Lunar New Year Love Story, by Gene Luen Yang and Leuyen Pham

This is fantastic - the moving, funny, emotional tale of teenage Valentina negotiating loss and love. The Dr bought it for me as a Valentine's gift, having had it recommended by a friend, and I ripped through it last night, entranced.

As a child, Valentina loves Valentine's Day more than Christmas and makes cards for her classmates at school, while chatting to her Cupid-like imaginary friend "Saint V". But in her teens, she comes to discover that this close association is the result of a whole load of other things going on in her early life of which she wasn't quite conscious - the statue of St Valentine at the Catholic church that her grandmother attends and some other things I won't spoil.

At the same time, Val, who is from a Vietnamese family, is part of a wider Chinese community in this unnamed part of the US, and takes up lion-dancing in part as a step up from her childhood ballet classes and in part because a particular boy is involved. The lion dance has its own mythology, which interweaves with that of St Valentine. In practice and performance, she learns to keep in time with her co-performer and also to recognise when they're not quite in step.

It's brilliantly well observed, from the cultural specifics (one character takes a rice cooker with them on holiday!) to the cringe of inter-personal politics at school. I laughed out load several times. But it also perfectly captures the raw energy of teenage emotion. Some characters are horribly selfishly but most mean well while doing things that affects others badly. It all feels specific, grounded and real, even though it's about the way that ghosts and spirits haunt our everyday lives and help us to reflect and heal. 

In all, this is a joy to read, beautiful to look at and the coda of a few extra panels placed around the closing acknowledgements and indicia really got me. Wow.

Holiday Sketches exhibition at Senate House

Exciting news! The clever Dr has curated an exhibition which opens this Saturday, 1 February, and runs until 14 March, at Senate House in London.

Holiday Sketches: Two Female Artists and an Archaeologist Husband go on Holiday, 1863, is about the trip made to Rhodes (as well as Athens, Ephesos and Istanbul) by artist Ann Mary Severn Newton and the teenaged Gertrude Jekyll, in the company of Mary's husband Charles. He was an archaeologist, the trip related to his work for the British Museum. 

You can find the exhibition on the 3rd floor of Senate House, University of London - just as you come out of the lifts, by the library of the Institute of Classical Studies. If you can't make it (and even if you can), the Dr has also produced an accompanying fanzine. 

For more of this sort of thing, she previously wrote the book, From the Harpy Tomb to the Wonders of Ephesus - British Archaeologists in the Ottoman Empire 1840-1880 (Bloomsbury, 2008) and continues to dig into all this, especially the life of Mary. You can keep up with her researches on her blog.

Ten years since our eldest daughter died

It is 10 years today since the death of our eldest daughter, Emily Maud, aged just eight days' old. I blogged about what happened that same afternoon, which seems a bit extraordinary now.

Me and the Dr are fine. Well, not fine - we're both suffering physical ailments at the moment. But yesterday we took a day off together and drove up to Haworth, home of the Brontes (including Emily). We met up with one of my old school friends, had lunch in the pub where Branwell Bronte went boozing, and I bought some stocking-filler bits and bobs for Lady Vader - the beloved daughter who wouldn't even exist but for the loss of her elder sister.

That loss still hurts and haunts us. This time of year is always difficult. Last week, I thought I was okay and then wasn't. But I've found that the best way to think of the anniversary is as a place: a fixed position in Earth's orbit round the Sun every 365 and a bit days. The Earth is constantly moving, so for all we come back to the same place each year, we're always passing through and will soon be somewhere else... 

The more time passes, too, the more that what lingers is the extraordinary kindness we were shown. I remain in awe of the staff at the neonatal ward at St George's Hospital in Tooting - whose brilliant work you can support with donations. There's the woman I never even met but think of all the time. I asked the medical staff where the knitted caps came from that so perfectly fitted our Emily. They told me they were knitted by a woman patient, up on the terminal ward. I wasn't allowed to go see her but sent her a note in which I could not nearly begin to express our gratitude. 

