Lost in his own museum

Adrian Salmon's characteristically splendid cover for my Benny play has now been released into the interweb. Woo!

The play features a number of rabbiting Aliens* played by m'self and my wee brother. I can exclusively reveal that the the small, bald, purple, pointy-eared Alien in the foreground of the cover was performed by my brother.

Our director was keen afterwards to point out that Tom was the better actor. Grr!

Or perhaps that should that be Ang!

[* Though, in the script, they were described as "locals" not aliens. It's Benny and Jason who are the aliens.]

Some humbugs

"The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another - particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish."

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, p. 134.

I've been slowly rereading the Hitch Hikers books (whenever there aren't the Doctor's newspapers about for taking to the loo) and the above bit really struck a cord.

I don't like driving. I can drive, and not too badly, neither. But it's like washing up, or proofing technical and policy documents. I'd just rather not, if that's all right. It's tedious, repetitive and it's not often I fit around the steering wheel anyway. And I hate the attitude - especially in London - that driving's a war of attrition, where you try and out-do as many other road-users as you can, without letting them nip in front. Me, I'm quite content to sit on a slow wending bus, reading or daydreaming silly titbits for stories, or even just staring out the window...

Of course, keen-driving pals and family members have already explained - and in depth - why I Am Wrong on this, too. And in the manner they also sometimes explain that, 'Simon, quite a lot of Dr Who is not very good...'.

Yes. I know. But I reckon they'd still agree that the whole driving experience would be a lot more agreeable if not so many people were utterly sold to it. Drive when you have to, not when you can.

Anyway, for going to a chum's wedding in a few weeks' time, I've just had to hire a car. Had to apply for a credit card, too, because (unlike the last time I did this, two years ago), you can't hire a car without one.

Credit cards, and their whole mantra of "Hey! You, lucky fellow, could owe us lots of money!', can sod off too. Not had a credit card since my earliest days as a student - a period with an inevitable moral lesson on the virtues of self-will. Which has all been paid off, what with it having been - Christ - a decade ago.

One of the security questions on ringing to activate the card (which a cynic might view as an underhand method of attempting to sell more product to someone who's just signed up to your services, and getting them to pay for the call while they're at it) was age next birthday. Not 'How old are you?' but 'How much worse is it going to get?'

Cheers for that. Almost a year to go, and I'm already dwelling on it. Humbug 3: Cannot be arsed with birthdays either.

Any colour you like

Some pontificating, when I should be doing writing I was meant to have finished on Friday.

Had a very nice day at a wedding yesterday, chatting to people I've not seen in ages and people I'd not met before. There was some excitement at Baker Street on the way, though, with the police trying to keep people out of the way as they dealt with a group of violent, shouty blokes. We assumed BNP - though comparing notes with other likewise delayed wedding guests, it wasn't an exclusively white group. There's something particularly brilliant about the BNP being a multi-cultural organisation...

But just why? As the Doctor said, this is hardly what the police or London in general needs just now. Assuming it was all some sort of response to terrorist bombings... Well, what is it we call people whose sole purpose is to spread a little more misery and fear?

What makes me most angry about this and all the shit over the last few weeks is that it's easy to make things worse. Any fucker can hit out, smash stuff, damage other people. Mending them again takes years of dedication and exams and long hours doing shitty placements as a junior doctor. Making things better needs effort and brains and compassion and all the kinds of virtue you'd think were essential to anyone's utopian vision. But bollocks to the idea that al-Queda and the BNP are working for a better world. Vicious tantrums yes, practicable ethical framwork? No, it seems it's always the easy option.

It's no show of strength to break things, it's a sign of weakness.

Bah.

Lemon Avenue flying straightly

Went to the Nelson and Napoleon exhibition on Wednesday, and met up with some old chums me and the Doctor hadn't seen in ages. The exhibition is fun - with some great and violent Gillray prints, recruitment posters exorting all good Englishfolk to "hate the French, damn the Pope", and even the underpants Nelson was wearing when he got shot. There's also a rather groovy interactive tabletop wossname, where as a digital map shows the battle in progress, you can touch the screen with your finger for more information on each of the boats.

Still, it's all rather "clean" and serious, with very little of the bloody misery of ship-life and war on show. There's little of what the Doctor refers to as "social history" (which, I think, means that it would have been better and more vivid if it could have been more like the excellent Master and Commander).

