All said and done

Issue #400 of Doctor Who's Magazine out today includes, along with its other loveliness, news of yet another audio play thingie by me. Time travelling old rat bag Iris Wildthyme returns in February for four new adventures, starring Katy Manning as Iris and David Benson as Panda. My one, “The Two Irises”, is an “affectionate pastiche” (it says here) of 1980s Doctor Who, and ought to be out in April.

I've also been interviewed by Ashley Mcloughlin for issue 16 of his fanzine Mad Doctor Who Magazine. I used to produce my own handwritten, hand-drawn fanzines and am a bit envious of Ashley's DTP genius. In my day it was all scissors and Pritt Stick.

Off to FantasyCon as soon as my passport arrives. You don't technically need a passport to get into Nottingham, it's just I have to sign for the passport so I need to wait around. But in the last few days there's been some exciting additions to my schedule:

Friday (tonight)
9 pm – How to Break into the Young Adult Market (Main room)
With me, DJ MacHale, Mark Robson and Sarah Singlton

Saturday:
11 am - Trends in Young Adult Fiction (Gallery suite)
3 pm - Writing for Doctor Who Panel (Main room)
10.30 pm – Reading: I'll be reading something from Morrigan Books' Voices anthology (Trent Suite, 10th floor)

Sunday:
10 am - Writing for the Franchise Market (Main room)
11 am – Reading: “Do you smell Carrots?”, an exclusive sneak peek at my story from the forthcoming Doctor Who – Short Trips: Christmas Round the World (Trent Suite, 10th floor)

If you're coming along, do say “hello”. Or even, “What would you like to drink, Simon?”

I'm also provisionally booked for two more Doctor Who conventions in the US next year – Gallifrey in Los Angeles in February and HurricaneWho in Orlando in October/November. Both are subject to work commitments and pesky things like cash. But woo!

Oh, and incidentally, this is my 700th post.

Ice to see you

Big Finish have posted the covers to next year's "Doctor Who - Key 2 Time" series, including my own The Judgement of Isskar.

Dinosaurs

Amazon have posted details of my new novel Primeval: Fire and Water.

When strange anomalies in time start to appear Professor Cutter and his team have to help track down and capture a multitude of dangerous prehistoric creatures from Earth's distant past and terrifying future...

At a safari park in South Africa, rangers are disappearing and strange creatures have been seen battling with lions and rhinos. As the team investigates they are drawn into a dark conspiracy which could have terrible consequences...

Back at home as torrential rain pours down over the city, an enormous anomaly opens up in East London...

In this brand new original never-seen-on-TV Primeval adventure the team confront anomaly crises both in rain-swept London and on the hot South African plains...

Also, I seem to have made it to the second round of the Kaos Films' British Short Screenplay Competition. Since the judging gets done anonymously, I won't say yet what my one is called.

Class act

Spent the weekend with some chums, and drank and laughed a great deal. Paul Cornell, Nimbos and I also performed the following hilarity at a party on Saturday night, based of course of the Frost Report's class sketch.

Telly:
I look down on him (Indicates Merchandise) because I write for the new series and get top-billing at conventions.

Merchandise:
I look up to him (Telly) because he writes for the new series; but I look down on him (Punter) because he is just a punter. I write books and get middle billing at conventions.

Punter:
I know my place. I look up to them both. But I don't look up to him (Merchandise) as much as I look up to him (Telly), because he has got innate canonical status.

Telly:
I have got innate canonical status, but I have not got any money. So sometimes I look up (bends knees, does so) to him (Merchandise).

Merchandise:
I still look up to him (Telly) because although I have money, I am vulgar and commercial. But I am not as vulgar as his (Punter) posts to the internet so I still look down on him (Punter).

Punter:
I know my place. I look up to them both; but while I am no one, I am honest in my opinions and passionate about the show. I fund everything they do. Had I the inclination, I could look down on them. But I don't.

Merchandise:
We all know our place, but what do we get out of it?

Telly:
I get my name on the telly and a feeling of superiority over them. I get quite angry when they don’t accord me the appropriate respect.

Merchandise:
I get my name on a lot of knock-off tat. I get a feeling of inferiority from him, (Telly), but a feeling of superiority over him (Punter). I get quite angry when they don’t accord me the appropriate respect.

Punter:
I get quite angry.