Then there were the family and friends who helped us through it all, at the time we were in hospital and in the weeks and months that followed. There was nothing anyone could do to help and yet so many people did. 

They're who I wrote that post for on the day she died. And what I didn't say then but will say now is: thank you.

Pedro (? - 2023)

Pedro, by Nimbos

This morning, we took turns to say goodbye to Pedro, our grumpy, once-chonky cat, before the Dr escorted him away on one last trip to the vet. 

A few weeks ago we thought he'd been knackered out by the hot weather; he wasn't unhappy, just listless. When the rain and chill hit, he didn't recover his energy. Then he was losing weight. I took him to the vet last week already expecting the worst. They found him full of cancer and he went downhill quickly. We'd booked him in for a final trip to the vet later this week and this morning had to bring that forward. He didn't even need the injection - in one last, typical act of defiance, he died as they were preparing it.

Oh, that cat.

Why 'Pedro'? I've been asked this a lot over the past five years. The rescue home where we found him in the summer of 2018 had a simple labelling system; each new cat they received was given a name beginning with the next letter in the alphabet. When this scrawny character arrived at their door, they'd just had a cat given a name beginning with 'O', so next in sequence was 'P'. They already had a 'Pete', hence 'Pedro'. The home assumed we'd come up with something more suitable soon enough but seven year-old Lord of Chaos was horrified by the idea we would dare to change his name.

It was a good name for quite a character.

The first time I took Pedro to the vet, sometime soon after we adopted him, he managed to make his feelings known by spraying piss through the slots of his carrying case, soaking me in the process. He then reached out a claw and caught my arm, so I arrived at the vet covered in piss and blood.

This delighted the vet, not least because Pedro had clearly got it all out of his system. So she picked him up and made soothing noises, and he pissed all over her.

Blimey, he could sulk. Rain and snow were obviously our fault. Woe betide anyone who sat in his chair (it's my chair, where I do most of my work). Or obstructed his comfy seat on the back of another sofa, where he could half slump on top of the radiator. Or if there was anything in the way of where he liked to laze beneath the front window. He declined to use a cat flap; you'd be summoned to open the door.

His grumpiness was matched by his greed. Pedro's dinner time was 5.15 each night, so from about 2 he'd trot after you hopefully, his forlorn wail of a not-meow more fitting a cat one-third his size. But Pedro was a survivor, having lived for some time on the mean streets of Streatham before we found him at a rescue home. You could see those survival skills in his scavenging and thieving, and the way he'd go crazy at the barest sniff of a plastic box full of chow mein.

Or duck. Or tuna. Or roast dinner. Or cheap sliced ham. 

Pedro was also affectionate - and not just when we were eating. Until recently, he liked nothing better than to sleep at the end of our bed, on the Dr's feet. If it was cold, he would move gradually up the bed, sometimes reaching the pillow. When the children were away - at school or overnight somewhere - he'd often curl up in their beds. If I was watching some hokey sci-fi late at night, he'd cuddle up, particularly enamoured of the twirling coloured lights in a star field or space battle. He weathered, usually with patience, a lot of cat squeezing and love.

What a lot of love we doted on that cat.

20 years as a freelance writer

Dr and me, about 2002

Twenty years ago this evening I took the Dr - though she was not then a Dr - to the pub to pitch a modest proposal: I wanted to jack in my job as an account manager in a contract publishing company and go freelance. I thought she would be horrified; in fact, she was relieved.

The idea wasn't entirely out of the blue. I'd begun to get some paid writing work - my first feature in Doctor Who Magazine, a few things for Film Review, the odd bit of copy for the customer magazines in my day job, such as the listings magazine for ITV Digital. When ITV Digital went into administration in March 2002, it hit my workplace hard. I expected to be made redundant but the payout would have covered bills for at least a couple of months. If ever there was a moment to make the leap into freelancing, this was it...

Except that I didn't lose my job and instead got promoted. I threw myself into new responsibilities, extra training, last-minute work trips. My birthday plans were cancelled so I could go to a meeting in Leicester; delays getting back from Barcelona meant I missed the wedding of some close friends. These were among a whole bunch of frustrations at work - small stuff, petty stuff, stuff that wasn't really about the job in the slightest but all about me. It took months to admit my disappointment at not having been made redundant.