Yesterday, oblivious to bombings, we went to see Henry IV part 2. Although excellently staged and performed, it's not as exciting or engaging as part 1 - a bit like Kill Bill, I said in the pub afterwards. We're going to watch the third part of the trilogy on Sunday, care of the DVD of Olivier's Henry V that my in-laws got me for my birthday.

Speaking of DVDs, Jonathan Clements passed this on.

We are history

The fab new issue of Dr Who's Magazine has details of authors and stories for History of Christmas.

You can get yourself a copy of the very-spiff-indeed magazine from Panini's website.

Some titles have changed since DWM went to press, and I've still got the running order to work out. So here's details as they currently stand:

• "The Anchorite's Echo" by Scott Andrews
• "Presence" by Peter Anghelides
• "Set in Stone" by Charles Auchterlonie and John Isles
• "Be Good For Goodness' Sake" by Samantha Baker
• "Home Fires" by Jon Blum
• "Danse Macabre" by Joff Brown
• "The Thousand Years of Christmas" by Simon Bucher-Jones
• "St Nicholas's Bones" by Xanna Eve Chown
• "Ode to Joy" by Jonathan Clements
• "The Gift" by Robert Dick
• "The Revolutionarries" by John S Drew
• "Rome" by Marcus Flavin
• "The Prodigal Sun" by Matthew Griffiths
• "Christmas on the Moon" by me
• "Comforts of Home" by Pete Kempshall
• "She Won't Be Home" by Joseph Lidster
• "Nobody's Gift" by Kate Orman
• "The Innocents" by Marc Platt
• "The Long Midwinter" by Phillip Purser-Hallard
• "Not In My Back Yard" by Eddie Robson
• "Callahuanca" by Richard Salter
• "The Feast" by Stewart Sheargold
• "The Church of Saint Sebastian" by Robert Smith
• "The Lampblack Wars" by Matthew Sweet
• "Faithless" by Ben Woodhams

Mooning

36 years ago today, Neil Armstrong clambered down from the lunar module of Apollo 11 and fluffed his lines. Google Moon - brother to the quite astonishing Google Earth - is celebrating this anniversary in style. Check out the extreme zoom, and I especially like the news (in the FAQs) of the forthcoming Copernicus initiative.

I am writing about Apollo 17 at the moment, as it happens. The last two blokes to stand on the moon's surface blasted off back home on 14 December 1972. And nobody's been back since. It's odd that by the time I got born a few years later, people had stopped going to the moon.

Other odd stuff, and yesterday I had to explain to m'colleagues the difference between a wiki and a Wookiee.

Humphrey Belcher's cheese cauldron

Spent a fine and chappish weekend in Brighton doing stag things, where I was Not Good at both raft-building and croquet. The latter was not assisted by the state of the pitch, which was dry and ungrassy and too fast.

I'd expected much teasing on this expertise yesterday, as I detailed my adventures to the Doctor - she after all calls me 'Shire boy' at the best of times. But I'm assured me she's quite the croquist (if that's not the word, it should be). It's an elementary skill of the vicar's daughter, I guess - along with topping up drinks and making canapes. She is a good wife, and I have made sacrifice of household chores today in her honour.

Caught the sun quite nicely, too: there's a satisfying, high contrast arc of white on the fleshy bit between my thumbs and forefingers.

I'm just 100 pages from the end of Harry Potter, having fallen into it by accident last night. Best one since Azkaban, I think - tighter written, better plotted and generally just funnier and scarier by turns... I love the feeling of haring through a book because you can't put it down, while at the same time not wanting it ever to end. The heading for this post, incidentally, is from page 187.

Good things happening on my own writing front, too. An email today confirmed things are all go on.... something exciting that will be announced in due course. And, on the train down to Brighton while chatting to a chum, the line, 'Well, I saw a light on...' popped into my brain unbidden. Not the most awe-inspriring revelation, I know, but it perfectly clears up all the bother I'd been having with something I'm working on, so yay. Explained what it's for to the Doctor last night as we meandered to last orders up the road. When it got to that line, she laughed. So that's all okay then.

Well, anyway. This isn't working, is it?

And nor would be sneaking off now for another chapter of Potter. But...

Cover up

Amazon are boasting the cover to fellow first-timer Nick Wallace's Fear Itself.

It's beautiful, and I am sorely envious.

Picked up the lovely-looking DWM special today. And a card for Joseph Lidster, who is apparently quite old. Amazingly enough, there's going to be a little drinking tonight to celebrate.

Oh, and I also bought a sandwich and a rhubarb yoghurt which was nice, too.

