Green! But Not That Green

A little while ago I picked up some old magazines from one of the free bookshelves around town.  It was a pile of World Magazine, which looked quite interesting to flick through.

My eye was caught by the Guest Editorial in the June 1989 issue, with the title I've used for this post.

It's by Professor Chris Baines, who I was unfamiliar with, but he's actually a well-known environmentalist who has been on TV, being one of the first presenters of Countryfile among other things.  

The article begins:

"With holes in the ozone layer, dead seals in the North Sea, and Austria-sized lumps of tropical rain forests disappearing every year, what can we as individuals do to help the Earth get better?

....Time is running out.  Every step each of us takes is valuable, but the urgent need now is for giant leaps forward.  These are dependent on industry and government, but it's you and I who must make them happen."

This was written nearly 30 years ago, and it was clear then that time was running out and that there was an urgent need for action.

The article could have been written yesterday, because nothing has changed.

He talks about needing more investment in public transport, and using cars less - we're still talking about that.

He talks about recycling and stopping industry from polluting our rivers - and just look at the River Wye now, full of phosphates and green slime.

He talks about insulating our homes, and there's a group now which has been stopping traffic on the M25 to campaign for the same thing.

He talks about the use of pesticides in farming....

And he says that the government initiatives that were happening in 1989 were as useful as re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.  Since then we've seen the National Rivers Authority and Environment Agency underfunded, and a vote in the House of Commons just a few days ago to permit sewage to be pumped into our rivers and along our coasts.

Thirty years, and not only are we no further forward, but the situation nationally and globally is far worse.

 Like many people who want to go on living on a habitable planet, I have been watching COP26 with interest, but without much hope that things will change in the way that they need to.

As Greta Thunberg said: "Blah-blah-blah".

Quite honestly, I don't expect to see anything meaningful come out of COP26.  I don't expect governments or the fossil fuel industry to change their behaviour, no matter what David Attenborough says, and no matter what the scientific evidence is.

People like Professor Chris Baines have spent their professional lives encouraging wildlife gardens, advising on environmentally friendly housing and sustainable water management and all the rest of it, but it doesn't seem to make a dent in what needs to be done - and the people who could take action don't seem to be interested.

I don't know what the answer is - I'm going to carry on doing what I can as an individual.  I just wish I knew how to change the minds of the people in power.  It was urgent 30 years ago.  It's even more urgent now.

A Lancashire Grace

 The Oldham Tinkers have a new album out!

It's their first for 42 years!

Andy Kershaw wrote the sleeve notes for the album.

I bought it because I like their version of a song about Peterloo (which does not appear on this album), and I'd heard a snippet of the first song on the album, Alphin, a gentle song about a hill near Manchester.

I was pleased to find that the album also includes Remember Annie Kenney.  She was a working class Suffragette leader from Saddleworth, close to Oldham, and there is a statue of her in Oldham centre.

Another song, Ten Oldham Men (No Pasaran) commemorates the ten men from Oldham who volunteered for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and Peace Be Upon You (As-salamu Alaykum) celebrates the multi-ethnic background of the Oldham community.  Other songs are settings of dialect poems by Cliff Gerard, Harvey Kershaw and Edwin Waugh, and the album finishes with It's a Long Way to Tipperary.

The artwork on the album, sort of Cubist? in light blue, is by Peter Stanaway.

It's a lovely album, and I hope they don't wait another 42 years to do another one.

Farewell to Una Stubbs

 She was Mrs Hudson in Sherlock, Aunt Sally in Worzel Gummidge, Alf Garnett's daughter in Till Death Us Do Part, and Cliff Richard's girlfriend in Summer Holiday.  She danced with Lionel Blair's ensemble in the 1960s, and I remember her appearing on Cliff Richard's TV show in the 1970s.  She was also the team captain opposite Lionel Blair in the game show Give Us a Clue.  I've even heard her in a Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama, The Horror of Glam Rock, alongside the 8th Doctor Paul McGann and his audio companion Lucie Miller!

Here she is in Summer Holiday.

That's a long and varied career, including several well loved characters, so I was sorry to hear today that Una Stubbs has died, aged 84.

Goodbye to Craig Sterling

 On the one hand, there has been some very good news today, with the announcement of a second season of Good Omens by Neil Gaiman.

