Or 26 in my case

“By this time I was pretty well convinced he was going straight with me. It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I made a practice of judging the man rather than the story.”

John Buchan, The 39 Steps, p. 21.

Richard Hannay is an ex-pat who’s tired of London, meeting the old bloke from the flat upstairs. The old bloke, Scudder, seems like any other paranoid drunk with dreadful conspiracies to spin about how Jewish anarchist group the ‘Black Stone’ are plotting to drag us all into war. Yet Hannay believes him. Soon it looks like the conspirators are to force Europe into massive war (the book was published in 1915).

This pulp thriller (or “shocker” as Buchan himself called the form) is concisely told in blunt, stark prose and is all over in 126 pages. This makes it feel more quick-witted and modern than its contemporaries (at least, I’m thinking of thrillers and intrigues I’ve read by Wells and Joseph Conrad where the whole world still seems answerable to the wrath of the Empress Victoria).

The gratuitous anti-Semitism is probably the most shocking thing about the book, though I did note that for all we’re told it’s a global plot, we only ever see four of the villains.

(Part of me wonders if that’s all there is of the Black Stone, and they’ve just faked a bigger crowd. Like Macaulay Culkin’s party of cardboard cut-outs in Home Alone, or the cheeky practice of sales reps for magazines to say things like, “Well it sells 20,000 each month, but every copy’s read by at least two or three people…”)

Of course, we later discover that Hannay’s not entirely been told the truth, but there is much throughout the book about being able to judge a man – Hannay believes and is believed on the look of a fellow alone.

It's lucky Hannay knows who he can trust, because none of the secret service can. Even when Hannay presents all the evidence, Sir Walter is still incredulous:

“‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ he said at last. ‘He is right about one thing – what is going to happen the day after to-morrow. How the devil can it have got known? That is ugly enough in itself. But all this about war and the Black Stone – it reads like some wild melodrama. If only I had more confidence in Scudder’s judgement. The trouble about him was that he was too romantic. He had the artistic temperament, and wanted a story to be better than God meant it to be. He had a lot of odd biases, too. Jews, for example, made him see red. Jews and the high finance.’”

Ibid., p.94.

By the end of the page, Sir Walter has been convinced that everything about the plot is true. Which all panders to egoist fantasy, in which the hero knows better than everyone else and is the only one can foil the baddies. Having been a surly layabout with no love for the mother country, Hannay has the rulers of the Empire reliant on his every move.

Hannay solves the riddles on his own where even the heads of the Secret Service cannot, based on what he admits himself are some lucky guesses and the courage (or pig-headedness) to stick to them. It seems only he can stop the coming war…

Actually, the idea of foiling some foreign plot on the eve of the inevitable war reminds me a lot of Sherlock Holmes’s Final Bow. Only Hannay’s not sporting the comedy beard.

It also relies on an awful lot of coincidence – meeting an old acquaintance in the middle of the countryside while out on the run, or and then bumping into him again at the worst possible moment.

And yet, its decades ahead of its time, more like the thrillers from after the Second World War than from just prior to the first. It’s paranoia about the sinister plottings of “anarchists” is not unlike current worries about terrorists. Though I’m amused that anarchists can be so organised, and have such a clear, military chain of command.

It’s certainly a great influence on later spy stories. The doppelganger plot appears again in Thunderball. Hannay’s pusuit by a plane over the Scottish hilltops seems to have inspired Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, which in turn inspired a sequence toward the end of the (film version of) From Russia With Love where Bond is chased over by a helicopter over the Yugoslav hilltops. Which shows how these things come round – the sequence was in fact filmed in Scotland.

Like Fleming, there’s also the bollocksy “tricks of the trade” – the plot depending on icky generalisations about racial and national types (such as Germans who cannot change their plans). Likewise, Hannay’s various disguises rely not so much on his skill with make-up as just his believing in the “atmosphere” of the part. It’s interesting to see these cheats and clichés so early in the spy genre.

Like Bond, Hannay is a snob:

“What fellows like me don’t understand is the great comfortable, satisfied middle-class world, the folk that live in villas and suburbs. He doesn’t know how they look at things, he doesn’t understand their conventions, and he is as shy of them as of a black mamba. When a trim parlour-maid opened the door, I could hardly find my voice.”

Ibid., p.119.

And, like Bond spotting a villain because he selects the wrong wine, this snobbery is a way of driving the plot forward and making the hero distinct from the hoi-polloi readers.

What is very different from these descendants is the absence of ladies and sex, which leaves it all rather cold and charmless. The story would be infinitely richer led by a wise-cracking Cary Grant or Sean Connery.

And then suddenly it’s all over – Hannay bluffs some men playing cards and they run off into the night. If this can be considered a victory then it’s a Pyrrhic one; the war comes anyway, and Hannay signs up to the army feeling (again, as if it’s a good thing) that he’s already done his best service.

More Dick than is good for you

Have (I hope) finished my toil on something that's taken longer than expected. The chap I've been working with has been very accommodating and I'm just tightening up his good work. But it needed thinking about from various angles and I was almost done when I realised how I'd written us into a corner. Now it is done. Phew.

So I can throw myself at the 12,000 words due in by the end of the month, some of which requires my being knowledgeable about a bloke called Phil from Istanbul. To help, I am currently reading Michael Grant's "From Alexander to Cleopatra - the Hellenistic World". This is because I have a clever wife.

I also have clever friends. Having watched Matthew Sweet present highlights from Edinburgh last night (and steal the word "TARDIS" into it, too), this morning I discover Phil has written for the Guardian a piece about Philip K Dick.

It's a good summary of the crazy-arsed dude (and I am terrible envious), though I think it misses something important. Dick was hugely prolific, but only a small percentage of his many publications are actually any sort of cop.

This was something of a bummer to discover, having keenly absorbed his work in my teens. Back then, a wise friend advised which to read - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Dr Bloodmoney, We Can Build You, Valis, Ubik, The Man In The High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Mary and the Giant and A Scanner Darkly (though YMMV and shit). Everything since then has been a bit of a disappointment.

I suspect this is less to do with me just getting older and more discriminating, and may be down to Dick's editors. Writing under the influence and all through the night until he'd met his wordcount, Dick would sometimes forget the names of his protagonists or things he'd already done to them.

It happens in stories (and I've had to compensate before for characters who've returned from the dead, or have swapped genders in a couple of paragraphs). And his free-wheeling brilliance is at its best when approaching some semblance of structure.

But this is just a guess based on my own sorry prejudice. It may also be that Dick's mania was like pretty much everything else in life - occassional greatness from the morass of the okay.

Mary and the Giant is not sci-fi, and is about a girl in a record shop falling for the wrong guy. It really struck a chord with the me aged 17 and I can't really recall why. I think it was just a nice story, about being misunderstood and unsure in love, and generally well meaning but fuck-knuckled. The only other thing I remember is that the giant used cheap, wooden picks on his record player.

(Other) Phil's article has made me: hotly envious; want to see the film, and; look up Mary on Abebooks.

Part-time punks

Lots on just at the mo as I race to get things finished. But regular readers may wish to tune in to BBC Radio 4 on Monday (14 August) at 3.45 pm.

"To celebrate 150 years of the National Portrait Gallery, well-known people select a portrait from the gallery to comment on.

Malcom McLaren on Andy Warhol's silkscreen images of Queen Elizabeth II

McLaren knew Warhol and tells us why he thinks Andy's portraits have lost their power and become fashion."

Discussing the portrait with Malc will be one Dr Debbie Challis. Cor.

Law of the jungle

On the train home on Sunday I read the first three chapters of the Jungle Book, which took me greatly by surprise.

Not least because it’s only those first three chapters which are about the wolf-boy Mowgli. The remainder of the book seems to be made up of other stories based on or pinched from Indian legends and experience.

I can’t help wondering how much is what he got told and how much is his own experience of India. As my dad pointed out, Kipling spent a relatively short period in the country he’s remembered as such as expert on. He was born there, yes, but returned to England aged six. Later he did a seven-year tour of duty as a journalist (where he obviously met Sirs Michael Caine and Sean Connery), and it’s this period – the same length as a doctor’s training – that provided the material for the rest of his career as a writer.

It’s no surprise that the book is darker, nastier and more animalistic than the bowdlerised Disney cartoon. Mowgli’s schooling by Baloo here is a neat twist on the savage law of the jungle. The jungle is full of danger and violence yet its wiser inhabitants abide by an etiquette.

The law is an ideal, not an absolute, a way of negotiating the harsh realities. It only exists where it is backed up by (the threat of) violence. So that the real law of the jungle – where power rests with the one who can kill his adversaries – is always glimpsed underneath.

There are those who flout the law – the tiger Shere Khan and his allies because they are building their own empires, the monkeys because they’re too reckless. And this lawlessness makes things unpredictable and dangerous, and threatens to overturn everyone.

