Worth £35 of anyone's money

[Previous posts here and here]

So, names can be named. Back in February I mentioned an individual living north of Watford who was under investigation for suspected eBay fraud. My involvement was that I was one of the ones he defrauded, to the price of one boxset of Battlestar Galactica, third series.

Then things went quiet ...

Until today. From DC957 Rich Clarke, Doncaster Reactive CID:

"On the 20th May 2009, the suspect in this case Ryan HERRING was charged with 6 specimen charges of "Fraud by False Representation" and wishes to take another 408 offences into consideration. His first court appearance will be on Friday 29th May 2009 at Doncaster Magistrates Court.

Basically, Mr HERRING has made full admissions to his fraud activities over the last 2 years and has created a number of Ebay Accounts resulting in the advertising of 1000's of items and the subsequent sales where you've become victims. In view of his admissions the Crown Prosecution Service decided to charge initially with 6 specimen charges that cover the full 2 year period and too allow other offences to be taken into consideration. Based on the replies I received via email from yourselves I have completed a schedule to include the 408 similar offences to be taken into consideration.

I have spoken to the complainants in relation to the 6 charges and so if you havn't received a telephone call from me in the last 2 days, assume that your complaint is one of the 408 other offences."

Render therefore to all their dues, and all that.

One more reason Skynet won't work

So, I needed to photocopy multiple copies of a manuscript that included blank pages. The helpful photocopier saw that I was trying to copy blank pages and concluded I obviously didn't really want to do that, so left the blank pages out. Result: pagination all mixed up in the multiple copies.

I had to copy another manuscript. This time I was cleverer. I wrote BLANK in large, friendly letters on the blank page. The copier still couldn't quite believe I wanted to waste valuable time, paper and toner on a page with BLANK scrawled on it and so again left the blanks out.

Please will machines stop trying to be helpful. It really doesn't help.

Of Time Lords, Trek and Thylacines

Oscar Wilde wasn't a science fiction fan as far as we know. I'm guessing he would be into the more character-driven stuff than nuts-and-bolts, if he were.

But he nailed fandom on the head very nicely:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

The kiss of death to any successful series is to let the fans get hold of it because they will love it to death, smothering any spontaneous creativity with layer upon layer of continuity, rigidly codifying throwaway one-off lines into immutable canon. Thus two 40-year-old TV series, Dr Who and Star Trek, which started in a blaze of unfettered creativity, were both nigh on unwatchable by the end. Star Trek in particular couldn't run a single scene without a very comprehensive checklist of fan boxes being ticked.

(Dr Who was in almost continuous production from 1963-1989. Trek started later and was more on-and-off – but if you add the original series @ 3 years + 3 spinoffs @ 7 years each + 1 spin-off @ 4 years it actually beats the Doc. And that's not to mention the 10 feature films.)

So when Dr Who was revived, Russell T Davies did it about the only way he could: after an unspecified period and number of regenerations had passed since the last outing, during which time the Time Lords and most established Who history had been wiped out and suddenly everything was up for grabs again. Sadly the initial impetus really hasn't lasted – tendrils from the past began to reach across the gap almost at once and now the two are almost one again. All it will take will be the miraculous reappearance of the Time Lords – which would disappoint but not surprise me in the least – and the work will be complete.

I doubt JJ Abrams consulted Mr Davies, so his revival of Star Trek was done the same way Tasmanian Tigers looked like dogs. Convergent evolution in a similar environment. He starts at the beginning, he wipes out the Time Lords whoever and suddenly everything is up for grabs. Bonzer.

Yes, the film is fun – the best cinematic Trek offering for a long time. About a decade, in fact. That said, I hope it doesn't spark a new series. Trek has reached retirement age. The Enterprise is snazzy, and respectful of the original design, and takes into account modern technology – inanimate surfaces suddenly providing computer interaction, for example. So it should keep everyone happy. But the days of a bridge full of personnel, even if they are all equipped with the latest Apple technology, staring earnestly at screens showing lots of stars are gone. I confidently expect that the order won't be “set course of Delta Vega”, it will be “ship, we'd like to go to Delta Vega, please”. And the ship may need persuading. The future of starship navigation won't be Sulu and Chekov, it will be Eddie the Shipboard Computer. Hi there!

(Why do they build starships in the middle of Iowa anyway? Wouldn't orbit be more logical?)

The cast convincingly play young versions of the originals, especially McCoy, who lacks the southern accent but is still secure in the knowledge that he's a damn good doctor and out of the line of command so he can say pretty well what he wants. The biggest exception, sadly, is Kirk, who has all Shatner's cockiness but none of the charm that let him get away with it. And then almost every positive thing the film accomplishes is offset by the last five minutes in which the recently graduated Ensign Kirk gets given the Federation's newest and best starship to command as a prize for saving the Earth, Oh, come on! That's just insulting to the intelligence. A medal and a commendation, maybe, but then let him sweat his way up the ranks like everyone else. I bet he would be a really rubbish c/o to work under. Everyone's pay would be months in arrears because he couldn't be arsed to do the paperwork.

On the other hand, I will forgive just about any shortcomings for the throwaway line about Admiral Archer's beagle.

For reference: Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable'

Things I wasn't expecting to do with my right hand when I woke up this morning

#2417: shake hands with Richard Dawkins.

Whereas he probably woke up fully expecting to shake hands with a lot of instantly forgettable people he will never see again, and I'd guess he wasn't disappointed.

The great man came to work to use our videoconference suite to talk to the Royal Society of New Zealand, as part of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival, on the theory of evolution today, 150 years after publication of On the Origin of Species. Apparently it went well. He at least had read the briefing notes about not wearing stripes or strong colours (both no-nos as far as good videoconferencing is concerned). The New Zealand host was wearing a black jacket and striped shirt, but hey, he's not the one the kiwis came out to listen to.

RD had also agreed to answer questions and I got a look at some of the ones sent in advance. Do you think there's a faith gene; why do Darwin's theories suggest a progression from simplicity to complexity when the tendency in the universe as a whole is towards entropy; and "If the phenotype is the chicken and DNA is the egg, why do you insist that the egg is more important?" And my favourite: "Is it possible for you to come to New Zealand and hold a debate with [redacted], (Head of [redacted] Church, Has a huge Maori/Pacific Island following, political power openly hates homosexuality and advocates strict adherence to fundamentalist biblical morality) and [redacted], who argues that evolutionary theory is being used as fodder, for a secular campaign against Christianity?"

Let me see. Guessing ... no.

Prologue prejudice

Prologues never did Chaucer any harm, generally speaking, but all in all I'm against them.

For some reason they work better in films or TV than in a book. They can set up a scene, or deliver some nice misdirection, or alternatively scatter some useful clues. They can establish an atmosphere. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that. A friend who went to see The Prestige, having earlier read the novel, was amused to see that the opening credits – a panning shot of dozens of identical-looking top hats – essentially gives the entire plot away, but no one who hasn't read the book is going to realise it. Thus, later on, the switched-on viewer gets the "aa-aa-h!" moment of understanding. But imagine if the book started with a description of the hats – that would just be pointless. Eventually the reader would get it, but so what? And that's why the book doesn’t do that.

This is not to say I won't use a prologue, ever. I already have. His Majesty's Starship kicks off with a press release. It seemed the quickest way of setting the scene. So I'll allow a prologue like that – something that seems off-whack with the story in general, so that the reader is intrigued to see how the two tie in.

But prologues that are essentially missing chapters from the body of the book – no. The information contained within such a prologue should emerge naturally within the story anyway. Case in point – an enjoyably flawed work I've just finished called The Last Templar by Michael Jecks. This, I'm guessing, was meant to kick off a medieval murder series in the vein of Cadfael. And it does – I gather there are other books with the same heroes – but not half as well. Part of that is way the author populates fourteenth century Devon with time travellers who invite visitors in for "a glass of beer" and can pin their movements down to "ten o’clock" or "half past seven". (He does however know his technical details, like how houses were made and lived in at that time, and boy does he make sure you know it too. But there are exciting action scenes, and a couple of good bits of misdirection, and the way he describes the glooming, looming Devon moors makes them almost come alive as characters in the best Gothic tradition. Credit where credit's due.)

