Just saying it could even make it happen

So, Tuesday 30th September arrived, the day I would finally manage something I had wanted to do since 1985 - to see Kate Bush in concert. As a spotty teenager I had become enraptured with Kate, listening to her albums over and over on my Walkman, covering my wall in her posters and scouring the media for the smallest mention of her in a way which would put a modern-day teenage Directioner to shame. My love had perhaps lapsed a little in the last 20 years and I had not given the later albums the attention they deserved, and so I had tried to rectify this in the weeks leading up to the concert.

We had been lucky enough to get much-sought-after tickets by going for the penultimate show in the run, which I thought would be a less popular night than the opening few. I was terrified in the few days running up to the event that one of my usual minor ailments (broken tooth, blocked ears) was going to prevent me from getting there - and would have prevented my friend and fellow Kate fan Steve from going in too, as I had our tickets! But all was well in the end.

It was really one of the most extraordinary things I have seen on a stage. Anyone expecting a valedictory 'greatest hits' performance would have been disappointed - she didn't even do three of her half-dozen Top 10 songs. (Well, she didn't do 'Don't Give Up', either, but I wasn't expecting that.) But it wasn't about that, and so there was no disappointment in the Hammersmith Apollo - just a lot of love, awe and admiration. The focus of the evening was to be a dramatic, musical presentation of the two Kate albums which could be said to be almost narrative poems, two pieces of work twenty years apart: The Ninth Wave from the flipside of 1985's Hounds of Love, and A Sky of Honey, the second CD of 2005's double album Aerial. The first is an intense 7-song cycle depicting the hallucinatory experiences of a woman almost drowning in icy water after a shipwreck, while the second is a modern-day symphony expressing the changing moods of a single day in the countryside from dawn through to night-time and the next morning, and a reflection on the challenge of capturing this in any form of art.

The concert was divided into four distinct parts, opening with Kate coming on stage with band and singers for what looked like a conventional rock gig, drenched in blue light and with the guitars turned up, if not quite to 11, then certainly to a rockier level than one might have expected. Crowd-pleasing moments included a storming 'Hounds of Love' and 'Running Up That Hill', at which point a young man six rows in front of us leapt up and danced as if at a rave. We didn't begrudge him his fun, really, although he was almost exactly in front of us and we had to crane to either side to see Kate! (At various points throughout the night, the audience got to its feet and gave spontaneous ovations, but then respectfully sat down again and listened to - and, just as importantly bearing in mind what was to come, watched - what was going on. This was rather as I imagined it might be.)

'King of The Mountain' finished this opening section - a song which always rather underwhelmed on the radio, but which sounded awesome live - and then three-quarters of the way through, it just exploded. The band vanished from the stage, a mime artist came on twirling some odd device, and confetti (adorned with the Tennyson quote from The Ninth Wave) was blasted into the audience. With a combination of sound and lighting, the effects guys managed to create the impression of a storm in the theatre, and at that point a screen came down and we had an amusing filmed insert (scripted by Kate and the novelist David Mitchell) with an astronomer calling the coastguard. From there it was full-on theatre - with scenery, lighting effects, back-projection, dramatised inserts, etc. The Ninth Wave was brought to life with visual imagery which I will always associate with it from now on when listening to it - including the one part which leaked out before the performance, the 'flotation tank' sequence where she performs in the water in a life-jacket! (The accompanying concert programme goes into the problems they had recording with live microphones in water, complete with some fruity language from an increasingly-frustrated Kate.) There was also a brilliant evocation of a helicopter sequence, achieved only with a massive lighting-rig swooping over the audience and stabbing out a stark, white spotlight. Also memorable was a dramatic interlude as a lead in to the spooky 'Watching You Without Me', where some clever direction managed to sneak Kate on stage behind a door without anyone noticing. An upbeat, light-drenched rendition of 'The Morning Fog' finished this section, with the musicians coming to the front of the stage and giving a beautifully joyous, loose-feeling, folky rendition of this piece, in which - spoilers! - the drowning woman is rescued and returns to her family.

The third part was mainly based on the second disc of Aerial, which I have always found difficult - but I appreciate it a lot more now! Digital images (birds, sunsets etc.) combined with conventional stage scenery, puppetry and moody lighting to create the feel of passing time, recreating and re-interpreting the album's 24-hour timescale. The climax of the 'Aerial' song itself, where she sings about going up on the roof and, um, turns into a rather scary blackbird (or was it a crow?) was very powerful and unsettling and weird! Then she finished with an encore, which involved her sitting down at the piano and performing not an obvious song but the lesser-known 'Among Angels' from the 50 Words For Snow album, and ending with a crowd-pleasing 'Cloudbusting' with the full band.

So, well worth it and very memorable - more like theatre than a traditional music concert. I loved it, and if I had any mild disappointments at all it would be the self-indulgence of the Aerial section in places (but if you go and see Kate Bush and don't allow her to be self indulgent, you're in the wrong place!). One might question the wisdom of giving her son Bertie, lovely chap that he appears to be, a full 4-minute solo, but there you are... nobody seemed to mind that much. Altogether it was well worth it, with a very contented audience vanishing into the night, and I hope the rumours of more Kate concerts in the future turn out to be true. The word 'genius' is over-used in the rock world, having been applied to everyone from McCartney to Eminem, but surely in Kate's case it is not hyperbole. There can rarely have been a live concert which was such a complete expression of an artist's creative concept, combining music, theatre, lighting, sound, staging, choreography and set design in perfect holistic vision.