So I looked into money and I talked to people. There were those in my day job who said they would employ me as a copywriter if - rarest of rarities as freelancers went - I delivered what I was asked for and on time. People who'd been made redundant from my work had since found jobs elsewhere in publishing and some could offer me work: updating spreadsheets, fiddling with Flash animation, even things involving writing. I also knew - or now introduced myself to - people in Doctor Who fandom who worked in publishing of one sort or another. Some couldn't offer work but gave useful advice: who to pitch to, what to pitch, who might be good as an accountant...

By the time I took the Dr to the pub on 15 July 2002, I had a list of potential employers and a budget based on needing to pay £600 in bills each month. She didn't need to see any of that. Next morning, I handed in my notice and later emailed everyone I could think of seeking work. My notebook from the time is full of lists: people to contact, ideas to send them, responses received and how I would follow those up. Hungry, for pages and pages and pages. Enough people were generous, or at least took a chance on this green, eager dork, that I picked up enough jobs to get by. I've been getting by ever since.

Mostly, it's been fun - more like larking about than working, for all the hours put in. I've had a very broad-ranging career, doing all sorts of varied stuff in very different media. Some jobs have been joyous, some very challenging but rewarding. I've worked with many brilliant, talented people. There is loads I'm really proud to have been part of. But freelancing has always been precarious - and just now publishing is in a worrying state. 

This week, Eaglemoss went into administration, taking with it my regular job on the Doctor Who Figurine Collection. Seven books I've worked on are currently in limbo, my work on them either entirely or mostly done but no publication date in sight because of... well, everything at the moment. Some projects aren't cancelled but stall; they're put back a few months or a year, as is the date when I can invoice for the work I've done on them. 

It's not as if things were easy before the cost of living crisis, COVID, Brexit, paper shortages and whatever else made them harder. In many cases, freelance rates have barely risen in two decades. That's had, I think, a corresponding impact on the demographics of people in publishing.

What can be done? Well, that's been much on my mind. Last week, I was elected chair of the Books Committee of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. I've 20 years experience of knocking about through this industry, and of being knocked about. As Leela says in the Doctor Who story The Robots of Death, "If you're bleeding, look for a man with scars." Hello, that is me.

Doctor Who: Chronicles - 2007

The latest issue of the Doctor Who: Chronicles (from the makers of Doctor Who Magazine) is focused on the year 2007, which in a weird, sci-fi wossname is now somehow ancient history.

For his article on the Doctor Who books published that year, Mark Wright spoke to me about writing The Pirate Loop, the one with the space-pirate badgers. The Dr still thinks that book is the best thing I've ever written, so it's been 15 years all downhill.

The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey

I've been meaning to get to this mystery novel for years. The Dr is a fan of Josephine Tey, and also of Nicola Upson's series of novels in which Tey is herself the detective. 

Some time ago, we watched the 1988 TV version of The Franchise Affair, which was the last TV work overseen by Terrance Dicks and the second of two adaptations of Tey that he produced for the BBC's "Classic Serials", effectively putting this mystery writer in the same bracket as Dickens, Bronte and Thackeray. I wonder why, of all mystery writers, Dicks chose her to make canonical... 

Robert Blair is a partner in a legal firm whose "business is mostly wills, conveyancing, and services", based in the smallish town of Milford. One morning he's rung up by Marion Sharpe he has seen around the town and asked to sit in on an interview with the police. Blair heads to the Franchise, a sizeable house now past its prime, which Sharpe and her mother have recently inherited and where they live in genteel poverty. Then the police arrive with a 16 year-old girl covered in bruises. She says the Sharpes kidnapped her, held her hostage for weeks, and inflicted ruthless beatings...

It's refreshing to have a mystery that's not a murder, and the general feel of the book is unsettling intrigue. It's as much about how the neighbourhood reacts to these two women from the Franchise, and there are plenty of shrewd observations, such as when Blair speaks to a waitress. 