BUT: it's a three-murder mystery and the most significant of these was an abbot who was tied to a tree and burnt alive. The abbot's abduction by two individuals was witnessed and it soon becomes very clear to the reader that there are only a couple of people in the novel who could possibly fit the description. One of them is quite obviously a nameless gent we met in the prologue. Now, without the prologue, we might think "that looks like X … but he’s obviously one of the good guys and I can't think why he would do something like that, so it can't be." Meanwhile X's history could be revealed bit by bit and the reader would be caught up in the excitement of discovery.

But no. Thanks to the prologue we can immediately guess 95% of what happened with perfect accuracy, and see why X would do that, and so the rest of the novel – approximately half, or more – is a frustrating exercise of watching the hero be immensely thick until even he can't avoid working it out.

Prologues. Avoid, if possible.

Dragon force

You can grow heartily sick of the Hawaii Five-O theme tune. Surprising, I know, but true. At the annual Abingdon dragonboat event they play it every time there's a race, and there's 18 teams in three heats plus a semi final and a final. That's a lot of Five-O. On the plus side, once you're on the water you don't hear it, due to some strange acoustic effect plus the fact that you're concentrating on the paddling. At the risk of sounding like a Guinness ad, you wait. The word comes. You ready with the paddles. And then you go at it for the next minute, regardless of how much water you're being splashed with, or wondering how the guy behind you keeps managing to hit you on the shoulder (hitting my paddle I could understand, but my shoulder?), you just keep going, one, two, one, two, and then suddenly you're told to stop paddling because apparently you've made it.

Look very closely at the boat furthest from the camera and you'll see a guy in a leather hat from New Zealand. The hat, not the guy. That would be me.


You might also notice that the boat is a little further ahead of the opposition. That would be because we won this heat with our personal best of 1 min 5.22 seconds. The Floating Points (for 'twas they) did 1 min 5.50 seconds, which is surely about as closely as you can cut a finish without altering the outcome by observing it. Still not quite enough to get us into the finals, which were for the fastest six teams, but a respectable showing. We're at the bottom of the score board, but only because we were the last to go in the first heat, against Blazin' Paddles. We won that one too ...


The key, we were told over and over again, is rhythm. A team with less powerful strokes but more rhythm will do better than a team with the opposite. This might be why, in between the endless Five-O, we were treated to possibly the full range of 70s disco beats. We did also get Meat Loaf's "Dead ringer for love," which would be an excellent tune to paddle to ... but no, Five-O it has to be.

To keep with the rhythm whilst paddling, teams are encouraged to shout "one, two, one, two ..." I did however hear an all female team rehearsing with "ooh, ah, ooh, ah." Another alternative suggested, bearing in mind the vaguely computational nature of our business, was "nought, one, nought, one". Or perhaps for soft porn aficionados, "yes, yes, yes, yes."

The Smurfs included a 78 year old lady in all three of their races (third from the back). So they may have lagged behind the rest in performance times, but three hearty cheers anyway.


People might have thought it was very public spirited of the Abingdon gay community to enter into the spirit of the proceedings so, fielding an entire team named Man2Man and getting a place in the finals. Sadly Man2Man is in fact the name of our church's men's group. I wish they'd asked, well, anyone before settling on that one, but what can you do?

Anyway, the sun shone, the sky was blue, the joie de vivre was vivacious, Cancer Research got two thirds of however much we raised. A good time had by all.

... though I'm still not sure about Ronald Reagan

Years ago – 1991 it were, the year before my stepson's birth and therefore ranking somewhere between the invention of the Spinning Jenny and the Ravelling Nancy – I wrote an article for Vector on J.G. Ballard's The Wind from Nowhere. This was Ballard's first published novel, though he subsequently disowned it and always referred to The Drowned World as his first.

I actually quite liked it – more than I liked any of his other works. By this time I had also read The Drowned World, The Crystal World, High Rise, Concrete Island, Hello America, The Day of Creation, Empire of the Sun and – of course – Crash (never did get round to The Atrocity Exhibition, for some reason), so I did know vaguely what I was talking about.

I was feeling naughty and provocative because I couldn't see the big deal and had probably just read yet another adulatory editorial in Interzone or the TLS on "science fiction’s consummate stylist" or whatever they were calling him that week and wanted to know why he was getting published and I wasn't. So I wanted to stick something into the ant nest and stir. As it was I did get a letter from no. 1 fan David Pringle – sent to me personally rather than to the letters column of Vector, and giving me the editorial equivalent of a pat on the head and a tolerant smile – but that was about all the reaction it drew.

My main bone of contention, which I still stand by, was that Ballard suffered from the literary writer's inability to trust the imagination of the audience to fill in the gaps. It had to be spelt out, and spelt out again, and then on the way out someone gave you a nudge and spelt it again just to make sure you got it. Instance: Vaughan in Crash has an obsession with the actress Elizabeth Taylor. (Or maybe it's "the movie star Elizabeth Taylor"? Let's say actress for the sake of convenience.) And this we are told time and time again. And it's never just Elizabeth Taylor or Taylor or "her" or "she". Every time Mrs Todd-Fisher-Burton-Twice shows up in the text it's "the actress Elizabeth Taylor". It gets so bloody tedious, and hence my reference in the article to it being "apparently in the contract that no copy editor should come within a mile of a Ballard manuscript".

Eighteen years later he goes and dies, much mourned and missed, and I surprised myself by feeling there was a hole in the world too. I hadn't read anything by him since that article, except for anything that popped up in Interzone in the meantime, but suddenly I was feeling I understood what he was about. Maybe it was because I've now lived out in the real world much longer than I had in 1991, and what he was telling me had time to sink in. Maybe it's just because the world has got so much more – let's say it – Ballardian. He wouldn't have been remotely surprised by the predominance of reality TV or the Jade Goody saga. He would probably have wondered what took it so long.

And so I resolved to read his autobiography, Miracles of Life.

Okay, I think I understand him more now. A little. I certainly like him much more than I did. He seems to have been a genuinely nice bloke, warm hearted and friendly and extremely moral. I'm amazed that, coming from utterly respectable middle class stock, he could always remain so apparently respectably middle class yet be so profoundly unrespectable in outlook and views. Michael Moorcock and the rest of the New Worlds crowd went hirsute and yeti-like in the sixties, yet in all the pictures our man is a slightly tweedy figure in jacket or v-neck and tie. His experiences with drugs just reminded him why he preferred whisky and soda. He lived in a happy family home in suburban Shepperton and turned out tales like Crash about the sexual fetishisation of car crashes.

He had the advantage of living at a time when a journal editor's salary could support a family of five on top of the purchase of the family home and a daily commute into London. I laugh a hollow laugh. Yet then his wife died suddenly he was stranded with three small children who he managed to raise single handedly – no mean feat today, yet alone in the early sixties.

Respect!

Ballard as any fule no was born in the International Settlement in Shanghai in 1930, where he lived until his late teens, which included two and a half years of internment under the Japanese. (The experience wasn't quite as harsh as depicted in Empire of the Sun: he stayed with his parents and they could live in their own home for over a year after Japanese occupation. On the other hand there are throwaway lines like the one about about his rectum prolapsing due to malnutrition, so it was no picnic.) I get the impression he would have turned out much as he did even without the internment bit. His experiences in the camp just confirmed what he was already coming to see. Shanghai was even more artificial than most cities, constructed for the sole purposes of trade and treated as a fantasy land by the many expatriate communities living there. Where obscene wealth and obscene poverty can co-exist within a few feet you must start to feel that reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Maybe we as a race have always been outmassed by the world we live in, but until comparatively recently there was always the illusion that we could shape our destinies. Ballard's experiences taught him that the modern world is a massive artificial construct that we created but which now dominates. It dictates, we follow. Individuals can swim against the stream but even the flow of the stream is affected by forces beyond us.

