Et In Arcadia Ego

A roundup of sorts.

Firstly, if the text on this blog is too small for you to read easily, hold ctrl and + or - until it is better. This seems to me far easier than the horrors of tweaking the code.

Now then:

1. There is a skeeling in the house! Dad's sketches, and work jumper; the front door key, my epic kirby grip stash, and one of the telephones, have just walked. I kinda hope they're all together somewhere, contributing to some fantastical machine.

2. Settled down to watch, at long last, City of Vice - the TV show about the Bow Street Runners. Despite being set in the 1750s, and starring Iain Glen, it is not the greatest thing ever, as I'd hoped. Instead sort-of frustrating, proving that there's little separating police procedurals, no matter how elegantly dressed. It's obviously cheap, and trying hard to be edgy - and we could forgive both, but it's padded out with lazy scriptwriting. If I never have to see another Dead Whore (TM), it'll be too soon - fictionally speaking, that's all prostitutes are there for. To be killed, unpleasantly. We Know You're In London, We Know You're In The Past, but what right have they to invent serial killing some 150 years early? Like all movies with a historical basis, I'd like some solid information on exactly how accurate it is. I may not bother seeing a second episode. I don't know. I am sure it won't turn into the show I want it to be, but maybe it's worth a try.

3. I love Hamlet. And found this marvellous blog, which makes me rather wish I had got there first. It makes me think, though: I have still never seen a great Ophelia. Not one I've entirely bought. I believe she is an impossible role to play - no backstory, no development, easy to be too cute, easy to reinvent badly as kickass.

4. I've started considering charging a nominal amount for charity Tarot readings. Why not? It's fun, and for a good cause. I've been practicing on people around me - mostly TV shows, it must be said - but Friend 2 has accused me of doing some dubious stuff like attempting to read her reactions, which intrigued me because it wasn't conscious. With that in mind, I sat down and read the book on cold reading, and was astonished to discover how many of their techniques I already use, just on reflex. Including the Skeptic's Gambit: "No, I Don't Really Believe This, But It's Useful For Psychological Investigation, Like A Rorschach Test". That was the one that really stood out, but a lot of their examples are almost verbatim things I've said.

I can't work out whether to change my game or not. There are two ways this can go. I can become a "proper Tarot reader" of sorts, and I'd want to deliberately not cold read in the name of accuracy and justice. Or I can become a Mentalist/Derren Brown type of performer, in which case I'd want to cold read the hell out of people. It'd always be for fun, of course, just a party trick - but I feel I should pick one or the other and stick with it. I suppose I'll go for the former, as you can't cold read friends - that destroys the point. But after this investigation, I am far more concerned about the ethics full stop, even in a fun context.

5. I have now bought several items of costume for That Blake Costume I'm Not Making. And thinking about the reboot has made me think, why not just do a gender-swap version? And making a sign reading "Starring Katie Sackhoff as Blake" - Katie Sackhoff being the gal who kickstarted this Edgy Reboot With Male Characters Recast As Women thing in Battlestar Galactica. It'd be geekily funny too. With that in mind, fashion advisors, here is a two-page gallery of options - which costume should I go for? Which has the greatest chance of actually suiting me?

6. Token cooing, skip this if you're really bored. You probably should be, I've been doing this for a year now - but it's OK, I've only got four days of it left. Then it's just aftermath, recovery and almost certainly moving on to something else, just as irritating...but frankly, I can't believe I saw what I just saw, I can't believe it's taken quite this long and I can't believe I can still be shocked. There was a point about a season back when I experienced a kind of darkness overdose. They hit us with a very cruel triple whammy that almost bounced off, I'd got so resigned. There are a whole bunch of blog updates, I know, expressing the same sentiment, and several episodes I remember feeling strongly "I know this show began with a betrayal, massacre, legal shenanigans, mental conditioning, all implied twice over, plus the destruction of three kids, but somehow this has just got worse".

