Harry Potter’s magic wand

Went to see Equus last night at the Gielgud, made famous by Daniel Radcliffe flapping his old chap about at the end.

We had “stage seats” – a bold new venture for me. There’s no legroom in the high horseshoe looking down on the performance, and if you even look like you might have food on your person, a stern-looking bloke comes over. So no popcorn.

It’s an odd place to sit, because you can scrutinise the audience as much as the play. Spotted Howard Jacobson in the posher seats, and possibly Julian Fellowes, too. They didn’t wave.

Richard Griffiths, leading and narrating, was good enough to glance over his shoulder from time to time, to include us in events. His was an engaging, gentle performance, playing against the frustrated, ranty man as written.

Griffiths is Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist, whose latest patient is 17 year-old Alan Strang (Radcliffe), who just blinded some horses with a hoof pick. Dysart’s patience and ploys unravel the reasons behind such an abhorrent act. But the more Dysart “cures” the nightmares plaguing the boy, the more he’s envious of his passion, too, and the more he starts to question “normalcy”.

Radcliffe was excellent, and a world from Harry Potter. The girls were pleased to see he’d been working out, too. Well, if you are going to lark about in the all together for the entertainment of a full house of punters, you want to be looking your best.

All the performances were good, and it was expertly staged. Kudos to the chaps playing horses, cantering about in precarious high heels.

Yet the writing is heavy and overly worthy, and very much of its time. Alan’s parents are by turns a self-taught socialist and blinkeredly religious, and it’s difficult to believe they’d stay together. I found the stuff about telly as the opiate of the plebs very dated, too. The women are very underwritten; able and capable and all very lovely, but objects for the men to respond to. Jenny Agutter was all very good, but really had nothing to do.

I think my real beef was that it reminded me of too many other things, most notably Robert Lindner’s excellent The Fifty-Minute Hour (and ooh! Alan C Elms’ brilliant New York Review of Science Fiction article, Behind the Jet-Propelled Couch: Cordwainer Smith & Kirk Allen is now online).

M’colleague B., sat next to me, was more bothered by the idea of psychiatry as only an intellectual process, the cure coming from deductive reasoning alone. And one lady outside the theatre was very annoyed that, “Just because we know why he did it, doesn’t make it okay.”

I spent a little over two hours waiting to be examined myself, today, having finally got around to registering with a doctor. I am a stone overweight, not diabetic and should cut down a bit on my drinking.

Three points

I have been told that Margaret Thatcher, when Prime Minister, refused to read briefs of more than three bullet points. If not too hot on detail, she did always appear to be on top of the myriad issues that people might ask her about.

My three bullets for you today are:

• ITEM! A talk next Thursday addresses human remains and display, and probably won’t include my one-liners:
  
  “The Stories of Sara Baartman – the ‘Hottentot Venus’”
  Written and presented by Dr Debbie Challis
  National Portrait Gallery (in the lecture room, downstairs)
  Thursday 26 April 2007, 13:15 - 14:00
  


• ITEM! M’colleague Mr B. Aaronovitch has joined the 21st century, and marks this auspicious occasion by… er, railing against the 21st century
  


• ITEM! M’colleague and soon-to-be neighbour G. thinks he knows where Martha Jones gets her look from

Pomp and circumstance

Watched the BBC’s 1962 Elgar drama documentary, directed by the young Ken Russell.

The imagery is beautiful and cinematic – looking as if made with a most un-BBC budget. Unlike more modern drama docs, the actors do not speak and the only voice heard is narrator Huw Wheldon. It’s a very effective way of illustrating one man’s essay, but also makes best use of Elgar’s music.

It mentions Elgar’s Catholicism as an inspiration for his epic and melodic scores, which is kind of ironic since his work is seen as so inherently C-of-E British. But then the lush theatricality of our anthems, crownings and royal ceremonies has always been a bit Anglo-Catholic.

It suddenly occurred to me (no doubt after everybody else) that Anglicans who object to women vicars must, on the same principles, oppose Betty as head of their church.

Elgar himself was uncomfortable with the patriotic claims made of his music. Perhaps the most extraordinary sequence in Russell’s beautiful film is his use of Elgar’s “Pomp and circumstance”. This Boer War marching song is, with someone else’s lyrics, better known as “Land of Hope and Glory”. And Russell juxtaposes the lyric-less original with awful footage from the First World War – men shot as they ascend from the rat-infested trenches, queues of wounded soldiers staggering through the mud. It’s an incredible, provocative sequence, and I could see just why Elgar might have felt angry…

• Screenonline’s page on the Elgar documentary includes a two-minute clip of the “Hope and Glory” sequence.

