This offence of the curry bread

Over curry and beer with the Joffstar a couple of weeks ago, we fell into talk of good comics. He kindly leant me the first volume of Ranma ½ which I devoured on the Victoria line home.

Mr Tendo owns a "school of indiscriminate grappling" and three daughters. He's keen to have his daughters marry, so send word to an old pal with an eligible son. The son, Ranma, is soon engaged to the youngest daughter Akane. But she's still at school, fancies the local doctor and anyway she says she hates boys.

But there's another wee problem. Ranma and his dad are both cursed, having fallen into some Chinese ponds when out training. Now whenever Ranma's dad gets hit with cold water he turns into an enormous panda.

Ranma's curse is all the more terrible - cold water turns him into a girl.

It's a weirdly compelling story, with a love triangle and school bullies and unrequited crushes. With it’s martial arts and teen-loves and curses-from-the-dawn-of-time, it’d be a bit obvious to say it’s like Buffy. Well, yes, but imagine Buffy getting her tits out all the time. If you hadn’t already.

As Joffstar said, for all the plot, ahem, requires accidental disrobings and people wandering in on showering, bosomy teenagers, it’s endearingly innocent. Though I am amused that the noise for prodding someone’s boobs to check that they are real is “Poit! Poit!”

It's also giddily silly, with the panda using hand-held signs to communicate his despair because he's unable to speak. (There's a nice moment where he answers the phone and then just looks exasperated at the reader).

By the end of this first book, we’ve set up the regulars and all the tangled love-geometry of triangles within triangles, and things are getting complicated by visiting cast – such as an old schoolmate of Ranma’s hellbent on revenge. The schoolmate is, as is everyone, a martial arts whizzkid, but his terrible sense of direction is the source of many jokes.

Joffstar tells me it continues in this vein, with other people turning up with their own strange curses. He’s moving house, though, so he can’t find volumes two and three. Gah.

Shipping forecast

Sent this shippy review of The Time Travellers, which seems generally pleased with the thing. When I wrote that chapter, the snog seemed less crucial than ensuring I got the 1966 bus routes and fares 1966 correct. Even asked the London Transport Museum for help, and they went and looked it up. Hooray!

Shippers will be pleased to hear that there are more snogs to come in the life of Bernice Surprise Summerfield. A week ago I was just finishing a holiday but it seems like another life now. Work continues apace and things are getting signed off in one manner and another.

"Collected Works" is at proof stage and I've seen the final cover. We race towards a final version of the words and then it can go and be published.

"Old Friends" has gone back to its authors (Jonathan, Marc and Pete) so they can argue with my comments and agree on the appropriate Japanese.

Edits of some plays are done and we've even had time to do trailers. E. Robson responds that this is the first of his audio work he's actually ever heard, because though he's all prolific and that, none of it is out yet. (There is a trailer for his rather lovely Memory Lane on Joe's Reaping, but E. Robson has yet to get a copy.)

Have also seen the final artwork for "Summer of Love" and am filled with paroxysms of pleasure.

Now reading the first draft of the first play of Benny's Season 8 (so far into the future there's nowhere yet to link to), and have another draft awaiting my attentions. Any time soon I should get responses back on two other projects which may require hasty rewriting on my part.

In the meantime, another company entirely has asked for a more detailed breakdown of something I sent them in May. I'd rather expected a "Thanks but no thanks!" as I've since learnt a bit more about what they're after. But instead they just said a bit more about what they're after and have asked me to suitably respond. This is pitching for a big and paid gig, so that's all a bit exciting.

And then there's the script I promised the brother, and something for that there John S Drew. And, you know, attending to the needs of both wife and cat.

And watching the rest of "For Your Eyes Only"...

It should be in a museum

The brother in law played something of a blinder with the DVD of “One of our Dinosaurs is Missing” for the Dr’s recent anniversary. Cor, it’s a corker. And, of course, an essential bit of reading for anyone interested in the history of museum acquisitions and their interpretation.

Sometime soon after the First World War, Derek Nimmo’s dandy secret agent escapes China with the top secret “Lotus X”. With Chinese hoodlums (led by Peter Ustinov) hot on his trail, he hides the secret in the skeleton of a dinosaur in the Natural History Museum, but then has a nasty fall.

Lucky for him, he bumps into his old nanny just before he passes out, and she’s able to take on the case. While Nimmo languishes in a cell perishing all thought of his being a spy, the hoodlums and the nannies both plot to recover the Lotus X whatever way they can – even if it means scousing the dinosaur.

It took the wife a bit by surprise to find that this was a Disney film, especially considering the cast – which includes Joan Sims, Bernard Bresslaw, Jon Pertwee and Roy Kinnear, and suggests a sexless Carry On or, even an Ealing comedy.

It was the last film of director Robert Stevenson, who’d been responsible for Mary Poppins, Old Yeller (a favourite of my mum’s), The Absent-Minded Professor, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

(He also directed Darby O’Gill and the Little People, with its lurid Technicolor Oirland, complete with shamrocks and leprechauns. It features an all-smiling, all-singing Sean Connery three years before he became James Bond. Yes, it’s why Ian Fleming responded, “What? Him?!?”)

Dinosaurs is a very low-budget runaround in comparison to all that – a clue to that being the absence of American stars other than Helen Hayes. The cast are quite amazing, the leads ably supported by some fantastic cameos. And the whole thing is a set-up for two brilliant set pieces: the chase through fog-enshrouded London with the stolen dinosaur, and the final fisticuffs between hoodlums and nannies.

It does feel like something from another age, with Caucasian actors made up (in some cases almost not at all) to play the lead Chinese. The Dr and Nimbos both felt sure it hailed from the late 60s, though it’s from 1975 (so post, not pre, Pertwee’s commitments to the universe as Dr Who).

It is very funny, but in an especially mild-mannered way. The villains are all good eggs really, if only you take a moment to chat to them. Like Talons (made two years later), what racial jokes there are more readily mock English pretensions than bully the Oriental.