Toxteth O'Grady

I have a horrible bloody cold. It just isn't right when it's so hot and sunny and lovely outside.

Years ago, I asked the old man (who knows such things) why we even have snot:

Well, it is a long story, but in essence, this is how it goes: the nose is the air contioning unit for the lungs. It works a bit like a Dyson vacuum cleaner. When you breath in, the nose spins the air into a spiral as it goes down the nose. All the bits of dust, earwigs, germs etc get spun by centrifugal force to the edge and become stuck to the mucus lining the nose. The mucus, with its trapped bits, is moved from the front to the back of the nose by thousands of tiny whiskers, which are beating together all the time. The whole thing behaving like moving fly-paper. The central core of clean air goes down to the lungs, while the mucus goes down to the stomach. There, the bugs and bits are destroyed, and the mucus broken down into glucose, and transfered back to the nose by the blood, where it is turned back to mucus again.

Sometimes the system doesn't work. Allergy makes little white blood cells diffuse into the mucus, and this can make it turn yellow or even pale green. The cells are not really white, just whiter than the red ones. Some germs excrete coloured dyes, mostly green, and these can poison the little whiskers, so they won't beat. The mucus doesn't move along; the water in it evaporates, and it gets very sticky and snotty. If it gets snotty enough, germs can even grow in it. So it all get a bit complicated, especially as acid in the air, and other pollutions, can damage the little whiskers too.

So now you know! A potent source of acid in the air is from exhaust fumes of cars and lorries and so on. There is a hole in the ozone layer over Switzerland. If you are south of about Birmingham, you are under this hole. The hole allows ultra-violet light through, and this light reacts with the exhaust fumes to make them more toxic to the nose. So London is a good place to live!

Even sitting out in the sun for hours on hasn't sorted it out. Bleurgh. Was picnicing at posh opera, thanks to some well-connected chums. Lovely day - though getting home turned into a bit of a faff, and only possible due to great kindness of other people.

Somewhat to my surprise, though, I managed to tie proper bow-ties. Blimey. And despite the raw, red nose, the Doctor seemed to approve of the outfit. She, of course, looked quite brilliant.

Back to work yesterday after some days of due to head being full of snot. Almost through all the Christmas stories. Oh, and I'm being interviewed on Friday about UNIT. Then off to a stag weeked for, by complete coincidence, one of the cast members.

Top hat

More lyrics from Great, which I am now writing a full, proper feature about. One day it will be available on DVD. Yes, one day...

Get a big top hat if you want to get ahead,
It doesn't really matter if you're not at all well-bred.
You're certain to be treated as a great success,
By adopting an inordinately tall head dress.

As the Queen once said to Albert,
'We are not amused by that.
But one thing tickles my fancy -
That's Brunel's big... top hat.'

Get a big top hat if you want to get ahead,
He always has it off when he's lying in bed.
He wears it to the opera and the London zoo,
And he'd feel undressed without it sitting on the loo.

He went to the Crimea,
The guns went rattatat.
They shot off all the Balaclava helmets,
But they couldn't hit his big... top hat.

Get a big top hat if you want to get ahead.
He wore it on the happy day he first got wed.
He wore it on the honeymoon day and night,
And he asked her if it fitted and she said, 'Just right'.

His wife, she was delighted.
He said, 'I'm glad of that.
I wouldn't like a woman who said "No, no"
To my bloody great big... top hat.'

Get a big top hat if you want to get ahead,
It doesn't really matter if you're not at all well-bred.
You're certain to be treated as a great success,
By adopting an inordinately tall head dress.

Keeping buggering on

As Liadnan says:

Screw you, whoever you are. London's still standing. And if it burns to the ground, we'll just build it again. We've done it before.

Coke and aspirins

I am hungover as a bastard, and don't quite remember all of last night.

The Doctor took me to the World's Most Photographed exhibition, and there was a pint of beer and quite a lot of wine and even a vodka martini involved. Really am getting too old for this. Hangovers should not last into the afternoon. Though I have somehow acquired an umbrella.

There were lots of interesting snaps - including one of Adolf Hitler looking a bit of a knob in his lederhosen, and an extraordinary one of Muhammad Ali as St Sebastian. That said, the Greta Garbo ones all looked much of a muchness to a philistine like me, and all from one brief period at the height of her career.

The cat has been sympathising with my delicate state this morning. Just a moment ago he snuck in from the garden with another toad. The little sod.