On the other hand, Stuart Damon has died.  He was, of course, one of The Champions. 

Here they are in the title sequence, supposedly in Geneva where Nemesis headquarters was (it was actually an office block in a place called Whetstone, in the UK).  He did some of his best acting in the episode The Interrogation, where Craig is questioned because his special powers have made him too successful as a secret agent.

Hanging around Euston

Here's Matthew Flinders and his cat Trim, outside Euston Station.  He was the first person to map the coast of Australia (which is what he's doing here). 

Looking up the statue, I found that it's quite recent - it was unveiled at Australia House in 1914, by Prince William, later moved inside the concourse of Euston Station, and now it's here in the open air.

I was quite pleased not to see the big silver blocky thing that I used to pass in previous years when using the station (apparently it's called Piscator, by Eduardo Paolozzi), but it may have been behind the scaffolding from some construction work that's going on near the taxi rank.

In the background is the takeaway place where the Young Man bought sushi for lunch.  I tend not to eat  much when I'm travelling, and the breakfast we'd had at the Wimpy bar was quite enough for me, so the Young Man said he felt he could eat sushi in front of me without feeling guilty!  I'm not a sushi fan.

I was quite happy to head for the Euston Tap as soon as it opened, to have a farewell drink, though - a light golden ale called Trinity from Redemption Brewery in Tottenham.

Damaris Hayman, the White Witch of Devil's End

 I was sorry to see the obituary of Damaris Hayman, who has died at the age of 91, in the Guardian today.  It was written by Toby Hadoke, so mentioned her appearance as Miss Hawthorne, the white witch of Devil's End in The Daemons, one of the most fun Doctor Who stories from the Jon Pertwee era:

In later years, she also starred in a series of short stories on DVD about the character, collected as The Daemons of Devil's End.

There was a lot more to her career than that, of course - from British films of the 1950s right through to TV comedy in the 1980s.  Here she is looking glamorous with Les Dawson:

Sunday Pub Lunch

 I don't really remember when I last went out for a pub lunch!

This one was special because I was meeting all of my Young Man's family for the first time since before the lockdowns.  We went to The Star at Sidcup Place:

Looking at the brickwork, I think the central portion is the oldest part, and they claim to go back to the 1700s, with a previous manor house on the site, surrounded by grounds which are now a public park.

There's also a Community Walled Garden, which is absolutely beautiful, and run by volunteers:

The meal was very good, and plenty of it, and it was lovely to see the Young Man's family again.

Whovian Day

 Of course, this was the one day of my holiday when it rained all day!

The plan was to go into the city for the day, ending up at UNIT HQ in South Moulton Street for Doctor Who: Time Fracture, so I spent the day cosplaying the 13th Doctor.  (This was why I had my hair cut!).

It's fortunate that the coat is functional, and at least shower-proof, though I did get a bit damp.

We were going to start off at the Museum of London, but we couldn't get a time-slot early enough in the day so we moved straight on to a spending spree at Forbidden Planet.

I regret nothing.

We had lunch at Ippudo, which serves Japanese food.  I had the best noodle soup I had ever tasted, with some good green tea.  I would definitely go back again.

Then, despite the rain, we wandered round Soho for a bit, looking for the locations of AZ Fell & Co., Aziraphale's bookshop from Good Omens.  My Young Man also pointed out the place where the exhibition had taken place when the series first came out.  He went to it, and took a lot of photos of the costumes, and the Bentley parked outside.

I've written some fan fiction on AO3 in which Crowley wakes up in Aziraphale's bookshop, recovering from being drugged, which includes memory loss - so he escapes from this weird angel who he thinks has captured him, and gets as far as the hut in Soho Square Gardens before he passes out.  So I had to go and see the hut:

The story is called Confused Serpent, and I'm Eigon on AO3.

We were booked into Mr Foggs' Society of Exploration in the afternoon, for cocktails.  As part of the track and trace system, we had our temperatures taken at the door, the first time I've had that done in the pandemic.

Downstairs, the bar was warm and cosy - we were seated in the 'railway carriage' at one end.  With some advice from the waiter, the Young Man chose a Guano Point, described in the menu as "short, warming and rich" and made with 12 year old Dewar's whisky.  I chose the Spicy Rupee, described as "spicy, aromatic, exotic" and made with vodka and elderflower.  Both of them were absolutely delicious, and well worth the rather high prices.  We rather liked the music there, too - quite mellow swing.