I couldn’t understand why Clive Revill, as Ustinov’s ambitious number two, seemed so familiar – and his make-up only made him more so. And then I remembered that he used to be the Emperor before Fidgeting George cut his bits out. Do put those scissors down, dear, or you'll end up the subject of a rhyme in Struwwelpeter.

What I especially like is the way Dinosaurs constantly undercuts the gritty tension of the thriller. So it sets itself up as something like Fu Manchu, but we discover along the way that the Chinese super-villain had a nanny, too, and that anyway Nimmo doesn’t work for M but for a supermarket.

Nimbos, always eager to spoil the fun, points out that the dinosaur prop looks like a skeleton, not a fossil. But he was impressed enough with the set to not always be sure what had been filmed on location.

Just like Salisbury

Bob’s my uncle (and his Mrs used to be my boss at the same time my sister was my landlady). You can now hear the noise he makes at his shiny new site.

Stung

A bit surprised by the response from some chums to the death of Steve Irwin (sorry to pick on that site in particular but it's indicative of stuff said in the pub last night). Some have said Irwin was reckless or a madman, or even deserved what he got.

I can’t help feel that if those gorillas had mauled David Attenborough instead of hugging him, it’d earn a different response. No less reckless a stunt for making good telly, it’s just Irwin wasn’t so immaculately spoken.

Danger men

Watching a 70s drama about Philby, Burgess & Maclean the other night (in which Derek Jacobi got Richard Hurndall and Arthur Lowe all cross), the Dr asked why spies so appealed.

The things the spies did and reported on led to the deaths of thousands – and they colluded willingly. (This led to a discussion of party politics, team games and all this current rubbish, my thoughts on which I’ll write up once I’ve prised “Interesting Times” from her paws.) She also decried what ruthless, vicious bastards spies are.

I concede she does rather have a point.

So what appeals? The charm and sex appeal of the style begun by Bond does lend the bastards some humanity, and a lot of what I like is the tension caused by the wretched ruthlessness of the job. Then there’s the tedious wish-fulfilment bullshit of one man who can make a real difference.

Spies are also clever protagonists, relying on wits and skill. They face constant danger in the field, battling against all the odds. Though they may have support and resources back home, they’re very much on their own. They face terrible, unforgiving brutality should they get things a bit wrong. As a result, they immediately make a plot into a thriller.

One of the great appeals of Casino Royale when I read it all those years ago was Bond getting things a bit wrong. Am hoping the new film (full trailer now here) will include his penance-by-tennis-racket.

See also: Millennium Dome on DangerMouse.

The whole brevity thing

Rob complained last night that my posts here go on a bit long. I patiently explained that cutting stuff down is the difficult bit and usually something I’m paid for. Rambling is extravagant luxury.

“But I don’t read to the end,” he said.

I think I replied along the lines of this blog being for my own personal amusement. But I have a notebook for that and its good practice anyway, so shall attempt more frequent concisisity.

Intelligent design

After a day trawling through the washing and inbox, the Dr and I last night attended a soirée at the Royal Chelsea Hospital which included a talk and free fizz.

Chatted to a couple of other punters, all linked to art institutions of some kind. The Dr spoke knowledgeably of effigies of Queen Anne and what conservation cleaning can reveal, and I mugged a bit and ate canapés.

One of the pensioners showed us round the chapel, and explained the prominent baptismal font. Pensioners’ grandchildren are eligible to be baptised (and married) in the place.

Then it was on to the smart Council Chamber for two quick talks explaining the hospital’s role now (with 300-odd pensioners today, and a new infirmary in the works - donate here), and the history of its origination. The latter made use of portraits round the room of the founding heroes and villains.

Charles II (yay!) set up the hospital at about the same time as he did the country’s first standing army. Work got underway quickly, and then stalled for over a decade when the Earl of Raneleigh (boo!) ran off with the money.

The hospital didn’t just deal with the social problem of former soldiers now begging. Charles had been newly established as king by a government who’d cut his dad’s head off, and the “sentinels” – as the pensioners were originally described in all the documentation – had an implied remit to act, should he need them, as bodyguard.

Christopher Wren (yay!) positioned the building at a slight angle to the river, so that the pensioners are shaded from the sun in the summer and get maximum sunlight in the winter.

The design also includes shallow, wide steps ideal for old blokes and a clever mix of public and private space in the long wards. Pensioners can hide away in their berths, or sit chatting in the corridor. Which is all a bit clever, really.

I am a doughnut

Saturday
Climbed into a cab at a little after 3 in the morning on Saturday and had a very easy ride up to Stansted. Behind us in the check-in queue, two female exemplars of English moderation and kindness took their time explaining the obvious: that the airport is very busy even at this time in the morning; that it’s still dark outside; that there’s a lot of people going to Berlin.

They also get mardy about a young couple just ahead of us they’ve decided jumped the queue. When they start saying, “Well then we should push ahead, too,” I point out that the young couple have been there all along. They glare at me right up to the check-in desk.

Security is no more of a palava than usual, apart from them not allowing cigarette lighters in your hand luggage. Well d’uh. Your hand luggage must also be, er, hand luggage, and not just a suitcase which you can demonstrably lift. We pass swiftly through the arguments with patient airport staff, whose mantra goes, “No,” and, “No,” and, “No,” and, “Even in this circumstance there aren't any exceptions.”

Had hoped to pick up “Lost Girls” in the airport bookshops, which are often ahead of the outside, real world. No such luck, and the Internet is available for just £1 per 10 minutes. Bah.

We shuffle onto the plane, and no one is allowed any sleep because Ryanair has exciting news of drinks and scratchcards and hire cars and shit. Everyone is already cranky from no-sleep, so this makes things all the more lovely.