What’s a weekend?

Spoke to the sister this morning, swapping gossip of one sort and another. She lives on the other side of the planet and has caught the natives’ upward inflection. The Dr and I hope to spend Christmas with her in Melbourne, some other projects permitting.

Work continues. Have gone through the proofs of Dave Stone’s novel, The Two Jasons, in time to receive the first draft of our next book, care of Jon and Kate and Phil. The Wake needs a little tweaking and is ready for studio, and by Tuesday I should have all this year’s remaining scripts done. Chapter 2 of Inside Benny is currently 25,000 words, and is coming together nicely. Bit of a blimmin’ mammoth, though. And we’re powering through the short story competition.

Met the writer Colin Harvey last night – or one of them. This one’s the winner of SFX’s own new writer competition, who’s also got a story in Snapshots. He was lucky enough to catch me when I’d spent all day at the typing, and I may have been a little talkative.

We and several other colleagues were in Lewisham’s answer to the Dolphin, ostensibly to pick apart the joys of Gridlock. Nope, everyone seemed agreed it was pretty damn wondrous, and I arrived too late for what had apparently been lots of snitty misery about the end of Life of Mars.

(Though I can sympathise with much of the criticism, it kept me and the Dr entertained and guessing right to the end. And Ralph Brown was, as always, a shiny great treasure.)

Congratulations to m’colleague E., who sneakishly, secretly got himself wed yesterday. Everyone should get married. And, more importantly, they should then have a good party.

E., you’re not allowed to do that bit in secret, okay?

Births, marriages, deaths

Met the Dr in the spangly Young Vic bar Wednesday night, where we shared some giraffes of wine. She also bought me a leatherless present, London: City of Words.

Have already learnt that Caxton’s first English printing press was inherited by the splendidly named Wynken de Worde. In about 1500, de Worde moved it from Westminster to Fleet Street, which remained the heart of English pressing for just shy of 500 years. Good fact!

• More on early English printing

We then ambled onwards to Tas for some Turkish comestibles. It was packed, but the service was exemplary and we had some very good food. Also got through quite a lot of fizz.

Yesterday was somewhat different, and we grabbed a lift from my cousin in Richmond down to my grandfather’s funeral. He was 93 and had been declining some time, but his death (on 31 March) was still a bit of a shock. Lots of family I’d not seen in years, and some wonderful stories too. Most of them entirely unrepeatable.

I’d been tasked last week with ringing round the cousins to gather stories to use in the eulogy. Most featured boozing and swearing. One family friend referred to the latter as “bicycling”, after “Jesus Christ on a bicycle!”

The elder brother – who delivered the short version of all this – had also worked through Grandpa’s own incredible memoir. He remembered Conan-Doyle as “tubby”, went tiger-hunting aged seven, and married my Granny having seen her only six times in daylight. The wedding guests had to take cover in the street from an attacking Meschersmitt.

But for the man who’d been born in Shanghai and lived his life all over the world, the last goodbye was in Basingstoke. We filed out to the thumping Radetzky March, and on to a pub flying the Union boldly.

Then back to the Smoke, and we took our chauffeur out for drinks and pizza in Richmond. More revelries and revelations, and some cheesecake for pudding.

With exquisite timing, my friends P. and A. produced a baby the same day that Grandpa died. Very glad to hear all is well with them. Found myself humming while on the way into work not Radetzky but that one from the Lion King.

Leather goods

Three years ago this afternoon, on a rather bright and sunny Easter Sunday in Greenwich, the Dr said, "Oh, go on then".

It seems a world away now. There was no Droo on the telly, I’d yet to get inside the Stockwell Moat Studios, and we lived in an underground flat with poo seeping up through the floor. Ah, happy days…

The commemorative wossname for a third anniversary is leather, according to my extensive research (no, not Wikipedia but page 55 of Schott’s Original Miscellany). But what to get the Mrs, who already has cat suits and whips?

After some lateral consternation, I settled on 300 – Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s lavish comic-strip version of the battle of Thermopylae. Well they’re wearing leather shoes and shields. It’s also Greek stuff, which the wife likes, and comics is what we enthused about the first time we met.