In short, I am having a fantastic time - not sarcastic, totally genuine. Obsessions always feel like the One True Obsession, but I have been proud and honoured to be a B7 fan. As you're probably aware from my almost constant wittering. And long may it remain, however bad it has yet to get, because I'm very upset, but also overjoyed that it has stayed of such high quality, and committed to it's unique tone that it can still regularly do this to me. With that in mind, we came up with a few new theories:

16. The Final Girl, possiby Vila

17. Blake (who is fine) meets up with Avon again, and they pick off where they left off getting on very well, especially because of the experiences they've had in one anothers absence, and go off into the sunset to fight the baddies together. Variation on Glimmer Of Hope from last week, but I really really like this one and feel it's within the bounds of possibility. Even had this one in a dream last night.

Likely variation:

18. Blake (who is fine) meets up with Avon again, and they pick off where they left off squabbling and tearing chunks out of one another's morality, especially because of the experiences they've had in one anothers absence which has left them completely incompatable. Hilarity ensues, and it's worse than usual.

7. I have lost my love for the piano. I'm - a bit floored, to be honest. My method has always been to play for my own delight, damn practice, damn everything else. But I have recently become aware of a) not being very good at all, and b) that this matters to me. That playing and being good make me happy. I'm trying harder, getting nowhere, and it's begun to be stressful.

Consequently, I have at long last abandoned Fantasie Impromtu as something I will never be able to play, to see if it deflates my newfound competitive streak. Fantasie Impromptu has been part of my life for such a long time, and unlike most of the things I try playing, it's actually harder than it sounds. I can basically do both hands individually, with breaks, and know in time I could play them both at once, but it's my own body defeating me. By the end of the first page - the first 20 seconds - my left hand (which hasn't had a break) cramps and loses it's dexterity; by halfway through the second page - some 10 seconds later -my right hand follows suit.

Giving up on it feels very strange indeed, because it's the first time I've admitted a limitation on that machine. I taught myself to play on Firth of Fifth and Chopin Nocturnes, songs which no beginner should touch. But I learnt them stubbornly, one note at a time, and kept at it, and after a while I could do 26-note runs and trills. Made me feel quite invincible, and informed my style ever since: "What do you mean I can't play that? Let me wade in and bash!" So I've been trying hard and regularly at Impromptu, to see if I can't get my wrist strength up. As if it would make a difference, as if I don't spend somewhere between one and four hours on the piano a day, as if I wasn't an archer-turned-poimistress. And what I discovered was actually, if I keep trying hard enough - my wrist just gives up and stings, and I'm sure, eventually sprains.

I feel like I've killed my own child.

This too will pass.

8. Finally, to end on a positive note, I'm taking part in a swap which merely requires participants to read their partners profile, and leave a comment. Quick, but cute. Anyway, one noted:

"I really enjoyed reading about your likes and you seems so interested in everything. That you love life and just enjoys the little things. "

It's fascinating how you come across on paper, and the weird thing is reading it written down momentarily made it true. I felt like I became this person. Or maybe I always have been.

This is a long one, so digressions are marked in red, and the red becomes brighter the more irrelevant the digression becomes. If you're only interested in What Happened, stick to the black.

Yesterday, I art-ed all morning and posted my swaps. I suffered a fashion disaster, by attempting a high-up pony, and ended up looked uncomfortably like the 90s had come to stay. In retrospect, this was to be the tone of the day. We had lunch, and had plans to go out shopping in Central for a new card holder for my ATCs. But all the reasonable tube lines were down, so we decided to travel west instead – heading to Gunnersbury Park museum, a restored regency mansion. I left my pocketwatch at home.

We (that is, Calypso and I. Should probably start qualifying pronouns now in case they get wobbly) took a bus to Acton, and I bought a new rucksack at the museum. It was £5 reduced from £13, and really nice quality – lots of pockets. My old one was shedding plastic flakes every time I used it. From there, we walked down to Gunnersbury – where the sun god lives. It’s a walk I’ve done three times, and each time been shocked by the heat. The light beats down the only routes. Luckily, I’d come prepared with a hat and water, but it was still a relief to arrive at the park and crash under the trees.