"'We were all discussing that case on Friday [says the waitress]. Imagine beating her half to death like that.'

'Then you think they did?' [asks Blair.]

She looked puzzled. 'The paper says they did.'

'No, the paper reports what the girl said.'

She obviously did not follow that. This was the democracy we deified.

'They wouldn't print a story like that if it wasn't true. It would be as much as their life's worth. You a detective?'

'Part time,' Robert said.

'How much an hour do you get for that?'

'Not nearly enough.'

'No, I suppose not. Haven't got a union, I suppose. You don't get your rights in this world unless you have a union.'

'Too true,' said Robert. 'Let me have my bill, will you?'

'Your check, yes." (p. 130.)

In this, there are hints of a generational divide, and an inrush of Americanisation, perhaps the result of the recent war. The book was first published in 1948 (mine is a battered copy from the following year), but there's little on the war specifically - no mention of Blair having served, for example, or that some of people's strange behaviour may be the shadow of trauma.

In fact, it's all rather lightly played, and straightforward. Blair remains convinced of the Sharpes' innocence and even falls for Marion. I was braced for some last twist or reversal that never came. It's a comic novel in many ways, with something of Wodehouse in the reactions of Blair's maiden aunt.

"A fortnight ago you would never have dreamed of putting a parcel of fish down on polished mahogany and forgetting all about it." (p. 162)

But I really felt for the Sharpes, facing prosecution and a violent response from their neighbours. I think that may be because I'm also deep in research at the moment about a real court case, the one brought 40 years ago by Mary Whitehouse against the director of the National Theatre production, The Romans in Britain - of which more anon.

And so I think the thing that really lingers from this is Marion Sharpe's sympathy at the end of the novel for the mother of her accuser, a connection felt across the gulf of the two sides.

V for Victory, by Lissa Evans

Entirely selfishly, I bought this for the Dr's birthday so that I could read it. It's the third in a trilogy, after Crooked Heart and its prequel, Old Baggage - both of which I adored. 

We pick up with young Noel Bostock and his adopted aunt Vee - though she's neither of those things officially. Now going under the name Mrs Margery Owens, she and Noel bugger on through the chaos of north London at the fag-end of the Second World War. At any moment of any day, a V2 might fall on them and it's exhausting - not least because the chores and home-schooling must still somehow be done. Still, there's romance kindling in the air for each of them. And then they both stumble into people who know something of their past - and might expose their secrets...

As before, there's a wealth of telling historical detail worked deftly into the breezy tale, which I knocked through in a matter of days. It's so teeming with life and emotion. We really feel the outrage of Winnie the Warden discovering that her harrowing real-life experience has been filletted by her sister for a sexy novel. Or there's Noel's infatuation with a girl who's moved away:

"Noel recognized Genevieve Lumb's neat but forceful handwriting. Even the thought that she had licked the envelope was quite physically stirring." (p. 53).

The remarkable thing is that these extraordinary, unprecedented times feel utterly real. But it's also a delight to spend time in the company of good people just trying to get by, despite all the crap going on. 

I was especially moved by the ending, where Vee and Noel face some tricky emotional stuff relating to his biological parents. It's so perfectly done, so impossible to describe here without spoiling. At one point, Vee wonders what might have happened if she'd not made a connection with this awkward teen at a critical moment, how nearly he might have been lost. But we leave them happy, the war over and a new world on the horizon. After all the devastation, what survives is the love. 

Haunting north

The removals people said they'd be here between 8 and 8.30 this morning but arrived just after 7.30 while I was still drinking tea in bed. So the Dr raced into the shower while I hauled on last night's clothes, and then we were in full boxing mode. They parked their enormous lorry in the middle of the street and none of our neighbours objected. I think that's a mark of how friendly things are here - or how pleased they are to be rid of us.

Tomorrow, we move from our house of nine and a half years, and from London where I've lived since October 1999. We're moving north for a new chapter and new life. The children are already there. So it feels momentous and yet anticlimactic. I'm glad to be going and sad to be gone.