It’s a graphically violent, lurid story, a tiny band of macho warriors going against all the odds. Miller’s style – which I first saw in Ronin – is stark and shadowy, with crudely hewn figures carved into the page, spattered with gore and muck. The story moves quickly and is unrelenting, piling up the Spartan mythology. They crack butch jokes in the face of misery and their training is more like torture.

For something so epic and steeped in history it’s not unlike the recent Commando collections, tough men being hacked to bits for the edification of children. It also reminded me of the hard-edged violence and humour of some of my favourite old Judge Dredd.

But it’s also a fun way to crystalise in my brain things I’d sort of gleaned in bits and pieces. I now understand how the battle played out, and know the Persian King Xerxes for more than being the "X" in Edward Lear’s alphabet rhymes.

Some concern that it might be read as don’t-negotiate-with-the-black-foreigners, and the Spartans’ lust for the glorious death that echoes in the heavens and history is never problematised as religious fundamentalism. No, it’s Xerxes seeing himself as a God that is hubris.

But it’s richly told and incredible looking, and we now both want to go see the film. The Dr muttered something about it being "visual culture" and so relevant to her work. Which also means we can claim the tax back on the tickets. Woo!

Thinking of graphic comics (if you see what I mean), A. leant me Marvel Zombies, which is one of the maddest lends yet. It’s about an alternative universe where zombie-ism wins, and undead superheroes eat the whole world up. Colonel (nee Captain) America has half his head sliced off and Peter Parker eats his wife and his auntie. There’s also some fun stuff as the zombie heroes try to keep the hunger in check by re-eating stuff that falls from the jagged holes in their bodies. Nice.

It’s a vicious and funny one-off, packed full of comics continuity that mostly passed me by. But having always felt that Marvel was a bit goody-goody, this is a joyously guilty pleasure.

Venice of the north

Done lots of work, ate lots of chocolate, saw some family from ‘cross the pond. The Dr dragged me out into the sunshine yesterday and we explored the posher, greener bits around where we abode.

Went to the Dulwich Picture Gallery and its busy Canaletto in England exhibition (on until 22 April). The DPG (as it’s known to the hood) only has a moderate exhibition space, which was crammed with a great wealth of pics large and small, plus a great wealth of fellow browsers.

Canaletto was in England between 1746-55, and his main interest was evidently the architecture. Just as in his famous Venetian efforts, grand buildings look majestic beneath a great deal of pretty sky. The people who give scale and a clue to the period are constructed from crude spheres and cylinders – more marionettes than they are people. On close inspection I have to admit I was rather reminded of Trumpton.

The epic views of the skyline above the Thames show a vibrant and complex metropolis, its most modern (then) constructions showing Venetian influence. Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s loom hugely over the rest of the city, but it’s fun to spot the odd other landmark – the roofs of Westminster and the Banqueting Hall, the square tower of the cathedral at Southwark.

Also on record is the building of Westminster Bridge (the one Daleks famously queued upon, and where Eccles and Rose first held hands).

I found the pen-and-ink sketches of far more appeal than the oils. Perhaps it’s the quick movement of the marks on the paper that give them more life and vibrancy. Perhaps the lack of glossy colour makes them more dirty and lived in. Or perhaps they look more comic strip and trendy. I also like seeing the working, and the sketches include notes for later colouring-by-numbers and hastily scrawled other detail.

As is the law in these matters, the few postcards missed all of our favourites, so I splashed out on the £25 book. We wended our way up the sunshiny hill and found a pub with a garden and lunches.

Back home to the grindstone until getting on for 10, and got most of what I’d planned finished off. Then snuggled up with the Dr to watch nothing on telly, flipping channels and bothering the cat.

At one point we moved from UKHitler, showing Eva Braun’s holiday movies, to 8 Women starring Catherine Deneuve. This – in those moments we saw of it – seemed a muddle of pretentious old cliché and was not, I said, a little French.

“The Nazis were better,” said the Dr. And then added (she said as a joke), “They made for better television”.

Spent the rest of my bank holiday being warned of terrible dooms that would follow repeating her words here.

Slave I

The Dr and I went to see Amazing Grace last night, the biopic of William Wilberforce. The performances are excellent, there are some good gags, and it looks sumptuous and real. I was especially impressed with shots of a Thames clogged with 18th century shipping.