Although, next time, 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes' would be lovely, please, Kate...

Footnote - I also managed while in London to go and take a peek at the new Foyles - a thing of glass and light and beauty with books arranged very creatively. I hope it starts a high street bookselling renaissance. (I had to navigate my way through the mess that Tottenham Court Road/Oxford St/Soho has become, though - when will that vast redevelopment ever be finished?)

Anything You Can Do

Do you know what the ten things never to say to a writer are? If you don't, here's Chuck Wendig to brief you. A lot of that resonates with me. I wrote an article for The Author a few years ago about the ten most annoying questions writers get, and it touched on a lot of similar ground (and resulted in a very nice handwritten reply from J.K. Rowling!).

Like most other writers, I probably get asked the one about where ideas 'come from' more often than anything else, and I give a similar answer to Chuck's - you just can't stop them coming. I currently have 63 'blurbs', or attempts at blurbs, on my computer. Each of these represents a potential new novel. Maybe 10 of them are actually good enough to be made into novels at some point. It's my continual fear that I won't live long enough to write all the books I have 'ideas' for.

Ideas are not the problem - it's what you do with them.

And yes, I always write a blurb because it forces you to think:

Who is this story about? 
What situation are they in at the beginning? 
What happens to change that? 
What questions does this make us ask? 

Those are the questions I use for children's workshops about story outlines too.

This is also why I am extremely sceptical when readers write scathing reviews which say 'I could have done better than that', or 'I could have written a much better novel/script about the same idea'. I may have become hard-hearted after 20 years as a published writer, but I'm afraid my first reaction is, 'no, you probably couldn't.' They think they can just pop through a magic fireplace to, say, BBC Media Centre, slap a script down on the desk and say 'read this'. It's the same mentality which draws people into being amateur football managers, and declaring - usually every 4 years after England is knocked out of a major competition in the early stages - 'My Sunday league team could have put up a better showing against Costa Rica/Portugal/ Italy/delete as applicable.'  Our national team is not the force it once was and is, sadly, distinctly average on the world stage, but even so, the idea that amateurs could make a better fist of it is, come on, a little far-fetched. Yes, even with England.

Doctor Who fans are more guilty of this than anyone. There is a tendency - especially since the show came back, first under Russell T Davies and then under Steven Moffat - for fans to fulminate that they could be writing scripts which are better than what has ended up on screen, and indeed in some cases that they could even be running the show more efficiently.

What is rather telling is that they always choose the worst example of Who they can find, and say things like 'I could wee Fear Her in my sleep', or 'I've had dreams that have been better-plotted than The Rings of Akhaten'. I make no comment as to the merits of those stories - they are the favourite of someone, somewhere, as the Doctor Who Magazine 50th Anniversary Poll reminded us - but just observe that they're generally rated lower than their bedfellows. So why set your sights so low? Surely any aspiring TV writer should choose the best example of Who (or Buffy, or Casualty, or Midsomer Murders, or whatever their bag is) and say, 'One day, I want to write a story as good as Pyramids of Mars/The Caves of Androzani/ Blink/Asylum of the Daleks'?

This excellent piece by Lee Zachariah says everything I want to say about the reasons the current incarnation of the show upsets a certain kind of fan a bit too often. A dimension which Lee doesn't mention so much in his - perfectly valid - comparisons with other programmes is the sense of ownership which Who fans feel over the show, one which really came into its own during the two big gaps when Who was off the air (sob!) in the early 90s and late 90s/early 00s. That was the point at which fandom took over the controlling narrative, and after which any 'official' version of the programme was going to have to compete with the fan text rather than automatically trumping it. It's very different from the way fans interact with, say, JJ Abrams, Josh Whedon and J Michael Straczynski about their shows. Yes, some fans are annoyed by Steven Moffat for a very simple reason -  he isn't making the version of the show which exists in their head. And so his ideas must automatically be inferior to theirs - even though he is the one with 25 years' experience of writing for TV.

Some people take it even further and argue for a return to the halcyon days of the New Adventures' open door policy (from which I and others did benefit). They say the BBC should no longer insist that people writing for Who come from established TV backgrounds, and that it should open script submissions up to the general public.

I'll tell you what I think about this.

I think that is the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard, and is a recipe for disaster.

Let's imagine for a second a lunatic parallel universe in which this actually happens. None of these script submissions would even be seen by Steven Moffat. They would be sifted through by some lowly BBC employee who would, slowly, lose the will to live as he/she reads the hundredth barely-literate, action-packed effects-fest in which multiple incarnations of the Valeyard take on the Daleks as they battle the Ice Warriors for control of Mars, or in which the Rani teams up with Sabalom Glitz on Peladon. Even those which were not continuity-laden, unfilmable nightmares would need bashing into shape through about seventeen different drafts before they produced anything remotely resembling a TV script. And it's likely that the best idea - the best story - which could slot into a new season of Who would come from someone who had ten years' experience of writing scripts for TV anyway, thus invalidating the entire process. Opening up Doctor Who script submissions to Joe Public would be to deny that Who is in fact a very difficult programme to write for. It would be like turning auditions for the London Symphony Orchestra into The X-Factor and allowing people to have a a shot when they haven't even done Grade 1 violin.