With the house over-run by boxes, the Dr and I went for lunch round the corner at our local - the first time either of us have been in a pub since mid-March. It was strange to use the new app to order drinks and food, all part of the careful, socially distanced provisions to keep us and other punters safe, and yet otherwise pick up as if we'd never been away. And then having caught up with landlord Colin after all these months, he was busy when we had finished, so there was no chance to say goodbye.

The week has been full of notable lasts: my daughter's last day at the nursery that's been a fixture in our lives since my son started there in 2013; the last time mowing the lawn yesterday; the last time past the old landmarks. What with everything going on in lockdown, and some personal stuff too, I'm all a bit emotional at the moment, haunted by things past and things to come.

Doctor Who Magazine #535

Out today, Doctor Who Magazine issue #535 includes my interview with Feifei Ruan, the illustrator and visual storyteller who created the extraordinary images used to promote Doctor Who in China.

I'm also a page 3 model, with my photo and short biography carefully placed to scare off readers of a nervous disposition. The Dr and the Lord of Chaos were commissioned for the special photo shoot, which included this dramatic moment.

The Shed

It has taken months and been painfully more expensive than expected, but I now have a shed/office up and running, and my daughter no longer needs to share her bedroom with my rubbish. Here, for those who've asked, is the whole saga...

The original plan was to convert the old, World War Two bomb shelter at the end of the garden, which had been used for storing the lawnmower and old pots of paint. I was really keen to keep the bomb shelter, not least because of its place in history. This part of London was heavily bombed in the war - the pub round the corner, my daughter's nursery and the swings we go to all the time are all built in place of houses that were lost.

Although the shelter looked large and imposing from outside, the very thick brick walls meant it was pretty small inside. Those walls would make it difficult to add a window or electricity. And the heavy-set concrete roof was leaking, which would be complicated to fix.

Exterior of World War Two bomb shelter
in our garden in January

Interior of World War Two bomb shelter
in our garden in January

The compromised roof, letting water in

So, in January, and a little guiltily, we arranged for builders to come and unbuild it. It took two of them, all day, with a huge pneumatic drill and sledge hammers, just to take the roof off.

Day 1 of demolition

Day 2 of demolition

It was exhausting work. The builders got through at least one pneumatic drill, and would retire wearily at 3 pm each evening. It took longer than expected, so they were then off to other jobs, coming in when they could to destroy another section.

By the end of the first week, we'd also hit a snag: the back and right-hand walls of the bomb shelter were supporting the walls behind them, so would have to stay. There was also the issue of how low the bomb shelter sat in the ground, which had meant there was always a problem with damp.

End of second week of demolition

The builders suggested using some of the rubble they'd cleared as the base for a platform on which the shed could sit. It saved money to use the broken bits of brick - but was still an expensive addition to the plan. We tightened out belts, and as well as the platform they installed panelling to tidy the whole thing up, too.

Construction of platform for new shed 

Our cat, Stevens, supervised the construction of a step up to the platform. The crappy weather may also have done something to the concrete mix - the edge of the step is already beginning to crumble. So we might have to have another go later in the year.

Paw prints in the step

After three weeks, the builders finished with the platform complete.

Platform completed, February

With them done and gone, I was ready to order the new shed from Woodside Timber. It would not arrive for another month - in March - so we had time to tidy the garden a bit, and attempt to book in an electrician for the next stage.

The Dr, in a tiara, tidying.

A nice electrician we'd used before came round and established it would be really tricky getting a cable out to the shed, as it would need to go under the floor in our kitchen, through the back wall, under the patio and then under the garden. Not one of these things would be easy.

But by happy coincidence, she was due to be working in the next few days with our old friend, the nice bloke who fitted our kitchen and converted our loft, who we'd booked to insulate and board the inside of the shed. She said she would talk to him about exactly what could be done. I heard from him soon after, and they'd talked through who would do what. We were go - in principle, or so I thought.

In March, while I was talking at the Bath Taps Into Science festival, the shed was put up by the nice people from Woodside Timber - exactly fitting the platform for it. Hooray!