Then we are in Berlin, sleep-starved and lost by the route into town. There are chatty volunteers at the railway station showing what tickets to buy, but they’re so chatty we miss a train while they “serve” the people in front of us. The train then stops for 20 minutes at one station and terminates at the next. We spend longer getting the miles into town than we did in the air.

“It’s a lot like London,” says the Dr as we plod out of Friedrichstrasse station, friendly commuters bowling past us, between us and sometimes right over the top.

We amble down the street to where our hotel is meant to be. On first sight, Berlin reminds us of Chicago, our favourite American city from our honeymoon. The hotel is sumptuous and we sleep a couple of blissful hours, me dreaming of Bernice Summerfield and spaceships full of cats. The Dr indulges in a bath (we don’t have such things at home), and the Hotel even provides its own rubber duck.

After a spot of lunch we wander up to the Brandenburg Gate, both so blinded by prejudice we’re amazed to realise we’re staying in what used to be East Berlin. Poster campaigns show the city’s gleaming tube network peopled by every demographic – young, old, scruffy, smart, disabled, gay and into rock music. I think I even spot someone who isn’t white, but it might be my imagination.

We gawp at the gate we’re so familiar with from old news, and then go for a peak at the Reichstag. Deciding to do the climb to the roof another day, we amble back through the park comparing notes on our A-levels and what we learned about the fire.

Feeling jet-lagged we explore the Gemaldegalerie, where there’s a Botticelli sketch of Venus and a lovely Vermeer of a girl polishing off a Glass of Wine. We pootle around for a good two and a half hours, and spent an anxious time in the shop afterwards looking for postcards. Why do they never have ones of our favourites?

On the way back to the hotel we marvel at the swanky new shopping centres, and then stumble over what used to be the border. We follow the line of the old Berlin Wall, picked out in colour stone in the pavement, and take photos where there are odd fragments of tall concrete, like the ruins of a skinny Stonehenge.

We reach Checkpoint Charlie and instead of trying its museum (which we’ve been warned is a bit gaudy), we read the many information boards all round the crossroads. It’s an eerie and moving experience – both of us remember watching this place on the news and seeing the world change. It could have all so easily played out more violently, more miserably, more slowly…

Then back to the hotel and the Dr has a swim while I snooze. We eat at the same nice place we had lunch in and then crash into an early night. The Dr dreams of monkeys without legs after I tell her I glimpsed one on the television.

Sunday
We get up lateish and head towards Museum Island, the reason we are here. On the way we pass through Bebelplatz, the square where the Nazis burnt 25,000 books.

The well-read Dr quotes Heine’s remark that,

“where they burn books they will also, in the end, burn people,”

and wonders whether the burning of the Satanic Verses all those years ago was the first symptom of more recent religious tensions. I start to answer that burning books is easier than burning people, but that’s not actually true.

The destruction of books is the destruction of social structure. The law is in books, as is religion and science and history. To burn a book is a refusal to empathise, to think, to engage. When you have burned down people’s ideas and opinions there is nothing left to stop you burning the people down, too.

Bebelplatz is an empty, open space amid the university, and though there are a couple of artworks about books in general, I think there should be something more lasting. They should have something like the stalls of mixed second-hand reading outside the National Film Theatre, with all kinds of well-thumbed, unsuitable ideas at tantalisingly affordable prices.

We move on, and the Dr adores the Altes Museum, speaking highly of a video presentation that shows where the ancient objects were taken from and how. We cheer as it shows an original Firman (a Turkish certificate saying they Ottoman government okay any looting), and I’m introduced to Furtwangler, whose marvellous moustache – as Charles Newton said – makes him look like the Dying Gaul.

There’s all sorts of detail in the objects on display and we coo at intricate glass and gold works and the insights into everyday life. We collect a mass of photocopied sheets with their additional facts about each display, the Dr marvelling at how well interpreted it all is. Again, though, the selection of postcards misses several favourites.

The museum is on a shared square with the vast, dark edifice of Berlin Cathedral and the building site that used to be the East Berlin government. The secular cathedral of classical gods easily holds its own against the Christian fella, and a great neon sign declares that “All art has been contemporary”. Feeling taller and happier and properly on holiday, we go find a suitable beer.

Next stop is the Pergamon, and the Dr marvels at how cheap the museums are before remembering that in London all this would be free.

The Pergamon is on a much bigger scale than the Altes, with whole reconstructions of pillaged ancient streets, but leaves us less impressed. I like the vast paintings of the relics in situ, hanging above the same relics on display. Yes, they look better where they were. And they wouldn’t have been quite so bombed, either.

We head home, get changed and head out for dinner. After a bit too much red wine we see in the Dr’s birthday with what cards I’d intercepted and the book on Victorian London she’d already intercepted.

Monday
Breakfast arrives at 7am, courtesy of the not-too-bad husband. We then amble down to the Health Club for the morning of indulgence I’d booked. The Dr chose the special “strawberry bath” while I was lead away by an agreeable-looking blonde to have an all-over massage.

She gently suggests I’d be more comfortable without the swimming trunks on and then sets to work on my knotty bits. Its odd to sprawl out in the all-together for a complete – and pretty – stranger, but I am soon blissed out by the pummelling. Point out later to the wife that it’s the first time in nearly seven years another woman’s got to have a prod at me naked. Does this count as a scratching of the itch, and do I have to wait as long for another go at it?

When it’s the Dr’s turn, I have fun playing in the saunas and then in the pool, and but for the last ten minutes have the whole place to myself. The Dr should have birthdays more often.

Floaty and content we find some clothes to put on and head out to again to explore. We pass the rather groovy British Embassy building, a cube of yellow inset with fun blue and pink shapes. It looks like a military headquarters run by children.

Queued and queued to get into the Reichstag as we passed through the various airlocks of security and up into Norman Foster’s splendid roof. The fine panoramic views remind you how flat Berlin is and why there are so many bicycles.