These are complex relationships, and any plan of action requires involved negotiation. Any alliance is made warily.

Mowgli spends his time cut and bruised all over, taking tumbles that we’re told would kill any other child. It reminded me a great deal of Tarzan (written 12 years later) – at least, it reminded me of the film Greystoke, because I’ve not read the book.

Chapter 1 starts with Mowgli being found by a family of wolves, who bring him up as their own just to spite the miserly tiger. Having had him accepted by the rest of the pack (and sponsored by a bear and a panther), and just got the story started, we then just skip to the end.

“Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only guess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli led among the wolves, because if it were written out it would fill ever so many books.”

Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, p. 22.

Kipling’s not really got the hang of the freelance thing yet if he’s pointing out to his readers that there’s probably more in this. (Says someone who’s only just pitched a rejected novel synopsis to someone else as a short story.)

Anyway, Shere Khan and his allies challenge the wolf leadership and win, but Mowgli stops them from killing Akela by threatening them all with fire. Then, because the use of fire means he has chosen the way of men over the jungle, he goes off to the local village. The end, it seems.

Chapter 2 jumps back a bit, recalling an episode from Mowgli’s schooling. It’s a valuable lesson in obeying his godparents and not playing with the naughty kids from down the street. Ignoring the warnings about what monkeys are like, Mowgli soon finds himself being carried off into the trees. The monkeys are dangerous not because they’re evil but because they are reckless and silly. They cannot hold an idea in their heads for more than five minutes.

In this anthropomorphic society, I wondered who the monkeys were based on – Unruly children? Those who do not attend to their school books? As the monkeys sit about the ruins of once-great buildings, unable to appreciate the grandeur around them let alone being able to reclaim it, I wondered if there wasn’t something more distastefully imperial going on, and these wild, silly creatures were some version of Kipling’s own dealings with native Indians.

More surprising is how Mowgli escapes his predicament – there’s no merry king of the swingers here. Instead, Baloo and Bagheera make an unlikely alliance with the cunning python, Kaa.

Together, these three amigos fight off the monkeys in a battle that’s hard-won and nasty. It nearly all goes pear shaped, with monkey reinforcements on their way and Bagheera hiding in a pond. But then Kaa hypnotises all the monkeys (and nearly Mowgli and Bagheera too), and we’re left with the deeply unsettling suggestion that the entranced monkeys all file up to be eaten. It’s terrifying and surreal and vicious.

Then Mowgli needs beating for his disobedience, because “sorrow never stays punishment”. He’s left bloody and bruised all over, but takes it like a man. The end.

And it’s this weird and brutal chapter that the Disney version is based on, of course.

Chapter 3 picks up after the end of Chapter 1 with Mowgli returning to the village from which he was snatched as a baby, and to his natural mother, a rich woman called Messua. We are told his real name – Nathoo.

Mowgli (because the village take him to be a replacement for Nathoo, not necessarily Nathoo himself) learns to speak the language and to look after their cows, but he finds the men’s sleeping habits and tales of jungle beasts ridiculous and he can’t fathom the caste system or money. He doesn’t really fit in.

What’s more, the belligerent Shere Khan is stalking him. So, with the help of his old wolf chums, Mowgli stages an ambush and kills the tiger in a stampede which seems to have inspired a scene in the Lion King.

Yet the killing of Mufasa is a cowardly act, and Mowgli’s tactics hardly feel noble. He further dismays a man warrior by refusing to surrender his kill, which warrants a big reward. (The people of the village are variously superstitious, stupid and greedy.)

As a result, Mowgli is cast out of the village for being a sorcerer (and able to command the wolves). By the time we leave him, he’s settled his old scores and lived by Baloo’s law, but is an outcast from both man and beast. Perhaps this is again Kipling’s own experience of those neither wholly English not wholly Indian, so cut off from both societies.

And then it ends:

“But he was not always alone, because years afterward he became a man and married.

But that is a story for grown-ups.”

Ibid., p. 121.

And I realised I’d forgotten it was all meant for kids.

(The Second Jungle Book apparently continues the story, with chapters about a much older Mowgli returning to rescue his real mum.)

Nature versus nature

“The plot meanders almost incomprehensibly through an all-too-familiar futureworld.”

So says the Guardian’s Guide of Code 46, which held me mesmerised last night on BBC2. Until seeing it in the listings on Saturday, Michael Winterbottom’s oedipal sci-fi had entirely passed me by, which I blame on the shortcomings of my usually impeccable medley of recommenders. (Though I note my boss Joe was similarly wowed by it two years ago.)

Spoilers follow.

Tim Robbins is investigating fraud in a genetics factory and falls for Samantha Morton when she talks back to him. Nothing unexpected there. They meet up on the Tube after work and go clubbing, and then end up back in her bed. Nothing unexpected there, either. But fortune is out to make fools of these star-cross’d lovers, and the future’s pernicious technological brilliance is all out to scupper their affair…

Despite what the sneery preview said, the futureworld is effective because it’s so familiar – a dystopia waiting just a couple of years from us now. We can recognise some of the buildings, the concrete and toughened glass of Canary Wharf architecture pinched right out of decades’ old SF comic books. The cities are packed full of people (the Tube only empty in dreams), and there are no trees or green spaces left anywhere but the desert.

(Yes, I know. I think it's meant to be ironic.)

The global village of pristine urban spaces may be the place to be in this deprived and environmentally scarred future, but the cities consist of small, cramped areas for living and just as imposing and totalitarian wide-open work areas. This is a place of invasion, where a virus can steal the subtext of someone’s life out of their innocent gabble, where memories are deleted as sickness and the state uses mind control to make criminals self-harm.

In all, it’s a deft bit of sci-fi that pays dividends if you only pay attention. Everyone speaks English but peppered with bits of other languages – a mish-mash of French and Spanish and Hebrew and what-have-you that’s in many ways more effective and more credible than the incomprehensible future slang of Bladerunner. The future is also more readily multicultural, though I did mutter, “But the two leads are both white!” before realising why they’d have to be the same race.

The social structures are also nicely delineated – not just between those inside and outside the cities, but between Robbins at the top of the heap with his clinically immaculate apartment and office, and Morton on the bottom rung and commuting through the rubbish and squalor.

I loved that Robbins asking his suspects to tell him anything about themselves is not explained until late in the movie. And the kooky nova of viruses that can make you sing well or speak Mandarin (so that you’re the only one not able to understand what you’re saying) turns out to be a crucial plot point.

The wheeze behind it all is that there’s a lot of IVF going on in the future, and that cloning ups the chances of (inadvertent) incest. Morton turns out to be a 100% clone of Robbins’ own mother – though, as one expert explains, her environment and circumstances have brought her up as someone very different. But to keep the human stock healthy the two must not be lovers…

This plot loses something explained out of context (as I found trying to catch up the Dr, who wandered in some way through). I also think the mystery would have been better if the titles had not defined “Code 46 violations” right from the off. I suppose there’s an argument to be made that this adds to the tragic inevitability of all that follows, but it just felt like fumbling the big twist.

But as it’s played out, the film is strange and unsettling, arousing weird empathies in a sex scene where Morton’s body is both compliant and resisting. A lot of the film's effectiveness is down to the two leads, but it’s also busy with images that live on long in the mind – such as camels racing along beside their escape in the desert, signs of life in an otherwise unnatural world.

I can see that it’s not for everyone – sci-fi about relationships bothers those who prefer big guns and explosions as well as those who sneer at anything that dares to admit openly being set in the future. (In Dr Who terms, that means alienating those who can’t see what Jacqui and Mickey added to the show as well as those who didn’t like it whenever the TARDIS left the Powell Estate.)

It may well have done better critically if Winterbottom had played to these silly prejudices and denied it was any kind of SF (and so many authors like to do). Which is a back-handed compliment, because when you start being embarrassed that a film’s thought of as sci-fi you know you’ve got something rather good.

Lost

A post entitled "Tastes a bit of pine needles" has gone missing from this blog and I think Picasa must be responsible. It mentioned the brother being on the front page of both the BBC News site and the Sunday Times, as well as letting you know that the Dr has a blog. The title was from something I've been writing.

Bah. You'll have to go without.

End of the road

The littlest brother is reaching the last few metres of his mammoth trek across Oz and finds himself on page 3 of today’s Telegraph. The reactionary sell-out.

Have dutifully bought him a copy while out handing matters of import to the Post Office.

Tom’s been out there since February, which means his mega-epic has lasted about as long as Judge Dredd’s, though without the flying surfboards or evil clones of himself camped inside Uluru. I hope.

Word is he’ll be back in the next few weeks. Which is good as we need someone to babysit the cat.

Today, not being wanted for my cut-and-paste genius, I have written a letter for another brother, posted some things, chased some others, rewritten the beginning of something (or rather, begun to rewrite something) and eaten some Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

Off now to a leaving do for someone who isn't entirely leaving. The liberty. But curry is included so hooray.