All right, it's the way publishing still works - most of the houses allow submissions (although increasingly they have to come through an agent), even those with no previous novel experience. Genius novels are found on the 'slush pile'. But TV is a very different beast, and even competent writers with lots of experience in other media, e.g. books or audios (I feel able to count myself among that number) do not necessarily have enough of a grasp of the basics of TV scriptwriting to produce a workable new Who. (When I do talks, I find myself comparing different kinds of writing to different kinds of running - it's rare, almost impossible, to excel in both sprinting and distance running, for example, as your training is totally different.)

And the people who say 'I could do better' think they can simply send their 'finished' (i.e. probably utterly unworkable) Who script off to the production office, rather than going through the more realistic, more tedious process of building a reputation: getting stuff published in small magazines, building up a CV through short films and soaps, having a script 'calling card', going through processes like BBC Writers' Room, script workshops and networking and so on. There's no one way to do it, but the ways in which people do it usually cover two or three of those bases.

It can take ten years or more of that kind of thing before you're ready to tackle a 50-minute episode of a highly-regarded show. But some people don't want that. They want their genius to be discovered now.

When I was first published, I knew nobody in publishing and knew nothing about it. The people I now know, and the knowledge I have picked up, is the result of 20 years' experience. I am a much better writer now than I used to be, because I have listened to people, and I have read more, and watched more, and thought more. That was never going to happen overnight. And I'm not published because I 'know' (actually not very well) some people in publishing. It's the other way round.

So, if you're angry enough to be watching a professional at work and think, 'I could do better', then by all means have a go. Anger is an energy, as a prophet said once. But I'm afraid, it's a case of - depending on what you want to get into - practising your scales, learning your dribbling and passing skills, or writing for non-paying, non-glamorous markets for a bit.

And there's no magic fireplace to let you jump through time to the required spot. You've just got to clink glasses with Madame de Pompadour and celebrate doing it on the 'slow path'.

Good luck. It's what the rest of us had to do.

The One About A TV Show That Is Not Doctor Who

At the risk of sounding like someone who writes in to the local newspaper to rant about whatever is on their mind, you know that song, 'it's 5 o'clock somewhere?' Well, it's always the 20th anniversary of something somewhere, these days. These anniversaries sneak up on unwary 45-year-olds who are still getting accustomed to not being 30: the first Iraq war, Britpop, Nirvana's Nevermind, Tony Blair becoming Labour leader, Jarvis Cocker showing his bottom to Michael Jackson at the BRIT Awards... (Wait, we haven't had that one yet, have we? That's next year. I hope.)

And now, apparently, this month it's the 20th anniversary of Friends. I find this a bit odd, as I thought we'd already had the 20th anniversary of Friends a while back, but that might have been the 20th anniversary of the pilot episode... or maybe it was the 10th anniversary of it ending. And if it's 5 o'clock somewhere, it's also the time for a Friends repeat somewhere. There was a time when it seemed to be on E4 about fifteen times a day, although that's calmed down a bit now, and they now fill the gaps with The Big Bang Theory and Who Cares How the Hell You Met Their Mother, Seriously? (not a fan of the latter).

The early series of Friends actually have a haunting, nostalgic, almost elegiac quality in places. There is the sense of regret beneath the comedy that these people will never get their childhood and high school years back, and the freedom and fear of being unleashed into the adult world - especially when viewed on the rather washed-out, grainy prints E4 seemed to use. (Or did it always look like that?) Later series sometimes descended into farce, and it was tricky to ignore the fact that the regulars increasingly looked like highly-paid, airbrushed supermodels, but it was usually very funny. It's not hard to see why it did so well here in the UK, as it has all the staples of a great British sitcom: a small group of characters (which doesn't change at all in 10 years - even Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum lost a couple of regulars) and comedy which is often based around misunderstandings, social embarrassment, irony, characters behaving in predictable ways, and people trying and failing to pass on important messages until it's too late.

It's interesting to think about the few things which a UK version might have made more of, but which are more-or-less ignored. The Geller family's Jewishness is just there, it's hardly ever really made a big thing of (which is fine), and yet it's hard to imagine a UK sitcom with a Jewish family which would not make their religion a central issue - and sadly, it would probably lapse into comic stereotype. Also almost totally glossed-over are the obvious income differences there would be between a head chef, a very-occasionally-employed actor, a singer/masseuse, a data input thingy whatsit (what does Chandler do, anyway?), a university lecturer and a waitress. (I say almost, because there are odd references to it, and one episode where it is, rather jarringly, pointed out that three of them earn less than the others.) The awkwardness would be made more of in a British sitcom - and it would probably also be a class-based issue, with the comedy arising from the ensuing social gaffes (think of Rodney and Cassandra in Only Fools and Horses).

A few elements proved odd for the British viewer, though (I'm hoping it wasn't just me) so I thought I'd round up a few of the cultural oddities which sometimes proved a barrier to enjoying the show properly. I don't mean stuff like the importance of High School proms or (mostly) issues of vocabulary, or how darned odd it sounds the first time you hear Phoebe say 'I'm a mass-oose' to rhyme with 'caboose', and not the much sexier and more Fruunnnch 'mass-euse' to rhyme with 'Chartreuse'. I'm not talking about high-fiving, belief-suspending riffs of plot ludicrousness like Rachel's meteoric rise from waitress to Ralph Lauren buyer (is nobody in US sitcoms allowed to stay unsuccessful, or be poor or have unfulfilled dreams?). Or Joey's apparent ability to work on a Los Angeles-based TV production while living in New York all the time, or the increasing unlikelihood of all six of them being together for casual breakfasts before work and cosy gatherings on the Central Perk sofa in the evenings (Monica being the only chef in the world who never works evenings, weekends or public holidays).