Back to the grindstone today, and the first trip to the gym in 10 days. It hurt. But plenty of exciting emails to work through, and there'll be all kinds of thrilling announcements in the next few days.

Oh, and the Dr recommends something she's been working on: a BBC archive collection of Francis Bacon clips and stuff.

First past the post

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

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

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

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

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

Solid gold shit, maestro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free - yes free!

You can now download for free UNIT: The Coup (26.7 Mb) – my very first audio drama for Big Finish. The story, which stars Nicholas Courtney as Doctor Who's best friend General Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (the KBE formerly known as “Brigadier”) and old baddies the Silurians.

London, the near future; UNIT is finished. The UK division of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce prepares to cede its authority to a new organisation... But who is attempting to sabotage the hand-over?

Originally given away on the front of Doctor Who Magazine #351 at the end of 2004, it's a prologue to the four-part UNIT series (available this month for a mere £20). UNIT of course first featured in old-skool Doctor Who in 1968, and played a major part in this year's series. The other authors and I were briefed by producer Ian Farrington to update UNIT, and we did so by pinching bits of 24 and The West Wing. Emily Chaudhry is a really quite blatant steal of CJ Cregg.

It's funny listening to it now; there's all sorts of things I'd do differently. But hear my desperate efforts to make it big and epic, and handwaving with stupid jokes to distract from the mountain of exposition. The characters Winnington, French and Ledger were named after people I knew in my teens who shared my love of Doctor Who – back when sniffing glue was more sociably acceptable.

One original plan was to have the Prime Minister turn up at the end, accompanied by the new head of UNIT, Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood – as played by a bloke called David Tennant. He turns up later in the the series.

(If this sort of thing appeals, as well as checking out the UNIT series you might also enjoy Sympathy for the Devil, in which Nicholas Courtney and David Tennant spar with David Warner's Doctor Who. Lethbridge-Stewart is also due to appear in an episode of the Sarah-Jane Adventures later this year.)

Also up on the Big Finish site are details of my latest audio adventure for Big Finish: Doctor Who & the Judgement of Isskar, out in January.

A new adventure in time and space for the Fifth Doctor and his new companion, Amy as they search for the Key to Time.

On a planet where Time stands still, the Doctor meets a woman who is just a few minutes old. She is a Tracer, sent into our Universe by her makers to locate the six segments of the Key to Time. This being without a name wants the Doctor to be her assistant, but she doesn’t tell him the whole truth. Not at first.

Their first port of call is Mars, where a society that one day will become Ice Warriors lives in peace and civility. But the Doctor’s arrival will change all that. The universe is dying, a choice must be made, and the Judgement of Isskar will be declared. The price must be paid - even if it takes centuries…

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Ciara Janson (Amy), Laura Doddington (Zara), Nicholas Briggs (Isskar), Andrew Jones (Harmonious 14 Zink), Raquel Cassidy (Mesca), Jeremy James (Thetris), Heather Wright (Wembik)

The Visitation

Doctor Who is stalking me. You can see where he's parked his TARDIS right outside my house.

Luckily, I've been primed to spot this sort of evidence.

"She stood by the nothing at the end of the lane and tried to make herself see it.

It was in an empty yard where a house once stood. There were still blackened remains, an exposed foundation. No one had built anything else on that lot, not ever. Evan had lived there once, but that wasn’t why they were there.

He paced round the square of flattened grass, one hand raised, running fingers over invisible walls.

‘You can’t see it, can you?’ Evan said, smiling a little sadly.

Rebecca reached out a hand, felt nothing..."

Michael Montoure, "Relativity" in Doctor Who & How The Doctor Changed My Life, p. 43.

80806

That's the word count on the as-yet-unannounced thing I've finished this weekend, bar another quick pass. It goes to the bosses tomorrow, and then there'll be questions and rewrites and proofs, and even perhaps an announcement. But I am pretty happy with it so far.

Got The Slitheen Excursion to finish now, and then a couple of things that have again not been announced. And that damn book of my own to get done. Maybe I need to hook myself up to National Novel Writing Month in November just to get a first draft of it done...

With all this being tied to the typing, I've booked a few quick escapes. I'll be attending FantasyCon in Nottingham from 19-21 September this year, and am very excited at the prospect of meeting guest of honour Dave McKean (who I interviewed about his film Mirrormask) as well as several mates I've not seen in ages.