We then wandered East down the Spree and into the old Jewish quarter. Having marvelled at the great palace built for the Post Office’s horses, and at the magnificent rebuilt synagogue, we had a happy time poking around the fashionable, studenty shops. The area around the Nikolaikirche was very badly bombed, and the rebuilt area is rather smart and foreboding. A bar seemed a bit perturbed to be serving tourists, so we left them to it.

Instead, we dined at the 12 Apostles, a lovely pizzeria just next to the Pergamon. It was bustling with locals – always a good sign – and we got to sit right up by the open-plan kitchen. I had a huge calzone (a folded over pizza), and managed manfully to finish it. Cor, it was good. We bickered amiably about the selfish gene and about lost bits of stone off Malta and where our travels would take us next, and then plodded home.

Tuesday
Breakfasted and checked-out of the hotel, and then made our way to the Jewish Museum, which was something of a surprise. It was less about the Nazis as about the history of Germano-Jews since the time of the First Crusade. Charting the highs and lows of bias in the law and acts of violence, to the contributions to society by Jewish scientists and artists, it’s as much a celebration as a warning.

I found it moving and involving, and was impressed by how much it engaged the gangs of noisy schoolkids. The interactive elements included difficult yes/no questions about citizenship and immigration, such as “Should those born in Germany automatically qualify for German citizenship?” (68% of visitors when we were there said, “Yes.”)

Then we had a foolishly long walk across town to the Humburger Bahnhof – a former railway station and now a contemporary art gallery. It had been recommended by a few people, and we were hugely disappointed. As well as the usual pretension of the things on display, the place was stark and unfriendly, the staff keen to tell us off for carrying a cardigan the wrong way.

Only contemporary art makes you feel like a trespasser, and I found it difficult to get anything from the work. Were scuff marks just discernible in the blinding-white walls some new, untitled piece? Or were they just what was left behind when a piece had been relocated? In different cases, both.

There was little signage or – so important to the Dr – interpretation. The café was not open but didn’t tell say so anywhere (so we got told off again for blundering in), and there were various building works going on and things set up, with nothing to explain which areas on the map were newly out of bounds.

We did like some of the things – some fascinating photos from inside the ruin of the Palast der Republik, built in 1976 to govern East Berlin. But much of the collection was large, abstract, plain-toned stuff, presented against large, plain-toned walls so as to reduce any hint of excitement.

Also, of course, none of the things we liked were available as postcards. Instead they had lots of pretentiously rude ones – dead-eyed women fingering their bits, a bloke looking bored with his half-hearted cock out. I suppose there’s an argument that it’s not dreary porn because of the building its in. But, you know, piss off.

We had curried sausages before taking a train back to the Altes Museum, where the Dr was keen to make notes. On the way back to the hotel to fetch our bags we nipped into the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche and had a look at the collection of sculptures by Schinkel. The church was largely destroyed during the war and has been rebuilt elegantly. Some of the early 19th century sculptures were also missing limbs, and seemed oddly so much more like the classical works that had inspired them.

There was time for a beer before getting the train back to the airport. Our place was late leaving London, but they didn’t tell us that until we were on the plane. We mooched around the meagre airport facilities – a coffee bar, a shop and a sickly-stinking Burger King – and then huddled in a corridor with our fellow passengers.

Air travel brings out the worst in people anyway, but the half-hour lateness turned boarding into a scrum. There is something especially galling about people pretending not to see me as they shove past – I am tall, I am freakish-looking and I spend my whole life in the way.

We left the tangled morass at Stansted, climbing into our waiting taxi as people around us swore at each other for all having been off on holiday. Home about half one this morning, to the Dr’s remaining cards and presents, and a pair of new shoes for me.

Rhymes with "Vimto grins"

If seasoned smokers, tokers and pipe-pokers can blow Smoke Rings (and Tolkein implies such activity is the finest part of havin' a puff), surely the same technique - the same articulation of the throat and tonguing action - might be used in the forging of vomit rings.

Imagine the joyous bafflement inflicted at bus stops besplattered in acidic hoops... like the Mysterons have had a night on the tiles.

Surely there's a research grant in this. No, really.

ETA: That should be "Anagram of", not "rhymes with". I am a twat. And much in need of a holiday.

Attack of the memory cheats

Blimey: The official Dr Who website has posted up Nightshade, former Dr Who Mark Gatiss’ highly acclaimed first forage into BBC endorsed Who.

Here's a review of it I wrote earlier:

The readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted it best New Adventure of 1992, despite competition that included Paul Cornell’s dazzling "Love and War" and strong entries from Marc Platt, Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch - three men who’d contributed some of the McCoy Doctor’s best TV stuff. The reliable reckoning of I, Who thinks it one of the "most emotive Who novels [...] striking a deep melodious chord with most readers," (p. 164).

The story is relatively simple – in marked contrast to the Doctor’s adventures at this time. The setting is a small town in late December 1968. Among the community is Edmund Trevethick, who used to play "Professor Nightshade" in the [fictional] BBC sci-fi series of the 50’s. He, the Doctor, the town and the staff of the nearby radio telescope are besieged by initially welcome, ultimately deadly ghosts from the past.

The book moves at a cracking place, full of drama. It’s built up of dialogue and action sequences, so reads like the novelisation of a TV story. It’s brief compared to many of the later books – only 228 pages – and keeps the reader on tenderhooks right until the end. The fact that it’s set in the days up to Christmas 1968 lends a significant atmosphere of invaded cosiness, as well as establishing a strong sense of time and place. Gatiss also takes us to the Civil War, albeit briefly, another potent time of English order being invaded.

"Nightshade" evokes the best of "Remembrance of the Daleks" – the first TV McCoy story to really impress. The 60’s setting is immediately identifiable, and would have ensured good production values had this been produced for television.