I'm thinking of things which probably won't have been commented on by the US viewer because they are so normal, and yet which will have made most UK viewers go 'huh'? At least, until the time we saw 'The One With The Holiday Armadillo' for the seventeenth time on E4. (Seriously, it was always 'The One With The Holiday Armadillo'.)

1. Ross is a Professor. 
His students call him Professor Geller. He's only just got his PhD, he's only just left the museum and started teaching. Yes, 'Professor' means something very different in the US education system, and it jars a bit when you're used to the UK one, where being a Professor entails the responsibility for an entire department - and where you're a prodigy indeed if you manage it before you're 40, let alone 30.

2. The Hallowe'en episode.
There always has to be one. And everyone dresses up in random, weird costumes whose extravagance is in inverse proportion to the humour quotient of the script. Can they not just ignore Hallowe'en one year?

3. The Thanksgiving episode.
Equally baffling. Again, there always has to be one, and there is usually an 'amusing' incident with a turkey and a crisis over a family misunderstanding.

4. 'Doodies'.
Over and over again, in the episode where Chandler starts his new job, it is apparently hilariously funny that his colleagues pronounce 'duties' in this way. It isn't even funny the first time, seeing as we don't have the same slang term (it's a toilet reference, right?), and having it repeated throughout the episode doesn't make it any funnier.

5. Pottery Barn.
We don't have it. So the whole social significance of Phoebe's antipathy to the place (despite eventually decking out her flat in its fake-antique stuff) is rather lost on us.

6. The crying Indian.
The basis of a famous Chandler one-liner, in 'The One Where They Run Out Of Petrol' (look, I know it's not probably called that, but people call Doctor Who episodes 'the one with the maggots' and 'the one with the statues' so often that I thought I could get away with it). Chandler says that if he throws some rubbish down, a 'crying Indian' would come by and save them. It's all about this environmental awareness short from the 1970s, which most UK viewers will only have discovered since we got YouTube. They probably wouldn't say 'Indian' these days... right?

7. Whooping at celebrity cameos. 
Seriously, why do audiences do this? Every time a guest or minor character walks into the room for the first time and, big deal, they happen to be played by Christina Applegate or Tom Selleck or someone (yes, they play roles, they are actors) the entire studio audience explodes with a rapturous 'WAAAAOOOGGHH--HOOO!' and a deafening round of applause. Quite apart from drowning out the character's first line of dialogue, it also breaks the fourth wall (and not in a clever way) and means that, on some level, the audience are not fully buying into the fictional universe presented.


That's it.

Well, not quite. I can't let this go. For the last time:

Doctor Who and the Deep Breath

In the olden days, when some people still had black-and-white telly, and Wagon Wheels were bigger (they were) and your mum and dad used to ask people, 'Are you on the phone?' and people still believed in TV detector vans, and you could pop down to the Post Office for a quarter of aniseed balls (insert nostalgic music here), there was a magical range of Doctor Who novelisations from Target Books.

A 'novelisation' was a necessary thing in the pre-video age - it was the only way of catching up on episodes you had missed, or of experiencing again those which you had. Because Doctor Who was so rarely repeated. It must be one of the BBC's few hit programmes of the 1970s and 1980s which never got a full series repeated on terrestrial TV. I'm pausing to think about that 'never', but... no. I'm prepared to be corrected here, but I'm pretty sure of this: not once has a full series of Doctor Who been repeated on 'normal' television - that kind of thing only started happening with the 2005 relaunch, when the BBC3 repeats became the norm. Only individual stories were repeated, often 'stripped' across the week on consecutive days.

The Target novelisations were a wonderful way of 'owning' the programme before one could ever do so on video or DVD. Terrance Dicks did a sterling job, novelising the bulk of them in the 1970s, but later on - largely thanks to the efforts of editor Nigel Robinson - some of the original scriptwriters came in to adapt their stories into prose.

The covers ranged in quality, from the wonderful to the puzzlingly bad. Many fans have a great affection for the work of Chris Achilleos, but I want to put in a word for the very talented Jeff Cummins too - perhaps I am biased, as he produced the stunning cover for my first novel The Dimension Riders in 1993, for which I am eternally grateful. The back cover blurbs were an odd mixture too. I don't mind a bit of melodrama, or a teasing blurb which deliberately avoids giving away a lot of the plot, but we did get the odd blurb which didn't do justice to the story at all. (Take this one for Mawdryn Undead, for instance, or this for The Awakening.)

I've started using the idea as the basis for school workshops, in which I get children and teenagers to 'mini-novelise' the openings of recent Who like 'The Impossible Astronaut' and 'The Day of the Doctor' - and even, if I am feeling brave, 1970s classic 'Horror of Fang Rock'. It provokes a lot of interesting discussion about the different ways in which stories are told in various media.