I should also add that Miracles of Life was an eye-opener for the sheer clarity and openness of the writing. See, he could do it after all. I will also accept a mild tap on the wrist for one of my other gripes in the article – the fact that the characters in his books very rarely do what any sane person would do and get the hell out of whatever catastrophe they've ended up in. But that was the point, of course, the same way Ballard couldn't get out of Shanghai because it was just too big. At one point he mentions a fellow writer with a "Victorian" ideal of writing – strong characters, plausible dialogue, logical plots. I would say that's not just Victorian, that's latter-day-neo-Elizabethan too, because how dare a writer just write a book and assume everyone will want to carry on reading past the first page? But when you're separated by such a gulf in your basic premises, there's not a lot of point trying to make comparisons. That's probably why I liked The Wind from Nowhere, whereas his one reference to it is, disparagingly, "my only piece of commercial fiction".

I used to think Ballard got his reputation the same way the original Star Trek and Dr Who became cult favourites. It's the difference between what you see and what you take away. Everyone saw the dodgy sets, iffy actors and questionable scripts, but after they turned the TV off the cognoscenti remembered epic tales of time and space and speculative thought. However, that's not quite fair, or indeed true. I'll now concede that Ballard got his reputation by absolutely mastering his chosen field. Easy.

Miracles of Life also confirms my favourite Ballard tale that I've heard from other sources, or at least some of it: that when The Atrocity Exhibition was published by Doubleday in the US, Mr Doubleday had no idea it contained a story called "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan". When he did find out, he ordered the entire run to be pulped. Ballard confirms this part but not the best bit: that he sent one of the surviving author's copies to the then Governor of California with a note saying "I think you ought to see the kind of filth Doubleday are publishing about you."

Ben solves the second homes allowance row

Most will agree that our MPs need a second home. They need a base in London within easy striking distance of Westminster. It's not enough to suggest that they check in at a hotel or a B&B. To do a job like that you need a home where you can just turn up. Most MPs do not use the second home as a pad to put their mistress up in. Non-London based MPs only really need a small flat.

It's also reasonable that certain expenses could be claimed for the second home. They're paid more money than I'll ever make but it's peanuts compared to some London salaries.

The problem arises when they start to juggle the numbers, declaring their "second home" as the one that will benefit them financially the most.

So, whoever is in charge of these things should simply declare that for purposes of Parliamentary expenses, the second home is a wholly-owned property (no more renting bedrooms from siblings) that of all the MP's properties is the one nearest Westminster. Peasy.

You're welcome.

Plain walking

It's Sarsen Trail time again, our mostly annual uptake of the 26 mile walk over Salisbury Plain from Avebury to Stonehenge, of which we do the first 11 miles and then get the coach back to the start. Except that this time we did the 15 mile second half, and my outraged legs are still letting me know their thoughts on the matter.

Well, we like a bit of a challenge and we’d always wondered what lies beyond the halfway point. And now we know. A lot of Salisbury Plain, and a very, very, very, very, very long track, for which the term 'wends' was specially invented. The fact that four fifths of the word 'wends' are also in 'endless' cannot be coincidence.


It is also extremely dusty, but you soon learn to walk on the upwind side when traffic comes along.

Weather on the first weekend of May is always a bit of a lottery - some years I've picked up a nice tan, others it's been tipping. This time was a winner, with a mostly bright and breezy day - optimum walking conditions. Getting blisters can always be awkward because you start to favour the unblistered foot and develop a hobble which puts strain in unaccustomed places - but I got a blister on each foot so that all balanced out.

There are pluses and minuses to the second half, quite apart from the extra four miles. The first half takes you over the highest point of Wiltshire and the views are spectacular, but you then go down into the low ground and though the scenery changes, views are never that great again. For the second half, the scenery rarely changes but you can see all the way to the horizon. And you start with a nice view down into the Vale of Pewsey.


The drawback is that having walked for a couple of hours, you'd be happy for a bit of a change, which you don't really get.

The first half takes you through the occasional town and village; the second half just skirts around the military training area. You never see signs like this in the first half.


And I’ve never before been overtaken by Batman & Robin, who were running the parallel Neolithic Marathon.


But the biggest plus of all must be finishing at Stonehenge. So much nicer than grinding to a halt on a lonely hilltop in the middle of the Plain prior to taking a coach back to Avebury. Even granted that the finishing area is some distance removed from the monument, you can still see it as you come over the hill and you really feel you have arrived, um, somewhere. A lady with the kind of voice that was bred to issue orders to servants welcomes you in over the loudhailer and even though your legs may have been on autopilot for the last hour, one foot in front of the other for as long as it takes, you know you made it.

Looking at Wiltshire Wildlife's site I see that the event was the grand climax of Real Nappy Week - probably a coincidence, but a worthy cause nonetheless.

Party excuse

If you find the sidereal calendar just so drearily predictable, there is an alternative. Decimalise!

I am currently 16140 days old. My next centennial birthday is on 23 June this year, when I'll be 16200 days. Or maybe I'll just keep my strength for the millennial celebrations on 1 September 2011 when I hit the big 17000.

I may just call it 17 mega-days. I'll be 17 again but without the spots and hormones.

Spread the joy and work out your own:

http://partysuppliesonline.com/decimal_birthday.htm

Way to stand for your principles, Ben ...

So, I thought I'd send an email round to far too many contacts asking for sponsorship for our team in the forthcoming Dragon Boat racing. And because I value online privacy, naturally I put all the addresses in the BCC field.

When my own test copy for the first batch of mailing arrived, I thought, "oh, that's odd. As the sender, I can see all the addresses in the BCC field ... in the B- ... uh ... in the ..."

Biscuits. I of course put them all in the CC field. Apologies to all involved. Anyone I mailed in the second batch, where I got it right, may feel smug.

But should anyone not contacted be feeling generous ... 1/3 of money to Abingdon Vesper Rotary, 2/3 to Cancer Research, handy sponsorship URL at http://www.justgiving.com/TessDragonBoat09.

It's the colour that counts

I think the first audio cassette I ever held in my hands belonged to my grandfather. I’m guessing it emerged after he died in 1975. And it was so frustrating because nowhere in my grandparents’ or my parents’ house was there any kind of device for playing the thing. Goodness knows what Granddad was doing with it in the first place.

We’ve almost come full circle …

Over the last six months I have discovered iPods. First, Bonusbarn upgraded his white iPod Nano to a green one. I bought the white one off him and put my downloaded music onto it. This didn’t take long. Bit by bit it began to fill up with other stuff. I bought a widget for playing iPods on a car cassette player. See, it was dawning on me that my beloved set of car-listening compilation tapes was wearing thin, stiffening up, stretching, generally getting wonky … and I had no means for re-recording them. A lot of them came off LPs I had once bought but no longer possessed, and even if I still possessed them I no longer had the means to play them. Some came off CDs which I still own but we barely have the means to re-record them. The only tape mechanisms now in the flat are the ones accidentally attached to a couple of radios. They record, but the quality ain’t great and the new recording often sounds worse than the one it’s replacing.

And now the white iPod is full, so I have been given permission to upgrade to a purple one with eight times the capacity of the white one and twice, or possibly four times the capacity of Bonusbarn’s green one. It was a cheaper option than buying a decent tape recorder. He doesn’t know this yet.

But this means I can go one step further than with the compilation tapes. I created them in the first place because while I enjoyed the works of the selected artists I didn’t necessarily enjoy them by the albumful; and anyway it was fun to mix and match the absolutely best songs. Which led to the inevitable heartbreak of having to leave some of the good, but not entirely the best good, stuff off as it can’t all fit onto a 90 minute tape. With a purple iPod this is no longer an issue.