We hadn't quite managed to leave enough time for another meal, so we got a sandwich to eat on the go again, but arrived at UNIT HQ early enough to have a lemonade in The Lucky Bar just round the corner.  Each table had a D10 in a tray, and if you rolled a 7 you didn't have to pay for your drinks!

Then we headed into Time Fracture, ready to save the Universe!

It wasn't quite as easy as it had been in The War of the Worlds to maintain social distancing - this wasn't one linear story we were following.  We all started and finished in the same place, but between that there was a lot of mixing of groups as different people followed alternative paths through the storyline.

We started in the UNIT lab, and I even got to type on one of the consoles as we tried to work out why strange things were happening all round the world.

Then we went through the Time Fracture itself, to the Court of Queen Elizabeth I, and an alien market place, an intergalactic space liner (with two very good alien cabaret singers) which was diverted to Gallifrey, and finally to Gallifrey itself, where we became part of the Prydonian Chapter!

At one point the actors leading us from place to place made very sure that no-one would be badly affected by strobe lighting before we headed into a dark tunnel full of shop dummies.

We met Davros!  And the Young Man had to negotiate with him for assistance!

There was a Sister, and a Brother, of Karn, and an alien auction, and a Kerblam stall.  We were told to look for Brian the Ood, who we saw in the distance but never got to meet.  We ran down corridors.  There were Cybermen and Daleks and Weeping Angels and an early version of Torchwood - and at the end of it all, we saved the Universe!  (and we got a Tshirt and a poster!).

It was all a huge amount of fun!

The Aldgate Pump

 On the way home from War of the Worlds, we came across the Aldgate Pump at the end of Leadenhall Street:

I got terribly excited, because I mistook it for another famous pump.

This one had been in use as a water source since at least the time of King John, and was the source of what came to be known as the Aldgate Pump Epidemic - the water supply passed through several cemeteries in Victorian times, and picked up all manner of nasty things to poison the water.

I was mixing it up with the Broad Street pump in Soho, source of the cholera outbreak there in 1854, when local Doctor John Snow removed the pump handle to stop people from drinking the water and proved that cholera was spread through the water rather than by miasma, or bad air.

Next time I'm in Soho, I'll have to visit that pump.

"The Chances of Anything Coming from Mars...."

 Groups going through the immersive experience of War of the Worlds gathered first in the bar at the entrance.  We were in the purple group, and were told to gather when the purple smoke billowed out of the Martian war machine that loomed over the bar.  

The organisers, Layered Reality, were very careful about Covid prevention.  Everyone in the group was masked (the actors were not masked), and the first actor to introduce us to the proceedings handed out eye masks so our skin did not directly touch the virtual reality goggles we had to put on at various stages in the proceedings.

Participants in the show have to have a certain level of fitness - there was a very tightly curved spiral staircase at one point, and a slide.  The various rooms we were led to were on two levels, and there was also a rope and wooden slat bridge at one point.

Also, we were led by a soldier to a house where we could take cover from the Martian war machines, and had to climb through a window.  As I hitched up my long skirts, I said: "I hope you're not looking at my ankles!"

I think my favourite part was as we escaped by boat, starting on a canal bordered by autumn trees, which led to the Thames with war machines looming on either side, and then out to the North Sea for the Thunderchild episode, all the time with Jeff Wayne's soundtrack in our ears.  I was singing along quite loudly.

After that, we were taken to a survivors' reception centre which was also the interval bar, where we could catch our breaths and drink our Red Weed cocktails (previously paid for) before we went on to further perils.

The visuals for the city underground were dizzying - we were sitting down and looking up to where it was all projected onto a domed ceiling at that point.

There's a photo opportunity at the end, and then we staggered out back to the bar, to applause from everyone who was there because we had survived!

And then there was the gift shop, and a quiet drink before we headed home (Trumans IPA).

It was all great fun, in the way that mild peril can be, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

On the Way to the War of the Worlds

 

Here I am outside the War of the Worlds Immersive Experience in Leadenhall Street, in vaguely Victorian dress to look the part of someone fleeing from the Martian war machines.