The interplay between the Doctor and Ace is excellent, giving both plenty of interesting character development. The way that McCoy’s Doctor and Aldred’s Ace speak on screen is nicely observed and mimicked: unlike a lot of books before and after this, we can really hear them speaking the lines. On page 198, Ace even gets to repeat the emphatic "Boom!" from "Battlefield", episode one.

There’s also a high demand for thrilling special effects sequences that screams for TV presentation. Thus, "Nightshade" transcends cursory similarities to classic Who of earlier eras – most notably "The Daemons" – and the ilk of English horror where evil whispers behind the walls in sleepy villages – without ever losing sight of its television heritage. Perhaps that accounts for the broad appeal.

This is the anti- Heart Beat, thank ****. There are terrors lurking behind the cosy façade and nostalgia kills. There is continual effort made to undercut a rose-tinted view of the period. Veterans of ghastly world war still suffer the effects of gas poisoning and the loss of friends and family, while an age of free love and drugs for the young and the rioting in Paris leaves people anything but safe and secure. This all adds to the threat that the demons from the past present: Ace herself offers a telling critique on the contrast between the era and her mum’s own lovestruck recollection.

What is also gratifying about a re-reading eight years after publication is noting the foreshadowing of 1996 TV Movie Dr Who. The book opens with the Doctor listening to scratchy gramophone records, and wearing a russet waistcoat. Ace has the same sense on entering the tertiary console room as on her first visit to church: post TV Movie books have tried to render the TARDIS interior as sepulchral, a cathedral like Notre Dame.

Gatiss signposts several of his own later efforts: the failure of religion to comprehend or answer the attacking monsters foreshadows his more pointed dismissal of the church in "St Anthony’s Fire." The character of the Civil War suggests much of the activity of "The Roundheads", while he even uses the word "Phantasmagoria" on page 72.

Billy Coote, the vagrant, could easily be a comedy yokel taken straight from a cosy Pertwee script. His running off in terror at the arrival of the TARDIS is, however, laced with his "malicious" desire for the deaths of famous people. Celebrity death means fatter newspapers and therefore comfier bedding.

This scintillating morbidity comes straight from League of Gentlemen. Crook Marsham is a "hotchpotch of small houses," (p. 32) akin to Royston Vasey. As the Doctor and Ace walk through the drizzle into town, we almost expect them to stop off at a Local Shop for a can of Coke. League of Gentlemen and this kind of Doctor Who (and, to some extent, Withnail and I, which is cited on page 5) are funny and scary – in a disturbing rather than wholly gory way – with well-observed, over the top English archetypes.

The crowning achievement is the depiction of social interaction between a range of characters, and the ways that this inter-linking group buckles and strains under pressure. The characters of batty pensioners and a carer who’d far rather be a political activist, the tensions amongst those working with the radio telescope – all are glorious.

The way the town hangs together is perhaps best shown right at the beginning of the book. Jack Prudhoe is aware that "there had been a lot of gossip recently about how ill Betty [Yeadon] was looking," (p. 4). This ginger suggestion of possible domestic violence and its evident interest to the townsfolk serves to ensure the close-knit feel of the town. The suggestion itself is soon forgotten in the wake of a cause far more horrifying. And yet, at the end of the novel, the town again closes ranks. Even "those who’d had the worst scares were the first to deny anything out of the ordinary," we’re told (p. 230). The novel rewards as a convincing case study in human behaviour.

Some of the cast are exceptionally engaging. Trevethick’s character is slyly observed. Like some other veteran actor whose telefantasy work is much adored, Trevethick is staunchly opinionated, loves to lose himself in Dickensian London and is a regular in the pub.

His relationship to the fictional Professor Nightshade recalls (in my mind, at least) a 1978 Nationwide interview, where Frank Bough accused Tom Baker of actually being the Doctor in ‘real life’. Tom muttered darkly that he only had to ‘be’ the Doctor as much as his accuser had to live up to being ‘Frank Bough’. The TV persona is a projection of a fallible, flawed man. If only Bough had listened and not laughed: it was exactly this dilemma between public and private personas that lead to his own plummet from grace in the 80’s.

Trevethick, as a retired actor whose private life is quietly evaporating, clings more and more to the strengths of a man he used to ‘be’. Rude and cantankerous, he’s still quietly delighted by the renewed success and longevity of his work, harbouring grand thoughts of a new series. But it’s not just this wonderful figure who suffers the crisis between public and private lives. The Doctor, too, experiences crisis as the misery and memories he has subdued for so long threaten to engulf him, overwhelming the space hero with all the answers that Ace enthuses him to be. Both Trevethick and the Doctor eventually have to face and live up to the responsibilities of their projected selves – it’s the only way to defeat the monsters.

Overall though – and despite the novel’s title – It’s not about Doctor Who and it’s not about Nightshade. This is Ace’s story. It is Ace who solves things, not only besting the Doctor but also provoking him into action when he has surrendered. Facing the angst of her past in the way she does resolves the ongoing issues explored in Season 26 - the final year of the TV series. As she acknowledges in the book, the Doctor has helped her grow up, straightened her out. She’s competent, brave and wise – knowing not only enough about Pulsars to explain them to Robin, but shrewd enough to manipulate the sly Time Lord.

Robin is a likeable, earnest, worthy and just bloody nice guy, and surely Ace earns her right to stay with him. In the books that follow this one, she’s never as happy with anyone else. In many ways, ‘Nightshade’ would have been a richly rewarding exit for Ace, and far more deserving of the character than what eventually got done to her.

If we can muddy the lines between TV and novels (as Doctor Who Magazine did in issue 287), ‘Season 27’ ought really to have ended with Ace’s victorious departure, the Doctor heading off to new adventures and a strong, new companion without her. Just think of all the crap she and we would have been spared...

"The ending breaks your heart," says I, Who. It’s certainly a stunning, powerful finale, and one that promises a new realm of forward-looking adventures. It’s a bit of a shame then that the loss of Robin is only fleetingly mentioned in "Love and War", and that such a genuine emotional match is eclipsed in favour of the unlikely and unlikeable Jan: something rather nicely made up for by Robin’s cameo return in "Happy Endings".