For those wanting to stalk me, my panels will be:

Saturday:
11 am - Trends in Young Adult Fiction (Gallery suite)
3 pm - Writing for Doctor Who Panel (Main room)

Sunday:
10 am - Writing for the Franchise Market (Main room)

Please don't throw fruit. As an extra special bonus, I've scribbled something about writing for Doctor Who to go in the convention programme.

I'll also be attending ChicagoTARDIS from 28-30 November along with a whole bundle of m'colleagues from Big Finish, the sixth Doctor Who and Sarah-Jane Smith. And there's a couple of other exciting events coming up for which I'm just waiting on details.

Service provider

"We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books."

Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, p. 110.

This morning, the computer didn't want to work. Which was a bit of a bother because I'd quite a lot of work to finish off and not a whole lot of time in which to do it. I unplugged things and plugged them back in again. I tried to fiddle with settings. Over the course of an hour and a half I turned the thing off and on and off again.

After some cathartic swearing I decided to have breakfast. Episode 3 of The War Machines might also calm me down. I turned on the telly. The sound came out okay but the picture remained frozen. I tried changing the channel. A pop-up box informed me that the channel wasn't available. It did the same whatever channel I chose.

"A-hah!" I thought, using my brain. "This will be a problem of the Virgin Media telly/broadband/telephone wossname. I shall give them a ring."

Only, of course the phone wasn't working.

At half eleven I got through on my mobile to a helpful chap called Gerald. He asked the usual questions - had I turned the thing off and on again, had I unplugged a few bits. I readied myself for the inevitable minutiae of tests and efforts, ratcheting up the cost of the call. But instead he said, "Sounds like I better send one of our technicians round."

"Hooray," I thought - though you can't tell from reading this off the screen that I did so with heavy sarcasm. What was the betting that it'd take a week or six, or that the one day the technician could turn up is when I'm in Spain. (I'm going to Spain at the end of next week, by the way.)

But no. The bloke was round within 20 minutes. And he'd already stopped off on the way at the thingie in the street where all our wires meet up. He lugged round the back of the telly to check it was rebooting properly, then had some fun with the computer.

Yes, there'd been a problem, he explained as he mucked about with wires. Not as bad as the citizens of BR6 who were all without broadband. Or a housing estate he'd been at that morning whose cables had all been cut. But a problem of the set up not coping with all the electric goodness I send back and forth. I wasn't plugged into the right bit, so he moved me up a notch. Or something.

The computer should have been fine from then on, but the ZyXel wireless gadget didn't want to play ball. We had a fun time unplugging different things in turn, then restarting the computer. And by about 1 pm it just decided to work.

"Blimey," I thought. "How efficient and friendly." I rang up expecting the usual Turing test where someone tries their best just to get rid of you. When really what I wanted was a Man to turn up and make everything okay. And Virgin Media did exactly that.

"Hooray," I thought. "Now I can get down to some graft." And the doorbell rang. Codename Moose wanted to borrow some books...

Anyway. The Virgin man made me so happy I knocked through my chores quite easily. I now have a bit more than an 80,000-word draft of something that's not yet been announced. A bit of tinkering over the weekend and then I can be delivered.

Bit apprehensive of turning the machine off and running out to play in the night. What if the system falls over again? Will the Man pop round as quick on a Saturday? And since this sort of service is - in my experience - little short of miraculous, should I ask him to bring a DVD of the Massacre with him?

Whiskers on kittens

The writing continues apace, though late into the night. And on the back of something I cut from it earlier, here's five guilty pleasures.

Pineapple and coconut
It's a drink, it comes in cartons and I'd never heard of it until the Dr's brother mixed it with some vodka. “Tropical!” declares the carton of the one I had today. And it is. But also no doubt full of sugar and ick.

Gardener's Question Time
Sunday afternoons on Radio 4 and just about the most genial, cheery and good-humoured half hour in all broadcast history. It's like a less noisy, brash and trendy version of QI. I don't even have a garden or any green-fingered ambition.

The Coen brothers' Ladykillers
I love the original and have concerns about the very principle of remaking old good stuff. And they've junked all the eerie subtlety for out-and-out screwball mayhem. And its got Tom Hanks in it in place of Alex Guinness, a Wayans and jokes about irritable bowels. It really shouldn't be allowed. But I laughed like a weasel enjoying a cardiac arrest.