Catch it

A relation of mine - he shall remain nameless here - is spoken of in family legend for his ability to eat rice pudding when small. He would eat it with his hands to begin with, then tip the bowl over his head. In the disrobing and washing that followed, he had managed to get rice pudding even inside his shoes.

Cats, of course, are meant to be less entirely disgusting than this. They are meant to have a certain grace and poise and elegance. They are, afterall, not dogs.

But not my cat. My cat is special.

Last night, while the Dr, M., Nimbos and I finished our decadent puddings, the shaggy cat wolfed down his own meal in a mouthful and then felt the need to make toilet. He clambered into his poo-box, turned himself awkwardly round 180 degrees and stuck his head brazenly back out into the daylight. He likes to oggle you squarely in the eye while he goes about making his bears.

Now he can be a pungent little blighter at the best of times but last night's effort has to be a personal best. The sort of sly fug you first notice when your nostril hairs catch ablaze.

The cat bolted from his box to escape what he had made and it was then the ladies squealed. Quite a lot of product was still attached to the little sod's back legs.

A chase worthy of the Best of Benny Hill ensued, women chasing cat up and down the stairs, him dropping moist morsels in his wake. I, heroically, stood my ground and let him come fleeing right to me.

Ensnaring him we discovered he'd even managed to get a splodge of his own poo-juice right on the top of his back. I held on to the twisty, turny animal thinking, "But cats just don't bend that way..."

My Herculean labour was to hold him pinioned while the ladies administered wet wipes and - because it was already setting in - the scissors. The hairy gent sulked superbly and scritched an artwork into my forearms resembling a later Jackson Pollock.

He then spent the rest of the evening wauing about the surprising lack of food on offer in his bowl.

I am reminded of the wisdom of my Best Man just a few weeks ago. "Your cat," he explained, "is weird."

Unstructured and class

Work ploughs ever onward and today I lunched with the Chief and the new recruit, and got all kinds of things done and agreed. I may still be running about like a headless ostrich but its getting to be in more of one direction.

Went to see Market Boy at the National last night, which ticked lots of the Dr's boxes. It's about shoes and rude naughties and Thatcher and 80s music - plus there were slow-mo fight scenes and people from Dr Who to keep me happy.

The Chief had also seen it, but said he'd left at the end of part one. "Wasn't really a musical, was it?" he said.

The politics were also a bit easy - a parody of Mrs T and her policies but one that never really seemed to say anything but "Witch!". More than 1.5 decades after she left her job, Margaret seems a bit of an easy target for that. How much better to critique the new Labour new broom brushing on at the end, who carelessly bins the market's vocabulary along with all its rich history.

Still, a fun night out.

Some reviews of my own hard-made things: Joe Ford enthuses about the Settling though he calls it "unstructured", by which I think he must mean "very carefully structured". Bah. You do not appreciate my genius.

Richard McGinlay likes The School, which demonstrates "considerable class" and wins 8 out of 10 - which I think qualifies as an A or A-. Today I am the swotty kid and expect to get bullied at play time.

That said, McGinlay looooooves Crystal of Cantus. It'd be nice to say that any good stuff is down to the script editor, but the bits he cites are all Joe. Phooey. Won't be employing him again...

Bounder of adventure

“'And what does that make you! The feted artist, the dashing dandy. But by night - philanderer, sodomite and assassin!'

As a thumbnail sketch of me that wasn't half bad.

[Spoiler] aimed the revolver at my face and cocked it. 'And so... farewell...'”

Mark Gatiss, The Vesuvius Club, p. 238.

Knocked through this leisuredly in the last couple of days. Lucifer Box is a caddish, Edwardian portraitist and secret agent with rather beautiful hands. Having deftly seen off an anarchist for his country, he’s set investigating the death of a colleague who may have stumbled on something sinister in the proximity of Naples...

As you'd expect from one of the The League of Gentlemen this is a frothy adventure full of monstrous invention. Characters have names like Tom Bowler (ha ha!), Bella Pok (ho ho!) and Cretaceous Unmann, and there's some horrifying punnery - at the prospect of sharing a bike ride, Lucifer admits he’s never been a “fan de cycle”.

It's witty, yes, but rather than a comic novel it's a ghoulish genre piece with a wry narrator. Box is a callous rogue who'll neatly undercut the tension with a well-placed, savage bon-mot.

As a genre novel, it's very generic - reminding me variously of: Austin Powers; Devlin Waugh; the Avengers; Flashman; Jason King; that Steve Coogan Hammer-horror spoof; Wodehouse's Psmith; and even the Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town. Oh, and lashings and lashing of Bond. The villain of course has a secret base inside a volcano.

This is not necessarily a criticism – it’s a comfy read, cosy because its stylings are so familiar. Yet it's still full of surprises.

Like the recent Rupert-Everett-as-Holmes (with Sherlie discussing Freud with Watson's emancipated bit of skirt), being this side of the Empress Victoria means it all feels so zestfully modern.

(Holmes is suffused with modernity, the canon chock full of the latest gadgets and theories – finger printing, psychology, photography, bicycles, telegraphy and high-speed trains. There's also one about genetic experiments (that results in the concoction of monkey serum, admittedly). Sherlock could not have achieved his prowess in any earlier age.)

References to Wilde and Beardsley (as well as King Edward) place Box's sexual dalliances in context. It's all a lot ruder than I’d expected, though the frequent lubricities are never gone into.

It’s never more explicit than any James Bond, but Box’s candid disclosures about the broad sweep of his sex life are what really sets this apart from its generic stablemates. There's something thrillingly seditious about Bond as a bit of a nancy...

The belle epoch stylings extend to the physical book – Ian Bass’s lovely line drawings owe something to Beardsley without being entirely pastiche. The dust jacket also appears worn and frayed, as if a much beloved second-hand copy. Really nice touch that.

Speaking of the high arts, the July 2006 issue of the glossy British Art Journal (£10.50 from your usual supplier of lavishment) includes the first published material on old Greek stuff as written by the elegant Dr. We shall sup fine wine.

One of us is green

In December, the Harrogate Theatre will be home to Sleeping Beauty, as written by friend and mentor, Nick “Is it ‘cos I is Black Dalek?” Pegg. He tells me the place is,

“a beautiful late Victorian auditorium, its red-and-gold colour scheme replete with chandeliers, gilt plasterwork and velvet upholstery.”

Although the phrase he first used to conjure this image was,

“a Muppet-Show-of-Weng-Chiang.”

Wow.

What a glory those words make in my brain.

They have replaced "festival”, “of” and “food" as the mantra to repeat at myself when stumbling headlong down the valley of the shadow of death. Or being shoved about on the Underground by untall and jostly natives. Or just feeling a bit aggrieved and weary about how much work there is in how much stifling hotitude.

Have borrowed Weng-Chiang on DVD for the edification of the Dr (my Dr) and find myself too often drawn to casting the Muppet version.

Gonzo would, of course, be Magnus Greel. But who would play Onnabol Chang?

I reckon Kermit – in a shocking twist on his usual, nice-guy image. He’s just the chap to get John Bennett’s sympathetic Fu Manchu.

And then: Rowlf as the gravely-voiced Tom Baker Dr Who; Miss Piggy as street-fighting savage Leela; Rizzo as Mr Sin; Scooter as Litefoot and Fozzie Bear as Jago; Sam the American Eagle as the policeman in episode one; Janice from the Electric Mayhem as one of the honest working women of the night; Clifford (yes, Muppets Tonight is canon) as Casey; Snookums as the rat…

But who to get in the key role of Peter Ware’s Uncle?

Insultants

Trying to explain why a consultant I'd worked with had made himself None At All Friends, this analogy popped into my head - and right there when I needed it and not on the train home. Which never happens.

"No," says the consultant, "you gave me twenty quid to go to the bar. Now I need money to buy the drinks."

Habitual coke user

Joined those siblings not in Australia last night to celebrate my dad's significant birthday. Dined well on chicken livers and steak, and am also now the proud possessor of a USB rocket launcher, much to the delight of the cat.

Saying farewell to the family at Waterloo, the BBC News plasma screen played an odd exhoratation for some new kind of Coke. "Zero" is exciting because of what it doesn't have, advertising this virtue with a flashy cartoon that weaves between grown-ups at a pop concert.

"Gigs WITHOUT tall people," it says, as if such segregation were a good thing.

I do like Coke, but of the fatty, sugary, sickly variety best accompanied with aspirin after a night on the tiles. Coke was afterall invented in an age when people quaffed opiates openly and required hangover cures with bite. It's a marvellous, miraculous pick-me-up.

Am not offended by Zero targetting tall folks so much as disallowed from joining in with the fun. I boast (yet again) the wrong dimensions; it's more for the shorter breed of groupie.

And for the larger, shorter ones at that. Am not entirely sure what Zero has zero of - sugar, calories, Alzheimer's-inducing chemicalia - but it's odd to see something promoted for not even touching the sides.