It had been a quite fraught journey to get to this point.

We left in plenty of time to get something to eat before the show, but disaster struck as I got onto the train at Woolwich Arsenal.  I have a little blood blister next to my nose, and it had chosen that moment to start bleeding.  It was still bleeding by the time we got to London Bridge, where my Young Man found the first aider on duty.  He was lovely.  He got me a chair, and then took me to the first aid post and gave me sterilised swabs to mop up the blood.  The only thing I could do was to sit there quietly until the blood stopped flowing, keeping pressure on it all the time.  It turned out that the first aider had gone to school in Cardiff, and we had quite a pleasant chat with him.

When I stopped bleeding, he pointed us in the direction of the station's Boots to get some ointment to put on.

Boots was useless.  No Germoline, or Savlon, or even Vaseline, or any other sort of ointment to put on cuts.  It was self-service, so there was no member of staff behind a counter (there was no counter!) but there was a member of staff sort of lurking around the place, who suggested we try teething gel.  

We did not try teething gel.

The Young Man decided to try WH Smiths on the off-chance they had something, and we found a little tin of Vaseline there.

By this time there was no time to get a meal, so we ate sandwiches outside the station, and took a taxi to Leadenhall Street - where we had a few minutes before we were due to go in to look around.

Across the road is St Katherine Cree church.  According to Wikipedia, it was first built in 1280, but was rebuilt in 1628, making it the only Jacobean church in London.  It is now a Guild church rather than a parish church.

Round the corner, we found that we were very close to the Gherkin:

and on the corner of a nearby building was an interesting plaque:

This was the corner of Holland House, also nearby:

Adventures in London

 I've written on my other blog about my problems with the buses from Hay at the beginning of my holiday.  I missed my train by a whisker so I went to the ticket office to ask what I should do.

"Do you still want to travel?" he asked.

Here I am, standing with my suitcase: "Well, yeah!  I've got someone meeting me at Euston!"

"So, do you want the quickest route or the cheapest?"

I went for the quickest, which got me into Euston an hour later than I was expected.  It's at times like these that I think it might possibly be useful to have a mobile phone - I had no way to tell my Young Man that I was running late.

It didn't help that the station cafe is closed for the duration, and I took one look at the vending machine and decided I did not have the mental energy to work out how to make it give me a bottle of water.

I had enough time between trains at Birmingham New Street to grab a coffee and find a quiet corner where I could take off my mask to drink it and eat the sandwich I'd brought with me.

I saw the Young Man almost as soon as I stepped off the platform at Euston - he'd had a station announcement put out, thinking he'd missed me and I'd gone wandering off into London and he'd never find me again!

He was going to take me to Cafe Rouge for lunch, which would probably have been nice if they were open.  By this time I was really quite hungry, and thirsty - the only way to access the buffet service on the train was by an app, which in my case I had not got.

Next door to Cafe Rouge is Nando's.  "Chicken?" he asked.

By this time I would have eaten greasy cardboard.  Chicken sounded fine.

To get into Nando's the Young Man had to point his phone at the track and trace symbol, and order by app.  He couldn't work out how to do that, so eventually we managed to get a paper menu, and a girl came to the table to take our order.  "The pitta's got coleslaw in it," she said.

I hate coleslaw.  I didn't care.  I'd eat it.

"What is there to drink?" we asked.

They had no tea, or coffee.  Juice was only for babies.

"Look, I just need something liquid!  What have you got?"

"Coke?"

"That'll do!"

I hate coke.  The last time I bought coke I used it as a drain cleaner, which in my opinion is all it is fit for.  I didn't care.  I drank it.

So, that meal was simultaneously the worst I've ever had, and exactly what I needed at that precise moment.  I will never willingly set foot in a Nando's again.

When we left, I was at least feeling a bit more human, so we went round to the Euston Tap for a half of Oyster Stout to take the taste away before we headed back to the Young Man's flat.  The beer was delicious.

The Four Feathers 1939

 This is by far the superior version!

It's far clearer on the reasons why Harry resigned his commission, for a start.  The characters have proper conversations about it, and they include the scenes from the book of young Harry listening with horror to the old soldiers talking about battles, and then going to look at the portraits of his military ancestors which are all over the house.  Harry in the 2002 version, to me, wasn't convincing in his reasons at all.  