Easy listening
The Dr accused me of this yesterday as she mucked about with iTunes. I denied it manfully until she ran through quite a lot of the noise I've loaded. Cat Stevens, Burt Bacharach, Nina Simone... I pointed to Lemon Jelly and Flaming Lips, and argued my chill-out thing also embraces the old skool. But not very convincingly.

Not shaving
Even when I've been freelancing more than six years, this is still the best evidence that I'm getting away with something fiendish in scribbling at home. See also not getting up in the morning and “meetings” with peers and producers which go on into the evening and involve a lot of beer.

Chapter 11...

...of something that cannot be spoken of yet includes the words "submission", "handcuffs" and "groin".

Swamp of Horrors (1957)

Clever Michael Rees had posted the following fun effort to YouTube, as a promo for his story in Doctor Who and How The Doctor Changed My Life.

I say you are, Lord, and I should know...

The Dr extracted me from the frantic scribbling for a trip to the British Museum's Hadrian exhibition. Being in the old reading room and with similar low lighting, it immediately bore comparison with the First Emperor show last year.

This one seems to have fewer actual exhibits, or at least no single artefacts that are quite so huge. But the interpretation is very good indeed. Whereas the First Emperor failed to ask – or diplomatically body-swerved – awkward questions about the megalomania of the subject, the (lack of) legacy and more bothersome aspects, Hadrian seems all about the tricky stuff.

A sizeable chunk is devoted to what the Roman's did for us: we seem to have inherited their wars, their economics and their architecture. Models and images of the Pantheon in Rome sat beneath the dome of the museum's Reading Room, making that inheritance plain.

It's also good on the economics, explaining how the Empire needed to expand to continue supplying the hungry city at its centre. Trade and war, and the state of the Empire as a whole, were in large part influenced by its over-dependence on oil (in Roman times, olive oil). As the Empire over-stretched itself, became dependent on all the fingers it had in foreign pies, the whole thing starts to unravel. It's (intentionally) very easy to see the links between the maps and politics of Hadrian's day and our own, and maybe even fore-taste our own decline.

The unnerving similarity of the maps of disputed borders and trouble spots then with those in our papers today suggests that nothing's changed in the last 2,000 years. One group of fellow visitors seemed to take this as reason just to shrug our shoulders at the Middle East. But what it really underlines is how the modern borders of a lot of these countries were decided by classical scholars who acted as if time had stood still.

But it's not all about what we owe the Romans. I was pleasantly surprised by the emphasis on global context.

“The Roman Empire did not exist in isolation. The Satavahana in India and the Eastern Han in China were both powerful empires of similar importance. Rome had links with both of them. At Rome's eastern border, in modern-day Iran and Iraq, was the Parthian Empire.”

Caption in the British Museum's Hadrian exhibition.

It was also good exploring the historiography, how we know anything about Hadrian, explaining the scant and bitty sources and the biases of those that wrote them. While the First Emperor presented a totality of story, Hadrian sign-posts the gaps, explicitly acknowledging that our knowledge is built up from fragments.

Picked up plenty of top facts as I nosed round. Such as that a clanking bit of dialogue from The Twin Dilemma, “May my bones rot”, seems to derive from a Jewish curse on Hadrian after the suppression of the revolt in Jerusalem.

The exhibition's family guide entirely neglects to mention Antinous – apart from his name being on the floor plan. The Dr suggested this isn't really an exhibition for kids anyway, but it also seems a bit timid for the notes to ignore such a major part of the show. Antinous was Hadrian's pretty Greek lover, and appears in all sorts of costumes and hairstyles.

The information panels explain the different attitudes to sex in Roman times – the general wheeze seeming to be that a respectable fellow would not a) shag married women and b) get shagged himself. But there's also lots on the court politics and intrigues of the Emperor having such a pretty favourite. And I found the aftermath of Antinous's death fascinating, too. (He threw himself / fell / got shoved into the Nile on a boat trip.)

“The Antinous Cult
Literary sources tell us that Hadrian was profoundly affected by Antinous's death and mourned him with unusual intensity. While Hadrian did not pass any official decree ordering Antinous's deification, he gave encouragement to those who wanted to make Antinous the object of a new cult. Shortly after his lover's death, Hadrian founded a new city on the banks of the Nile and named it Antinoopolis. He built a large temple and set up festival in Antinous's memory. Other Greek cities began to establish their own cults and festivals in honour of Antinous, led by local and senatorial leaders, who wished to express their loyalty to Rome and to Hadrian. The cult became popular among the common people where it seems to have competed with Christianity.”