The new shed, in March

I was then on holiday - at a wedding in Vietnam, and then with the family in Majorca - and we hit the Easter holidays. So we were well into April before the nice bloke was free to put in the insulation and board. As agreed with the electrician, he put the wiring in - but didn't connect it up to the mains - and got a cable running from the shed to the house. It helped that he fitted our kitchen all those years ago and knew where everything sat. But it was still a fiddly job.

Then we hit another snag. Yes, the electrician had discussed with him what needed to be done. But she'd not actually quoted for the job because she knew she was too busy to take it on. Me and the nice bloke had both thought she'd given each other the go ahead. Oops. So I had to dash round looking for another electrician. More time lost. The soonest anyone could come just to quote for the job was now May...

In the meantime, I got on with painting the inside of the newly boarded shed, with the Lord of Chaos helping when the mood took him. Once the paint was dry, he also decorated it, on the theme of an aquarium - with added monsters.

Lord of Chaos at work

 Lady Vader also wanted in on the action, though her work is more abstract in nature.

Lord Chaos and Lady Vader at work

Towards the end of April, I made a whistlestop visit to Winchester for the christening of an old schoolfriend's new son, and was able to steal some off-cuts of carpet from my parents.

Shed now with some carpet

Then there was the matter of burying the steel wire armoured cable running from the shed to the house. This had been the bit of the job the electricians and nice bloke were all keen to dodge. So on a rainy day at the end of April, muggins here just had to get on with it, with spade and fork.

Garden before the trench

The official recommendation was to bury the wire at a depth of 600 mm, which is a lot of digging. It didn't help that very soon I was digging through broken brick and glass and tile - as if the house had been built on a rubbish tip. It was knackering.

Garden with trench

Meanwhile, with progress being made, the Dr was keen to get all my stuff out of what had been my office and is now Lady Vader's bedroom. That mean lugging the enormous desk downstairs and out. I called in a favour, having helped some friends move house over Christmas.

Desk in old office, in sight of the new shed

Desk and chair now in the shed

It was all done in time for the electrician to arrive the next day to give us a quote, as they'd need to see the trench. Job done - but I was a little sore and damaged.

A writer's hand after some real work

Lord Chaos was fascinated by the spoil heap I'd created, which meant a house full of mud. But he also diligently uncovered all sorts of treasures. We cleaned up the bits of broken tile and removed the bits of glass so he could take it all in to school for an accomplished show and tell.

Treasures from the garden

There was then a bit of back and forth with the electrician - he missed the day he was meant to come to quote, then couldn't do the actual work before the end of May. He also recommended a whole new fuse box for the house, rather than just grafting an extra bit on. It made sense, so we gritted our teeth and said yes. It might all be done by June...

At the last minute, he was able to come on the first Bank Holiday Monday, so we were suddenly ahead. I had to dash to the local DIY warehouses to pick up switch sockets and lights ready to be installed. I do not recommend this on a bank holiday weekend. It took almost for ever.

On the Monday, the electrician and his colleague worked quickly through the sunshine. They also signed off the trench I'd dug as being adequate, so - having put down a warning scroll about their being an electricity cable underneath - I could fill in the trench. That was on a very hot day, and probably harder than the original dig. The Dr felt I failed to emulate Poldark.

Not Poldark

After all that toil, I was granted a night out in the pub with some friends. Which was when the Dr discovered our downstairs lights had not been reconnected. The apologetic electrician was back the next day...

With the cables in, the nice bloke came back to fix a few last bits and pieces, and fitted the shelf brackets I'd also purloined from my parents. They had been the shelves in my bedroom in my teens, home to my run of Doctor Who books, most of which I'd long since given away... Putting up the brackets proved fiddly, because the sloping roof created an optical illusion where the middle bracket never looked right. After much swearing and use of a spirit level, we got a shelf up.

The middle bracket is at the same height as the other two

With the brackets fixed, my parents then came to babysit while I was off on a job. They arrived with my old shelves, cut to six feet exactly as I'd asked, and more off-cuts of carpet to fill the remaining gaps.