Sieg heil, Jeeves!

"131. We all act through life, and each of us selects the special audience he wishes to impress. When this audience is not looking at us we are never really happy, however many other people are applauding."

PGW Notebooks, Wodehouse Archive, cited in Robert McCrum, "Wodehouse - A life", Penguin Books (2004), p. 80.

What with work spewing from my ears, it's taken me a month to get through this and reassess what I thought I already knew about Wodehouse. The chums kind enough to comment on that previous post both quickly leapt to Plum's defence – that no, he was never a Nazi.

Yet that's not quite what my concerns were getting at.

McCrum's book is largely taken up with the consequences of five broadcasts Wodehouse made in the summer of 1941 on German radio, which have variously been described as naive, criminally treasonous, revolutionary and anti-British, or even just plain dim.

The reason for the emphasis on this one particular episode may just be that Wodehouse is not otherwise the most exciting subject. Literary biography tends to explain how an author’s best works can all be put down to plagiarism – copied down from real people, real incidents and the works of other authors.

Wodehouse, though, made his name by secluding himself in a fantasy world entirely divorced from the real. Blandings Castle could be based on any number of places he actually went to (McCrum names several), and he hits the big-time as a writer only when he stops basing it all on his schooldays and job in a bank. (Still, McCrum is keen to point out the plethora of aunts in his youth.)

He also defiantly refused to change with the times, to update his characters or worldview beyond an occasional wry reference to things he’d aglanced in the news.

As a result the biography struggles to make sense of the Wodehousian creative process. When he wasn't writing fiction he was talking about it. The biography is littered with snippets of fret about plotting, character and cash. The long hours of grind at a typewriter struck a chord with this particular hack, but I can see it might not ignite joy in fans of Wodehouse's giddily witty prose.

We are told time and again how the writing came first, like an obsessive affliction. He worked at an astounding rate right from the get-go – the only way he could be so prolific.

While his wife, Ethel, threw indulgent parties, Wodehouse would be squirreled away in his study at the type-writer secluded in his fantasy world as much as his characters are.

As the Dr knows only too well, juggling writing commitments (and the insatiable need to write) with real life can be difficult. But a selfless devotion to the craft (I've never felt comfortable with scribbling stories as "art") can be selfish. There's something ungallant about his correspondence as a POW, enquiring after possible book deals and articles but never as to the welfare of Ethel. This lack of concern led his adopted daughter Leonora, struggling to keep track on the far side of the fighting, to assume that her parents were still in touch.

But this selfishness does not make him a collaborator. McCrum’s real strength is to track the myriad accounts and reactions to Wodehouse with the available, provable facts.

Wodehouse did not buy his early release (some months before, aged 60, he'd have been let out anyway) in exchange for speaking propaganda. He was already out by then. He was not a stooge of the SS, who only took advantage after he’d made the recordings. Nor was he venting anti-British feelings so much as letting his American readers know he was okay.

"The events of June 1941 hardly convict Wodehouse of anything worse than gross stupidity."

Ibid, p 304.

Yet this acquittal from charges of treason is really nothing new. George Orwell’s spirited 1945 defence of Wodehouse (which Psychonomy sent me the link to, though it was having read it already that got me thinking on these lines – honest) says something suspiciously similar.

"It is important to realise that the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity."

George Orwell, “In Defence of PG Wodehouse” (1945).

Orwell’s argument is that Wodehouse “had no conception of Nazism and all it meant,” and that we can only understand what happened by appreciating Wodehouse’s mentality.

"One of the most remarkable things about Wodehouse is his lack of development," Orwell goes on. And again, "His moral outlook has remained that of a public-school boy."

But this doesn’t get Wodehouse off the hook. Rather, it reminds me of Skimpole, the parasite in Bleak House whose persistent claims to being "like a child" are expected to excuse his behaviour - selling introductions to crooked lawyers or deserting his wife and children. Note that his childish ignorance of all adult affairs never stops him getting what he wants or walk away from anything he doesn't.

I guess I'm bothered with the argument that Wodehouse didn't know any better because really he should have done.

Orwell argues this was not unusual either. In not damning the Nazis unequivocally, Wodehouse – always living in the past anyway – had missed out on a relatively new idea. Over to Georgie:

"In left-wing circles, indeed in ‘enlightened’ circles of any kind, to broadcast on the Nazi radio, to have any truck with the Nazis whatever, would have seemed just as shocking an action before the war as during it. But that is a habit of mind that had been developed during nearly a decade of ideological struggle against Fascism.

The bulk of the British people, one ought to remember, remained anæsthetic to that struggle until late into 1940. Abyssinia, Spain, China, Austria, Czechoslovakia -– the long series of crimes and aggressions had simply slid past their consciousness or were dimly noted as quarrels occurring among foreigners and ‘not our business’. One can gauge the general ignorance from the fact that the ordinary Englishman thought of ‘Fascism’ as an exclusively Italian thing and was bewildered when the same word was applied to Germany.

And there is nothing in Wodehouse's writings to suggest that he was better informed, or more interested in politics, than the general run of his readers."

Ibid.

So perhaps the vehemence directed against Wodehouse came from those who were similarly, childishly innocent until recently. There's an old adage about new converts being the most evangelical, so perhaps they saw in Wodehouse's stupid broadcasts a chance to purge their own failings. Of the witchhunts going on as he wrote at the end of the war, Orwell conceded, "at best it is largely the punishment of the guilty by the guilty."

I think that’s maybe too easy. The perceived “betrayal” came at a time when the stakes were genuinely life and death while the merry, country-house-and-butlered world Wodehouse made his fortune describing was in tatters. Orwell himself calls it a “ghost”. The care-free wit he’d made famous were of no solace to those caught up in the war, especially if their author seemed so at ease with the enemy. At best his cheery indifference to the war, comfortably off in a Nazi hotel, is horribly tactless.

That’s not to say that arty people should not express their political views – but a celebrity backing a political party often leaves you feeling they’ve got something to sell rather than something to say. And that can taint the rest of their work.

This is not to say Wodehouse was a collaborator, but to acknowledge the buttons he pressed.

Where I disagree with Orwell (and where I thought he'd have been harsher) is the lack of responsibility on Wodehouse's part. Orwell seems, for all he acknowledges Wodehouse's own tacit acceptance of class and finacial hierarchy, to share the idea that a bit of money can somehow cocoon you from the world - and worse, that this means we should treat Wodehouse more leniently.

No, you don't have to do the washing up when you can afford a maid, but that doesn't mean you can skive off all social responsibilities. You don't get to live in a bubble. A failure to engage with others is anti-social.

How much is the "stiff upper lip", which McCrum speaks of so often, a virtue, and how much a failure to engage with others?

(The phrase comes from cowardice anyway - sailors pretending to be dead to escape the harsh life of the navy. before being thrown out to sea, their "dead" bodies were sewn up in their hammocks, a stitch put through the lip to check they weren't faking.)

Emotions are a very modern preoccupation in many ways (though we tend to be sniffy of other era's sentimentalities). Wodehouse's writing, for all its comic mastery, remains somewhat detatched and cold. Bertie keeps his friends and relations at arms length. He's never in love, finds the idea of marriage appalling, and gets by just being generally affable but never committing to anything.

Wodehouse was not funny in person, and apparently did not laugh at his own jokes when writing. He cuts a lonely figure, obsessed by his work and himself, though McCrum never really explores this in depth. That may be because there aren't any - and Wodehouse himself was as much surface as his work.

His books skate around on the surface of proper behaviour. There's mention of socialists, women's rights and political groups like the black shorts, but the humour is based on not caring about the big things, and reacting with shock to the fripperies.

All actions, ultimately, are political. It was not stupidity. Wodehouse was intelligent, astute and wanted his reader to know that he was all right and there'd be another book in the bookshops soon.

He didn't care about the other stuff - the war, the suffering, the politics. None of that mattered to him, and that's why he made people so angry. That he'd up till then so delighted them is why they felt so betrayed.

Heavy plant crossing

With the Dr back tomorrow from her sojourn north of the border and after a very long day’s toiling myself, I’ve just finished the 1981 BBC Day of the Triffids.

Cor!

I’d have sworn I’d seen it when smaller, but it was all so unfamiliar that this may be wishful thinking. I remember elder siblings speaking of it in hushed, horror-stricken tones, so probably conjured a version inside my head. Yes, I’d seen clips (some at school, when we read it in the second year), but that’s all.

Bill Masen (John Duttine from the hugely good and hugely different To Serve Them All My Days) is in hospital, his eyes bandaged up because he got stung by a triffid. He works on a triffid farm, studying the mobile, venomous plants and the precious oil they were created to produce.