Of course it’s not quite as flexible as mixing and matching the recording of your own tape, or if it is I’ve yet to find out how. iTunes will let you shuffle your music randomly, or play it album by album, in alphabetical order of title rather than year of release, and in track order. But you can still have a certain amount of geeky fun classifying everything by genre and playlist. You’re essentially populating a database, after all, and fun doesn’t come more geeky than that.

It’s not quite as fun as the good old days of putting coloured stickers on your cassette collection for ease of classifying, but it’s better than nothing.

It also goes without saying that I totally ignore Genius, the cunning means by which iTunes studies your musical tastes and suggests music you might like to purchase to go with it. Until iTunes drops DRM completely and unconditionally, it will be a cold day in Hell before I buy something there. Anyway, one of the joys of life is serendipitously picking up a track at random from the background noise of your day to day existence, deciding you like it, hunting it down and acquiring it. Being fed music by Apple would miss the point completely.

And speaking of DRM ... it was a truly frabjous day when Amazon launched its own reasonably priced DRM-free MP3 download section. That way I’ve been able to select favourite tracks from LPs that I formerly owned and added them to the purple iPod too. It means that in some cases I have paid for something twice in the course of my life, but only by a matter of pennies.

But this led on to a further moral conundrum. Another huge plus of the unambiguously legal Amazon service was that the dubious attractions of the dodgy Russian download sites vanished. I admit to having frequented them in the past but it was becoming clearer and clearer that the money wasn’t reaching the artists concerned, even if the Russians maintained that was the artists’ fault and not theirs. So I stopped using them.

But some tracks that I want to iPodise aren’t available on Amazon. I’m thinking specifically of the early work of Mr Oldfield and the entire oeuvre of Sky. The dodgy Russians have the Oldfield corpus covered, and do at least have Sky’s second (and best) album and half of their fifth. So on the grounds that I have already bought Sky2 and Five Live in my youth, and Sky have had their royalties off me, I admit to reacquiring them for a handful of roubles.

But now the question looms in my mind: what will replace the iPod …?

I comfort myself that both LPs and audio cassettes needed special, though cheaply available, equipment to play on. As do MP3s and whatever format it is iTunes converts them to; but even so, more and more of my music is becoming available on a big electronic database somewhere and I’m reasonably certain it should therefore be convertible to any other format that comes along. We have the raw data; what we make of it is up to us. No one will be stumbling across mysterious recording media in my effects after I’m gone; what I have will be plainly available, there on screen, in rights-free format, for anyone who wants it.

For the fun of it, here is Toccata from Sky2. Drummer Tristan Fry looks like he's enjoying it most. For his more energetic solos he was known to take his glasses off.

"The floor dropped away from me before I started to follow it"

Okay, a bit of friend-plugging for the entertainment of a wider audience, on behalf of the wonderful Molly Brown.

Apparently the Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Film Challenge assigns competing teams with a title for a film, a line of dialogue and a prop. Teams then have 48 hours to complete a film incorporating all of the assigned criteria.

For Molly's team:

• assigned title: "THIS IS..."
• required line of dialogue: "The floor dropped away from me before I started to follow it."
• required prop: a map of Europe with three red circles drawn on it.

And here is the result, with Molly appearing a few times as Puzzled Housewife to drive the plot along.




A behind the scenes video is also available ...

Revving like a souped-up Ford Cortina

The comedy duo Kit & the Widow have a number called “Love Song in a Major Key”, about the affair between two of our formerly prominent politicians.

“Edwina, O my Edwina,
Other men would rather swig industrial cleaner …”

Other rhymes for “Edwina” include “let’s make love until you scream like a hyena” and the title of this post. Somehow I could never quite rid the back of my mind of it as I waded through A Parliamentary Affair …

Well, I told you I was reading it and I know everyone was waiting for a report.

A Parliamentary Affair was published in 1994, which means the present day reader has an advantage the original readership didn’t: we know the author had a four-year affair with John Major when she was a newly elected MP and he was a Whip. A nation felt faintly queasy over its breakfast cornflakes as the news broke and didn't want to imagine too many details. And guess what, here the female protagonist, newly elected Tory MP Elaine Stalker, has an affair with one of her party Whips. In the light of what we already know there's a terrifying suspicion we're getting just too much information. You read the sex scenes with a growing, horrified fascination: oh, please don’t say you did THAT? Like, did he really have her backwards in his office over a leather blotter with the Commons crest pressing into her face? And there is one scene involving whipped cream, strawberries and the male anatomy that … well, fortunately I never liked whipped cream with my strawberries anyway.

Moving on. I would say Currie chose her order of careers – MP first, then novelist – wisely because she started off by playing to her strengths. Novel writing isn’t one of them, or at least it wasn’t in 1994. This was her first and she may have improved. All the newbie habits are there: inability to settle on a point of view character for any one scene; occasional rants on subjects that the author feels strongly about (amoral tabloid journalists, overweight working class people); a very strong authorial voice that sometimes delivers information direct to you, sometimes lets it emerge through character dialogue. Sometimes you can only tell which is which by seeing if there are inverted commas wrapped around the paragraph you’re reading. The characters have the kind of conversations where they reveal exactly the information required by the scene without any sense of it arising naturally through dialogue. A test I like to use for natural sounding dialogue, which I think I learned from David Langford, is: can you imagine it being shouted across a room? This definitely fails the shouting test.

(It does not however pass the Soft Porn Dialogue Test. After the first Encounter, she says to him [staring intently at the anatomical part with which she has just become orally familiar] "It certainly gives a new meaning to the term Honorable Member". I wish I was making this up.)

And yet it grips you, in a West Wing kind of way, because of the author’s obvious love of the parliamentary process and the minutiae of how the great British political machine goes about its stuff. A lot of stuff I’m sure comes straight out of Currie’s own experiences, in particular her frustration as an underappreciated intelligent and capable woman in the 99.9% male world of Westminster. Yes, I can well believe she was felt up by a smug Tory patriarch as all the MPs milled together at the bar of the House to elect the Speaker.

But of course we’re not reading this for the dialogue or the politics. It’s all about the shagging. It doesn’t take us long to get into the swing of it, as it were: two on-going hetero adulterous affairs and one gay one between elder statesman and underage boy (underage meaning 19, as it still was in 1994), with a bit more bonking, titillation, adolescent sexuality and one rape going on in the wings. And here I have to admit Currie surprised me – a little.

My chief memory of the 1992-1997 Major government is a never-ending series of scandals and resignations (Wikipedia helpfully lists 13 of them, averaging at 2.6 a year), mostly to do with affairs. I distinctly remember getting to the point of wondering why Major didn’t just give his Cabinet an ultimatum: dump the mistress or get out, now. Of course, we now know he was in no position to point fingers. (What’s grey and smells of Currie? Moving swiftly on …)

Currie convincingly portrays the Commons as such an alien world that affairs become almost inevitable. The hours, the pressure, the sheer detachment from what passes for normality in the outside world. You’re thrown against these people who understand, unlike the wives and husbands trapped back home in their normal day to day lives, and who can deliver what said spouses can’t in terms of support and meeting of minds. Don’t think for a moment that I believe she excuses the behaviour, but she does explain it much more than I thought possible. Sadly, she then goes and blows it with Elaine’s righteous indignation when her husband also has an affair. The difference is obvious, at least to Elaine. Elaine and the Whip are engaged in doing Great Things in Parliament, so that makes it All Right. Their affair is what keeps them sane. Elaine’s husband is caught in bed with a neighbour who is not very intelligent and overweight and generally menial, and he’s obviously there for the base reason that he isn’t getting enough in the marital bed, so clearly that’s grounds for divorce. Well, obviously.

It all works out, sorta. Elaine goes through a learning process that I’d like to think the rest of us never needed to. There’s a sudden IRA bomb threat plot that feels a little grafted onto the end of the book, but it does bring about closure. The book ends on a nice note, keeping us in suspense at the fictitious 1996 election with the results about to be read for Elaine’s constituency. And just to show that Currie does have a sense of humour, one of the more repellent characters is polished out of the story with a nasty dose of salmonella.

