jane says, right at the end of episode one, "Links!"

• The Quest for Truth
  The European Commission representation in the UK (yes, them) has a myth-busting section. It's fab, and includes this damning rejection of lies about bosoms.
• Lushury
  M'colleague B Woodhams saw this and thought of me. The git.
• Bus ting
  Another not-great review of Day in the Life, where mine is just "heart-warming". Disagree with a lot of what's said, and I'll have you know that (my own) "tedious commute across London" swings past Rose's house (though the explicit reference to that got cut).

Briefly...

Draft of the Settling finished, and going through people's notes. Also pitched something somewhere else (more of which if it happens), and listened to the first episode of Thicker Than Water, which fell through my letterbox this morning. Top stuff, with a TARDIS scene that's really rather moving.

The Doctor is suffering, submerged by a cold. Despite not being able to speak, she's still bossed me about. Quite a trick.

Nice time in the pub last night, though we're all old and rubbish and left by 10. Much appreciation of my new, spanking haircut, with girls wanting to run their hands through it. So that worked, then. L, sweetly, asked permission. Though not from me...

And the thing in the book that threw me yesterday?

"His name was George Mouse; he wore wide suspenders to his wide pants".

John Crowley, Little, Big, p. 8.

Settling bill

The Secret Project I’ve not been talking about here for weeks finally got announced. In fact, the script for Dr Who and the Settling is due in on Friday. Pretty much there, and lots of sitting-on-trains this weekend helped.

Swansea was great fun, and I got to walk down the bit of street from The Unquiet Dead. Not that I’d have recognised it, were it not for my local guide. Telly people are clever.

Spent most of my time in the convention fringe (i.e. the bar) catching up with old friends and making many new ones. Bit vague on things after my excitement that the bar was still serving after midnight… Am told I get bigger the more I drink.

Sunday was mostly nodding and smiling while the hangover faded to black. May have talked myself into some more work. We’ll see.

Then to Bristol in the evening, which took forever. Like last Sunday, there were no trains. Ng. The best mate, who’s just bought a house in St George’s, took me for medicinal beers and a curry. Ended up watching Team America until 3 in the morning.

Yesterday, got to chat to the sister for a bit, then greasy spooned and headed for home and the neglected Doctor.

As well as scripting, I also finally got round to The Gallifrey Chronicles, which is everything lovely that everyone’s said it is. Not sure I understood all of it – a mixture of my booze-battered brain and not having entirely followed the previous books in the run. And I glowered sternly at the occasional, overly-indulgent bits, such as a description of 26 things the Doctor is, one for each letter of the alphabet. But great fun, chock full of wondrous, wild ideas, and actually rather moving. The git.

Now reading Little, Big, which put odd images into my head on the bus this morning. I’ll explain that one tomorrow.

Oh, and happy birthday M. See you in the pub shortishly.

You lied, Edward

There is a Swansea.

I am going there now.

The cost of secrets

A retired chum tells me that posting a letter used to be cheaper if you didn't seal the envelope and only tucked the flap in. Wanting a bit of evidence for this top fact, I googled the following.

"On 1st October 1870, the first official postcards in Britain were issued by the Post Office. [...] The officially produced Post Card carried a prepaid stamp to the value of 1/2 d, a new postal rate for open correspondence. The postal rate for letters in a sealed envelope remained at one penny. At half the standard postal rate, the Post Card was immediately popular, and 675,000 were sold on the first day of issue."

David Simkin, "Seaside photography - the picture postcard"

Wonder when that stopped being the case. Wonder if my legion of readers can supply the answer. Oh, go on. It works for Neil Gaiman.

It can be very nasty...

...being interviewed, but I seemed to survive my first ever go. Mr D Darlington of Dr Who's Magazine had a beer waiting when I arrived, which helped soften the blow. Hopefully, somewhere in the ums and ahs and going-off-on-tangents, I said something intelligible about wanting real and lasting consequences...

Got a postcard from one E Robson this morning, who reports that,

"In Stockholm everybody stops at around 3 O'clock for coffee and cake. It is therefore the most civilised city in the world."

He also took my advice and went to the Vasa museum, which is cool - even if it makes the (also cool) Mary Rose look a bit scrappy. I'm off to Sweden myself in November.

Am just over half way through proofing History of Christmas, and the cover is apparently due on the Internet shortly. Also finished a very readable, very damning book on cost-benefit analysis and the way it's misused in the US to curtail regulation of health, the environment and so on.

"How can bizarre, hypothetical calculations about tiny sums of money stand in the way of using our knowledge and resources to do the right thing? ... A large, and growing, chunk of our collective resources is already allocated to the militaryon the basis of passionate claims about moral imperatives. Those who care about civilian objectives have to answer in kind, not imagine that they can win the debate with careful spreadsheets and subtle tradeoffs."

Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling, "Priceless - on knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing", p. 223.

I'd love to see the same sort of study focusing on public spending in the UK. I suspect it'd make similarly harrowing reading.

Another final thought

Delighted to see Jerry Springer The Opera has managed a reprieve, after the insidious campaign against it. Christian Voice's latest, charming, argument is that those staging the play will "sacrifice community cohesion".

It's not exactly the tolerant, forgiving attitude, is it? Those who object to the play don't have to go see it, nor do they have to like it, and this campaign of hatred is missing some pretty fundamental points.

The portrayal of Jesus and his family in the opera is not meant to be literal or true. There are explicit warnings to that effect within the opera itself. Instead, it's a fevered imagining by (the character of) Jerry Springer, reflecting his own preoccupations, fears and guilt. It's tasteless and over-the-top, but that’s the point: Springer’s treatment of ordinary people and their problems is just as despicable.