Since he’s all bandaged up, he didn’t get to see the exciting shooting stars like almost everybody else did – and so is one of only a few in the whole of the country not to have lost their sight. London is soon a ruin of blind scavengers, bristling with violence and disease. But even the few able to see are being picked off by the organised triffids…

More than John Wyndham’s wonderfully vivid book, it seems it’s this version that’s the influence on 28 Days Later. Part six’s snapshot montage of the long-empty London – and a litter-strewn, quiet Piccadilly – was especially reminiscent, as is the not-brilliant guff with the soldiers at the end.

There’s also the same clumsy need to make the cosy catastrophe relevant (“It was star wars that did it!” or “It was animal experiments!”) where the end of civilisation is all the more chilling in the book for being so unexplained.

Yet it manages some very nice subtleties. Gary Olsen is not just (as the BBC’s old Cult site has it) “Man with Red Hair” blithely shooting at Masen’s gang in part four. Without it ever being commented on, it’s him again in part six, the officious war-monger running the police-state in Brighton (and maybe the inspiration for Eccleston’s character in 28 Days Later).

There’s also some great model work, with triffids surrounding a country house in panorama, and looking more scary than ridiculous throughout. Kingdom of the Blind is troubled by their “uncomfortable phallic appearance”, which I must admit I missed. They’re orchids not Vervoids, though they do seem to natter by rattling multiple willies against their stems.
Having put the thing on in tribute to the late, great David Maloney, I was not disappointed with the brilliant viciousness. There’s a lot more suggested than seen – Masen and Jo (his posh totty) listen at night to people being killed in the streets, rather than seeing the slaughter. I guess they also saved cash on those night scenes.

It’s a high-budget epic and Ken Hannam’s direction is thrilling, even giving life to the fixed studio sets that so show the production’s age. Breezing through other reviews of the thing, Hannam’s “documentary realism” is often referred to. For all the conventions of TV production at the time – where telly drama looked like they’d film in a theatre – this feels less staged and more like a movie. The shingly beach in the final episode reminded me especially of Get Carter.

There’s plenty of Dr Who people to spot, all practised playing “serious dread”: that bald bloke from the Mutants; Pat Gorman without lines; Sevrin accepting his disabilities and sure that the Norm will help out; Lytton being thuggish and then turning out good; even some mugging from Morris Barry. There’s also one of my friends in episode two.

Christopher Gunning’s score reminded me of Lygeti. The simplicity of the title sequence made me think of Nigel Kneale’s heydey, and the neon-tube typeface of the BBC’s other newly good-looking sci-fi of the time.

The end of the world is all rather abrupt, as is the end of the serial. Part five ends on a cliffhanger that’s left hanging for six years, and part six cuts out just as things are getting exciting, guns are being fired and the triffids are attacking en mass.

So it’s probably fitting I couldn’t think of a conclusion to this blog entry either.

"He smells of the ocean, of seaweed and brine."

Yesterday's mention of sea changes reminds me of something else. I'd not realised until recently that the world being someone's oyster is another one of Shakespeare's coinages.

(I'd be surprised if he didn't have a claim to "how strange the change from major to minor" or "I've got a brand new combine harvester", too. Or "daddy or chips?")

Oysters are pretty, shiny things and I'd always assumed the phrase meant that for whichever opportunistic soul as was the subject, the whole planet seemed like a pretty bauble for the taking. If only you'd bother to try... You know, the heartening sort of thing they tell you in your career advice as a teenager (along with how it's absolutely impossible to make a living as a writer).

But there's more to it than that. The bloke who says it does so because he can't get any money out of his mate.

"Well," he says in Act 2, Scene 2 of the Merry Wives, "then the world's mine oyster. Which I with sword will open."

So people to whom the world is an oyster are less cheery doers with a bit of pluck and get-up, as violent, cut-throat thieves. Just to make the point, the bloke who says it is called Pistol.

I assume that's a nickname. It does make him sound like one of the lesser, hairyer, squawkier-laughing CB-tastic truckers in a Burt Reynolds movie.

Coming back to you now at the turn of the tide

From his hilltop retreat on the far side of the Continent (living what might almost be a monastic existence were he not shacked up with two russet-haired beauties), O. wonders where this week’s bloggings have got to. Keep your tractor on, old boy. I have merely been working.

And no, not the grubby, hands-in-the-soil, satisfying, constructive manual labour you gad about with. I speak of gentlemanly, gallant and not-at-all-gay employment, doing typing and getting the spelling right.

Monday and Tuesday was in the studio, which went exceedingly well despite the heat, some last-minute changes and me managing to piss off someone I was genuinely trying to make life easier for. Words have been exchanged and I think I have expressed the meant sentiments. Things will be different and better now, but golly, I haven’t got it this wrong since my teenage self tried to impress girls.

(I’ve since learned the painful lesson to that one: don’t try to impress the ladies. At best endeavour to be tolerated. Or barely even noticed.)

Anyway. Have also interviewed a lot of people, scheduled some things, written some other stuff, sorted various oddments out for my sister, been to the Dr’s leaving do (for she has of Friday joined the ranks of mercenary freelance hacks) and to a works outing stuffed full of writers, managed a good couple of hundred words’ worth of research and seen off four full days at the cut-and-paste grindstone.

This exciting daytime monotony continues all week, but is much needed and pays well. Today I was able to solve a tricksy bit of pasting with the sly remembrance of tables. My trs and tds were enough to do the business, but getting the sub-heading td colspan (of six, code fans) to match the brand palette was really pretty clever.

No, nobody else was much bothered either. But the only other highlight of four days’ grind was finding the phrase “genuine sea change”. Yeah, well, it seems funnier when you’ve done nothing for hours but CTRL+A, CTRL+V and staring into the white abyss of the screen while it hints at saving changes.

Anyway, what is a sea change? And how can such a thing be ingenuine?

Of course, Michael Quinion has the answer:

“Pundits and commentators who think it has something to do with the ebb and flow of the tide, and use it for a minor or recurrent shift in policy or opinion, are doing a grave injustice to one of the most evocative phrases in the language.”

Michael Quinion, World Wide Words, SEA CHANGE.

But this is not all. The Dr and I toddled along last week to a private view of Gillian Westgate’s paintings at the City Inn round the back of Tate Britain (to be there, it says on the back of my commemorative postcards, until next month). Her East London vistas busy with street furniture (a fancy way of saying lampposts and overhead cabling) reminded me of the detail in the work of Robert Crumb, a faithfulness to the ugly technicalia that crowds our urban lives (and makes his grubby, lusty tales all the grubbier).

The streets themselves are threatened with Olympic regeneration (though “threatened” is probably not the right word at all), so these also document social and architectural history, like that St Etienne movie I caught last October.

I also liked Gillian’s quirky Quink series, pen and ink drawings of cowboys in the same East London setting, playing off the lost Victoriana of both the wild west pioneers and the heydey of Shoreditch’s now decayed buildings. But I’ve always been a fan of illustration, and bored the Dr on the way home with musings about David McKee and the work of Colin MacNeil…

The Dr is in Scotland until Thursday and saw seals playing in the water, a castle, some Whistlers and the work of Rennie Mackintosh. Yet I have the cat canoodling on my lap as I attempt these words, so reckon that I am the winner.

More soon, if this little update hasn’t put you off altogether. And in the meantime, my friend Falldog is just starting out, so go give him some encouragement.

Production code

It was only announced last week that the guv’nor is leaving his job, but I’ve of course known a bit longer than that. Making me the Gary Russell of Benny was part of his exit strategy.

I used to be a project manager and the skills acquired back in my youth have been dusted off, darned-where-needed and clambered into once more. But producing is, I have learnt in the last fortnight, quite a lot more work than I’d expected.

The Big Finish announcement says that “Gary will still be on-hand to ensure an 'orderly transition'”, and that's true. He's already had several panicked calls beginning, “Help! What do I do?!?” He also picked up something calamitous that I’d entirely missed.

Bookings have been dealt with and double-bookings sorted out (and a system agreed so that it won’t happen again). Schedules have swapped round to accommodate a last-minute change (did I mention that Dr Darlington is a hero?). Someone else absolutely essential to all we do is going to be on holiday, but we’ve got the perfect stand-in who’s been fully briefed. An undelivered script has been traced, picked up and hand-delivered (on foot on a baking-hot yesterday), lunches are sorted, trains agreed, monies and contracts all sorted, pronunciations discussed and now I’m off to collect something vital, before collapsing into a heap for the night.

Have also done a wealth of interviewing recently, with a wealth of more to come. And writing. And editing. And an agreed conjoinment of two persons to make one that is better than both (a bit like those Transformers that could team up and become one, bigger robot). And now there’s another 12,000 word commission for the end of August. And a five-day-a-week, ongoing freelancing gig in the midst of it.

So you may not see me here much for a bit…

100 things

M'colleagues have set up a new blog about our very much forthcoming Dr Who anthology, "The Centenarian".

I have a written a long, rambly post that doesn't reveal a great deal. Hope m'colleagues will do the same sometime soon, or else I'll look a right old swot.