So, where does this leave the proposed political bonkbuster Best Beloved wants me to write? Not sure. I can probably supply the plot, she can provide the gossip, but then there’ll be the, um, stuff that probably wouldn’t occur to me in a month of Sundays under normal circumstances. Like novel uses for dairy products and fruit. Ah well, thinking cap on, and I can console myself it will all be tax deductible.

Påsk i Sverige

Pause for a moment and consider the end of eras.

Our usual habit is to come out to Sweden for a week, make a base at my father-in-law Morfar’s farm and venture out on day trips. Sadly, this habit is now so usual after many years that Bonusbarn is quivering on the point of mutiny, having seen all the local sights so often he could do the tourist commentary. Plus at Easter everything’s closed and other typical Swedish activities – walks, swims in lakes – aren’t really viable. So we’ll probably next be in Sweden next summer, 2010 – by which time my stepson will be an 18 year old school leaver, quite possibly with plans of his own for the summer.

And consider the old man himself, who is always delighted to see us but it clearly becomes more of a strain every time he does. He gets stressed that he isn’t being hospitable enough – but, confined to a wheelchair, that translates into micromanaging Best Beloved to ensure that she is providing us with the kind of service he would like to give us. Which really isn’t necessary. The slightest departure from his decreed norm causes him endless worry, and meanwhile he gets vaguer and more forgetful; unable to remember (for example) if he’s already demonstrated to us how he uses his pee bottle, and unable to conceptualise that maybe we don’t want a demo anyway.

In short, the kindest way of staying in touch in future will probably be a long weekend on the farm – we could probably coax Bonusbarn out that long – and then explore further afield, while we send the young man gratefully back home to his friends and wireless internet. There’s plenty more of the country I’d like to see and Best Beloved would like to show me. And Morfar is always convinced that each time he sees us will be the last anyway.

But it was a good stay. Previously we’ve had snow at Easter: the snow poles are still out on the roads and the hire car (a Volvo, the best result yet in the Avis lottery) still has studded tyres. And yet the weather was so summerlike that I often wished I had bought a light jacket instead of, or at least as well as, the winter coat. We didn’t have an Easter bonfire because Cousin Valter, who as a mere sprog of 82 is responsible for physical and maintenance activities on the farm, decreed that the undergrowth was too dry. Then the wind blew and I was grateful for the woollen jumper and cords. A season of contradictions.

I still love that little house on the Västergötland prairie. It’s made of wood, but so snug and tight that I could sit out a blizzard there. And so quiet. There were times I quite literally could not hear a thing apart from my own heartbeat. No one else in the house, no traffic, no wind, nothing. Quite astonishing. But it is a relief to know that tonight I sleep in my own bed, which must be as much younger than me as the one in Sweden is older.

We met Senior Niece’s baby, who is most babylike with a cute smile and habit of vomiting without warning or apology. As expected, really.


I enjoyed the unusual (for a writer) experience of a couple of hours’ honest work, helping Valter split logs. He has a machine for the purpose that pushes them against a metal blade and they split without any apparent effort. Harder than it looks.


Power lines run through some woods at one end of Morfar’s property, and new laws increasing the amount of free space around them has led to a few extra logs needing to be dealt with.


And then of course there was Easter. A fairly High Lutheran service but I was raised fairly High Anglican so can cope with that. The words are pretty easy to follow – the Lord’s Prayer, the creed ... Or this one? “Helig, Helig, Helig, Herre Gud Sebaot; Himlarna och jorden är fulla av din härlighet; Hosianna I höjden ...”

I had my annual reminder that the words for Spirit and Duck are the same: thus Helig Anden could be the Holy Spirit or the Holy Duck. You have to take your best guess.

It was an old church but refurbished in a modern style inside – big windows, pastel shades, pine furniture, comfortable chairs, full of light. The choir really sounded like they meant it, with some songs and tunes so joyful it didn’t matter that I understood one word in ten. During communion they sang a Taizé chant, over and over again, and kept singing as they went up to the rails. This meant that we who were among the last of the congregation to go up suddenly realised the singing was following us. Quite beautiful. The closing hymn was sung in question-and-answer style, with the men essentially asking what this Easter thing is all about and (appropriately for the season) the women telling them. It was a dignified, proper hymn with a light and happy tune that I've not heard before, but I wanted to take a copy to give to our own worship leader and say "more like that".

The sermon – I was told later – mentioned a Palestinian family whose 12 year old child was killed by an Israeli soldier. They donated the child’s heart and it now beats inside a young Israeli. The two families have got in touch and as much as possible are friends. And that, said the pastor, is the Easter message. Hear, hear.

[Previous Sweden posts for 2008, 2007 and 2006]

Reading so you don't have to

Best Beloved is determined that I will one day write a bonkbuster filled with politics, diplomacy and intrigue and sex. She will feed me snippets gleaned from her time as an au pair to a diplomatic family in Saudi, where the shenanigans and goings-on would not meet with approval of the mutaween (which is a pretty good reason for doing anything) and we will retire on the proceeds.

Therefore, strictly for research, I must report that the next title on my reading list is Edwina Currie's A Parliamentary Affair. There, I said it. A report may or may not be following. Likewise the proposed bonkbuster.

Now off for a week for our annual Sweden pilgrimage where Internet connectivity will almost certainly not be forthcoming. To fill the void in your lives, here are some things you probably didn't know about me. Why not look yourself up too? You may be pleasantly surprised.

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Ben Jeapes!

1. The Church of Scientology was founded in 1953, at Washington D.C., by Ben Jeapes.
2. Ben Jeapesology is the study of Ben Jeapes.
3. Ben Jeapes can eat up to four kilograms of insects in a single night.
4. Julius Caesar wore a laurel wreath to cover up Ben Jeapes.
5. Ben Jeapes can squeeze his entire body through a hole the size of his beak.
6. Ben Jeapes can smell some things up to six miles away.
7. A sixteenth century mathematician lost his nose in a duel over his love for Ben Jeapes, and wore a silver replacement for the rest of his life.
8. The Vikings believed that the Northern lights were caused by Ben Jeapes as he rode out to collect warriors slain in battle.
9. The number one cause of blindness in the United States is Ben Jeapes!
10. Japan provides over thirty percent of the world's Ben Jeapes supply.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Ancient and modern

Ancient: this nineteenth century writing desk brought back from my grandmother's flat yesterday, already lightly encrusted with clutter. "French mahogany secretaire a abattant with boxwood outline panels" ...


and "... satinwood veneered interior with an arrangement of six drawers".


It replaces a much more modern G-plan writing desk, so while we've probably traded down in terms of storage capacity we've traded way up in style. It now looms over to one side of our room like a TARDIS with a slightly iffy camouflage circuit. If it was a TARDIS then we could have just landed it, rather than have to manipulate it up a flight of stairs slightly narrower than it is with two right angled bends. A good family bonding exercise, not least for Bonusbarn who was squished against the wall on a couple of occasions but took it like a man.

Modern: later the same day, an Oxfringe do at Borders in Oxford on Reading & Writing Sf and Fantasy. A panel of three - Juliet McKenna, Chaz Brenchley and yours truly - talked about what we like to read and write, while an audience of 11 - so at least outnumbering the panel, always a good thing - listened with rapt attention. So, nice people happy to let me talk about myself for a lot. I could get used to that. As Juliet put it in her email inviting me to attend, it was:

"Essentially, a panel discussion of the kind we're all so used to via the convention circuit and which so many bookshops/libraries regard with awe akin to someone splitting the atom in their back bedroom."

Well, quite. Let's hope they don't catch on. Mark Chadbourn was meant to attend but couldn't, which sadly meant I was unable to tell him I read his novel Jack of Ravens on honeymoon and still turned in my review of it on time (the five hour round trip to the Scillies did help). The review was only mostly complimentary, but he's a pro and I'm sure he could have taken it.