In Act One, Springer is seen cynically exploiting the real misery and crises of his guests, mistreating his staff, and refusing to accept any sort of responsibility for what happens on his show. This is a bloke who even gives airtime to the Klan.

Act Two is not, then, putting Jesus on trial; it's Springer's own soul that's at stake. The Jesus and his family we see are clearly all distorted versions of guests we met in Act One, their sordid, tawdry problems warped to Biblical, operatic proportions.

So what’s worse, a guest “entertaining” a baying crowd by declaring his infidelities to his heartbroken wife, or a twisted dream of Jesus claiming to be “a bit gay”?

The conclusion Springer reaches through his absurdist dream seems to be that he can’t shirk responsibility for his guests, that he can’t stand to one side, passing objective comment as the fighting ensues. He has to get his hands dirty. Forced to justify himself, forced to broker some kind of peace between the warring deities, Springer is left to ask some pretty serious moral questions about our – all of our – obligations to one another.

As a morality play, then, I’d argue Jerry Springer The Opera actually serves to bolster community cohesion. Instead of the pat moral summary at the end of (the real) television show, the opera poses complex questions… ones we have to think about for ourselves. If it’s not the “uplifting morality” story that some Christians might be used to, surely it deserves merit for appealing to exactly those people who wouldn’t go near anything smacking of self-congratulatory moral worth.

Jesus himself taught morality by telling stories that questioned people’s values. The parables are so well-known that it’s worth remembering how controversial they were in their time. Imagine a modern version of “The Good Samaritan”, where it’s not Pharisees and the rich who stroll past the man in need, it’s our own moral guardians and public leaders. And rather than help coming from a Samaritan – the sworn enemy of the people Jesus was telling his stories to – what would we feel if the “good” man was (considering criticism of the opera) gay? Or a Nazi, or a terrorist?

(Actually, typing that last bit made me think of how ordinary people become terrorists – is it just that they’re shown a concern by extreme groups that’s otherwise lacking in “civil” society?)

I don’t have a problem with mocking religion – it’s healthy to question authority. Yes, I’d rather the mocking was done well, with intelligence and wit, but like Life of Brian before it, Jerry Springer The Opera achieves that, and puts forward shrewd insights in amongst all the funny stuff. For which it should be celebrated.

And though some people will object to their gods getting teased, I’ve no time for any deity not man enough to take it.

Why I died

Took forever to get down to Winchester yesterday to see my folks, due to the usual joys of trains. The coach from Woking came in (for some reason) at the south end of town, so I got to point out to the Doctor the carpark that was once Winchester's other train station (and the one that Sherlock Holmes used). Much discussion of the damnable Dr Beeching, which seems all the more pertinent in these apocalyptic days where petrol for cars threatens to be as much as £1 per litre.

Laughable, really, when compared to a litre of milk (84p), six large, free range eggs (99p), or a loaf of bread (91p). (Source: Sainsbury's)

Petrol Direct also made me laugh.

Anyway. Had a huge and lovely lunch and caught up on family stuff. Then to the pub with a friend while we waited for the trains we'd been promised would be working again at half four to be working again.

This morning, I saw Revolver (review should be live soon). Verdict: well, I feel especially professional for staying till the end. Which was more than some.

Went to see O afterwards, who is well enough to be bored and restless. We had soup.

My death last week has been officially announced. Now to get on with writing something that hasn't...

Other people's news

Everybody else has news: B's dog died; O's in hospital, still waiting for an operation; M's going to be a daddy, sometime next March...

My uncle and auntie are over from the States, and last night we fell in to a proper, smoky pub and got drunk. Saw some people I used to know and work with, too, and caught up on gossip and chips.

Phil has sent me a world of notes on something I'm writing but Still Cannot Speak Of. Damn him, everything he's saying is right.

So there'll now be some stuff about the importance of discipline.

Impressive living

Got sent a link to Joe Ford's (mostly) positive review of A Life Worth Living. Glad he enjoyed it, though I (obviously) disagree with him on some points.

Joe also gives "a major thumbs up" to the number of "unknown writers" in the book. Hooray! Really pleased the effort is appreciated (and not just by the writers themselves).

New writers mean more work for the editor, because of the additional time taken reading submissions, making suggestings, getting the stories into shape, and so on. They also mean competition for the few enough gigs. It's far easier to just employ someone you know is reliable, a "name" whose inclusion can be a selling point.

Still, Big Finish published my first ever published fiction ("The Switching"), and I'm absurdly, toadyingly grateful for that. And new writers - either new to writing, to Dr Who, or just to Big Finish - also play a big part in History of Christmas and (though contributors have yet to be announced) Something Changed.

Reckon I've paid off my debt now.

Corpsing

A fun day being a number of dead bodies. Practising in the mirror yesterday, I'd been hoping to emulate John Turturro's "Do. Not. Seek. The. Treasure!" in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Think it probably ended up more the noble and learned Baron, Lord Greenback.

Anyhoo.

Be sure to grab yourself the new Dr Who Magazine. Not that I'm biased or anything...

"Simon Guerrier's 'How You Get There' is in another league than the other stories in the anthology, and the opening four pages are the best thing in the collection. The story illustrates the theme of the small kindnesses that make life worth living, as the Seventh Doctor takes a bus journey to save the world. If the other stories were of this standard, the book would be something special."

Matt Michael, "Off the Shelf - Short Trips: A Day In The Life",
Doctor Who Magazine 361 (12 October 2005), p. 65.

Tra la la...

Ask for me tomorrow...

...and you shall find me a grave man.