Some other anagrams of Edward Grainger:

Dad grew a ringer
Rearward edging
Rwanda egg drier
Green Wing RADAR

The Universal War - part two

Introduction
Part one
 
 
 

The Universal War - part one

Introduction
 
 
 

To be continued in part two. 

The Universal War

This is the cover of "The Universal War", which I wrote (and drew) when I was about ten. Happy birthday, Tom. Part one to follow. 
Part one
Part two

Good news and bad news

Good news first. Having blogged yesterday I popped to the shops for a copy of the Times - and was a bit surprised to find that the brother's jaunt occupies all of page 3. And he gets a credit for his precious photos.

He's on page 9 of today's Metro and all (I'm told - haven't seen a copy and it's not up on the site). Further media interest is due to follow...

As well as a paper, I also bought my first batch of Dr Who stickers, having been a bit late in the game. And I now have my first swapsies. The lucky numbers are: K; L; M; 65; and 184.

Suspect these might not be easy to get rid of as they're the ones free with Radio Times.

Have spent a day running about not buying a chair and trying to sort other things out. Full of adrenaline and sugar as things come together, so am a bit worried that it'll all fall to bits the moment the pressure's off, like the newly regenerated fifth Doctor delegating saving-everyone to K9, though the tin dog had left 10 episodes before...

I. has just texted to say that Syd Barrett has died, which makes me think of working into the evening on some meagre attempt at art, in a disused squash court with a wobbly tape of Relics playing over and over. And fellow (and more talented) artists squabbling about what they could put on instead that would be less weird, less funny and less unsettling.

Went to look at the obituary and what Bowie had to say, and see there's been more people blown up, and we're destined for more unclear power.

Hmm. Freudian typo there. I'll leave it. 

Quite right too

K.'s 39th birthday (you can trust me on this) went smashingly on Saturday, in a lovely little pub by Euston with a DJ and dancing and lots of talking rubbish.

K. had also organised big-screen Doomsday, punters assembled before a projector screen as if it were a new kind of England game. The sound popped and pixellated every now and again, but otherwise we were dumbstruck. Cor, that was a bit bloody good wasn't it? See right for one quarter of the verdict from the Time Team.

Some things do trouble me. Couldn't some Cybermen have held on to something? And anyway, Tracy-Ann Cyberman hadn't jumped between dimensions, so wouldn't be all sticky with void stuff. (I suppose, though, that she was built from spare parts that had been).

Like Charlie Brooker's not-a-review, this is not to criticise but borne out of love. Perhaps it's just the freelance hack in me looking for ways to cash in with merchandise, but I thought, "Ooh, there's another story there..."

I'd also come up with a completely different reason for how the Daleks came back: we see in Bad Wolf that their teleport-wossname leaves behind dust (so that Dr Who thinks Rose got disintegrated). And when Captain Jack wakes up again in Parting of the Ways, all that's left of his executors is the same sort of suspicious white powder...

But anyway, can't wait for Christmas.

Speaking of things in newspapers, the brother's wild adventure has made it into today's Times. 

Self improvement

Five things I have learned in the last couple of days:

• David Darlington is a hero.
• I., my evil overlord guv'nor, does not like pineapple.
• Dr Who does not wear pants or socks, the little scamp.
• Mandarin characters (I think they were Mandarin) don't copy and paste easily in Word.
• When texting someone, "I'm sending you a script!" predictive text wants to spell the last word as "rapist".

Deliverance

For the first time since I went freelance 47 months ago, I have missed a deadline. The particular boss has been terribly understanding and it's not been entirely my fault, but it's still something of a nuisance.

Still, the thing has been delivered five days late (or three if your weekends aren't working), and I am entirely in love with the pretty picture to go with it. You'll have to wait and see...

Other work has quietened down too - though I missed seeing Dr Who swotting West Wing on Tuesday due to pre-paid commitments in a house. The Doctor had fun, though admitted surprise at Mr Tennant's geekery, and again bewailed the socially inept demographic she and her girlfriends have all settled for.

There's plenty more on my slate but it's all rolling onward and we've overcome a plethora of last-minute hiccups. I repeat to myself the unofficial maxim of the modern NHS: if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. And I am not dead yet.

Nor is K, who is staying with us for the next couple of weeks. She survived a first night with the cat (there'd been some concern about allergies, but she thinks its only dogs now), and also the sight of me manfully topless.

This morning I climbed on a train with a reading book and not print-outs to red-pen. Am delighted by how The School turned out - and so is Tapeloop, which is nice. I have also bought flowers for another man's missus, and talked tracing with the far end of the Earth.

Off to the pub tonight as it is that time of the month again. May even have time tomorrow to shout lunch for the accommodating boss.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll write a post that's actually *about* something. Blimey.

Coterminosity

Is a word I learned today. Its the state of having shared geographical borders, so is a bit like "proximity" but a bit snugglier.

It has been swelteringly, tropically hot today, apart from the moment of sudden rain that caught my boss G. We think this might be the gods' response to years of tradition and wigs coming to an end this afternoon.

(Lords mostly cheered at her announcement, though I think there were cries of "Out of order" from the torier benches. And there was another big cheer when the Lord Chancellor whipped off his wig.)

Anyway, as well as cutting my way through the office with a machete, I have edged nearer to finishing something big (and approved a splendid picture for it), dealt with an embarrassing misunderstanding that almost dropped me right in it again, and had some notes on more things I must do. Also got a copy of my Sapphire and Steel play, though not had a chance to hear it.

If I were clever, I'd make some link to coterminosity with our American neighbours...

Two years ago we were in Livonia watching fireworks that went on for weeks. Recommend Alex's thought for the day.

Collapse at the coalface

Arg.

This is something of an understatement, but will have to suffice for this family blog.

On Saturday my already packed schedule got a little bit busier, later than "the last minute" by one month and one day. Though the extra straw has not (yet) broken this camel's well-exercised back, I did hurry home after tea and Dr Who with Nimbos, and was still typing away desperately at 3 in the morning.

The end is now thankfully in sight (well, in one of four current big projects), but being pre-booked with work today and tomorrow has not exactly eased the blood-pressure.

Also, yesterday my long-lost friend Daniel popped round, who I'd not seen in sevenish years. We took him (and Nimbos) to Crystal Palace's Victorian Fair, where we had a picnic and watched the Dr cavort on the not-too-scary carousel. Some very splendid pictures to follow, when Daniel's back in Sweden and can send me them.

The day seemed to be in part a celebration of IKB's 200th birthday, and 70 years since the Joe Paxton's enormous great greenhouse burnt down. There was wrestling and a ferris wheel and various stalls of knick-knacks, and the Dr got drawn in by the glossy pictures a chap from the Crystal Palace Foundation showed off. She was very good and ladylike, and didn't dispute his using the word "Italianate" when describing the Greek stuff.

We wended round by the monsters again, feeding ducks with our rich, new-fangled bread, and ended up in the pub for a pint or four. Then we headed back through the park, showing Daniel how the ruins look like Greek stuff.

Being of an archaeolgical bent, he was delighted to see "modern" ruins - and we discussed how apocalyptically sci-fi a Victorian would find the state of such an icon. Like the overgrown Washington DC in Logan's Run, said Nimbos - though we don't talk about 30 being past it just now. I was also minded of Shelley's Ozymandias, king of kings, the ruin of whose works should make the mighty despair.

Yes, I have read another poem.

Anyway, hot and slightly tipsy we headed home for tea, and I got the washing up done just in time for Dr Who. Daniel coped with not having seen any of the rest of New Show, though he did pick up on the Egyptian Mummy, which shows he paid attention when I educated him in our cultural heritage all those years ago.

We discussed the apolyptically sci-fi icons New Show has bumped off in the captial: they've broken the clocktower at the Palace of Westminster and shattered the glass in the Gherkin. And now the big tower at Canary Wharf turns out to house scientists making jumps to alternate universes, and all because of things left by the Daleks.

That's a neat idea, isn't it? But if they're going to blow it up, they'll be late by two weeks.

I don't absolutely talk about boils

Have just finished Right ho, Jeeves, in which Bertram Wooster finds himself in tricky circs. as he struggles to help out his chums.

Newting teetotaller Gussie Fink-Nottle is too timid to chat up his beloved Madeline Basset; Tuppy Glossop has fallen out with his finance Angela after pooh-poohing her shark; Bertie’s Aunt Agatha has yet to come clean about all the cash she gambled away in Cannes; and Anatole, Aunt Agatha’s highly strung chef, is threatening to resign.

Worst of all, Jeeves seems to have lost his usually brilliant psychological insight. At least, that’s what Bertie’s insisting…

It’s probably little surprise that I pictured this all the way through starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, with ad breaks between every chapter. I’d watched their telly version avidly, but this is the first time I’ve tried one of the novels.