Also, Harry's father in the 1939 film dies before he resigns his commission - I had wondered how Harry had been able to afford to get to Egypt in the 2002 film, since he'd lost his officer's pay and presumably his father had cut him off without a penny.  In the 1939 film, he'd inherited his father's property, so had funds available.

The 1939 film also gives a good reason for Harry managing to disguise himself as an Arab without learning Arabic - he's supposed to be from a tribe who have had their tongues cut out!  Harry has a clearer plan of action too, though the character of Abou Fatma is absent, so he has no help to carry it out.

Ralph Richardson is very good as the officer blinded by sunstroke, and the 1939 film actually shows Harry getting him from the desert back to the British fort on the Nile, rather than jumping straight back to England. 

The battle scenes are epic in scale.  They were even filmed at the original locations of the battles, in the Sudan.  Apparently there were extras there who actually remembered the battles.  The 2002 battle scenes, especially involving the British soldiers forming a square, were also very good, though the film has been criticised for dressing the British soldiers in scarlet jackets, when they were actually wearing khaki at the time.  The 1939 film gets the uniforms right.   

The 1939 film was set ten years after the 2002 film - the Royal Cumbrians were sent to the aid of General Gordon in 1885, while the Royal Surreys were sent to be part of Kitchener's army in 1895, which meant that the escape from the prison at Omdurman was timed to coincide with the battle of Omdurman.

It was strange to see John Laurie playing the Khalifa, though.  I don't think a modern film would have cast a Scottish actor in the role.

It's also quite strange to think that British forces, and their allies, were fighting the Italians over the same terrain just a year or so after the 1939 film was made.

The Four Feathers 2002

 I've been looking for films featuring Michael Sheen recently - not his famous roles; I'm not really interested in him playing Tony Blair or the chap from Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  I was intrigued by The Four Feathers, though, in which he plays Trench, one of the friends who presents the hero with a white feather when he resigns his commission on the eve of war in the Sudan.  The hero, Harry Feversham, was played by Heath Ledger.

It wasn't a very good film.  I read the book years ago, and saw the 1939 film (which at least made more sense).  The events of the 2002 film are crammed into a rather shorter time frame than the book, where Harry had plenty of time knocking around the Sudan to learn Arabic and behave as a convincing Arab.  Here, he was lucky to meet up with Abou Fatma before he got himself killed, and he didn't have time to learn much Arabic.  I'm not sure why Abou Fatma put up with him.

There are some odd jumps in the narrative, too - moving straight from Harry rescuing his friend Jack (whose gun has blown up in his face) to Jack back in England, adjusting to his blindness - and Harry's meeting with Willoughby is done in flashback.

Meanwhile, Michael Sheen is the most cheerful of the friends to begin with, until he descends into despair in the prison at Omdurman from which he is rescued by Harry and Abou Fatma.  He spends quite a while slung over a camel's saddle or being carried across the sand dunes.

I'm sure Shekhar Kapur, the director, wanted to say something profound about colonialism with the film, but I'm not sure what it was.  Still, the actors did their best with the script they were given.

Plant a Tree in '73

 I listen to Radio Hereford and Worcester in the mornings, and this morning they were getting terribly excited about a tree planting campaign.

We've been here before.

In 1973, I was Form Captain of my class at secondary school, and the most important thing I did as Form Captain was to Plant a Tree in '73.  Every Form Captain went out to the ground around one of the gyms, and we all planted a sapling there.  We thought that we were helping to save the planet.

Those trees are not there any more.  The school is not there any more.  So really the campaign didn't do a lot of good.

I hope this campaign does better, but I'm sceptical.

Trigger-Happy Cops in Prodigal Son

 I've just started watching Prodigal Son, mostly because Michael Sheen is in it as the serial killer dad, but I'm quickly warming to the other members of the cast as well.

There's one thing that really jumped out at me in the first few episodes, though, and it's how the members of the NYPD portrayed here are so quick to pull out their guns.