It is, though, a bit chocolate-boxy, with the very perfect Wilber not merely giving his all for the slaves, but also inventing the GCSE, women’s suffrage and modern geology. He talks at one point of the healing waters from a spring having “waited for a million years”. Er, surely his own religious convictions would have stopped him from so brilliantly pre-empting Lyell (who was only born the same year as the film opens on).

The film packs in the historical figures who knew and influenced Wilbur: John Newton, Pitt the Younger, Thomas Clarkson, Lords Grenville and Fox and (the only black speaking part in the film) Olaudah Equiano. The script also works hard to explain the context: that many working class people lived brutal and impoverished lives; that there was no money for war veterans or other social causes; that whole cities had been built on slavery; that with America and France in revolution, a “popular” movement could be seen as seditious.

Much of this is described rather than seen, so apart from a few city street scenes the film always looks immaculate and tidy. Evidence of the horrors of slavery is also kept to descriptions of witnesses, rather than being enacted on screen. Wilberforce sees a few opiate visions, but mostly it’s what people say.

This is, of course, as was with the case the abolitionists made to Parliament. Yet I felt the film was somehow pulling its punches. The Roots TV series, which we’ve also been watching, is much more explicitly graphic, and I think more effective.

Yet it’s not as if there are loads of films made on the subject, and it’s not a bad film by any means. Though it certainly doesn’t suggest it was easy for Wilberforce to get the slave trade abolished in the British Empire (on 25 March 1807), it does rather simplify the story.

Slavery itself was not banned in the Empire until 1834 (after Wilberforce was dead). In the independent United States it continued until after their vicious civil war. No mention is made of that – indeed, the US is spoken of only with whispered excitement as a contagious hotbed of freedom and liberty.

The banning of the trade did eventually lead to the banning of slavery itself, and because existing slaves could not be replaced it can be argued that they were better treated in the intervening period. Yet indenture remained as slavery in all but name well into the twentieth century, and slavery continued in many countries until the end of the nineteenth. Slavery in various forms still exists today.

There’s a whole heap of events and stuff commemorating abolition this year, and I’ve had fun going through all the links there to glean yet more top facts:

“The surgeon on HMS Sybille , Robert McKinnal, took drastic action when a seaman went down with yellow fever, to convince his fellows that it was not contagious. One of the symptoms of yellow fever is black vomit, and McKinnal, on deck and in sight of the crew, drank off a glassful.”

Royal Navy, “Boredom, boat service and the black vomit”.

ETA: No sooner have I posted than I notice this feature on the emphasis of the commemoration on the BBC news site. Ng. Always behind the tide, me. Get there eventually.

The tyrants of style

“berks and wankers
Kingsley Amis identified two principal groups in the debate over use of language: ‘Berks are careless, coarse, crass, gross and of what anybody would agree is a lower social class than one's own; wankers are prissy, fussy, priggish, prim and of what they would probably misrepresent as a higher social class than one's own.’”

David Marsh (ed.), Guardian styleguide – B

Not for the first time I am writing a style guide.

Usually, my work involves adhering to other people’s prejudices, so it’s fun to dictate my own terms. Client X will, for example, henceforth write “focused” with one S and TARDIS in caps (as an acronym).

There’s no general consensus on style. Really. While correct spelling has been more or less agreed for hundreds of years, punctuation and phrasing is still largely a matter of taste. For every style guru who’ll insist on one rule, there’s another expert who’ll vehemently disagree.

Which can be a bit bothersome when you work for lots of people, all with their own ways of doing things. At least the style guides I’ve written so far have tended to start with a warning:

“What follows are not definite rules for written English everywhere. They’re just how we do things here...”

Should it matter? Well, people do notice inconsistent and incorrect usage – and not just the finger-wagging wankers with their copies of one set of rules. If nothing else, inconsistency is distracting. People should be taking note of what you’re saying, not where you’ve used capital letters to say it.

When style does become an issue, it helps if the style guide can explain the reasoning. I like to think that my own bigotry-of-style at least stems from some rational first principles.

For example, I recently had to justify why we used double (“) quotation marks rather than single (‘) ones on a website I do stuff for.

“Double quotes are easier to read on a screen,”

I said, which follows from our principle aim:

“Our copy is easy to read, accessible, consistent and does not distract the reader.”

But there’s still fierce debate about the serial comma, which I think a fussy affectation. One colleague however protested,

“Readers need telling when to breathe!”