Had tried Wodehouse before but was irritated by the posh fripperies of life at Blandings and put off his golfing short stories by their being about golf. This, though, proved something else – funny, fizzy and delicious, and a right old pleasure to read. I’m told it’s one of the better ones, and it felt like sipping Champagne.

There’s some wonderful wordplay and turns of phrase, giddily narrated by Bertie, who only just follows what’s going on himself.

That said, the book was written in 1934 and I couldn’t help think of Roosevelt’s New Deal and what Mr Hitler was up to by that point, and of the ominous Things To Come.

(Oddly, no one seems to be selling the Region 2 DVD version of that which I've got.)

There’s just one aside about the real world:

“I was reading in the paper the other day bout those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven’t the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.”

PG Wodehouse, Right ho, Jeeves, pp. 170-171.

This reminds me of Chaplin’s Great Dictator, in which there’s some silly mucking about in a concentration camp, an astonishingly misjudged laugh. Chaplin later said that he regretted these scenes, and would never have dreamt of doing them had he known what the camps really involved. Though there’s arguments about what people would and should have known at the time, it now plays as woefully crass.

Wodehouse is even more overshadowed by our knowledge of later events because of accusations that he collaborated with the Nazis. I’m aware it’s complicated, and McCrum’s Wodehouse biography awaits me next (the far side of some urgent writing of my own). Am very interested to see what he makes of that. Have an idea for a story…

Last year, before researching Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland, I listed what I thought I already knew. What follows is more of the same – me throwing down my current position to see how far it’s wrong.

Right ho, Jeeves gives an insight into a long-lost and idealised world of servants’ balls and school prize-givings, where English society revolved entirely round the authority of landed gentry. We watch the bored, silly lives of the rich with their expensive hobbies, vanity publishing and horrendous taste in fashion.

There are a few other historical observations, such as Agatha muttering about the poor quality of whisky since the (first world) war. We’re also treated to the kinds of car and hat and holiday destination thought topping at the time.

It’s an "idyllic world" says to Evelyn Waugh on the back cover, one that "will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own."

It’s written as if thus will it ever be, the young things trapped in one eternal summer. Bertie’s chums are always getting engaged and never married, and he himself ever evades ladies’ snares. It cannot last, surely – unless Bertie ends up as a lonely old bachelor shuffling alone round the Drones – but it’s a happy make-believe.

I can see that later books, written after the Second World War pulled the Empire apart, can be seen to hark back to a golden age of economic inequality. But you could argue, just, in this one that it subverts the class hierarchy of its time. Jeeves playing the toffs off against one another, and sending his master on an 18-mile goose chase, is of the same class of subversion as the Marriage of Figaro. That’s what makes it funny.

Does comedy have a duty to deal with contemporary issues? The appeal of Wooster is his refusal to take responsibility. His only desires are to eat, drink and be merry – and wear his ridiculous clothes. He’s not a mean person, though, forever causing trouble because he wants to help.

The problem is that ignoring the nasty realities seems less acceptable when the author then writes similarly witty accounts of having tea and cakes with Nazis.

I’m reminded of the end to Goggle-eyes by Anne Fine. One of the characters explains that life is difficult and stories can help. Some give you tips on how to cope with the difficulties, and others just give you a break from them. The best do both at the same time.

So a clever, witty and enjoyable book, but I’d have liked a bit more depth and texture Champagne, Bertie, is all very well but is better with Rich Tea biscuits.

Back and forwards

Spent some of today ringing round people trying to make something happen. Fingers crossed it will all go swimmingly, but there's something unnerving about calling people you've never spoken to before and asking them when they are free.

It must in turn be a challenge to sound both keen and wary...

Also been trawling through old emails for the purposes of research. Odd to find email from a me aged 24.5, discussing books I don't remember having read. And the young scamp's so enthusiastic.

He also seems desperate to be writing things and bored by his current job. Poor lamb's still got 18 months to go before he makes the leap that'll transform his life...

His girlfriend sounds quite nice though. And patient.

Had a nice long chat with the sister this morning, who becomes an Australian on Tuesday. She doesn't think that she'll have to do national service. Note to self: go out to see her.

And an email from the youngest brother, at the other end of Oz, to see if I've done the homework he'd set me. Ha! I've 300,000 words of things to get through first. But these things creep ever onward.

Hello to the elder me looking back on this post, recalling all this bustle with affection. Up yours, granddad.

The Library of St John the Birthdayed

Some of my more bookish correspondents complain that I did not include full details of the volumes received on Saturday. Having counted again, I also realise there are 20 of the blighters - and that's not including the collected "Gifted" which my boss Joe sent just because he's so nice.

So, in alphabetical order:

1. Baker, Tom, "The Boy Who Kicked Pigs", Faber & Faber, London, 1999.
   A grotesque and grisly story about a very naughty boy, and very funny it is too.
2. Banksy, "Wall and Piece", Century, London, 2005.
   Had bought this for M. and was terribly envious. Used to love seeing Banksy's stuff as I passed through Southwark, though I gather art galleries and museums are a bit fed up with his rubbish, teenage imitators.
3. Beresford, Kevin, "Roundabouts from the Air (ish)", New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd, London, 2005.
   A collection of snaps of favourite 'bouts, include two shots of Pierre Vivant's glorious traffic-light tree sculpture I pinched for the front of a book.
4. Carey, David, "How it works - Television", Ladybird Books Ltd., Loughborough, 1968.
   Includes beautiful illustrations by BH Robinson, including Daleks on page 21, and a diagram showing how the Black and White Minstrels get into your house.
5. Fromkin, David, "A Peace to End All Peace - the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the Modern Middle East", Phoenix Press, London, 1989.
   Or, "How the Middle East ended up in such a godawful mess," as Liadnan wrote in it. "Perhaps somewhat harsh to the Palestinians, but nevertheless I find it a fascinating read. Hope you do too."
6. Gathorne-Hardy, Edward, "An Adult's Garden of Bloomers - Uprotted from the works of several eminent authors", The Bodley Head, London, 1966.
   21 pages of brief snippets from famous books which sound a bit rude. Such as this from Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, cited on page 13: "Mrs Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various degrees of fizzy laxness."
7. Gatiss, Mark, "The Vesuvius Club", Simon & Schuster UK Ltd., 2004.
   Some wild and wildean Victoriana from the author of "Nightshade" and "The Idiot's Lantern", starring a gent called Lucifer Box.
8. Grayling, AC, "Among the Dead Cities - was the Allied bombing of civilians in WWII a necessity or a crime?", Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, 2006.
   Was meant to go see Grayling speak earlier this year, and am looking forward to this a great deal.
9. Cole, Stephen, "Dr Who - The Feast of the Drowned", BBC Books, London, 2006.
   I've met Steve once, in 1997, when I interrupted an interview with him to ask my own questions. Got credited as "others". Ho hum.
10. Iggulden, Conn, and Iggulden, Hal, "The Dangerous Book for Boys", HarperCollins Publishers, London, 2006.
    Just full of spendid stuff I wish I'd been told betwen 10 and 13. Trip wires, grammar, the different kinds of tree - even how to talk to the female.
11. Low, George (ed.), "The Dirty Dozen - the best 12 Commando comic books ever", Carlton Books Ltd., London, 2005.
    A fat brick of a compendium in which war is hard but the British are plucky, and the Nazis are always evil and ghastly. Have read the first one already. Wished it included credits for the writers and artists.
12. McCrum, Robert, "Wodehouse - A Life", Viking, London, 2004.
    Wanted this especially as research for something I'm writing later this year, but N. tells me it's a great read once you get past Wodehouse's childhood. Am currently reading "Right ho, Jeeves" and will report on that soon.
13. Morrison, Grant and McKean, Dave, "Arkham Asylum - 15th anniversary edition", DC Comics, New York, 2004.
    Luscious, extravagent, slef-indulgent adventure for Batman which I'd loved when it first came out. I interviewed McKean earlier this year, too, which was nice.
14. Nobbs, David, "The Reginald Perrin Omnibus", Arrow Books, London, 1999.
    B. (who bought me this and really adores Nobbs) had been enthusing about Perrin only last week. Apparently the second book got written because Leonard Rossiter would only do a second series on the telly if it were based on a book.
15. Paterson, Don, "The Book of Shadows", Picador, 2005.
    A collection of brief observations and thoughts, sometimes terribly pretentious and uber-poet, and sometimes beautifully profound. And there are quite a few rude ones, too. This is from page 73: "I read a definition of the word 'solid': something which retains its shape; and find myself immediately terrified by the wilfullness of objects."
16. Rayner, Jacqueline, "Dr Who - The Stone Rose", BBC Books, London, 2006. Includes carefully researched British Museum action. On the way back from Jac's house I was amused by the Third, Second and First Avenues nearby, leafy no-through-roads a universe away from the gird-system, New Town and American model I assume they were based on.
17. Richards, Justin, "Dr Who - The Resurrection Casket", BBC Books, London, 2006.
    Justin told me I couldn't kill Ian Chesteron, and though we've stood in the same room a couple of times before, I actually meet him for real on Friday.
18. Roberts, Gareth, "Dr Who - I Am a Dalek", BBC Books, London, 2006.
    A glimpse of a paperback for the Quick Reads scheme, which opens with a lovely scene of the Doctor and Rose practicing being weightless inside the TARDIS.
19. Robinson, Tony, and Aston, Mick, "Archaeology is Rubbish - a beginner's guide", Channel 4 Books, London, 2002.
    A couple of the Amazon reviewers seem very cross about this book, but I've found the first half very entertaining, and full of little things that I really didn't know.
20. Shapiro, James, "1599 - A year in the life of William Shakespeare", Faber & Faber, London, 2005.
    Had read good things about this in the Dr's erduite press, and it will count as homework for next year's Dr Who.