Now, this is a series that is approving of cops - they are solving some grisly murders, after all, so they're obviously the good guys.  But in so many situations their first response is to point a gun at someone, while someone else yells "NO!  Don't shoot!"  For instance, Malcolm Bright falls asleep in an office in the precinct, has a nightmare and starts running.  Despite the fact that he's in an area of the precinct that he's obviously authorised to be in, and that he's also obviously unarmed, half a dozen officers immediately point guns at him, and it's left to the woman on the team to wake him up, bring him back to reality, and save him from the very real risk of being killed.

In another episode, the murderer has been dosing victims with LSD before killing them - the officers know this, but still their first response, not the last response, is to point a gun at the victim who is obviously tripping.

I'm sure that this portrayal of the police is reasonably recent - I'd have to go back to watch a few episodes of Kojak or something similar to be sure, but I'm pretty sure Kojak was more often seen with a lollipop than a gun in his hand, even though there was a lot of violence in the show.

I've also been thinking about the recent protests in the US with the slogan Abolish the Police.  If Prodigal Son is a favourable depiction of police officers in action, and they are shown to be so trigger-happy, I can't say I'm surprised that there is a protest movement against that style of policing.

Goodbye Manolito

 I just heard that Henry Darrow has died, aged 87 - and it's only now, looking at his Wikipedia entry, that I discovered that his ancestry was Puerto Rican.

He was a familiar face on TV when I was younger, often playing Latino or Native American characters - there was a TV movie called Brock's Last Case where Richard Widmark retired from being a police detective and started running an orange grove in California, for instance, assisted by Henry Darrow's character (who I think was accused of murder, bringing Richard Widmark out of retirement to clear his name).   He also appeared briefly in The Invisible Man (starring David McCallum), and a host of other popular series of the 1970s.

He appeared in Star Trek TNG as a Starfleet Admiral whose body had been taken over by maggot eating aliens, and also as Chakotay's dad in Voyager.

But I liked him best as Manolito Montoya in the High Chapparal.  I always did like the roguish bad boys with a heart of gold.

Happy St Patrick's Day

 

Here's a picture of the River Liffey in Dublin, which I took while I was at Dublin WorldCon in 2019.

Sharon Penman has Died

 Another sad loss - Sharon Penman had been ill for some time, but her death was still an unpleasant surprise.  She had recently been diagnosed with a rare cancer.  She was 75.

She was one of my favourite historical novelists, and one of the few who wrote about Welsh medieval history.  Both Sharon Penman and Edith Pargeter wrote about Prince Llewelyn, the last independent Prince of Wales.  Edith Pargeter wrote four books under the umbrella title Brothers of Gwynedd, and Sharon Penman wrote the magnificent trilogy which begins with the life of Llewelyn the Great, the Last Llewelyn's grandfather: Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning.  Falls the Shadow brings in Simon de Montfort as the main character, as his daughter Ellen eventually married Llewelyn (no thanks to Edward I, who I despise with a deep and abiding passion!). 

 I wept non-stop through the last 200 pages of The Reckoning, partly because I was so involved with the characters, and partly because I already knew the history, so I knew what was going to happen to them.  When I was an archaeologist, I did the site tours of Caergwrle Castle in North Wales, which is where Dafydd, Llewelyn's younger brother, launched his attack on nearby Hawardan Castle (which was held by the English), thus starting a war with England which Edward I very decisively finished.

Sharon didn't only write about Welsh history, though.  Her first book was The Sunne in Splendour, about Richard III, and it is magnificent.  It was also completely re-written after the original manuscript was stolen, while she was still working as a tax lawyer.

She's also written about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Anarchy under King Stephen, and Richard I.  Her most recent book was The Land Beyond the Sea, about King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and the war against Saladin - the same period that was covered in the film Kingdom of Heaven, but with a more historically accurate Balian d'Ibelin.

For lighter medieval fare, there are the lovely Queen's Man books, shorter medieval mysteries about a young man who works for Queen Eleanor.  I'm very fond of Justin de Quincy (and his dog Shadow).

"We are all Star Stuff" Delenn Goes Home

 

Mira Furlan, who played  Minbari Ambassador Delenn in Babylon 5, has just died at the age of 65.

She had only been in the US for two years when she got the part of Delenn, having emigrated from the former Yugoslavia with her husband.  She was born in Croatia, and her husband Goran, who survives her, was Serbian.  They have a son called Marko.  