Laptop dancing

This is a bonding exercise with my stepson. We're sitting about five feet apart in the living room tapping away on our laptops. And I'm doing it wirelessly.

His is/was a pretty decent nearish state of the art 16th birthday present. Mine is a retired company laptop with a small crack in the lid bound together by brown parcel tape (which I removed to see exactly that it was meant to be holding together). This is mostly an exercise to acquaint myself with the keyboard and layout. It's pretty good for writing on. Better than the desktop ornament, anyway. I'm pretty certain Best Beloved is on the main machine in our room as I write this. We have finally achieved the goal of all twenty first century families, each of us being on his or her own separate computer and not talking to anyone else.

When the firm announced one of its periodic purges of no longer maintained equipment, I put myself down for a laptop on the offchance. I thought I could do with a typewriter to replace my 10-year-old, much loved but essentially defunct IBM Thinkpad (which I bought with money received for His Majesty's Starship. A true writer's laptop.). This came with hard disk wiped and a copy of Windows XP - nothing else. Then Bonusbarn pointed out we have some wireless adapters knocking around and I thought why not?

And so, apropos of nothing, I thought I would share my thoughts on the saga of our Home Secretary and her avant garde art movie loving husband. First off, it's pretty clear what happened. She gets phone, TV and everything as a package from a single firm, as do we. She gets a monthly bill stating everything, as do we. It runs to several pages but that's just the way it's laid out. The bill includes movies watched. So far the biggest surprise we've had is that Bonusbarn watched Pulp Fiction at 2 in the morning over halfterm (we've since tightened up the parental controls). Ms Smith must wish she shared the experience. Anyway, she's a busy women. She can't remember the last time she manually went through the phone bill. She Has People Who Do That. She threw the pile of paper at a People and said "that's the bill, deal with it." And sadly they did.

What absolutely no one seems to be obsessing on is that somewhere in the House of Commons is a mole leaking paperwork like this to the papers. That is a disgrace and this person must be hunted down and destroyed. Though it's probably not a priority in the House of Speaker Martin, where the historic privileges of our elected representatives that were literally won in blood are secondary to who gets to wear the nice robes.

Also worrying is that the national domestic budget is in the hands of a woman who can't check her phone bill. Not even to weed out the business calls. I'm sure she racks up a hefty phone bill in the course of her duties, and naturally it should be claimed as an expense, but I can't believe every single call was work-related. Or maybe she just makes domestic calls from her sister's flat.

I would have liked to call this post "the porn ultimatum" but sadly the Sun got there first. I don't often say this to the Sun, but, nice one.

Ada plus One

Yesterday, 24 March, was the first ever Ada Lovelace Day. This is what happens when I don't keep my ear to the ground.

Ada, as I'm sure you already knew (I did - hah!) was the daughter of Lord Byron who because of her work with Charles Babbage is often credited as being the first programmer. From the day's official website:

"Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless."

What an excellent idea. Thanks to Pennski for bringing it to my attention.

I won't blog at length on the general awesomeness of anyone, (a) because I don't generally and (b) because I'd feel the need to ask permission and that takes time. But I will mention a few (by no means all; omission from this list implies absolutely nothing) of the several IT-related women I have known. In alphabetical order to avoid any hint of favouritism or bias:

• Joella, former colleague, who was a reporter and then editor on Information World Review. This means that for >50% of the 1990s she and her lovely but somewhat vague editor were the totality of UK-based IT reporting. (Correct me if I'm wrong, Jo ...) She also, more recently, introduced me to the blogging concept.
• L, former colleague, now working for Oxford Uni. Twenty years before we met she was working for Locomotive Software, proof reading their manuals, which would include the manuals that came with my Amstrad PCW all those years ago. I think that's where she met her husband. She now programs Javascripty sort of stuff.
  
• S, head of my division but I'm not crawling. Now responsible for heading communications and customer support on a 40Gbit/s optical network that links every university in the country, she started here in the mid eighties when it was basically two cans and a bit of string.
  
• T, fellow writer, longest acquaintance of all the above, bisexual witch and freelance IT consultant. See where a degree in theology from Durham can get you?

Next year I may mention some others ...

Victory!

I just wanted to preserve my own copy of this.

It's HMS Victory. And it's floating.

From a very senior relative's photo album, dated 18 July 1914.

So that's why I don't deflect compasses

To give blood you have to have 13.5 somethings per something in your iron count. I have 13.3. Put another way, when they take the drop of blood they drop it into a tube full of blue liquid and it has to sink within 15 seconds. Mine floats.

I'm assured I'm not anaemic but still ... Must be just one of those things. My diet hasn't changed and I haven't been ill. Maybe I've always been just at the upper end of the 15 seconds. So, plenty of lean red meat, pulses and brown bread required. And less tea, which blocks iron take-up, apparently.

Nah, stuff that.

UPDATE: Best Beloved comments that this is obviously what lay behind all those floating witch trials. They weren't rejecting the water of their baptism, they were just severely anaemic.

To the Tower!

Here's a useful tip. If you're going to a Sunday morning service in the Chapel of St Peter Ad Vincula within the Tower of London, and provided you're pre-booked in (or just plain convincing, smartly dressed and clearly not a terrorist) you can get in for free. See, there is a plus side to an established state religion. Of course, it's probably best that you actually go to the service after that if only to establish some cred.

Or, in today's case, to attend (arriving five minutes late due to a crash [not ours] on the M4 and having to awaken a slumbering teenager at 7.30am on a Sunday) the christening of Junior Nephew in the same building that has previously seen the christening of his sister and brother and the marriage of his parents. This is a chapel royal and they do it ... differently to Christ Church on Long Furlong.

The medals worn by the vicar on his robes are the first clue (six of them, one with bar and a mention-in-despatches). The robes themselves are another. As the service progressed I had cause to discover (and feel quite pleased that) I can still mumble my way through the Venite, the Te Deum and the Jubilate, all in 1662 English. And I can safely say that the highly spiritual meditative aid that starts "Oh it's great great brill brill wicked wicked skill skill to have a friend in Jesus" has never rattled these particular rafters.

The rafters are however rattled by a marvellous choir who can hit their notes so perfectly that the sound just seems to come out of the air around you. We finished, as you would only expect, with the National Anthem and the final verse of "Eternal father strong to save"-

Oh Trinity of love and power
Our brethren shield in danger's hour.
From rock and tempest, fire and foe
Protect them wheresoe'r they go.
Thus ever more shall rise to thee
Glad hymns of praise from land sea.

In case this all seems a little overpowering, it's also worth mentioning that the choir master has a pony tail, he looks (from behind) like the lead singer of the Commitments, and at my niece's christening four years ago he played "The wheels on the bus" on the chapel organ for the benefit and delight of Senior Nephew.

Sometimes it's good to take a break, eh?

On previous occasions we've taken the opportunity to see the Crown Jewels, but not this time as the queue was winding around the block and there's some things even chapelgoers can't jump. As I recall they have a conveyor belt down either side to carry the tourists past, thus preventing build-ups of gawkers which is a very good idea. With only a small effort you can make the perceptual shift that you are standing still and it's the Crown Jewels that are gliding past, like a very expensive edition of the Generation Game. "A priceless diamond. An orb. A sceptre. A cuddly toy ..."

Then we repaired to Zizzis in St Katherine's Dock for lunch, where I had the seafood risotto "with a hint of chili". I would say more than a hint - it gave me several harsh nudges, a couple of curt requests and at one point it was outright barking orders at me. Very nice. I'm loath to admit to any good coming out of the Thatcher era at all, but sheer honesty often forces me to admit that quite a lot did and one of these things is the renovation of the Docklands. If a building has to be one thing or the other, would you rather an Italian restaurant with a slightly experimental menu or a mouldering warehouse that's no good to anyone except rats? Not a hard choice to make.