So all in all I shall be busy for the next few weeks. Have yet to attempt the making of bread or afixing my shiny new monitor. Been a bit caught up with other pressing bits of work.

Oh, and Millennium asks (on his Day MM), after pictures of me looking... sleepy, that I look after Minimum.

Too late! The little fellow has been claimed for the Beast. 

Argentees and sparklers

A bread-maker, a zippy remote-control K9, lots of fine booze (including – hurrah! – some Bolly), a chair-to-come, a Dalek cake with genuine pyrotechnics, some Flaming Lips, a robot, a screen, a Minimum Elephant, 19 lovely, lovely books and a right old sod of a hangover…

Yeah, a rather splendid haul this year and the Dr surpassed herself with the party. As did my second wife, who should drink pink fizz more often.

Had a splendid time with lots of splendid friends, though the last hour or so is a tad blurry. Probably for the best, as some former colleagues of the Dr were discovering that it is unwise to call the bluff of a drunk.

M. says it’s a different experience watching Droo while standing up, and I loved Rose having to watch out for the Doctor’s eating jam and being weird at people. Is she also responsible for his knowing Eastenders and Kylie and the shenanigans at Club Med?

Others seemed less impressed, finding it all too girlie about the love and/or too boysie being nice about sport. I can all too believe that the tribal excitement of a big sporting event could generate sufficient power. Have fond memories of Burnley vs. Sheffield United in November 2000, and the contagious thrill surging round the stadium as the home team realised they’d won…

Hadn’t seen some people in ages and folk had come from far and wide; Bristol, Macclesfield, Brighton, Margate… Liadnan looked bronzed and handsome like he’d just wandered in from the Aegean. He’d bought me the Fromkin book he spoke about here which the Dr was a bit miffed about: she’s the one who reads the serious, clever stuff. I might let her have a lend, and will report back here on all the other reading. But I am a bit slow, so be patient.

Bernice Summerfield herself bought me “Archaeology is Rubbish” which I’m already 70 pages through. Know my spoil heaps from my robber trenches, and all sorts of other top facts which will generally improve my dating. The book is fun and engaging, using the second-person to draw the reader in, but it does rather assume you have a garden.

Apparently got to bed about three-ish. Remember it getting to one. Remember making R. laugh without meaning to, and being cunningly stood by the lashings of wine…

H. and J. couldn’t make it ‘cos they were watching posh singing but turned up yesterday for a picnic. Had not been very brilliant up to that point, but a walk, some champagne and some ice cream brought me round. We admired the monsters and then ambled home.

Caught the end of the football – and felt better for seeing Beckham spitting out a tiger. The play wasn’t brilliant and I’m more annoyed by the wobbles there than in the previous night’s Droo. Feel someone needs to take them aside and politely chide, “Now do come along, Ingerlund.”

Listened to Cantus, finally, and watched telly about museums, then French spirals, then spitting image. And at last sleep…

Fab weekend then, but I wouldn’t wanted to be 30 all the time.

Hello, old boy

Had lunch with the parents yesterday, at which my Mum told me a top fact: between three and three-thirty in the afternoon thirty years ago, I slippped out into the world. At quarter to four I had my first ever bath.

This was of especial interest to the Dr, who in our bathless abode misses a good long soak. No, I don't just mean me.

She was careful to look for differences between me last night in the winter of my 20s, and me this morning as a crusty old man. And claimed she could see no great different, though she may have been sparing the truth.

Have done rather well on the presents front already: a bread-maker and some suitable reading from the wife; a bag full of Dr Who Adventureses (including free gifts) from one of her henchwomen; and a spiff-tastic book from Nimbos explaining how to make trip-wires and treehouses. Hoorah!

The Dr has also turfed me out of the house for the afternoon while she prepares for this evening's festivities. Am a bit scared about what surprises she has in store. Have spent a nice time drinking tea and watching telly with Nimbos, not playing in the sunshine.

And must shortly head back home to the nice mrs, to drink and eat. And fear her.

Smiley happy people holding hands

“Some people act a memory, the Superintendent thought, noticing his concentration, others have one. In the Superintendent’s book, memory was the better half of intelligence, he prized it highest of all mental accomplishments; and Smiley, he knew, possessed it.”

John le Carre, Smiley’s People, p. 43.

And so my hunt for Karla comes to an end (having previously read Tinker, Tailor and the Honourable Schoolboy).

This would constitute quite a hefty spoiler were Karla’s presence not signposted in the blurb - and in the only clip of the telly version they ever seem to show. Which is a shame, as it would have been a corking great surprise to realise only late into the book why Smiley’s so excited.

It’s been a while since Smiley’s last work for the Circus (the officious and inelegant British secret service). But his paymasters want him to tidy up after the brutal murder of one of his old agents. Could he be a good fellow and ensure there’s no fuss?

But as old George walks his old haunts and catches up with his old (and peculiar) chums, he gets the sniff of a much greater intrigue. Retired, jaded, and estranged from his wife, old George may just have the nounce left to win one last, glorious battle…

It’s a gripping read, and like Tinker, Tailor navigates a treacherous path through unreliable memories and differing perspectives. You spend most of it lagging some steps behind Smiley, not quite making the connections that he can and hoping he’ll stop to explain.

It really gets across the slow-trudging monotony of cold war spy-work, tawdry and unglamorous, and very not James Bond. (The telly version boasts a brilliant cast including three Bond villains – two of them consecutive – as well as Maureen Lipman, Alan Rickman, Ingrid Pitt, Gatherer Hade and Lou Beale.)

I’m still a bit confused about some elements. Codename “Karla” (we’re never told his name) can’t have been Ostrakov because Mrs O. saw her husband die of cancer. So is Karla really Glickman, the lover she’s long-assumed dead? Does that play, or am I missing something obvious with my paltry dimness of brain?

The book makes a few things more explicit than the TV version – stating as fact (eventually) what Alexandria’s relationship is to Karla, and why that’d matter.

The TV version likewise provides stuff we don’t get in the book, such as the contents of Smiley’s letter to his caught-out Moriarty (reminding me of S Moffat on why he felt we should know what Reinette wrote). There’s also more to Smiley’s meeting with his estranged wife, Ann. Karla had previously used the Smileys’ problematic marriage to his own advantage, and in the telly version Smiley tries to protect her from any further danger.

In the book, though, he’s colder and more aloof – ending things between them without saying why. The implication (that I saw, anyway) is that he’s cutting himself off from weakness, rather than worrying for her safety. So Karla and he swap places – Karla showing human frailties and concern for family, Smiley coldly using this against him. As Smiley himself says:

“I have destroyed him with the weapons I abhorred, and they are his.”

Ibid, p. 391.

We’re kept guessing right up to the end about whether it’s going to all work out or implode into some grisly snafu. That uncertainty is helped by knowing that le Carre stories so often end with someone’s sudden and miserable death.

But whatever the outcome, it can’t be a full victory. Smiley’s people are used, abused and left strewn behind him.

Clever by mistake

'Scuse the inordinant boasting, but somewhat to my amazement people like me. Last year they really didn't, which just adds to the surprise. Cor and golly.

Today's Dr Who Magazine includes the "Off the Shelf Awards" results, as voted for by its many discerning readers. "The Time Travellers" has won the "Other Doctor Who fiction" category (i.e. them books that don't have Eccles on the cover), with a rather smashing average of 8.06 out of 10. Which makes me feel better about snittier reviews like this one.

"History of Christmas" came fourth with an average 7.61, just below "Fear Itself" and "Gallifrey Chronicles" - the two books I expected to be trounced by. And "Lost Museum" came third in the "Other Big Finish audios" category, the one I'd come almost bottom in last time. I were beaten by the Cybermen, which was always an ambition.

Hearty congratulation to fellow winners Gareth, Joe, Nick, Johnny, Mike Collins (who I've only met once, when he advised me to add guns and robots) and "The War Games".

There's also a generally positive review of something else of mine which concludes, "Whether or not this is intentional, the Settling is a refreshingly intelligent, layered play."

Yes, I know that's taking the Mr Michael out of context, but it still made me laugh.