War had broken out in Yugoslavia when they left.  Mira had been part of a travelling theatre company which crossed borders to perform despite receiving death threats from both sides of the civil war.  When asked about it she said: "What's the worst that could have happened?  Yes, they could have killed me.  So what?  Art should have no borders."

Her official Twitter account announced the news of her death with a quotation from Mira:

"I look at the stars.  It's a clear night and the Milky Way seems so near.  That's where I'll be going soon.  "We're all star stuff",  I suddenly remember Delenn's line from Joe's script.  

Not a bad prospect.  I am not afraid.

In the meantime, let me close my eyes and sense the beauty around me.  And take that breath under the dark sky full of stars.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.

That's all."

How I Got Started in Fan Fiction

There's an argument on Twitter at the moment which started when someone (I'm not linking to it) said rude things about fan fiction writers.

I'm proud to be a fan fiction writer - and I'm incredibly grateful for all the fan fiction writers on AO3.  Reading their stories helped keep me sane through 2020 (yes, even the ones which didn't meet professional standards - they were written with love, and the writers were doing their best).

So, I started writing fan fiction when I was 12.

I shared a bedroom with my sister, and I used to tell her bedtime stories until she fell asleep, which I made up myself.  Then I started writing the stories down.  I was reading my way through the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome at the time, so my stories were heavily based on them.  I was also a great fan of old pirate movies that were shown in the afternoons on weekend TV, and some of my plots were based on them.  In the process, I turned Nancy and Peggy Blackett into 18th century pirates and based them in Cornwall, with a ship called the Sea Witch.  I was also reading my dad's collection of Richard Bolitho novels, which gave me all the knowledge of sails and rigging I needed.  I can still tell the difference between a sloop, a barquentine and a ship of the line.

I didn't know it at the time, but what I was doing was writing Swallows and Amazons AU crossover fan fic, and I was having enormous fun.

None of these stories ever went further than a folder in my bedroom, where they were written out in felt tip pen.

I doubt if there are many Starship Excalibur zines still around from the early 1980s, but when I joined Star Trek fandom in my late teens, I wrote for them.  Looking back now, some of those stories were quite embarrassing - more enthusiasm than skill - but I got enough encouragement to keep doing it, and I kept improving.  My proudest moment was to write a Deep Space Nine story without ever having seen an episode of Deep Space Nine!  The new series had just started, and I knew some of the details, but I didn't have a TV at the time.  I wrote a story about Keiko O'Brien setting up her school and dealing with a problem Andorian pupil, and I seemed to get it right.

I spent many years not writing at all, for various reasons, but eventually I decided to make my best attempt at becoming a published writer, and started writing original fiction.  I got as far as getting a personalised rejection letter from an agent.  So I knew my writing was almost professional standard, but I also knew I wasn't going to get any better than I already was.  

I self-published the stories on Smashwords (see the side bar).

Then I went to Dublin WorldCon, where the AO3 website won a Hugo.  I'd heard of AO3 before that, but it seemed so huge that I kind of bounced off it.  This gave me the impetus to try again.

Last year, I wrote nearly 60,000 words of fan fiction.  Some of it was incredibly niche - I think I'm the only person to ever have written a fan fic for The Flashing Blade, which all of 6 people have read!  I've also written Lord Peter Wimsey fan fiction, in which Lord Peter became Lady Petra - working out how the plots would have changed if Lord Peter was a woman was fun.  (Bunter became Myrtle Bunter, too).  The first story I tried was about The Saint, since I was re-watching the old Roger Moore series and trying to make sense of his confusing and possibly contradictory back-story.

And I've written a lot of Good Omens fan fic, too.

So there we are - I'm proud of being a fan fic writer, and reader.  If it's comfort reading, well, I'm not the only person who needed comfort reading last year, and the process of creation has been very satisfying (I love doing research!).

I'm also very grateful that sites like AO3 exist, because I can remember the days when fan fiction writers could be sued - in fact, Anne McCaffrey once threatened to sue me, so that Star Trek/Pern crossover never saw the light of day!

The Feathered Serpent, Series 2

I had no memory of a second series of The Feathered Serpent even existing, despite loving the first season - I think I was probably in the middle of exams when it was on TV in 1978.  When I sent off for the DVD, though, both seasons were included and I finally got to see the end of the story.