I am now halfway through a bottle of coke and in the midst of some Christmas stories. The authors should get announced in the next issue of Dr Who Magazine - in about a fortnight - so I'll not name names just yet. Though I notice there's a blog or two dropping the subtlest of hints. Tut.

Oh, and blimey, London is going to host the Olympics. Bugger. Probably means lots of work for me to do tomorrow.

Design by Beethoven

BBC News is reporting on the logo for the UK's presidency of the EU. It's an odd sort of non-story, where some people like it, some people don't, some people couldn't care less.

I especially like the last line:

But John Williamson of brand consultants Wolff Olins was scathing about what he said was a sugarcoated image of countries "flying in harmony, shoulder to shoulder".

"This presidency is about re-writing the rules of Europe," he said.

"The difficult decisions that have to be made, the tension, the debate - that's what has to be symbolised somehow.

"Picasso and Beethoven must be turning in their graves."

First sight of Christmas

Just this second received my contributor copies of A Day In The Life, which is a nice, chunky volume. Looking forward to reading it.

Even more excitingly, there's an add in the back for something else:

SHORT TRIPS: THE HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS
A short story collection edited by
SIMON GUERRIER

ISBN 1-84435-149-1

Christmas is a time for many things. For family and old acquaintances. For giving, for receiving, for feasts and celebration. For huddling round the warmth of the fire, sheltered from the dark and the cold outside.

And the monsters.

It's also the busiest time of year for the mysterious Doctor, whether he's caught up in the violence of ancient Rome, taking Leonardo da Vinci on a day trip to the stars, or popping in on the very first Christmas on the Moon.

Spend Christmas with the Doctor. If you dare.

Featuring stories by Marc Platt, Jonathan Clements, Eddie Robson, Joseph Lidster and many more!

No tea, Harry

A wiser man than me recently ticked off my pronouncing the 't' in 'often'. It's meant to have a glottal stop, he said.

Reckon 'glottal stop' should 'ave a glo'al stop, 'an all.

It can't be done

Lyrics to a song about the building of Clifton Suspension Bridge, from Great!, Bob Godfrey's Oscar-winning, animated musical biography of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

'It can't be done, you haven't a chance, there isn't a possible way.
The chains will bend, the girders snap, the bridge will blow away.
What's more we can't afford the price - it's rather high you see.'
And he replied, 'It's great, you fools. And I am IKB.'

'It can't be done, you haven't a chance, there isn't a possible way.'
Since he was born they've always said, 'It can't be done today.
Just wait till they invent the car or electricity.'
And he replied, 'It can be done, and it'll be done by me.'

'It can't be done, you haven't a chance, there isn't a possible way.'
That's what his nurse and his mama and teachers used to say.
'They'll never go under the Thames,' they said. He said, 'Just wait and see.
Just give me a rope and a little piece of wire and I'll do it after tea.'

The House of Lords to spoil his plans consistently tried.
They said, 'His engines will not run on gauges seven feet wide.'
When Wellington was rather old he heard of Brunel's boat.
He said, 'If you build it with iron the thing will never float.'
Brunel said, 'You're the iron duke. It's clear you're all at sea.
The ship will sail, you bet your boots, or I'm not IKB.'

King of the hill

A king stands on the grassy peak of a hill, at some point between the Romans sodding off and the Normans sodding on. From this vantage, he has a great view all round. He can see his lands, his wealth... and the enemy army down in the valley before him, preparing to wage war.

The king is surrounded by his closest, most loyal, most able men. Around them are their best men, and so on and so on, the king's army commanding all the hill. Each concentric ring is another rank of soldiery, the outer bands full of peasants and farmers paid housecarls, even idle men here by accident of fate. Some out at this range might not even know the king's name.

Around the perimeter of the king's defences, men with shields jostle up close, creating a protective wall. They will be the first to engage the foe, the first to die. And because of this, they are fiercely proud. They might be well-paid, but it can never be enough.

The king looks out, over the heads of his army, down on the enemy mustered below. He feels safe on his hilltop, surrounded by his garrison. He is restless, sure the land under the enemy's feet rightly belongs to him. He might even be a bit bored.

'Let's show 'em what we are, then,' he says.

The men beside him nod, and pass the order outwards. Word makes it through the ranks, leaking through to the proud shield-bearers on the perimeter. The shield men take up the call. They get the message, and yelling it for all they're worth, they charge.

At best, these men will be decimated and their king will win the day. At worst, every one of them, and every one of the men behind them, is dead. Their first wave will be crucial, and they have to believe that the rest of the king's men are close behind them, with them all the way.