With shelves done, I began ferrying boxes of stuff over to the shed, in between trying to keep up with the work I'm behind on. Much of it was boxes of stuff that I'd hardly been able to get into in the seven years we've lived in this house. There was a happy afternoon just putting 25 years of Doctor Who Magazine in order, which will speed up a lot of the stuff I'm currently writing...

On Friday, we visited the British Heart Foundation shop in central Croydon looking for some kind of armchair or sofa that would a) fit the limited space and b) suit comfortable reading. We found the perfect thing and - miracle of miracles! - they delivered it that same afternoon. Lady Vader and her Dolly approved.

New old sofa meets Lady Vader's approval

With Lord Chaos off school with chicken pox, we've had a couple of days this week to concentrate on the shed - because he objected to me ignoring him by working on my laptop. Yesterday, we went to collect the box shelves Homebase were meant to have delivered 10 days ago. They apologised for not having a driver available in all that time and generously refunded the £3.95 for delivery.

Lord Chaos enjoyed using the gentle IKEA drill to put in the screws, and fixing the little white round things that hide the screwheads on top. He then contentedly watched me fill the shelves with all my rubbish. Last night, the Dr was delighted to see there was space for my Doctor Who DVDs, too - finally exorcising her house.

There are still bits and bobs left to do: things to unpack, a fan heater to buy, so much of it to reorganise. But it's a snug and cosy space to work in, and I'm now ripping through the stuff that for so long I have been late on. It has been well worth all the effort.

Shaggy

This morning, the Dr and I took our poorly, frail cat Shaggy to the vet one last time, where he was quietly put to sleep. It was quick. It has all been horribly, mercifully quick.

For months now, he’s been losing weight and confidence, no longer daring to go outside in the cold and wet, let alone to brave the domains of Other Cats that he once kept in line. Then, in the last few weeks, he’s taken a sudden turn for the worse and been miserable, too. This morning, there was no fight to get him into his carrier, no resistance at all.

Thirteen and a half years ago, Shaggy was my wedding present to the Dr. Growing up, she’d not had any pets but could never pass a cat in the street without stopping to say hello (she still can’t). The day after we got back from honeymoon, on 14 July 2004, we headed to what’s now Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.

The Dr was jumpy with excitement, so my role was to be the cool, collected one. I reminded her on our way in that we’d been warned not to expect to take a cat home that first day. No, this was just the start of the process. We were interviewed about our past experience with pets (I grew up with cats, dogs and chickens), about the kind of home we could provide and whether there were dangers such as nearby busy roads. They concluded we needed a nice “entry-level” pet. There was a colour-coded system: we were told to look for green cats.

Then we were led upstairs to where the cats were waiting. They were all in individual hutches, inset into the wall floor to ceiling, each with a card giving details of their temperament and background. Older, crosser cats had red stickers. One particularly furious red beast glared at us from its cell. The yellow cats did a better job of imploring us to love them. The green cats hardly seemed to notice us at all.

As instructed, we looked at the green cats. They were… cats. All very nice but nothing exactly suggestive of how we were meant to choose.

Then they let some green cats out, one at a time, so we could get a better idea. One dark-haired cat with both green and yellow stickers was set down on the floor and wandered nonchalantly off, barely glancing our way. The Dr had his card and asked why he’d been called “Shaggy”. The person showing us round grinned and clapped her hands. It made us jump – and Shaggy, too. His thick, long hair all stood up on end, an endearing scruffy mess.

Sensing our interest in this ridiculous creature, it was suggested we pick him up. The Dr was nervous, so I went first. Shaggy immediately collapsed into my arms, snuggling up like a baby. That did it for my cool composure.

Now it seemed that we might get to take this purring fur-bag home with us that same day. That was, if we could sign all the paperwork and buy up all the equipment we needed before Battersea closed for the evening. There was a bit of a scramble and some crossed wires, but finally we were in our cab home – cradling our new cat.

Back home, we did as instructed and shut ourselves in one room before letting Shaggy out of his carrier. The idea was not to scare him with too much at once: he could get used to one room at a time. (Years later, our surviving cat, Stevens, was so terrified on her first evening with us that she spent the night clinging to the top of a door, and only came down to pee all over the floor.)