Sadly, the new stories broadcast since 2005 have not been novelised - the medium is seen as redundant in the post-DVD age. BBC Books don't think - rightly, I'm sure - that they'd sell enough to make them worthwhile. That doesn't stop people having a bit of fun with the idea, though.

So I wonder how that master of crisp and sturdy prose, Terrance Dicks, would have described the appearance of the new Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, in a novelisation of his first story? Based on his previous work, would it perhaps be something like this?...

Inside the Police Box which was not a Police Box, but in fact a Time and Space vessel known as the TARDIS, was an impossibly huge, dimly-lit room full of books and scientific apparatus, with a many-sided console at its centre. At the controls stood that mysterious traveller in Time and Space known only as the Doctor. Now in his twelfth incarnation - although, in truth, the Doctor himself did not bother counting - he was tall and lean, with a hawkishly imperious, high-cheekboned face and elegantly swept-back grey hair. Authoritative blue-grey eyes were framed by dark, imposing eyebrows, while his mouth was set in what could have been determination, or perhaps grim amusement. He was elegantly attired in a high-buttoned white shirt and a dark blue Crombie coat with a blood-red lining, matching blue trousers and sturdy, polished black shoes...

Apologies to Sir Terrance if that's nothing like the way he'd do it nowadays...

The stars are my fault

Some books I have read recently, with the star ratings I gave them on Goodreads. Oh, how I do enjoy a good star rating. I'm sad enough to be excited by star ratings, having been raised on 1980s copies of the controversial Doctor Who Bulletin.

Disclaimer: Two of the writers below are friends on Facebook and one in real life as well, but as ever, my policy with friends' books is to review them if I liked them and to tell them honestly in private if I didn't!

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green.

Never would have read this if my daughter hadn't told me to... Lots of very sassy, unconvincingly smart teenage dialogue gets in the way of a genuinely touching romance, humour and some interesting writing. Ultimately, I'm not the target audience - I read it at some emotional distance and resisted the shameless tear-wringing. Everyone who likes this book says the bit in the Anne Frank House is awesome - I'm afraid I cringed at it more than a little. ***



The Set-Up by Sophie McKenzie.

First in a highly successful series, so it must be doing something right - who am I to judge? But I found it emotionally flat, with the main character's continual obsession over the lead girl to be puzzling. The writing was flat and 'Year 6 SATs' in style, with lots of cheap phrases like 'my heart was pounding', the exceedingly dull narrator's body apparently being contorted in various uncomfortable ways by his unnecessary emoting. His whiny emo-mooning is totally at odds with the action-thriller the story wants to be, and totally gets in the way of his being likeable. There was a vestige of a good spy/action plot at the heart of it, totally wasted by the plodding way in which it was told. And please, YA writers, stop making your characters nod, smile and bite their lips all the time! It must hurt their necks and mouths so much. *

Flood Child/Flood and Fire by Emily Diamand.

This book and its sequel are charming. They're full of jokes, fun and quirkiness alongside the darkness and exciting adventure, and compellingly told. There's some quite visceral violence too. In a future Britain, drowned in post-apocalyptic floods and at the mercy of rampaging raiders, a girl called Lily is in possession of a unique treasure - one of the last remaining computers in the world. Action-packed but with a sense of fun and an underlying intelligence - rather like a clever Doctor Who two-parter, in fact. ****

Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick.

Coincidentally, another 'flooded future England' book with a young female protagonist, but this time set in Norwich, much shorter than Emily Diamand's books and much darker, at least until the redemptive ending. Didn't totally feel it. A novella which felt a little like an expanded short story at times - a glimpse of a world whose other stories it would have been interesting to know. I gather his later stuff is very good, so I may seek out more of it. ***

The Quarry by Iain Banks.

Sadly, not a great final novel. I so wish Banks had gone out in a roar of brilliance, but this is the book of his where I've cared least about the protagonists since A Song of Stone. After the very enjoyable Stonemouth I had high hopes, but sadly it wasn't to be. Flashes of his old self can't redeem it. There's a MacGuffin of a lost videotape which turns out to be not very interesting after all, and would you believe it, some drugs and sex, long-buried secrets and a few rants against injustice and established authority. Enjoyable in parts, but ultimately unsatisfying - The Crow Road it is not. **

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver.

Haunting, unsettling tale of an Arctic expedition in the 1930s plagued by dark forces, this could so easily have lapsed into stereotype or laughable parody. Instead, it is thoroughly intriguing and pulls off the very difficult trick of narrating an intelligent ghost story for the cynical modern reader. Astonishingly detailed sense of place - you totally believe you are there in the long, cold Arctic night - and a compelling, psychologically-disturbing narrative. *****


The Unpierced Heart by Katy Darby.


In some ways a clever pastiche of the Victorian Gothic novel, with flashes of Conan Doyle - an engaging approach to the storytelling and a mystery which intrigues. The story unfolds through the perspectives of multiple narrators, cleverly intertwined, and there is rich, superbly-researched period detail. Not sure it totally holds the reader's attention in the end as it veers off into over-the-top melodrama with its moustache-twirling villain and the seemingly obligatory pox-riddled prostitutes, but it was entertaining enough. ***

The Liberators by Philip Womack.

More YA fantasy, this time with rather complacent, wealthy children. Superbly dynamic and intriguing opening which makes one think the Alan Garner comparisons are going to be justified, but soon lapses into smugness and tedious runaround. I found myself unengaged by the end. **

The Secrets We Left Behind by Susan Elliot Wright.