'We're leading this,' they say to themselves as they break against the enemy's own wall of shields. 'We're leading this,' as they fight and hack and die, smashing themselves and the king's message against the unyielding foe. 'We're leading this,' they say, as they fall, broken bodies trampled into the mud by their own comrades.

Their names will not be remembered. These men are fodder, for all the king cares. All that matters is that there are people so willing to carry his word into the fray.

Today, they would be his advertising agency.

Hot and cold

If IMDB and my maths are correct, then Peter Davison was 29 when he sat up on his elbows and looked a bit bewildered.

So, as of today, I am the same age as a Dr Who.

Obviously I'm feeling old, because a birthday isn't a cause for excitement so much as a cue to philosophise. About Dr Who, anyway.

Davison is now (counts on fingers...) 54. So next year, the dashing young Doctor with the pleasant, open face will be the same age as William Hartnell was, when he first got the gig. I had to do the counting a few times over, to convince myself that really is the case.

Anyway. Splendid, easy birthday with breakfast in bed followed by a surprise trip to Tonbridge Castle. It's been recently done up, and the audio-guide round the place was exactly right, with plenty of (admirably brief) contemporary sources giving vivid, sometimes funny accounts of how the whole thing worked. Just my cup of tea, and the Doctor approved at a professional level, and all. Boozy long lunch followed, and we never did get to Tunbridge Wells. Mmm.

Absolutely sweltered though - and England seems far stickier than Italy. On the way home, we stopped off for shopping, and the sky was clearing its throat as we left Sainsburys. Being rained on at the end of a hot day is bliss.

Did very well for loot this year, and am already enthralled by The Spy Who Came In From The Cold - a gift from the Baldrick-in-law. Good castle, good book, good booze, and the good Doctor recommends snuggling down in front of Star Wars tonight.

Probably doesn't get much better than this, does it?

Overcoming opposition

Just back this afternoon from some days in Italy, where I helped nice people clear what was once a compost heap and will soon be a workshop. Bit tanned, very bitten, much better for not seeing a computer all week. Mmm, nice.

While there (well, while getting there and back, to be honest), I finally read NHS plc, which my dad has been raving about (and for which I swapped him Paxman's excellent The Political Animal). As the old man promised, it's an extraordinary, damning and horrifying study and everyone should read it.

'New Labour's chief tactics were to denigrate the existing public services and tout the imaginary superiority of market-based services in other countries; to add fuel to public discontent by aggravating and highlighting exisiting points of stress; to muzzle internal critics; to dismiss and/or contaminate scientific evidence; and, finally, to attempt to discredit, marginalise and intimidate anyone bold enough to point out what was really happening.'

Allyson M Pollock, NHS plc: the privatisation of our healthcare, pp.194-5.

Have passed it on to the Doctor.

Also zipped through one of the funky, hardback ninth Doctor Who novels, which was something of a contrast. Loved it, loved how it felt just like the TV show, loved this bit in particular:

'Freddie grinned. The grin froze, then faded as Rose leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "Thanks," she said.
He was rubbing the cheek as he walked away, glancing round embarrassed.
"I only kissed him," Rose said.
"He's a boy," the Doctor told her.
"I thought that's what they were for," she grumbled, following him down the street.'

Justin Richards, Dr Who - The Clockwise Man, p. 130.

In other Droo news, A Day In The Life is now out, and includes Dr Who meeting a chap called Brimmicombe-Wood. Which is kind of funny now, what with the Doc's new, weird teeth and all... Stories for Christmas are trickling in, and there's some other stuff I hope to be able to boast about soon...

Off to do washing up now. And maybe have a shower and a shave - currently doing a good impression of a hairy, stinky farmhand.

Long live the apple-bong!

Oh, the urban dictionary just get's better and better. A chum sends me this listing :

Guerrieri
Chief Guerrieri of the Toke-a-lotta-weed Tribe
All hail Guerrieri, and long live the apple-bong!

Guessing it's not related to the wine, which the Doctor and I drank quite a lot of having booked our wedding. And when we took my folks out soon afterward. And when we had a big dinner, the night before the hitch itself. Ah, happy days...

Off to Italy tomorrow for a much-needed holiday. I shall not be looking at a computer for a whole five days. Hooray!

It'll all be old news by the time I get back, but see how nobly I have not got involved in discussions like the one Phil's been having. Happy to report that the Fear Forecasters were delighted with the thing.

And you know what? So was I.