There’s usually some kind of style council to arbitrate when copy-writers get into such an argument. As a result, style guides are often packed full of Top Facts, and give an insight into how reportage gets criticised and – sometimes –sued:

Alibis are not excuses

“If Bill Sykes has an alibi it means he did not commit the crime because he can prove he was somewhere else at the time. It is not a false explanation or an excuse.”

BBC News Styleguide (PDF 276kb), p. 78.

Talks with Iranians

“The language spoken in Iran (and Tajikistan) is Persian, not Farsi. Flemings speak Dutch.”

John Grimond, Economist Style Guide – miscellaneous spelling

Asylum seeker

“(No hyphen)
Someone seeking refugee status or humanitarian protection; there is no such thing as a "bogus" or "illegal" asylum seeker. Refugees are people who have fled their home countries in fear for their lives, and may have been granted asylum under the 1951 refugee convention or qualify for humanitarian protection or discretionary leave, or have been granted exceptional leave to remain in Britain. An asylum seeker can only become an illegal immigrant if he or she remains in Britain after having failed to respond to a removal notice.”

David Marsh (ed.), Guardian styleguide - A

(It’s reading this kind of thing more than my upbringing that got me 10/10 in Channel 4 News’s Easter quiz.)

Music to wash hands by

Nimbos, the Dr and I went to Westminster Abbey last night. Sat on uncomfortable chairs in front of a memorial to MARTHA to hear St John’s Passion sung, along with several hundred other people.

The singing was good and the acoustics authentic, though I thought it lacked the polish of some other versions I’ve been to. Think I prefer the Matthew one anyway, which is more widescreen and special effects. The John one seems less epic, and more matter of fact about (SPOILER!) the death of God.

But fun, and good for people watching. There was a lot of milling about immediately before, and also during the interval-that-wasn’t. Nimbos felt it might help to shout “Runaround!” – a reference the Dr didn’t get.

One gaggle of ladies felt they had paltry seats so decided to move them. They then did their best to ignore the badged gentleman explaining they’d blocked up a fire exit.

Afterwards the Doctor led us down a gale-force Whitehall to a new good pub discovery. But it had stopped serving food an hour previously, so we schlepped into the place next door and ate gratefully their microwaved fodder.

Point of view

O. writes from the Continent:

“Do you know I always read your blog... and get quite annoyed when there isn't an update for a few days.”

Which inspired me to spend lunch wandering round Manet to Picasso, which is free and until 23 May. I’ve gone on about what follows before (sorry), but it does have the distinction of being almost not-at-all Droo.

I got to know O. when we were doing A levels together, and especially due to one summer’s homework. We had to go to famous galleries dotted all over London, sketch a set list of Worthy Old Paintings and forego all our pocket money for postcards. O. was a good companion for that sort of thing because he has quite different ideas about pictures. We spent many afternoons idling in pubs shouting, “No, you big fool!” back and forth.

The impressionists were my pin-ups. No, I don’t mean J. Culshaw and company – which included D. Tennant on Friday and writing my two of my Droo chums. Heck, wasn’t going to do that…

The late 1800s were rather exciting artistically, with all sorts of clever ideas. These included lightbulbs and photographs and refined chemical processing. And these things had an affect on the hapless, cravat-wearing creatives who flounced around drawing from nature.

Until these inventions came along and spoiled things, an artist’s talent was easy to quantify. The trick was to make what you had drawn look like the thing you were drawing. Even now, there are learned scraps over painted portraiture hinging not on who is the sitter but whether it’s at all a good likeness.

But photography came along and with a point and click reality was caught in an instant (well, it took a bit of time when they first got invented, but not anything like as long as a painting).

Photos also showed up the falseness of the way paintings presented their subjects. Paintings composed the elements of the picture, framing them the most pleasing way. A photo captured the raw immediacy – blurs, blinks and ignoble posture. It could brutally crop parts of the scene, creating a new and dramatic, if troubling, composition. And once snapped, there was little way to correct it. At least canvas could be painted over.

Photos were still in black-and-white, so these painters tended to glory in colour. The brilliant sky-blues and vivid pinks were another technical innovation – colour that’s still stunning a century later. The artists experimented with “complimentary colours”; clashes of blue and orange, red and green, purple and yellow, that made their work more vibrant.