"Nightshade" is a richly satisfying book, superb to revisit. It’s also the sort of thing you can duplicitously hand to those strange and terrible Not-We if they enjoy League. Rah!

Usealla planeetalla on pohjoinen

Panic sorted, thanks to those that asked. Have tomorrow and Friday in the studio and am then off to Berlin for a bit. Am hoping that another country and looking at their Greek bits will distract the Dr from being so much horribly older.

Speaking of foreigners and Drs, the Finns get Dr Who next month and their blogs are jolly excited about it, as Alex recently posted. He’s even had a post translated into Finnish by a bloke called Tero Ykspetäjä:

“Tohtori uskoo vapauteen ja vihaa tietämättömyyttä, yhdenmukaisuutta ja eristäytyneisyyttä. Hän ei ole kenenkään työntekijä eikä käytä univormua tai kanna asetta.”

I am inordinately envious, not having had anything I scribble so much as translated into English.

Sent Alex’s thing to Jonathan Clements, who is knowledgeable about Finns (and also about Vikings which are apparently not the same thing). He comments:

“I know Tero Ykspetäjä, he is indeed a terribly nice chap … I spent much of my first Finnish convention appearance in 2003 trying to impress people with my Doctor Who associations, but nobody gave a flying toss, as only a single person had ever heard of it at that time, and he was Swedish.

However, the Finns are very excited about Doctor Who now, because:

1. the marketing for it has very smartly targeted blog-crazy Finnish fandom, with a screening at Finncon
2. it's got London in it (nobody has told them yet that it's mainly Cardiff)
3. Billie Piper looks like a pixie

My personal Finn, who has demonstrated little to no interest in Doctor Who for the last three years, despite editing an SF fanzine and being offered the chance for all sorts of insider gossip, came back from last week's Finncon in Helsinki full of squeeing fangirl excitement about it.

I have now realised that the way to get her to do anything is to get a stranger on the internet to tell her that something is cool, since she immediately rushes off to get anything recommended to her by anonymous bloggers, but doesn't pay an ounce of attention to anything I suggest.”

This strikes something of a chord, as I shared with a fellow passenger on a much delayed train this morning:

"You'd probably really enjoy Talons of Weng-Chiang," I tell the wife
on a regular basis for six years. Nothing. Doesn’t even look up from her book / cat / book with a cat sitting on it.

"You'd probably really enjoy Talons of Weng-Chiang," Matthew Sweet tells the wife. And she’s watched it all within a fortnight, and voluntarily too. I wonder what else he’d endorse for me.

Jonathan also remarks on the Finnish translation of “Tohtori Kuka”:

“Finnish has at least two words for ‘Doctor’, and they’ve plumped for the academic variant, Tohtori, rather than the medical one, Lääkäri.”

I delude myself with happy thoughts of serious debate in Helsinki over the on-screen evidence in the old-school show. Does his being a valeyard, his special knowledge of Article 17 and his donning a wig for the Megara mean he’s really a doctor of law?

But then what about his studying under Lister?

Of course, the title of this post is the Finnish for “Lots of planets have a north” – as, Jonathan adds,

“A mystified Finn has just confirmed.”

I enjoy mystifying Finns.

Rewriting in his own hand

Things can be spoken of: the Big Finish website now thrillingly details much that I’ve been up to.

I have edited another book of exciting Dr Who short stories and it is called Time Signature. Philip Purser-Hallard came up with the title (after we decided “Music of the Spheres” was a bit wussy) and the incredible cover is by the incredible Stuart Manning.

(I gather Stuart also had a successful time in New York this weekend flogging his new Dark Shadows series. Dark Shadows is apparently a famous US soap but with the twist of being full of ghouls, the undead and all manner of macabre happening.

No, actually, that’s most soaps I can think of…)

Also in the news is Nick Briggs’s book of exciting Dr Who short stories, Dalek Empire. Nick is of course the voice of the Daleks (and the Cybermen and the Autons and Mr Crofton) as well as chief of new old-school Droo on CD.

Dalek Empire is also the name of an audio series he did (bits of which starred David Tennant), and in that there is a planet called Guria. Nick assures readers on page 300 of his Dalek Empire scriptbook that this is assuredly not named after me because – he says – he didn’t even know me then.

But he did. And so I hold that he did.

Guria makes an appearance in that what I’ve written. And not just in the way I am credited.

Also of great excitement, but only until midnight tonight: my Sapphire and Steel heads the Play Bank Holiday sale. Which may explain why I’m currently numbers 5 and 24 in their audio drama chart.

Hooray and hooroo! It’s been a bit of a slog, but life is pretty damn -

[Mobile is rattled by a text message bearing not entirely fab news. Cue leaping about in a panic and howling full tilt at the sky.]

Gah! Thank you, the Fickle Finger of Fate. I hate it when this happens…

Hullabaloo

The 12,000 words is more like 13,500 right this minute but the bulk of the heavy work is done. It includes the word "hullabaloo", which is no doubt done in memory of "Hullabaloo for Owl" which I read when I was little.

And I am pleased with it. And Julio Angel Ortiz likes the Time Travellers.

So life is good. Sleep now.

I should say

Go have a look at Next Time, I Shall Not Be So Lenient! - a new blog from my friend Alex which dares to collect together all the snippets of thought about old-school Dr Who that he's sent into DWM's Time Team. Alex is, of course, a frequent contributor to the "And you said" side-bar, and now you can read him in all his glory.

On a related note, I'd recommend his advice on writing press releases the DWM way.

7,200 words have been sent round the houses for comment and another 3,700 is being worked on right this minute. Have also had time for a pub lunch (mmm, moo cow) and yesterday went to see some chaps playing football.