I tried getting into a habit of going to the park across the road, but it is too unpleasant. Too many people using it for sports, and the moment you sit down you get covered in some of the nastiest insects I have ever seen. This had few insects, and satisfying shade. We watched clouds, complete with quirky Indie accents; then we did a cloud oracle. I'm interested in divination at present, and the way it reveals not so much the future as the subconscious. I saw instructions for making a "random oracle" - a bag of any old items, from which one is drawn and interpreted - and the idea amused me: it takes divination as reading meaning into nonsense to its natural conclusion. Earlier this week, we used a page of Stylist featuring This Season's 20 Must Have Products. After crashing for a time, we went into the museum – where a a pissed-off attendant told us they were soon closing. The front room was notable for a Auton-gentleman with a cravat, and a book on Edwardian Murders.

I ambled on to work out the extent of the museum, as we'd run out of time to explore it fully. Down a short corridor and to the left was the cart room - reminding me of the Folk Museum. But I was totally distracted by the windows, three of them down one wall, and the design of the door, and in general the room's shape and situation. Because it reminded me strongly of Mortimer's childhood - we can call it home. Although it never was, not really. That house had always had these characteristically tall, shuttered windows, and I'd been sure they were in period - but was too certain they were there to change them. I went into the next room, and this didn't feel so familiar, but with some trepidation I peered between the shutters and experienced the most horrible sensation - because I had known what the view must be like, because I've seen the view from that window before. I moved into the third room of the corridor. And this was unpleasant because, but for the orientation (this room was on the front of the house, not the back), it could have been his father's study - the original owner of my confusingly engraved pocket watch. Fireplace and all.

Now, every time I go to old houses I think about him, and maybe find the odd artifact of a design I like - but never anything like this. I felt like he was walking over my grave - or I over his.

If you haven't been keeping up, he was the roleplay character who never really went away. I don't want to focus on this too much, partly because I'll go on for hours, and partly because it gets into the Nature Of Creation. Nevertheless, because I "stayed in contact" with him, I've always been interested by what he is to me and vice versa.

How much of ourselves do we put into characters? Consciously, I wrote him as alien to myself. But now I wonder if my subconscious didn't write him with more care. Many of his defects and qualities, I can now identify with personally - and in some ways, my life has begun to mimick his history. What is this? Was it indeed the subconscious, and those qualities of mine I accidentally gave him have affected my life as it did his? There are some things about myself which I could not have known age 13 - an example would be our characteristic melancholia on consuming alchohol. Is it habit - I spent a lot of time "playing" him, something like three years at least. You can't spend that amount of time thinking in a certain manner without it brushing off. And maybe, then, things like his reaction to alchohol subconsciously informed mine. Is he the name I give to certain aspects of my personality, like a stage persona or a pen name - or a dark side, to disassociate my more unpleasant/unwanted characteristics by blaming them, or at least attributing them, to Someone Else. Or is he my ideal form? And certainly, at times I would like to be a gentleman (but is that habit, as mentioned above?)

Is it supernatural? Well, if we're going to be scientific about this, we should at least consider the silly options too. I do feel my brain and body shift, and my tone and mannerisms change - and this is no a conscious act. I'm not the only person to exhibit this sort of behavior: the Otherkin, for example, believe they are animals trapped in human form, and that they can feel, say, a tail and experience a shift between their human and "true" selves. There are even the Otakukin who, closer to what I am experiencing, believe they have the souls of certain Anime characters. Or people with past lives - I imagine, if you took me to a past life specialist this would be their explaination, and in my research on the topic they have used similar language to me. Certain groups might also suggest demonic posession.

I've more sympathy with the Otherkin than the past life folk, and I mention them because it's clear that a certain combo of imagination and (perhaps) discomfort with the real world regularly produces the effects I am describing. And because there is a fatal lack of rigour and scepticism in the New Age community, the phenomenon has never been properly studied. At present, I have got around to thinking that we are the same person, same starting stats, who have experienced different lives. In particular, he never had friends - while I have had marvellous ones in abundance; maybe also a caring, interested family. Perhaps because of all this, he has a fatal lack of empathy, whereas I have rather too much. But this conclusion will doubtless change again, as it always has.