Occasional recipes: Marilyn Monroe's Chicken Cacciatore

I have no idea if this really is Marilyn Monroe's recipe (or variation hereon), but why would iON Oxford Tube, the Oxford Tube's inflight magazine, lie to me? Anyway, this comes from page 21 of issue 3, apparently winter 2009, though I'd have said in March 2009 that's impossible and winter 2008 was probably what they meant.

Anyhoo. They say/ [I say]:

• 4 chicken quarters [or 2 drumsticks each]
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• crashed black pepper and salt
• 1 yellow pepper, sliced
• 1 small chopped onion
• 2 cloves chopped garlic [um, 5, I think it was]
• 1 glass dry white wine. [A glass? Just what the heck is a glass in official terms of measurement? I dunno, so I gave it exactly one wine glass full and it seemed to work.]
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 cup chicken stock. [Cup? See remark about glasses of white wine. Best Beloved suggested about half a pint and again it seemed to work.]
• 1/2 tsp crumbled oregano [omitted in favour of lemon thyme, that being what we had to hand]
• 2 bay leaves [simply omitted]
• 1 cup finely chopped mushrooms [here we go again ... I just went with my judgement of what looked like a good quantity]
• 1 can peeled tomatoes, juice reserved [whatever that means. I put the whole lot in and, you guessed it, it seemed to work]
• 2 tbsp fresh, torn basil leaves [see bay leaves above]
• 1 tbsp slivered black olives [I don't think I've ever had a slivered olive in my life. Black olives! Whole! Lots of them!]
  
• 3 anchovy fillets [a tin from Tesco has more than 3 and did fine]
• freshly grated parmesan [so much nicer than the pre-ground type you get in sprinkler cans which smells of sick]

Season the chicken with blackpepper and salt. Heat olive oil unilt a haze forms over it, then saute the chicken until skin goes golden brown. Transfer onto a plate.

[I know from experience that this will just fill the kitchen with chickeny olive oily smoke. Instead I roast the chicken pieces for 30 mins at gas mark 5. Meanwhile ...]

Saute the yellow pepper, add onion and garlic and cook for 8-10 minutes [more like 5]. Add the vinegar to deglaze the pan, then add the white wine and boil until the jucie is reduced to about 1/4 glass. Add black pepper, pour in chicken stock, turn down to low, add tomatoes and half their juice [or, as I say, the whole lot], oregano, bay leaf, half the basil [if you're having any of this] and the mushrooms.

Return the chicken to the pan, cover, reduce heat and simmer for 30 mins. Transfer the chicken onto a plate.

To the sauce add the black olives, remaining basil and anchovies. Stir and cook for two minutes. Spoon over the chicken and sprinkle with parmesan. Serve with buttered spaghetti.

[Now, at this point I want to know why I have never heard of buttered spaghetti before. Where has it been all my life? Just think of it. Roll the words around on your tongue. Buttered ... spaghetti. It's spaghetti, and it's buttered. Got that? Buttered spaghetti. I have just done you a greater favour than you can possibly imagine.]

And, wow. If Norma Jean was in the habit of cooking that little lot up then she wasn't half as dumb as she appeared. It's rich, make no mistake, but with a range of flavours jostling for attention and each one pointing out to you what an utterly fabulous meal this is. Go to it, people.

And remember, buttered spaghetti.

To your scattered quizzes go

I am: Philip José Farmer This prolific author brings surprising depths to he-man adventure tales, and broke science fiction's prudery barrier.

Which science fiction writer are you?

There are worse things than to be the creator of Riverworld, though I'm not aware myself of having broken any prudery barriers. Having got this result I redid the quiz trying to make myself as obnoxiously right wing and then as utterly loveable as possible. The former, surprise surprise, got Robert Heinlein, the latter James Tiptree Jr. So, should anyone else be tempted to try this, those are the ends of the spectrum you'll find yourself somewhere on.

Bonanza with bubbles

- is my manager's unkind assessment of the titles to Barrier Reef.

Reader, I cannot speak highly enough of this show. It captured my imagination in the early 70s and still has it to this day. It was an Australian series about a marine science unit based on an old sailing ship that had been significantly upgraded into a high-tech floating laboratory. It must have been pretty high-budget for a kids' show. The extensive underwater scenes really were shot underwater, and the two jet boats that come thundering towards the viewer in the opening bars of the title sequence really are thundering towards the viewer. Most of it was shot on location - the scenes on board ship, even below decks, were shot on board ship. The title music is just as stirring as the Thunderbirds march and I've been able to hum it ever since.

I enjoy, or at least am interested in, old ships, computers, scuba diving, science and the sea. I can probably trace all those back to this show.

Barrier Reef was produced by the same company that made Skippy. It seems grossly unfair that that stupid wallaby gets the lasting fame and Barrier Reef has faded beyond even the reach of DVD re-releases. How hard would it be? I'll do without the usual cast interviews, value added features and easter eggs. Just stick the eps on disk and I'll watch them end to end. And pay for it. Who could ask more?

Two things I learn as an adult watching the closing titles that evaded me as a child. Three things. Among the things I learn are: (1) without the music it would be pretty dull. (2) I bet that boat's under power. (3) There's a key change I'd forgotten. For the opening titles, Bonusbarn comments that that's the most useless submarine he's ever seen.

Smugness lost and regained

Lost: Just as I was looking forward to another session of doing immeasurable good for very little personal loss, the National Blood Service tell me I can't give blood platelets and be a blood donor. It's one register or the other. I'm sure that's the first time they've mentioned it, and since they signed me up for the platelets at a donor session you'd think they could have worked it out. But no. When I phoned today to postpone tomorrow's session, and mentioned I'm giving blood next week, the lady reacted as if I'd said I wanted to come round and have her on the spot. One of them had to go, and as giving platelets requires a trip into the JR and blood requires popping round the corner from the office, it wasn't a hard choice to make.

Regained: Firefox crashed on me (irritating) immediately followed by the automatic Apple Crash Reporter (quite amusing). Even more amusing, the latter caused a window to pop up asking if I wanted to relaunch Crash Reporter. I did, and it told me you can't run Crash Reporter directly, you have to wait for something to crash first. "Quis reportiet ipsos reporter?" I thought to myself with bilingual classically inclined cleverness, and resolved to spend the rest of the day pointing out the badly designed native Mac software to anyone who'll listen, and a few who won't.

How do you turn a bird into a soul singer?

You microwave it until its bill withers, arf. I thought of labelling this post "Not your average white band" but the Bill Withers joke beat it by a margin.

The magic of photography manages to make this look like a smoke filled jazz lair rather than the eminently respectable and entirely smoke-free Charles Maude Room of Abingdon School. Though the rows of politely attentive audience might also be a clue. This represents, though I say it myself, a really quite good recovery job via Photoshop on a picture taken in a dim room by my phone on Saturday night.


Young Michael S, second band member from the left and playing bass, is a pupil at said school and has a close relative suffering from Addison's Disease. And so, completely off his own bat, he arranged an evening of jazz and funk at the school to raise money for the relevant charity. He was ably assisted by a friend from church on keyboard, a friend of the friend from church on drums, and teachers on trumpet, sax and guitar. The sax teacher has apparently played with Manfred Mann, though whether that is the original group, the Earth Band or the individual I do not know.

And flipping good it was too: two hours of tunes by people I know or know of (Hoagy Carmichael, Gershwin, the Average White Band, Mr Withers) and people I don't. A great time had by all and, I hope, lots of money raised. If Mike can keep going like that non-stop for a two hour gig, despite being the youngest in the band by a good 10 years, then great things lie in store for him. He was at primary school with Bonusbarn. I'm posting this now to register the fact, when he's famous, that we knew him first ...

A tale of fire and water

Recently finished, and hugely enjoyed, Pompeii by Robert Harris.