As a result of having been Satan in a former life, I was in the visitors' end of Selhurst Park. The game was okay, though mostly played round Burnley's goalmouth. A small, valiant gang of mad-keen fanatics had travelled down to cheer on the clarets, and myself and the Swedish contigent marvelled at their inventiveness with songs.

It wasn't all just about southern jessies - there were bold denunciations of other north-west teams, and even a couple of ballads about fellow supporters. Though it took a minute to work out why they were so proud of some Lanky Shah.

One season-ticket-holding Burnley-ite was amazed at the lack of police presence. "We get one copper for every two of us back at home," he boasted. This is because we southern jessies are all so beautifully brought up.

Or we're too jessy to misbehave.

There were a few evictions in the second half for naughty behaviour - having drink on the terraces or shouting rude words. One bloke refused to be manhandled by security staff and would only be led off by the police.

After the disappointing finish we ambled back into the city and found a pub for the evening, though it wasn't open as late as I'd promised. Lidster teased me about liking to eat pancakes, because he himself is not posh. I think his myriad inadequacies bleed through the bulk of his work.

But with a knob of butter

From the archive:

The Iron Man (1968), by poet widower and Laureate Ted Hughes, is a rich, darkly textured story.

An awesome metal man from nowhere wreaks havoc until taught better by a small boy called Hogarth. The metal monster then saves the world from a terrifying, Australia-sized space bat. In five brief, plosive chunks, it’s great bedtime reading for impressionable kids, and was an ideal book-of-the-week for Jackanory in the early 1980s. A shaven-headed, bleak and grey Tom Baker told the sombre tale from a bleak and grey set, and another small boy was utterly mesmerised.

Many favourite books have fallen apart when reread as an... ahem... adult. But, like Russell Hoban’s The Mouse and His Child, The Iron Man is more absorbing and satisfying than I remembered it. Stirring, potent imagery, right from the beginning, delights in hulking metaphors – the Iron Man is,

"taller than a house, [his head] shaped like a dustbin but as big as a bedroom."

Ted Hughes, The Iron Man, p. 11.

The images are unwieldy, noisy and jarring, a messy ensemble of everyday bric-a-brac.

We’re immediately drawn into the mystery – who / what is this robot and where is he from? We’re never told, and just learn to accept him. There are clues to some sort of imprisoned past –

"Never before had the Iron Man seen the sea,"

Ibid.

- and throughout, his industrial, masculine body contrasts with the natural and feminine (a theme overplayed in the less wowing sequel, The Iron Woman).

The opening moments are shocking – the cold, inhuman machine torn apart, tumbling down the cliff into the sea. Seagulls pick at his severed parts. Eerily reborn – rebuilding himself bit by bit from just one hand and eye - he grows from bird-fodder to saving the world from a terrible pterodactyl.

The Iron Man invades a land of picnics and fox-hunting. Hogarth lives a safe, rural idyll. It’s not just the Britain of the 1960s – Hogarth spends nights out on his own with a gun, while his dad immediately believes him about the monster, even when other adults don’t. This is a child’s world, where adults are just as alien and other as robots and space monsters.

The ever-ready kid carries a handy nail and a knife amongst the clutter in his pockets, and it is he who leads the Iron Man to initial entrapment in the pit, to the scrapyard after that, and then to his duel with the Star Beast.

The adults want to destroy both Iron Man and Space Beast. Big is intrinsically bad; the two strange visitors are feared for their size and scale of appetite. Both, however, ultimately save mankind. World peace, with people,

"blissfully above all their earlier little squabbles,"

Ibid., p. 62.

derives from space, the "bigger picture", if you will. As it happens, it was adult, earthly war that originally corrupted the Star Beast so that he wanted to join in with the destruction – the little people and their little squabbles brought the real threat upon themselves.

Proving himself - sprawling in fires of his own making - we’re told that the Iron Man’s

"hair and elbows and toes became red hot".

Ibid., p. 52.

His hair? Why does a robot need hair? He’s resplendently, sensibly bald in Andrew Davidson’s stark illustrations. On the cover, however, he’s gazes at us with sensitive blue eyes.

The Iron Man is about a monster growing unmonstrous. It’s unprecedented. King Kong and Frankenstein’s (engineered) monster raged against the adult world, and lost. It’s a small boy who humanises the Iron Man, leading him to glory.

For all their guns and cars and industry, the adults are left feeling sheepish and silly, and have to submit to living a peaceful idyll. Hah.

The eighth wonder of the world

No, I don’t mean King Kong.

For reasons that shall become clear another time, I asked a couple of learned fellows about the seven wonders of the world (according to Phil from Istanbul: two blokes, two tombs, a church, a garden and a lighthouse).

If, I wanted to know, you were to list seven modern wonders of engineering and human cleverness, what would they be? The catch being that you can only include things made before 1853, so I might rip off the answers for a story.

So no, you can’t have the Brooklyn Bridge (which was started in 1870), and neither the new Palace of Westminster nor the Clifton Suspension Bridge were completed.

We came up with a bridge, a boat, a greenhouse, some tracks, a lighthouse and two connected houses. You can have a guess if you like, but the answers aren’t due until Christmas.

There’s yet another shortlist for “unsung landmarks” on the BBC News site. I find myself torn between two:

Telly transmitters at Crystal Palace
Which I live sort of under, and what gave Nimbos his logo. It's on the site of one end of the Crystal Palace, and can be seen from all across London. Which makes me wonder whether the palace was, too.


Radio telescope at Jodrell Bank
Which was the formative death of Dr Who, and also had sunflowers growing next door when I visited many years ago.

Still, it loses points for the paltry exhibition, which explained little more than what the nine planets are called. The exhibits were mostly about what we can see of the cosmos, when Jodrell Bank really just listens.

Returned home to my then physicist housemate who explained that the little and newer telescope next to the big one is by far the more powerful and groovy. Technology has meant that size doesn’t matter.