This story, written predominantly when I was 13/14 and packed with youthful flaws, constantly amazes me with its accuracy - often when I least expect it. Some of the most vivid events of M's life are scattered and blurry, and often make no damn sense even though they are narratively the most important scenes to get straight. This was recently explained to me in a movie violence textbook, by a criminal psychologist talking about murder. Apparently, serial killers pre-plan in detail and keep souveneers because the sensation of killing doesn't last, and memory is instantly fallible afterwards. This explains a lot. And indeed, he very closely matches wikipedia's description of sociopath - he gets a 30/40 score (at least) on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (He doesn't have a Grandiose Sense of Self Worth, and only appears to be Emotionally Shallow. I can't comment on his early life, and can't work out what Revocation of Conditional Release means.) The book on psychopathy offers a very familiar conclusion:

Cleckley describes the psychopathic person as outwardly a perfect mimic of a normally functioning person, able to mask or disguise the fundamental lack of internal personality structure, an internal chaos that results in repeatedly purposeful destructive behavior, often more self-destructive than destructive to others. Despite the seemingly sincere, intelligent, even charming external presentation, internally the psychopathic person does not have the ability to experience genuine emotions.

And I could go on; apparently, psychopaths have a particularly intense stare (and I have letters from the game attesting to this). Often, psychopaths are so convincing that solid evidence of their deceptions cannot convince others of anything but their innocence - he's actually experienced this on more than one occasion, and it's always been amusing. One of the most interesting things I have discovered is how far my experiences of his life are skewed by how he sees himself. At the time, I was playing him as a romantic hero. With perspective, I'm now realising how far he plays himself as a romantic hero. And sometimes, other people's behavior makes me think yes, the behavior of the minor characters is realistic. Add into that accidentally accurate details of London's layout, including the instinctive understanding that the south bank was scummy and warehouse-ridden; burning down Newgate Gaol and later discovering it had indeed been burned down historically, in almost the same year; knowing how to wield a regency gun before being instructed; little jolts like these make me think there is more to this than fancy.

Anyway, believe what you like. To my mind, there is not much separating something happening, and one's total belief that something is happening. It doesn't hurt anyone, so far as I can tell, and
perhaps it's even helping by keeping me keener to be good.

It's entirely possible I've picked all these things up by osmosis; but this was different, weird. Few films and books concentrate on the actual layout of houses in enough detail. Surely. It's also possible that once I noticed a few synchronicities, my mind was actively hunting for more - and obviously found them.

When the museum closed, I dragged Calypso around the house to have a closer look at that fateful view. Because climax of the tale occurs on the lawn at the back, so it was easy to find the right window. And there was arguably nothing more important than sitting uncomfortably in the long dining room at the back, glancing by chance through those windows – and catching sight of ghosts on the lawn – than dashing through the double shutters, walking over the stone terrace, down the grassy slope and finding the worst thing in the world at the bottom – because I've done this walk before, first in my imagination, and then again every time I've revised a script or story draft, I'm as familiar with it in my mind as the daily commute. So inevitably, I set off in the right direction and felt heavy and liberated all at once, queasy and released – like white sunlight would overwhelm my mind – and ran. I could have been anyone or anywhere: two parts of time which should never have touched.

And I’m not overreacting, I’m truly not, because I’ve been looking for this house most
of my life and never expected to find it. Nobody should be confronted with exploring their mental landscape in the flesh. This house should not have been real, and I’m half convinced that it wasn’t – or my memories of M’s house shifted to match it. But I still have those sketches, and to keep things in perspective, there are as many discrepancies as accuracies: six big rooms instead of four; different front, different lobby. And mercifully, the lake was not where it should have been (it was about 20 degrees to the left, slightly too far back and had been bricked in – but it would have been the right shape)

And I feel it will change to accomodate the things I’ve learnt. Because, like the instances above where my mind is a black hole because his is, I’ve never really been satisfied with his description of the house – like working out where the servant’s quarters are, because M never cared to be aware of them. Using the Gunnersbury layout, I can correct such mistakes. The back of the house looked correct in its length, even though from the inside there should only have been 8 windows instead of about 12 meaning there must be an extra room (and now I think of it, there was always a salon/parlour, the location of which I was never sure of because it wasn’t very important. I mean, I can think of six ground floor rooms – but apart from the two important ones, never worked out where the other four definitely fitted.)

After that, the day just became increasingly weird. Nostalgia came bubbling up, like the curse it is. We explored the rest of the park and found the boating lake, the temple, the fantastic orangery. We found a building from 1969, covered in carved graffiti from people with older names, like Ken and Dennis. And spray graffiti reading “Its going to start somewhere”, which seemed apt. We took two busses back, and I came home, buzzing to write – and then spent a long, long, long time on sociology websites. There’s only so much excitement I can take in a day.