Compelling story set in two time-zones, with a disastrous decision in a squat in Hastings during the drought of 1976 having shocking ramifications in 21st-century Sheffield. Lots of research has gone into the 1976 bits, and you feel you are really there with the characters in very real settings. They have jobs/situations you can believe in, as well. The ending requires you to buy into something I can't reveal without spoiling the plot, but the author carries you along with her crisp, strong narrative, teasing you when you think you've worked it out. *****





Love Falls by Esther Freud.

Languid, Italian-set holiday romance with pretensions to literary fiction, populated with the kind of people I would go out of my way to avoid. Complacent, pretentious protagonists laze in the sun in between magically-appearing meals ('supper'), and having giggly romances. There is no plot. Seemingly random 1981 setting, in order to shoehorn in some irrelevant references to the Royal Wedding. Rape is presented as a casual irritation. I remember quite enjoying her early novels Hideous Kinky and Peerless Flats, but this is one of the worst books I have read in two years, and I'd have quite happily drowned most of the awful characters in the swimming-pool. *

     

On time travel, anachronisms and other matters

Quite impressed by Peter Capaldi's first outing as Doctor Who - and I feel happy enough calling him that, despite the inevitable clamour of fan voices reminding me that the programme is Doctor Who and the character's name is The Doctor. I'd have been joining them vociferously a few years ago, but like I lot of things I used to think mattered, I'm prepared to let it go. If Mr Capaldi himself says he is playing Doctor Who, then who am I to argue? I'll wait until mid-season before offering a proper judgement, as an actor's first story in the role is hardly ever typical.

My other big cultural experiences in this half of the year involve live performance. I was one of the lucky ones who got Kate Bush tickets for this autumn. I aimed for the later performances, using the logic that, in the brief booking window available online, the pressure would be on the earlier dates. 30th September, then, is Kate Day, and I literally have no idea what to expect from what is rumoured to be a 'theatrical' show at the Hammersmith Odeon. I had thought I would never get to see this woman live at all - the prospect of seeing an actual performance by someone so closely bound-up with my angst-filled teenage years is producing quite a mixture of emotions.

I hardly ever get to the theatre these days - but  I grabbed a rare opportunity to arrange a birthday outing for my wife, a keen member of the Richard Armitage Appreciation Society, to see the man himself in action in The Crucible at The Old Vic. Highly recommended if you get the chance. (It closes on 13th September.) I'd only ever seen the play once before, and I remember it being delivered in quite restrained, buttoned-up fashion. This production by Yael Farber is visceral, full-on and very shouty, and performed with complete conviction by the cast. Stage and TV veteran William Gaunt had a good few show-stealing tragicomic lines, while among the newer and younger actors, we should expect to see interesting things from Marama Corlett in future. The only disappointment (mainly for the ladies in our party) was that Mr. Armitage was unable to come out and sign autographs after the matinee, but that's understandable after a performance of such intensity, especially with another to get through a couple of hours later!

My wife and I had both forgotten that Miller's play involves a couple of examples of what might, at first, appear to be anachronistic language - there's 'pregnant' a few times (I must admit that jarred for me, as I would have anticipated hearing 'with child' or 'expecting'), and then one on which the jury is still out: 'She fancies him.' At first hearing, that seems like a very 1980s Grange Hill expression to use, but I'm willing to accept its usage in a way which implies 'she has a fancy for him' or 'she has taken a fancy to him.' Perhaps this really was said in late 17th-century Massachusetts?

This linguistic pondering ties in with the fact that the book I am writing at the moment involves taking some difficult decisions about how, and when, characters in the future might swear convincingly - will today's colourful Anglo-Saxon have bitten the dust, or will it just have become as harmless as 'flipping'? Even Doctor Who companions are allowed to say 'bloody' these days, Freema Agyeman taking a bow as the first sweary companion in the episode 'Smith and Jones' all the way back in 2007. That would have had Mary Whitehouse reaching for the smelling salts back in 1977. (For younger readers of this blog, Mary Whitehouse was an interfering lady in horn-rimmed spectacles who headed the 'National Viewers' and Listeners' Association', an organisation spiritually comfortable with the values of the Daily Mail. She would frequently write to the Director General about how she was so horrified by all the filth on TV that she just had to keep watching to make sure it was as disgusting as she had imagined.)

Both futuristic fiction and historical fiction are fraught with these linguistic pitfalls. (Ironically, getting contemporary slang right is easier than it has ever been, thanks to that universal tool for embarrassing your teenagers by being able to decode their language, Urban Dictionary.) I expect many people have had the experience of watching period dramas with older relatives, who tut and sigh and point out that a character in, say, Foyle's War or Miss Marple would not have done or said such-and-such a thing in the 1940s or 1950s? And that the script 'must have been written by someone who wasn't alive at the time'? (Well, that much is true - there aren't many TV scriptwriters in their 70s and 80s.) I often wonder how they know for sure, though - given that, even in early middle-age, my own memory of what people might have said and done in the 1980s and 1990s is not exactly 100% reliable. When exactly in the 1990s did the fad for 'rad' come in? (Post-Ninja Turtles, but would it have been widespread in 1990?) How far outside Manchester would someone have said 'sorted' or 'nice one' in, say, 1993, before Oasis went stellar? If a film set in 1987 featured a character saying 'Eat My Shorts', would I be confident enough in myself to assert that this was 'wrong' - or would I be more likely to assume that, just because I hadn't heard it at the time, that didn't mean nobody said it? (The Simpsons first appeared as a short feature on The Tracey Ullman Show in April 1987.)