At the end of the first season, the baddies are killed and the Princess seems to be about to marry the Toltec Prince Heumac, but it turns out that they have further problems to solve before they can get to the happy ending....

Nasca the Evil High Priest was far too good a character to kill off (played by Patrick Troughton with great relish), so he immediately gets resurrected, with the help of new baddy Xipec, Governor of the Gold Province.  He was far more fun than Nasca's accomplice in the first season (the rather boring Jaguar General) - silver-tongued, elegant, tall, with long black hair and lots of gold eye paint, and dressed in dark green and gold, a bit like a 1970s version of Loki.  He's also quite happy to torture young Tozo, Prince Heumac's servant, who does a very good job of showing how much he's suffering when he's tied up on the terrace baking in the hot sun.

Here he is with the mad witch Keelag who brings Nasca back to life - a good meaty female role, but not one that passes the Beschdel Test - she and Empress Chimalma never meet, and the only other female "speaking part" is a city woman who has been driven mad by poisoned water, who only screams.

Xipec was played by Granville Saxton, who has appeared more recently as a Death Eater in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and one of the Patricians in The Eagle (the film version of Rosemary Sutcliff's book Eagle of the Ninth).

I don't think I learned much about Aztec/Toltec civilisation from the series, but it was great fun to watch, and I don't think there's ever been anything else quite like it on British children's TV.

Fan Fiction, Fictional Archaeologists, and Libraries

 I love writing fan fiction.  The research for a story can lead me down the most interesting rabbit holes.

In this case, I read a Good Omens fan fic on AO3 called It's Not the Years, It's the Milage, by MovesLikeBucky.  The plot is basically the first Indiana Jones film, but with Aziraphale as Indy and Crowley as Marion, and I enjoyed it enormously.

But before Indiana Jones, there was Pimpernel Smith.

Leslie Howard played the first adventurous archaeologist - Professor Smith, who was in charge of a student dig in Germany just before the Second World War.  When he wasn't directing the students, he was smuggling intellectuals out of Germany before they were arrested by the Nazis.  The film was made in 1941, in black and white, and has a moment of terrible sexism where Professor Smith insults the women archaeology students to make them walk out of the lecture hall, so he can invite only the young men on the student dig with him.  Apart from that, though, it is wonderful fun, with the Nazis puzzled by the tune used to signal to the escaping intellectuals, and a very funny conversation about Shakespeare at an Embassy party.

It occurred to me that Aziraphale would work far better as vague academic Professor Smith than as action hero Indiana Jones - but I didn't want to do a straight swap of the characters.  Aziraphale could go undercover in Germany as an antiquarian bookseller much more easily.

And this is where the research comes in.  I work in a secondhand and antiquarian bookshop, and I had recently been cataloguing some books about Germany.  I noticed that many of them were published in Leipzig.  So Aziraphale could have a bookselling contact in Leipzig he could write to.  I discovered that Leipzig was, indeed, a centre for book publishing - and that there had been a terrible air raid in 1943 which destroyed the booksellers' quarter (the Graphisches Viertel), including the oldest music publishing house in the world, along with an estimated 50 million books.  The German National Library was badly hit.  1,800 people also died in the RAF raid.

That happened after the period I wanted to set my story, though.

I wanted Aziraphale to buy a collection of occult books, possibly from a castle somewhere.  Thuringia sounded like an interesting location, not too far from Leipzig, so I started to look at local castles - and hit solid gold!

The Duchess Anna Amalia Library is still housed in the Green Castle in Weimar.  In the 1930s it was known as the Ducal Library, and it had been a library since Duke Wilhelm Ernst started it in 1691.  Duchess Anna Amalia moved it to its present location in 1761.  It houses important collections of Shakespeare and Goethe, and a 16th century bible connected to Martin Luther.

Aziraphale would be in Paradise!

Even better, it looks like this:

It even has a book tower that reminded me of Aziraphale's shop:

There was a serious fire there in 2004, but it has been wonderfully restored, as the pictures show.

And now I want to visit Weimar....

Happy New Year

 

On Discworld, this year has been declared the Year of the Beleaguered Badger - but I could only find a picture in Spanish.

Happy New Year!