We are going back. With cameras. Today is the 17th of June, close to the day it ended, and now I am itching to get to my old diaries and see how close we came.

An apologia regards my fondness for Celine Dion. Not that I'm embarassed - my music taste is weirdly nebulous, in that I actually like some things from most genres - I like romantic slush, and I like experimental weirdness, I like dance-rave-repetitive-noise, some rap, some classical, some Britpop, some blues. I've got one of the widest music tastes I know - and it's probably because I'm not a terribly discerning listener. I have favourites, naturally, but I can listen to pretty much anything and enjoy pretty much everything. No, this is not a challenge. If you interpret it as such, then I have four candidates for the most irritating songs of all time waiting in the wings. For the record, "Dodo/Lurker" by Genesis, "Games Without Frontiers", Peter Gabriel, virtually all Mike Oldfield, and "It's A Lie, It's a Fake" from a weird music site. "It's a Lie" is the worst, because not only does it get in your head - it's appallingly out of tune, so you can't even hum it.

Or maybe, as a musician, I'm drawn to weird stuff like chord sequences and interesting production values, and not artificial ideas like genre - I tend to describe most things I like as "a bit prog"...

So I'm not ashamed of Celine Dion, because even though she's cheesy, she does occupy a hole in the market for cheese - and does it marvellously. Her voice is great, and her fans are terrifying. The real question is how I became a Celine Dion fan, and I'm going to recount it partly as defence for people not convinced, and also because it's quite a good story. 7/10 at least.

I can't remember exactly when it started, but it involved a very vivid memory from childhood of a music video from Top of the Pops. I could remember the plot, more or less: it starts with a man on a motorbike being crushed by a burning tree, and then his ghost wanders around this huge empty house with a woman in a white dress wailing about it. Over the years, the memory got a bit messy - there are scenes I remember which didn't ultimately turn out to be in the video, and in the weird way of childhood memories it was all tied up with Princess Leia and the three times table - no, don't ask, because I have no idea. I was only six at the time. Now I think again, perhaps it was No. 3 on the TOTP chart that week?

Anyway, flash forward to about three years ago. I brought the memory up - and my dad, who I clearly remember was serving us a TV-tea when we were watching it, obviously had clearer memories of it. We spent about an hour on the internet, and he worked out that yes, it was a Celine Dion song. Amusingly enough, it was called "It's all Coming Back to me Now"...

Youtube didn't exist back then, in the Dark Days, so I had to wait till Christmas when he got me her "Best Of" DVD. Watching it was uncanny, and terrifying in the way revisiting childhood things are, but it's also a great video in it's own right:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPUIXWg9-Dw >

You can see why it might really stick in the mind of a child. And in the past few years, I've wondered how much it has influenced my thinking. To go back to Lord M, he has this intense problem with two women in white dresses in his past, and about which the sheer iconography of a fleeing blur of white fabric is the most striking thing. Which, one can logically infer, means that I have a very strong image of a Woman in White - and there are other ones in other stories, or films and books I've enjoyed or been scared by. Lucy in Dracula, for example, I always concieved like that. It's an image that just instantly sticks with me. My art project perfume was called White Lady, and even my pseudonyms - Ninquelosse - are the same idea. Maybe my entire love of the Gothic genre started there. Alternately, it happened the other way around, with Lord M. being obsessed with Silver, and his Lucy in the 1700s, and that's why the video struck me...but that bends reality a little far for my liking.

It's a possibility. It was only after I got madly into The Picture of Dorian Gray that I remembered the first time I had come across the story, also as a small child, in a big encyclopedia of weird things. There's a truly terrifying illustration of the painting. For literally half my life, I'd always been genuinely worried by oil paintings and portraits. It was only discovering the original novel which unlocked the memory of the first time I read it, and solved why I so strongly disliked them. They still scare me, but now it's an enjoyable type of terror.

