Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Socks (2023-25)

Some very sad news. On Monday, the vet called to say that one of our two cats had been brought in, having been hit by a car. Poor old Socks did not survive the encounter. It's been a horrible shock and the kids have been distraught.

Socks, who was not quite two years-old when he died, and his sister Mittens came to live with us in September 2023. They were both manic - "They don't sleep!" we were told by the rescue place from which they came. Since then, Mittens has mellowed but Socks dug into the wild-eyed madness.

There was the time he leapt from the top of the stairs at the main light in our hallway, sending all the bits of the chandelier-effect lampshade everywhere in an almighty crash. There was his habit of biting my feet if I ever stopped moving about. On the morning of New Year's Eve, when we were all a little fragile, he brought the Dr a live pigeon and let it go in our bedroom... 

The number of daft things he did. The speed at which he burned through his nine lives.

Then there's all the comfortable, companionable stuff. He liked to curl up in a cardboard box beside me as I worked. He slept each night on the Dr's feet. He had a selection of sunny spots in the garden to laze about in. 

I miss the patter of his feet at a little before 5 pm each evening, in the never-dimming hope that his dinner might just once be early. We all miss him just being around. What a character. What a keenly felt loss. 





Saturday, March 29, 2025

Smith and Sullivan: Reunited - Blood Type

Big Finish have announced the forthcoming release of Doctor Who audio series Smith and Sullivan: Reunited, for release in July 2025. The three stories include Blood Type, written by me.

Blurb for the set as follows:

Sarah Jane Smith: investigative journalist; Dr Harry Sullivan: UNIT operative. Together, they journeyed to the stars with the Doctor. But when the adventures end, what can they do?

Find more...

Reunited in the chaos of 1980s London, Sarah and Harry find danger and darkness lurking beneath the metropolitan veneer of wealth and technology. With trusty super-computer K9 and the brilliant Lavinia Smith alongside, new adventures are just beginning...

The other stories in the set are The Caller by Tim Foley and Union of the Snake by Roland Moore. Sadie Miller plays Sarah Jane Smith, Christopher Naylor is Harry Sullivan, John Leeson is K9 and Annette Badland is Sarah's Aunt Lavinia. More details to come...

Friday, March 28, 2025

Cinema Limbo: Observe and Report

I'm the guest on the latest Cinema Limbo podcast, this time - for my many sins - to discuss the 2009 black comedy Observe and Report, starring Seth Rogen and Ray Liotta. 

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Remembering / Forgetting The Savages

Artwork for the Blu-ray release of Doctor Who and the Savages, showing illustration of First Doctor, in foreground with companions Dodo and Steven emerging from behind TARDIS
The animation of otherwise-missing 1966 Doctor Who story The Savages is out now. It includes Stuart Denman's 100-minute documentary Remembering / Forgetting The Savages, in which Toby Hadoke explores in depth the history, context and meaning of this lost adventure.

I'm one of the punters involved, asked about such things as The Joy of Sex and the Doctor's reacting vibrator (yes, really). 

Bald old man in front of black-and-white frames from missing Doctor Who story The Savages, with caption Simon Guerrier, Writer and TV historian

The Savages sees the departure of companion Steven Taylor, played by Peter Purves. You can find out what happened to him next in the audio stories The War to End All Wars, The Founding Fathers and The Locked Room.

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Alex Andreou's Podyssey podcast

The Dr is one of the expert "muses" featured in Alex Andreou's new Podyssey podcast series.

Each episode begins with Alex retelling a Greek myth - Echo and Narcissus in episode 1, Orpheus and Eurydice in episode 2 - before going on to explore its cultural influence into the modern day. 

In episode 2, the Dr refers to a brooch of a lyre strung with hair from the head of the poet John Keats, which she wrote more about (with pictures) in a blog post last year, ‘Touch has a memory’: An Object of Friendship.

The Dr previously featured as an expert witness in the BBC radio series 1922: The Birth of Now and the one-off documentary John Ruskin's Eurhythmic Girls, the latter co-produced by me.

Friday, March 21, 2025

Green for Danger, by Christianna Brand

"'If this were a detective story, he'd be the murderer for a certainty, though,' said Barnes. 'They always pick on the benevolent elderly gent, because you'll never think it could be him!'

'Ah, but nowadays they're more subtle; they know that the reader's wise to that trick and the older and more benevolent a character is, the more he'll be suspected.'