So I find myself watching 'historical' TV set in my lifetime (like the recent Philip Glenister drama From There To Here) with my 'spot the anachronism' head on, which probably isn't healthy. Now that people born in the 1980s are writing about them as a historical period, there will no doubt be a lot more of this. What writers can be sure of is that, if they get it wrong, there will be someone, somewhere, willing to write them an outraged letter telling them about it...

Fifty Years Of Hurt (Well, Almost)

I have a confession to make. I am a forty-something Englishman who has never been to a professional football match.

When I mentioned this to a Beautiful-Game-loving friend, adding that I should maybe rectify this by going to see my local team, Sheffield Wednesday, his memorable quip was, 'But then you still wouldn't have seen a professional football match.' Badoom and, indeed, tish.

You're looked at in a bit of a funny way in this country if you're a Bloke Who Doesn't Like Football. But it's not that I don't like it, really - it's just that I feel the obsession over it and adulation for the players in this country gets totally out of proportion. And, unlike a great many of my friends, I can't understand that flipping offside rule. I refer you to Laura, who not only can but makes it the title of her blog.

I was amused to hear recently that some people had to have time off work for stress because their favourite team didn't qualify for some competition or other... I'm sorry, run that past me again. Time off work? For stress? About FOOTBALL? Why didn't I think of that one when enduring the slightly disappointing Season 5 of Babylon 5? Couldn't I have I used the anguish caused by Doctor Who's enforced 1985 hiatus as an excuse for my O-Level performance? (Not really, because I got all my O-Levels. That one doesn't work.)

It has to be said, though - Doctor Who fandom and football supporters have more in common that we'd like to admit. Battling evil opposition on a Saturday afternoon, often with cliffhangers and moments of tension, and wearing long scarves... and demanding the head of the guy in charge when it all goes wrong.

I think a lot of my aversion to sport comes of not having grown up with any particular attachment to a local team (my dad was always more of a rugby man anyway), and also from being rubbish at it. I was That Person who was always in the last three or four picked during the dreaded Team Selection at the start of a games lesson. (Why did we not get to do this in French? Or Maths?)

But I don't actually dislike football all that much, at least not when the national team are playing. I think it was Euro '96 which dragged me in (it even gets a largely-accurate scene based around it in Losing Faith), and even football-haters got interested in the 1998 World Cup tournament in France - the last time England looked like doing anything remotely interesting. As I understand it, on paper 'we' (it always has to be 'we') have about the tenth or eleventh best football team in the world - which isn't bad out of two-hundred-odd countries, and means that getting to the quarter-finals three times with Sven-Goran Eriksson was pretty over-achieving. It's just that it's something there in the background on the level of, say, Midsomer Murders as far as my interest goes.

While we're on the subject of that 'we' - I love this sketch by Mitchell and Webb:

Looking at the posters in my local pub advertising the upcoming football matches, I was reminded that another World Cup is imminent, and perhaps that people's expectations are quite realistic - even low - for the first time in decades. This has been the curse of the sport-lovers in my generation - the idea that some kind of  Buggins' Turn system operates, that England win the World Cup once in a generation, and that the time has been due to come round again for the last 20 years. And, to be fair, in 1990 'we' got quite close. But that's it. It won't happen again in our lifetime. Really.

I hope you enjoy the World Cup, football-lovers. I won't deny you your pleasure and I may even watch some of it. But it's not a matter of life and death... and yes, I know how the rest of that quote goes.

Meanwhile, here's my favourite football anthem - from that infamous 1998 tournament. It has Echo and the Bunnymen! And Ocean Colour Scene! And the Spice Girls! It's as 90s as TFI Friday, Tamagotchis and a night on the town with the Appleton sisters... Enough to make me feel 28 again.

The Writer Out and About

I've done more than my fair share of school visits over the past few years. I've been very lucky, because the Doctor Who connection always gets a lot of interest, especially from primary schools. But sometimes a secondary school has a useful link too - a librarian who is a big fan, or a Science Week or a special open day. 

My last blog piece was about how I am contacted for school visits and the background to the whole thing. So, what happens when I get there? Ideally, this.

THE LOVELY EXPERIENCE

I arrive at Lovelyton, having had a superbly relaxing train journey during which I was able to enjoy a cup of coffee and a croissant. At the station, I'm either met by a smiling member of staff - probably the one I have been liaising with by phone and email - or a taxi is very easy to find. When I arrive at school, I'm shown the staff room, offered a cup of coffee and pointed in the direction of the Gents should I need it. I'm informed that the books I ordered have arrived and have been set up on a stand in the hall - or that the bookshop we are liaising with will be sending someone in later. I then have about fifteen minutes to set up my laptop in the hall, ably aided by an IT technician who knows the vagaries of the school projector, computer network configuration and sound levels. The presentation is all ready when the pupils file in, well-behaved but not zombie-like, excited but not too rowdy. They've already been registered, so no time is wasted there. The head, assistant head, librarian or other member of staff gives me a short, enthusiastic introduction, they all clap and I begin forty-five minutes of enthralling presentation, during which all my videos and sound work wonderfully, everyone can hear me, and everyone listens attentively. 