At the same time, electric light transformed painting. It wasn’t just that they could work later in the day, and on less bright and airy subjects. The lightbulb made evident many of Newton’s observations about the spectrum, and without needing to shove sticks in your eye sockets. It made the artists see reality in ways they’d never seen before.

While the impressionists were daring to show optical mixing and coloured shadows, and Seurat contrived scenes out of blobs of coloured light, the hapless, much-moustached physicists just over the border were thinking maybe light travelled in blobs.

Impressionism was then excitingly brash and modern, on the nose of the latest developments. And its proponents got into trouble with the establishment – who still wanted pictures that looked just like the subject.

Scruffy old Claude Monet, who is a bit cool, dared to suggest that my throwing some paint around a canvas at slapdash speed you could still create the feeling of the subject. Not like a photograph in all its detail, perhaps, but something with more of an emotional flavour.

So even before you get to all the politics that the paintings might also reflect, there’s something a bit brilliant to see in all those pictures of the same haystack or cathedral. By painting the same subject over and over, Claude was breaking all sorts of rules, the old punk.

It was on one of these daytrips with O. that I discovered a real dazzler of a painting:


Again, Claude painted lots of huge water lilies – the canvases almost as big as his tiny Japanese garden in a fashionable Parisian suburb. But this one is my favourite, being more yellow than green-purple and with more of the canvas left bare.

It's big: 2 metres tall but 4¼ metres widthways. You need to stand at the far end of the room to appreciate what you’re seeing – up close it’s a mess of unconnected marks and squiggles.

And so (because I’d seen Droo defuse a bomb in Earthshock part two) a question formed in my brain: how the heck did Monet even paint it?

He could have only ever been an arms length away from the canvas. And if that wasn’t boggling enough for you, Claude was also fairly blind when he painted it.

"I've lit the blue touch paper..."

Received in the post from the father-in-law some clippings from the Blackpool Gazette. Front-page news on Friday was that Dr Who will be turning them on.

The web version doesn't show what the clipping does: Tom Baker doing the deed back in '75, all grinning teeth and curls.

I'm especially pleased that Tennant's appearance seems to have been organised by,

"Jackie Potter, Blackpool Council's strategic director of tourism and regeneration."

Have they also booked Michael Sheen?

Small world...

Spent the afternoon being harried round my parents’ garden by two young and tireless nephews. Some attempt was made at teaching them piggy-in-the-middle, and though they enjoyed the chasing they were disappointed that it might involve rules.

The thuggish four year-old was making an impassioned stand against the sectarian – he had on a Superman costume, yet with a pair of Spider-Man socks. And at one point he stopped in the midst of a tackle to share his latest epiphany:

“Uncle Simon, do you know about Doctor Who?”

It seems he was, for the first time ever, allowed to stay up last night. He liked the Things but not the Lady, and shared the absurd miracle that there’ll be EVEN MORE next week – at least, so long as he is good.

(His elder brother had the same response after his first taste of school dinners. He would ask, with great care and when nobody else was listening, whether you knew of such a thing as apple crumble.)

My mum was also impressed with the episode – but she has a weird thing for Roy Marsden anyway, and consultants with good bedside manner.

(Oh, and the title of this post is Sir Sean Connery’s response to an unexpected “I gotta brudda.”)

Return of the Old Adventures

On the flight back from LA a bit more than a month ago, m'colleague Mr Anghelides spoke of lost history. He could not recall, for example, the last time he'd changed a nappy. There was just a time when he wasn't changing nappies any more, but that moment passed unremarked.

Got not-quite through the first of four folders of old fanzino-periodicals today, frantically scribbling the morsels of fact that relate to the development of Benny. It's been fun to see who DWB's nemesis is each week (John Nathan-Turner; no, the executive of the Droo Appreciation Society; no, the editors of Droo's own magazine; no, the folk at BBC Video; no, anyone who dares to write in; actually, let's just go to war with EVERYONE...)

But there's also all the bits of Droo history that kind of passed me by.

"Sylvester McCoy is no longer Doctor Who, that's official. Doctor Who licencees have been instructed by BBC Enterprises to refer to him Sylvester McCoy as the 'former Doctor Who'. The Radio Times itself set the trend in its billing of Sylvester for the Children's Royal variety Performance in May."

David Gibbs (ed.), 'The former Doctor Who'
(news story) in DWB #103, August 1992.