Ibid.

NB the assumptions in that, the the political, pragmatic reasons for a religion flourishing. It was not unusual for an ordinary mortal to find themselves deified, and their ordinariness quickly appeals to the masses. For all the talk of loyalty to Rome, surely Antonius's appeal to the Greek cities who worshipped him was his having been Greek.

So you've got some ordinary, non-Roman geezer turned into a God because it serves a useful purpose to the politicking of the day. It happened to be the Emperor's dead gay lover, but it might just as well have been anyone.

Yeah, but dogs - - from space!

The new issue of Doctor Who's Magazine has just arrived, full of fantastic stuff. It also makes mention of a few things I have been involved in.

The Judgement of Isskar – my Doctor Who audio play out in January – guest stars Raquel Cassidy (Jack Dee's wife in Lead Balloon) as the Lady Mesca. The plays that follow mine in the Key 2 Time are by my chums Jonathan and Peter, and feature David Troughton and Lalla Ward.

Also out in January is my The Prisoner's Dilemma, and there's a picture my ugly mug on page 44, lurking behind some beautiful people. Davy's feature includes some sage wisdom of mine on the two Companion Chronicles I've written.

(Incidentally, Davy's website includes an exclusive interview with Rona Munro, which includes him asking about the slow-mo lesbo pussy-cat chase (1.57 into this excerpt) in her Doctor Who story, Survival. Yes, I was one of the "three straight men" who wanted him to ask about the subtext.)

Vanessa Bishop seems generally pleased with the audio version of The Pirate Loop, feeling Freema Agyeman is on good form chatting badgers up at the bar.

And it's also announced that I'm writing another Doctor Who novel featuring David Tennant's tenth Doctor. The Slitheen Excursion is out next spring.

40 long

Just back from a shopping trip to buy a linen suit. I used to have a linen suit, but it was one of the things that got pinched by burglars in 2003. Being the strangely tall sort of fellow that I am, either the culprit was an Ourang-Outang or they just liked the fancy suit bag. So this morning my sister - the tailor - and her friend S. accompanied me round lots of shops telling me what to do.

We tried Moss Bros and Marks and High and Mighty and The Suit Company and John Lewis, and maybe some other ones as well, but ultimately Next had a 40 long jacket and matching 34 long trousers. I tell myself the £110 is some kind of investment.

Despite the longness of the clothes, they still need adjusting. This is due to my Ourang-Outang genes topped up with lashings of monkey serum. The sister is going to unpick the hems and do some clever sewing. But how exciting to discover that we had such problems finding the right sizes because I'm otherwise quite a fashionable shape.

Scribbled several pages of incomprehensible nonsense into my notebook on the way and way back, which I now need to hack away into the computer before rushing off to another engagement. But in the meantime, my friend R. (whose innards I stole for Markwood in The Lost Museum) sent me this:

Monsters and dinosaurs

On Saturday, I had a whole day of not writing. Instead, I met up with seven of the authors of How The Doctor Changed My Life, plus Paul who runs the Big Finish website, four loyals WAGs and a baby. We talked eloquently at Paul's microphone and trundled round the Doctor Who exhibition at Earls Court, and then fell into the pub.

It was a fantastic day, from watching all the parents revealing the great surprise of where they'd been dragged to of a morning, to the splendid gang of writers, keen and friendly and all bolstering each other - not at all the jadded, bitter hacks they're destined to become. I had such a nice lunch I lost track of time and suddenly a whole day had gone by. Hooray!

Rob McCow reports some of our antics, and I'll post photos and more details when the podcast is up on the BF site - in around a month or so.

We'd hoped J. would be able to join us, but some last minute insanity meant he's stuck in the US. Yesterday, we entertained his dad, who could make it out of the country. The Dr did roast chicken and we nattered on about leftie politics and went for a nose round the local monsters.

Later, the Dr and J's dad went to the Globe for the last night of King Lear, and I stayed in to work. And work. And work. Finished getting on for eleven when the Dr rolled home.

More work today. Have written 6,329 words of something and proofed something else. Not nearly where I should be, so on we plod. And tomorrow I have appointments all over London, so will be cramming words into the gaps in between.

Put him in the curry

With the Dr away in the Darkest North at the moment – apparently teasing her Dad about his becoming a Writer – I made tea for a few chums last night.