In a book set in Roman times, about Pompeii, you think you have a shrewd idea what's going to happen. So it came as a pleasant surprise to find most of the novel is in fact about water. Marcus Attilius is engineer in charge of the aqueduct that feeds water to most of the Bay of Naples region. The water supply unaccountably fails one hot day in August 79AD and he has to find out why.

The reader already has a pretty shrewd idea why, and it's no great surprise that, yes, the aqueduct has been blocked by earthquake activity near the base of Vesuvius. It's easily dealt with. But in the process of his enquiries Attilius stumbles across intrigue, fraud and skullduggery that would make quite a decent novel on its own.

Yes, the reader is thinking, all very good but sooner or later that volcano's gonna blow and press the reset button. Which it does, but in a way that still manages to continue the story so far quite logically. Each chapter starts with a paragraph or two from a modern text on volcanology, so we the readers understand what's happening even if the Romans don't, and it's all quite seamless. One of Attilius's niggles is what happened to his predecessor, who looms over the novel without ever actually appearing alive. Turns out the guy was a native of Siciliy, from near Etna, and was about the only person in the whole of Campania with an idea of what was about to happen.

And when the volcano does blow, it's terrifying. You see how the Romans must have felt. First, they had no idea Vesuvius was a volcano at all (the Greek historian Strabo, who had obviously been up there, described the top as a flat plain - no crater like today. You could stand up there with no idea the mountain was hollow). When it blew, around midday, the clouds of ash blotted out the sun and brought a premature night to the land. When the final pyroclastic flows came, burying Herculaneum and Pompeii completely, that really was at night so it would have been twice as dark as before, with visibility through the ash just a few feet. All they would have seen were the faint glows of light tumbling down the sides of the mountain. The first couple of these, from the point of view of the Pompeiians, go from right to left, east to west, and take out Herculaneum. The next just seem to get bigger and bigger, coming right at the town ...

You're on the edge of your seat, I tell you. And what makes this vision of volcanic hell doubly powerful is that Harris has been so good at describing the contrasts. The pre-eruption paradise of hot sun, vineyards, crystal clear water from the aqueduct, and the well-ordered civilisation of the empire that collapses into local chaos.

Another point that struck me - and amused me - was that Attilius reports direct to a guy in Rome who reports direct to the Emperor. A couple of times he is able to play on this fact and bypass all local politics, vested interests etc. The aqueduct itself, the mighty Aqua Augusta, was built by direct order of Augustus. That well known bunch of commies the ancient Romans had absolutely no problem with the idea that a vital resource like water operates under centralised state control. Privatise it? Don't be ridiculous! They would have laughed.

Okay, we don't have slaves or gladiators and we know a thing or two about volcanoes now. But it's just possible we may have lost something too ...

Lost soles

They look like something on the seabed picked out by the lights of a submersible, but these shoes have a story. I suppose any shoes you've owned for at least six years would accumulate experience but I like to think these ones are special.

I forget if I acquired them specifically for my first ever trip to the USA in 2002 but I know I was wearing them at the time. So, these shoes have traversed the North American continent. They have felt the waves of the Pacific slap the boards beneath them as they stood on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. They have trod the baking hot dirt of the Cahokia Mounds in Illinois. They have been up the Empire State Building and the Washington Monument, they have walked the length of the National Mall and they have stood in reverent silence before the giant statue of Abraham Lincoln in his Memorial.

They only survived this long by taking a cunning sideways step a few years ago into being my indoor shoes. They have a strange fleecy lining that stops them getting too warm in hot weather but keeps them nicely warm when it's cold. Even so they really were getting past it and made the fundamental mistake of becoming uncomfortable to wear, due to the split soles on either side. Overconfidence, perhaps? So they have, with all due respect and ceremony, been consigned to the kitchen bin. I will probably never see them again. If I do, I'll know something has gone badly wrong, probably in the kitchen.

I don't know if it's meaningful to tell a new pair of shoes that they must fill a big pair of, um, shoes, but that's what I'd tell their replacements if I could and it was.

Who, me?

"I am pleased to inform you that today, March 4, 2008 Emerald Who's Who for Executives and Professionals has selected you as potential candidate into our organization to represent Didcot, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. Your professional experience with Great Big Network Ltd as Technical Editor has been recognized and has qualified you to possibly be included. Emerald Who's Who is the authority for professional networking and recognition in virtually every industry across the globe."

My colleague N asks why I get emails like this when he just gets spammed by Vistaprint. I tell him a man is known by the company he keeps. I'm awed that my experience has been recognised by such an august body, even if they plainly assume my five years of service have also stripped me of all critical discernment. Thankfully, I still retain the ability to recognise at least three grammatical errors in the above - and also to spot that they spell the name of Great Big Network Ltd wrong.

Let's not go anywhere near the idea that I might want to represent Didcot. At anything.

But let's not be sourpusses either. There is no charge for inclusion and they kindly send me the link by which I can enter my own details. So, to be selected into Emerald Who's Who to represent wherever you live, just go to http://www.ewwep.com/signup.asp?ID=SXEUR.80.120.030409

A necessary correction

I've met a few reasonably well known and/or important people in my time. Most of them are of an authorial persuasion. I have been recognised by Philip Pullman and I've sat opposite Terry Pratchett at dinner. Of a non-authorial nature, the great and the good of Northern Ireland used to pass through our dinner parties with monotonous regularity. One I particularly remember included the Northern Ireland Minister and the Chief Constable of the RUC, whose jokes were judged so off colour by Mrs Minister that she threw a wobbly and demanded to be taken home (whereupon Chief Constable apologised profusely to my mother, who said that's okay and could he possibly finish the joke?).

But all this was as a clanging bell on Saturday when I got to meet Michael Green. Michael Green! One of the greatest Christian apologists of all time! (And no, that doesn't mean he keeps saying sorry for it.) I was reading his books when I was a kid. I can't remember anything about them, mind you, but I know they're there. They're like the hidden foundations of a mighty building. You don't need to know what they look like.

And I was bursting with pride, not because of meeting him, but because he came into the church, and he greeted my lovely wife by name, and she introduced him to me.

And then ...

He was leading a seminar on the general topic of "how to share your faith without sounding stupid or putting people off". Well, that might as well have been the title. Someone asks why you're a believer? He suggested a number of non-jargony, non-judgemental responses. One of which was to cite the fact (his word, not mine) the fact of intelligent design in creation.

Oh, Michael, what went wrong?

You could cite the fact of a widespread perception of intelligent design. That would present no problem. Others may disagree but you've got your talking point. And I must hasten to add he's of an entirely different intellectual order to the Sarah Palin brigade; I don't see him raising any controversy about whether or not to teach it alongside evolution in science classes.

But, fact? No. It was like he was ticking Richard Dawkins's boxes. "Something as complex as an eye ..." St Dawkins has shown, quite convincingly, in his epistles unto The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable, that actually something as complex as an eye can evolve. And to show that the Blessed Richard isn't just mouthing theory, St David of Attenborough the other day on TV actually showed examples of animals with light-sensing organs that are, we could say, eyes at different stages of evolution.

My position? Well, we're working our way through the final series of The West Wing on DVD. To quote Congressman Santos, "I believe in God and I believe he's intelligent". Later in the same episode he defines his position with a few well chosen words that wouldn't be news to any Christian at my church but which apparently takes the American media by storm:

"Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory. It's a religious belief and our constitution does not allow for the teaching of religion in our public schools.... Evolution is not perfect, It doesn't answer every question but it is based on scientific facts. Facts that can be predicted, tested and proven. Intelligent Design asks theological questions. I'm sure that many of us would agree that at the beginning of all that begetting something begun. What was that something?"

(quote half-inched from The West Wing wiki)

No, my faith isn't left in tattered shreds. The Blessed Richard is impeccable on biology but in areas outside his self-taught expertise, including the whole vast arena of theological discourse, he is so gloriously, wonderfully wrong that Mr Green still wins by several thousand points.

I just dock a few.