As well as the reviews and letters pages which take Benny's adventures to task, I have also dipped into some of her Old Adventures, to get something correct in "The Wake". And too my great excitement, if nobody elses, I have this afternoon typed the direction:

SCENE 4. INT. CHURCH HALL, CHELDON BONIFACE

Nice work

“Sunday, December 31st [1978] …I listen to the car radio and hear tales of horror from all over the UK. Edinburgh is almost cut off from the rest of Scotland (a fact which the weather only confirms!)”

Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979 – The Python Years, p. 519.

Yes, I have been busy. The Dr bought me this for Valentine’s Day (naw) and to read on the plane out to Gallifrey. Which I did, and got something like halfway though. And then mutchwurk stopped me getting much further.

More than a month later, with bits snatched on trains and in toilets, the end is almost in sight. It’s a great brick of a book, with perhaps too much on the weather and what the author was eating, so perhaps this is the best way to read it.

The diaries cover the period from the first filming on Flying Circus to the furore that met Life of Brian. Palin’s a sharp-eyed observer, and even the briefest entries contain telling detail.

In large part, it documents the progress of his work – the late nights, the famous people, the many meetings and compromises, the flights on Concorde that are not half as glamorous as might have been hoped for. With my own current schedule it’s been good to see someone else barely outrunning the snowball. And it’s weird to think of Palin, that funny old man off the telly, being my age when he wrote all this stuff.

But it’s not just the hard graft of the writer that’s of interest. It’s a fun and engaging historical document. As well as definitively telling us what day Brian was first thought of, he notes the world as it changes around him:

“Pre-lunch cocktails with the two neighbours and their three daughters, who bring with them a game called Twister, which involves participants in a grapple on the floor and, in the immortal words of Eric’s joke salesman, ‘Breaks the ice at parties’.”

Ibid.

Palin is, as his later travel documentaries have shown, a sharp and witty commentator, and his remarks on politics and life in Hampstead are often warm as well as comedic. But there’s also more insight into his own life and feelings than I think we’ve ever been prey to. There’s the slow decline of his dad and a fair amount on his poor teeth.

I’ve seen some reviews mutter that it’s not more salacious, that Palin is too nice about everyone. Yes, that’s apparently a bad thing.

Anyway, he can be quite tetchy and is especially impatient with anyone who makes life more difficult. That reminded me of the last of his 80 days round-worlding, when his temper is beginning to fray.

(On this very point, he told Saga Magazine how he can “fly off the handle ... Usually at the most stupid things.”)

But it’s to Palin’s credit that he was seen as a mediator by the Pythons and others he worked with. It’s because he was the one that everyone talked to that his history is so comprehensive.

I shall tell you this

Codename Moose turned up at half eight yesterday, when I had hardly begun making my toilet. Mrs Codename Moose had turfed him out into the street, and were it not for our agreement to get a smidgen of script written, he’d probably have been playing in traffic.

Work proceeded pretty well, fleshing out notes I’d made into three separate sections, with some chipping in and chivvying of additional bad jokes and ever improved ideas. By one, we’d completed something we’re both quite happy with, and felt able to take my second wife, M., out with us for lunch.

Basked in the sunshine and ate a breakfast so mammoth they’d named it after me. (Or at least after my parents’ nickname.)

The trendy elements of Penge straddled by, not all quite complicit in pretending it was summer and that the high street was all continental. The keen waiter seemed most impressed with M. and ignored anything said by me and Codename Moose. M., of course, remained entirely oblivious to this, bless her.

Back home, and while M. and Codename Moose enjoyed Casino Royale I got up to 8,700 words on The Wake. Still have to write up some pre-titles set-up and four key scenes from near the end, but might even have a draft by the weekend. Hooray!

By the time the Dr had gymmed and shared gossip, M. had cooked us a feast. We watched some old telly, and I pointed out the actors from Droo. The Moonstone featured Peter Jeffrey, who was much more lenient this time.

Rab C Nesbitt’s Seasonal Greet included Garron and Commander Uvanov. This, the first full-length outing for Rab back in 1988 (years before we met his Dr Who brother (PDF 80kb)), sees him gobby and Scottish with sticky-up hair, and wearing pin-stripe and trainers…

Can't think who that reminds me of.

Some announcements

Hasn't it been ages? I am up to my handsome eyeballs in various books and scripts, and this 'ere blog wossname has been out-prioritised.

"The Two Jasons" proceeds apace, with the latest draft just in from Dave Stone. It's possibly the most personal thing Dave's ever written, and yet still crammed full of the daftest possible jokes.