Shaggy was never shy. He immediately took charge of the room – our bedroom – and was then scratching at the door. Within an hour or so he’d taken charge of our flat. And that night, we were woken by his happy howls on discovering the mouse problem we’d inherited from our previous tenants. Shaggy, for all he was a beautiful, soft fluffball, was a very practical mouser.

He was always a character. When one friend came round to meet him, Shaggy playfully climbed on to a potted plant in the front room and – brazenly staring all of us out – proceeded to crap in it. He was fascinated by frogs, scooping them up from the old pond at the end of the garden and bringing them into show us them leaping around. When the Dr was bedridden with sickness, he helpfully dropped a frog on her head.

In short, we’d hoped for a good entry-level cat and Shaggy was magnificent. Affectionate, cheeky and rarely ill until these last few weeks, he’s given us a very easy ride. He’s been quick to warm to friends and neighbours (I discovered he’d been getting second breakfasts across the road each morning). More than that, he’s seen us – the Dr especially – through plenty of tough times over the years, always knowing when to pad softly over for a cuddle and that deep bass purr.

He had such a close bond with the Dr that we worried how he might respond to children, and so got a second cat in part to prepare him. But Shaggy was just as affectionate with the interloper cats and then with the children, snuggling up to them and suffering their clumsy but well-meant attention. One friend used to guarantee good behaviour from his daughter with the promise of visiting Shaggy.

For our own Lord of Chaos, Shaggy has always been part of the family, and they had one last cuddle this morning before school. His name is one of Lady Vader’s few but well-practised words. It’s hard to tell how much they take in what’s been happening or how it will affect them. I suspect the main issue they’ll have to deal with is their tender parents.

We knew Shaggy was getting on in years. He was a kittenish 15 months-old when we acquired him so would have been coming up to 15 years now, somewhere between 75 and 90 depending how you calculate cat years. That’s not a bad age, and it’s not been a bad life – doted on by the Dr and spoilt rotten when I wasn’t looking. You could tell when he wasn’t happy, and that’s been mostly rare: when we didn’t share prawns or tuna; when we were ever packing a bag he couldn’t climb into; in his long war of passive aggression against my mother-in-law; in these last few weeks.

This morning the Dr and I went with him to the vet, and soon it was all over. We buried him with his favourite pink mouse toy in the garden, in the corner he’d always made his own because it caught the sun.

Dr on Today yesterday

Yesterday, the Dr was up early to get to BBC Broadcasting House, where she was a guest on Today and talked to John Humphrys about Different Perspectives: Archaeology and the Middle East in WWI - a Heritage Lottery Fund project looking into the lives and stories of great archaeologists who became spies during the war.

The Dr was there representing the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, and was interviewed alongside Dr Roderick Bailey, a historian specialising in unconventional warfare in the world wars.

You can hear the segment 2:41:15 into the Today programme of 14 November 2016.

Front Row on HG Wells

On Monday, I was a guest on Radio 4's Front Row, where learned academic Fern Riddell and I discussed the legacy of HG Wells, who was born 150 years ago on 21 September.

• Listen again to Front Row from 29 August 2016
• 2015 documentary I produced for Radio 3, HG and the H-Bomb 
• Trailer for 2011 Doctor Who DVD documentary I produced, Alls Wells That Ends Wells

In the studio, we also got to meet Debbie Horsfield, writer and producer of Poldark, which is back on tonight as a special birthday treat for the Dr.

Sorry for the lack of updates. We're just back from a nice family holiday on the Isle of Wight, and I'm about to be lost in a blizzard of deadlines.

"Grief is never healed"

"Memento mori: grief, remembering, and living" is a piece by the Dr in the latest issue of the Lancet Psychiatry - March 2016, vol. 3 no. 3, pp. 210-212 (you can read it for free but need to register with an email address).

It's about the Victorians taking photographs of their dead children, and why, and how today we shy away from grief. It is informed by the death of our daughter.