Again, I wonder whether I like the book so much because I had discovered it so long ago, or whether the discovery was a sort of prefiguring of the later love. When I re-read the synopsis-story in the encyclopedia, I even remember the images which occurred to me on reading it so long ago. They're different to the ones the book leaves me. For example (pardon the minor spoiler) the synopsis only mentions that Alan Campbell kills himself, not how - and I always knew that he drowned by a foggy river: very vivid image indeed. Actually, he shoots himself. In his lab. And if we're going to get all circular about pre-occupations and imagery, Lord M has some very interesting things to add about foggy drownings - but it's far too late for that worrying line of questioning. And by now you're probably all thoroughly confused.

Back to White Ladies: Cathy Earnshaw, for example, and Wuthering Heights is a funny one. Wikipedia didn't exist in the Dark Days either, but apparently the song was based on it. What goes around, comes around. A quote from the song's writer:

The scene they always cut out is the scene when Heathcliff digs up
Catherine's body and dances in the moonlight and on the beach with it. I think
you can't get much more operatic or passionate than that. I was trying to write
a song about dead things coming to life. I was trying to write a song about
being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. It
was about the dark side of love; about the ability to be resurrected by it... I
just tried to put everything I could into it, and I'm real proud of it. It's
about obsession, and that can be scary because you're not in control and you
don't know where it's going to stop. It says that, at any point in somebody's
life, when they loved somebody strongly enough and that person returns, a
certain touch, a certain physical gesture can turn them from being defiant and
disgusted with this person to being subservient again. And it's not just a
pleasurable feeling that comes back, it's the complete terror and loss of
control that comes back. And I think that's ultimately a great weapon.

I've never actually thought the lyrics were that good, actually, but the funny thing is, I've always had those sort of strong associations with the song. And I didn't even know that scene happened, though I've read the book. Once. Too scary.

Wikipedia also tells me there are two other versions, an earlier one by Pandora's Box, a later one by Meat Loaf (unsuprisingly, considering how Meat-Loaf-y it sounds), who saw it as a duet - and Spotify turns up a few more. I'd listen to them both, but I've already pointed out how the song has it's creepy clutches into my psyche - I'm on my own, and it's dark. Apparently, Meat Loaf's video also uses a very Gothic aesthetic, with dead lovers and all: it's going to be fascinating to watch.


Anyway, to circle around to my original point: this is how I came to have a whole DVD of Celine Dion music videos, and after I'd watched mine once or twice, I did watch the other videos. Pure cheese, but enjoyable - and I particularly like that you can switch on the subtitles, and effectively sing along. So I have got pretty fond of all the reasonably decent songs on there. And I really love "Then You Look At Me". I found the sheet music for that and all. "Live for the One I Love", "Because You Loved Me" and "To Love You More" are also pretty good. Girl with a one track mind, but some times you do need that, like after a whole evening of Ovid. It never did the Beach Boys any harm.

In this issue: why I'm enjoying Galactica, Starbuck vs. Cavil: the ultimate showdown, why A-Team is smarter than it looks, and Tommy Westphall's Universe explained

Bad dreams.

I've been thinking about Galactica again this morning. I've suddenly taken a shine to it, not sure why. Perhaps it's because Season 4 has so much more Cylon-y goodness - when she's not being use purely as a pair of walking breasts (hello Season 1?), Six has some fascinating scenes and developments. Perhaps it's because the plot is winding to a climax, and they've cut all the trivia. Perhaps because the "kids" were always more trivia? Perhaps, after 90 hours of television, because I've got to know the characters better than some members of my family?

Perhaps it's because I've been waiting for 14 episodes for Tigh to do something, and last week he finally did it, and I wasn't disappointed in the slightest with the results? And this coincided very neatly with Gaius finally getting on with a scene I've been waiting for since episode one.

Like Law and Order, another one of Oceanic's favourite shows, Galactica has a big split between what my brain has termed the "kids" and everyone else. Like Law and Order, the Police and Prosecutors interact all the time - but sometimes it'll be heavy for one, and sometimes heavy for the rest. I've never been that interested in the "Law". Sure, I like the Chief, and I like Callie, and Helo is great, and Starbuck is possibly the best female character of all time in a contest of one. But compared to what's going on with the President, the Admiral, Gaeta, Gaius and Tigh - well I can't match the enthusiasm. The "law" are important, for balance, to give a more human story. But "order" has all the characters I like, and most of the interest. Interestingly, Apollo has moved into "order" recently and become more interesting as a result.