I learnt my famous curry recipe while in Spain in 1996 visiting my senior brother. I assumed he was working to some carefully ordained plan, but apparently he'd just made it up there and then. I took careful note and when I got to home to Preston (where I was a student) tried to recreate it.

However, there's a translation error in the raw equipment. Preston's fine supermarkets didn't seem to do certain basic Spanish fare such as tins of tomato frito – now so beloved of Delia. So I improvised. And as a result found a magic ingredient.

No, it's not cough syrup ( a clever reference to the Simpsons).

Last night's pore-opening extravaganza also needed to be without meat or mushrooms if it were going to please my guests. So it consisted of: an onion; a small potato; an aubergine (cut up, salted, washed); two courgettes; red pepper; green pepper; broccoli; one tin of kidney beans; one tin of plum tomatoes; garlic; a dash of chilli; garam masala...

And a large tin of Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup. Yes, that's what gives the thing its sumptuous, plush delight. Bwah ha ha, etc.

I was also much complimented on my fluffy rice. The trick is to let it have loads of time, and lots and lots of water. In fact, I have a full kettle on standby to keep topping it up.

M. also brought pudding so we didn't even touch the ice cream. I am now off to hit the machines to work off some of this feasting.

There's a new and deadly danger facing us

The Restoration Team who make old-skool Doctor Who look pretty, have released a fantasto-brilliant trailer for their next DVD release.



"The War Machines" (1966) was the first of a new kind of Doctor Who, a cool and contemporary invasion of London more like the show of the 70s - or now - than a typical first Doctor adventure. William Hartnell is at his bad-ass best facing down the robot monsters. (Though I also love his manic gurning when he takes a nuisance phonecall).

The story sees the newly opened Post Office Tower taken over by an evil computer, who can, get this, TALK TO OTHER COMPUTERS BY TELEPHONE! I have spoken before in more detail of Doctor Who and Computers:

The Doctor fights to save the fashionable, modern people of London from a computer virus spreading down the telephone line. Today, computer viruses are a common blight in our lives, continually costing companies a fortune and getting in the way of us emailing our pals. What’s more, the virus here hypnotises humans, and is the first stage in a programme to make the species extinct. The Doctor fights to save humanity from the aggressor. [...]

WOTAN’s virus working on humans isn’t so unfeasible. Neal Stephenson’s modern tech novel “Snow Crash” makes the same plot a plausible threat to the computer industry, something portrayed as a real-world danger, rather than the funky, modish fantasy it seemed in 1966. It’s not the computer the Doctor has problems with – in fact, he seems quite impressed with it. It’s WOTAN’s invasive, misanthropic plans the Doctor finds “evil”. That, and it referring to him as “Doctor Who”.

It’s also interesting that part of WOTAN’s plan is ultimate global domination – and not just NW1, as it seems onscreen. Though WOTAN may seem quaint and clunky now, compared to what was going on in the real world at the same time, it was pretty cutting edge technology. Made-up, but cutting edge.

What we know today as the Internet first appeared in recognisable form in 1969. Four computers were connected to the ARPANET – though the very first user got as far as the letter ‘G’ when trying to LOGIN before the system crashed.

It was created on the understanding that a network of connected computer stations would survive, say, a nuclear strike. One of the system’s multiple locations might be destroyed, but the others would continue. This was back in the days when nuclear war was a major concern, and the system was only going to be used by the military and academics – for purposes far more worthy than episode guides and pornography.

As a result, there wasn’t exactly a rush to join up. By 1971, the system was connected to 15 computers. The first email programme was written the following year. And in 1973 ARPANET went international – connecting to a computer at University College London (just down the road from WOTAN).

At this point in the Doctor Who universe, the best technical minds were a little further ahead.

WOTAN is also, of course, responsible for the dystopian future of my first novel, Doctor Who and the Time Travellers (a sort of first Doctor Turn Left). I sometimes dream luridly of a similarly fast-cutting trailer, mashing up explosions round Canary Wharf train station with the horror-struck faces of the first TARDIS crew.

So this may be the third Droo DVD in a row I am compelled to purchase. Doctor Who is required.

Batsha sengathi yizibhanxa

Hooray for my cousin G, who asked a favour of a waiter on my behalf. I now have the opening line of something mammoth I am writing.

Well, not exactly mammoth but along the same lines.

And no, none of this means anything to you, dear reader. But right now it's everything to me.