I have also recently interviewed Dave, along with Matt Jones, Daniel O'Mahony, Neil Penswick, Gary Russell, Simon Winstone and a bundle of other people about their part in the development of Benny, and the "Inside Story" is coming together pretty well. May even have a cover to show off soon.

The Big Finish website now has details of "Snapshots", including Stuart Manning's rather marvellous cover. My contribution is called "There's Something About Mary", and may be the first ever Dr Who story set in Preston.

Also crawling through the never-ending heap of short story competition entries. Not to be spoken of until we reach the end, though.

A few other fun things can't be spoken of either, hence the mad glint in mine eye. And according to Alex, I'm one of his five thinking bloggers. How badly he is deluded.

¿Cuál es la palabra para "el tejón"?

Back from a much-needed break to Malaga to see A. and J. (we went to their wedding last year). Apart from a quick mooch round the Picasso Birthplace Museum, it was uncharacteristically lacking in being good for me. Yes, even the Dr wanted a holiday. Instead we wandered to nice eateries, ate lots of fresh fish and sampled bars that don't get going before midnight.

In one trendy place that served very good mojitos, J. pointed out the flag hanging above the bar. The Spanish flag is three horizontal bars: red, then yellow, then red again, the yellow band twice as thick as the red ones.

In the dim and disco lighting, it took a moment to realise what was different: this one went red, then yellow, then purple.

This republican flag from the 1930s, J. explained, was banned in Spain under Franco, and even now it's a bit of a shocker. He spoke of the frission of seeing it hanging from the arm of the Philip IV statue in Madrid, in the midst of a political protest.

The nearest I could liken that was to Winston's turf mohican.

(The Internet also tells me of the irony of the purple band: it's not purple, but royal Castilian purpure.)

J.'s own republic sensibilities would be stronger but his king is helluva tough. Our Charles III did something similar, I said, in the first issue of 2000AD.

As well as the politics, we discussed how Bowie's lyrics translate and pretty much everything under the sun. My best effort to explain a reference to badgers was "a sort of mash-up of a boar and a tiger".

No time like the present

I have been to a stag do and to a funeral, and been off to do interviews in between. Also pitching for something and been asked to do something else, and still battering away at the History of Benny and that there short story competition.

One project looks close to completion. One.

I shall look back on this period eventually and laugh.

Not because they are easy

The rather grainy image right is from a few hours after last night’s eclipse. We sat in the Dolphin and peered out the window as the moon turned eerily red. Nimbos nimbly explained why it does that, using empty pint glasses as props. This is the best of my pictures. Oh well.

In timely fashion, I’ve got three episodes into the lavish Tom-Hanks funded dramatisation of the Apollo missions, From the Earth to the Moon.

S. who knows about technical specifications, offered the Region 2 discs cheap having just bought the Region 1 versions. There’s apparently a slightly judder in the NTSC transfer that spoiled the whole thing for him. I explained I forget to change the aspect ratio watching Droo DVDs, and am quite content with Logopolis in widescreen. He went a bit pale at that.

Haven’t noticed any problem with my inferior version. It’s an extraordinarily sumptuous series, the sort of prestigious thing that over here David Attenborough might have commissioned. You can see the money that’s been bunged at it. The first episode is especially grandstanding, a bold fanfare from start to finish.

Hair-raising at times, you can’t help but be wowed by the ballsiness of all those involved. Episode 2 gets is much more involving as things start to go horribly wrong. Death and disaster and steely-jawed jokes really help ratchet up the drama.

It also avoids repeating too much of the stuff covered in The Right Stuff, so – at least to me – feels fresh and surprising. The third episode has also spun a new angle on the format, by telling its bit of the story through the eyes of a documentary team. The hippy director in his rose-tinted specs gives a much better sense of context than the news footage. I also realise now I come to write it that episode two is about two guys eaten up by the system, which helps to convince us of the scale of everything involved.

That said, it’s a pity it’s so US-centric and less about all the players in the space race. There’s no effort (at least so far) to deny that the whole mission is an exercise in pissing higher than the Russians. I’d have liked to have seen more of the Russian programme, comparing their struggles with NASA’s. Appreciate that’s not really in the brief.

In fact it reminds me of The West Wing a lot: brave and idyllic and with exemplary performances, but a little naïve about foreigners. You can play spot the West Wing cast, too.