'Perhaps it's gone all the way round and come back full cycle,' suggested Barnes, laughing; 'and elderly gents and paralytics in bath chairs are suspects number one all over again because the reader doesn't think the author would be so obvious. Anyway, this isn't a detective story, and it certainly wasn't old Moon.'

'So that leaves you and me and the three girls,' said Eden, grinning sardonically. 'A charming alternative.'" (p. 216)

My good friend Father Christmas added this to my Mum's stocking based on the blurb, thinking it a suitable present for a former nurse who likes a murder mystery. My Mum's first reaction was, "Oh, I knew her." In 1971-72, my late Dad was a joint junior registrar at Mount Vernon and Middlesex hospitals, working under Brand's husband, the surgeon Roland Lewis.

First published in 1944, Green for Danger involves victims of air raids in 1943 being brought into a military hospital in Kent, where someone bumps off a number of patients and staff. A film version was released in 1946, directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Alistair Sim as Inspector Cockrill, with action moved forward a year to 1944 and the V-1 offensive, presumably for greater cinematic impact.

The book begins with postman Joseph Higgins pushing his old, red bicycle towards the new Heron's Park hospital to deliver seven letters. They're all from new members of staff and we get a quick glimpse of each character before being told that one of them will, a year later, murder this poor postman.

In Chapter II, we jump forward a year and are quickly caught up in the bustling, bantering hospital on the night of an air raid. The local ARP centre and a pub have been hit, so lots of patients are coming in, wounded and grimy and scared. At the same time, we get more details of stuff going on under the surface - the staff's love affairs and unrequited passions, their terror of the air raids, the people they've already lost. 

Higgins is brought in with a fractured femur, the sole survivor of the ARP Centre. The doctors decide to operate. Higgins and his wife are both nervous but are assured it's a routine procedure. In he goes to theatre, our seven suspects all on duty. By the end of Chapter III he is dead.

At first it seems that no one is to blame - sometimes these things just happen in theatre. Inspector Cockrill is called in as a matter of routine. But he starts to suspect that something more sinister has gone on and then someone else is murdered...

It all moves along breathlessly and the different characters are well drawn, with some suspenseful moments such as when another man goes into theatre with the same suspects on duty, plus the Inspector watching them. The air raids and murder make for a tense setting anyway, and there's something a bit naughty in the staff's complex romantic intrigues, their efforts to solve the mystery for themselves and the games they play with the police officers assigned to watch them. 

Cockrill deduces who the killer is fairly early on but requires more evidence before he can confront them, which is effectively a challenge to the reader to work out what he has spotted from the clues given so far. On more than one occasion, things don't go as he expects - putting lives in danger.

Brand keeps us guessing skilfully. There are some fantastic twists at we rattle towards the conclusion - one section ends with a character springing forward to attack and we think they are the killer exposed. In the next, brief section, the Inspector intercedes to stop this person and then arrests someone else. "Oh, it's them!" we respond to the sudden attack. And then, almost immediately, "Oh, no, it's them!"

In the closing chapter, the survivors compare notes and look towards the future. There are still further twists in the tale. One character seems to be proposing to another - and then it's clear that they aren't. The other character, hopes dashed, 

"stuck our her chin, made a little joke, and nobody knew there was anything wrong at all." (p. 255)

We leave them, laughing and talking, for all we are haunted by the trouble we know lies just under the surface.

Friday, March 14, 2025

Macfest interview with Shirin Shamsi

Tomorrow, as part of Macfest, I'll be interviewing children's author Shirin Shamsi in a free online event

Shirin will read her book Zahra’s Blessing - A Ramadan Story, and we'll talk about that and her other work. There will be an opportunity for attendees to ask questions.

The blurb for the event says:

Shirin Shamsi is an award-winning author of children’s books. Born and raised in the United Kingdom to Pakistani immigrants, she moved to the USA with her husband, over thirty years ago, where they have raised three children. Now empty nesters, they live with their cat Bramble in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.

With a background in Early Childhood, children have always been Shirin’s priority and focus. She writes with the hope that every child will see themselves represented in books. Having lived on three continents, Shirin sees herself as a global citizen. She feels passionately about sharing stories that represent global themes and diversity; stories that inspire curiosity, compassion, kindness, and empathy.

This is the third Macfest I've been part of. Last year I interviewed Seti Atta about her novel A Bit of Difference. The year before, I interviewed Fatima Manji about her book Hidden Histories.