And yet, they can still make use of the big one. They team up with two other big telescopes evenly spaced around the Earth, and then go listen to the same bit of space. By comparing the slightly different hearings, they gain results as if they had a telescope bigger than the whole of the planet.

Which is a bit damn cool. So I’m voting for Jodrell.

(Note to self: 4,073 words and still lots to be done with the other one.)

Hot salad

Things that happen when you have a chef staying who cooks tea in leiu of rent: last night the outlaws took the Dr and I for a slap-up meal at Carluccio's and it felt a little like slumming it.

Ah, heaven...

Moments ago, m'colleague A. declined a cup of tea on the basis he'd already had several. This is indicative of the wild, rock-n-roll lifestyle what the young people live nowadays.

"And one of 'em had caffeine in it," he added.

Hmm. In my book of arbitrary rulings that makes his total just one cup of tea, plus several mugs of fruit drink.

Another colleague, F. tells of culinary hardship when attempting to buy herself lunch. The cooked chicken had gone mostly cold so she asked the bloke behind the counter if she could have it re-heated.

He took her plate, decorously arranged with meat and veg and sald, and bunged the lot in the microwave for a good minute's ping. F. ended up eating arid, still-not-hot poultry and some unnaturally warm strands of lettuce.

"Didn't you complain?" asked A. "Didn't he think it was odd cooking salad?"

"People ask him for odd things all the time," said F. "Putting ketchup in soup, or just ordering a meal of chips and potatoes... People round here are weird."

Oddfelt

Have spoken before about odd things in James Bond films, but working my way through the shiny new attache case of all 20 remastered flicks, all sorts of new ones occur.

Doctor No and From Russia With Love are both very fast-moving, with lots of tightly edited quick scenes and sequences. I love that having set Bond up as this dangerous playboy we then find out that he shoots like a lady.

I also like how vast the world is - it's a long and arduous process to get across a border.

Doctor No thinks Bond just a "stupid policeman" with ideas above his station (about nice wines and so on). But Bond's actually quite a blunderer. His job is to walk into wherever's the dangerest and piss people off until they tell him their plans. Then they fail to kill him.

Goldfinger really is very good indeed. I don't quite understand why Goldfinger gives his demonstration to hoodlums he's going to kill - unless it's just so Bond can eavesdrop.

It's a whopping great coincidence in Thunderball that Bond happens to be in the same health farm as the baddies. That is, unless either a) it's being right next to a NATO base means the Secret Service can get a discount, or b) M has had a tip-off.

Though the latter seems not to play when Bond phones in his suspicions about Count Lippi's tattoo: Moneypenny reminds him how he's on leave.

There's a top cat moment in You Only Live Twice, as Blofeld and his gang flee the control room. Watch the white pussy struggling in his arms, and pulling hilario-comedic gurns at the camera.

Also, when Blofeld kills Osato (just before he doesn't kill Bond, then walks through a door, and then tries to), the cat escapes him. So presumably dies in the volcano.

Why don't Blofeld and Bond recognise each other when they meet in OHMSS? There's a silly scene of Savalas catching Bond out on geneaology when they've already met...

Bond sits reading Playboy in OHMSS, and then steals the centrefold. While trying to look inconspicuous in a lawyer's lobby, he's admiring the double-spread and then pocketing it.

Blofeld tells Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever to go and put more clothes on because her bikini distracts his workers. So she covers up her arms. Also, she's a sassy, dangerous lady right up until she meets Q on the fruit machines. And then she's just a ditzy, dizzy broad. Which is a shame.

All Sean's movies except Goldfinger end with him and his moll on a boat.

Ten headaches

As well as making my tea each night and ensuring that each morning I am ready for school, it appears the two wives feel themselves responsible for my general presentation.

Last night, as we ate the chicken-and-noodles-and-chillies-and-yum that Wife 2 had made and while Griff Rhys Jones enthused about Betjeman, Wife 1 tried to explain that if you’re wearing groovy brown trousers, you shouldn’t wear tops that are blue.

And that white stripes on the arms are not cool.

And that anyway it looks like a cardie.

This is unfair on two counts: firstly I’d asked for her unforthcoming opinion while compiling the day’s costume, and second, you should see what she’s happy putting on, the Goth freak.

Anyway, I ventured, such silly fripperies as fashion are below a fellow of my breeding. You decide these things on a sensible, evidential basis, asking will they last and do they fit and can you avoid having to iron them.

Wife 2 suggested that no, knowing what colours go well together is a universal. Pah, said I, that’s what fools told the Impressionists with their punky clash of blue-against-orange and purple-on-yellow that made their stuff so vibrant and exciting.

(Anyway, we know all about those men who are good with colours, don’t we? And if we don’t, we ask Lee.)

The wives countered that an arty sort like Monet would have known better than to wear a mismatching cardie. At least he knew what he looked like.

“Have you seen pictures of him?” I blathered. “He looked like an old tramp! His wife wouldn’t be worried about how his white stripes looked council. She’d more likely say, ‘Oh zut alors, Claude! Did you put that on so you could spill paint on it, or have you been out on park benches sucking shit through a sock?’”

I’m quite content looking a bit grubby at the edges. Neglecting to shave is as much a guilty thrill as not getting out of bed. At school there was one teacher who used often to jeer that, “You’re a shambles, Guerrier.” I was always too timid to shout back, “That’s the point!” – though sometimes I would bravely dare think it.

This Betjemanesque admission much amused the cackly wives, who thought “You’re a shambles, Guerrier” would look good on my tombstone. Yes, they are already planning, and said how they’d plant the grave with an appropriate great clash of weeds.

“They’re not really weeds if you plant them on purpose,” I said, and then had to explain: “Weeds are your unplanned-for growths.”

Forget the lure of the reaper, “Unplanned-for growths” can be the name of my memoirs, in which will appear the further unbosoming of my bigamous exploits. And anyway, this dishevelled thing is what gets me two wives in the first place.