After the talk, I answer between ten and twenty original and interesting questions, although I don't mind a few old favourites like 'How long does it take to write a book?', or 'What was the first book you read?' Even though I've answered these hundreds of times, they are still new for this lot, after all! I read a bit from one of my books, to wild applause. After this, I get a coffee-break in the staff-room, during which the oldest member of staff tells me that he/she can remember seeing the first episode, the ones who are about my age reminisce about Tom Baker or Peter Davison, and the one in her mid-20s apologises for not having grown up with it. (This will soon change. Many children who watched Christopher Eccleston regenerate into David Tennant in 2005 are already old enough to be trainee teachers.) They also ask about Shadow Runners, and some of them have even bought it. 

If I'm doing the Doctor Who Quiz, it usually happens now - teams are smoothly organised and it provides another forty minutes of entertainment. We then do the book-signing, at which I sign and sell about 20 copies of each book, and everyone is happy. 

After a nutritious lunch at the school canteen, I am shown where I will be doing my writing workshops. These go very well, with the children all answering my questions intelligently and creatively, and producing some wonderfully imaginative pieces of writing of which the teachers are very proud. I leave at the end of the day, with the cheque in my pocket and the knowledge of a job well done. 

I arrive home, tired but satisfied, to my lovely family and an evening meal with a glass of wine, and get a good evening's rest. 

On the other hand - and I stress nothing has ever gone this badly, it's just a conflation of lots of different experiences:

THE HORRORVILLE VISIT

I arrive, sweating and fraught, because my train was delayed and I had to wait ages for a taxi. I have not had my coffee, and I have a headache. I'm greeted by a hassled-looking member of staff to whom I am not introduced. 'I hope you don't mind,' he/she says, 'but we've invited the local infant school in as well. They really wanted to come.' I ask about books, but they don't seem to know what I'm talking about. (I later find out there was a mix-up with the order.) I am thrust into a hall already packed full of expectant children, and have to perform embarrassing technical gymnastics with trailing wires to set my computer up, while they all watch me in gimlet-eyed silence. My computer does not work. Eventually, one of the Year 6 pupils takes pity on me and comes and does it all for me, while the head teacher invites everyone to pray for me before introducing me as David Blythe, or possibly Dan Brown - or simply turns to me and says, 'I'm sorry, what was your name again?'

I manage the best presentation I can do in the circumstances, although my laptop decides to switch itself off and do random updates in the middle. Two of the infants cry, and two older boys start a fight and have to be removed. I finish to muted applause. Questions are coaxed out of the children, most of whom don't watch Doctor Who, have never read Shadow Runners or Emerald Greene and haven't heard of me. I am asked if I am rich, and what kind of car I drive. Afterwards in the staff room, I am ignored and left to find my own coffee. The afternoon workshops don't go very well, because I have a lot of reluctant readers and a large contingent who need extra help with language. I ask what goes at the start of a great story - the usual answers being mystery, suspense, intrigue, questions, whose story is it, where is it set - and the one answer I get is: 'A capital letter.' I realise with a heavy heart - and not without sympathy - that the school is under great pressure to get as many grade Cs as possible at GCSE, and that the dreaded VCOP has been drilled into them (Vocab, Openers, Connectives, Punctuation - I can never remember it, because I hate it, and had to look it up just then). The even more dreaded expression 'wow words' raises its ugly head. In the office at the end of the day, I'm told I can't be paid yet because I didn't produce proof in triplicate that I am self-employed. I bite my tongue to stop myself asking if they would like to see my biscuit bill, my Facebook records or my running score on Ken Bruce's Popmaster. 

I find my way back to the station in the rain. It is getting dark and my train is diverted via Crewe. I get home at 8pm to an empty, dark house, because my family have all gone swimming.

THE TRUTH

Well, it obviously lies somewhere in between - and you could argue that a lot of the above could be down to bad planning. I've certainly learnt a few lessons about that over the years.

Most of the time it's Lovelyton, if I'm honest. My school visits have brought me into contact with hundreds of hardworking, dedicated staff and bright, enthusiastic pupils. Even working with the reluctant readers can pay off - the excitement of getting someone to read for pleasure when they would not normally is really very special. (And if things don't go quite to plan - which is inevitable - we normally find a way round it and it doesn't spoil the day.) 

The importance of these school visits, which I and hundreds of other writers for children and young people do, cannot be stressed enough. In these days of ever-tighter Government control over the curriculum and frazzled teachers forced, against their will and their natural talents, to 'teach to the exam', it's hugely valuable and enjoyable for children and young people to have a day off the timetable where they do something different, creative and imaginative. When you ask a child later in life what they remember most about 'doing writing' in school, it will be depressing if all they come up with is 'using punctuation'. I'd like to think it might be 'we had that writer in, and he was a bit mad and a bit nerdy about Doctor Who, but I liked him. And we did some stuff we wouldn't normally do, and it made me go away and read some books I'd never heard of before.'

South Craven School's fantastic home-made Dalek,
displayed at their Science Evening.

TARDIS built by the talented Bruce Sharp, shown here at
Wetherby High School to celebrate the 50th Anniversary
of Doctor Who in November 2013.