In any case, it's been a fun morning. I've been reading the Aeneid - in Latin - but with a translation close by for the knotty bits. I'm some 8 pages in, when I came across this line from Aeneas to his disheartened companions:

"o passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem."
"You who have suffered worse, this also God will end"

It instantly reminded me of Galactica. Earth is the mythical home of humanity, and my dad was quick to point out it was strange to have such an advanced society still having polytheism was bizzare. In any case, I'm not yet sure whether they're going to inspire the Ancient Greeks or the other way around, but it struck me that if their gods are Athena, Apollo, Zeus, and the names of their planets derived from constellations, which in turn derive from Latin (and some of those from Greek, such as Taurus, but many are basically Latinate), those wretched Scrolls of Pythia are probably written in Greek or Latin. Which suggested me an intensely nerdy translation project over the summer, to translate all the Pythia quotes.

Although perhaps not - because even if the planet names, and presumably therefore the names of the tribes, even if they come from Latin - the Pythia herself is most definitely a Greek. It's not only Galactica who can pinch from the Ancients - the Timelords significantly inspired Greek society. Old High Gallifreyan has a definite resemblence to the Greek alphabet, and many of their words and ideas are Greek. In particular, Academy, Arcadia, Capitol and Panopticon derive from Greek - and the Pythia, who is a figure involved with Ancient Gallifrey, is likewise.

Suggesting that any scrolls written by a Pythia, in any continuum, are likely to be Greek before they're Latin. Although again it's not that simple - Castellan is a Latin term, and Ulysses a Roman name. I wonder where Valeyard came from? Wikipedia doesn't know.

I've yet to work out the relationship between Greece and Rome, but it's a hard one because they're close yet far. For example, Aphrodite was a lot more fun than Venus, who as the mother of founder Aeneas had to be a lot more serious and matronly than her Greek counterpart - "Venus Genatrix"

In any case, to tie this all together, it leaves a further question - are the Cylons Timelords? Interestingly, the 12 tribes of Israel were arranged around what we now call the zodiac, which reminded me instantly of Kobol's 12 tribes.

This was all set off by The A-Team, which I stuck on to get over the aforementioned uncomfortable dream. I think it's smarter than it appears. In any case, it's a light-hearted fun reaction to 'Nam. It'd certainly make an interesting addition to any essay on fiction of that period. There's a real anti-authority thread running through it, literally every week it's corrupt governers, corrupt cops, corrupt establishment figures of all kinds - with basically vigilantes, on the run from the law, as our heroes. Plus, Murdoch is crazy. In a comic way, true, but it's a light twist on all the post-traumatic-stress fiction that came out after the aforementioned war. I don't know enough about American history or American literature to define what I'm talking about, all I know is it slips right in. Because there's something dark lurking straight under the surface, and I can't define quite what it is.

In any case, today's episode was fun. One of the young extras was played by the actor who'd later become the villainous Cylon Cavill in Battlestar Galactica. This lead to much amusement, about how their "plan" involved infiltrating the police of 1980s America. With the amount of disguise and double crossing that goes on in that show, it does make a sort of sense that every time an ex-Cylon actor appears in anything else, there's a possibility that character is also a Cylon, either pretending or unaware. In a Tommy Westphall's Universe sort of way.

This was especially fun because Dirk Benedict, who plays Face in The A-Team was the original Starbuck in the original Galactica. Starbuck vs. Cavill! Oh yeah! Especially fun when they actually ended up in a fight together.

And now we're going to talk about Tommy Westphall's Universe. Pay attention, because this is real brain-pain territory. As someone who has a very skewed vision of what is/isn't real, this theory fascinates and scares me in equal measure.

Tommy Westphall was an autistic child, and minor character, on the show St. Elsewhere. The show ends with a very strong implication that the entire series was merely in Tommy's imagination. Which is a valid plot kink. Unfortunately, characters from St. Elsewhere have since crossed over into other TV shows - for example, two doctors have since appeared on Homicide:Life on the Streets. This strongly, indeed, irrefutably suggests the two are in the same universe, so if you take the snowglobe as proof that St. Elsewhere was all imaginary, the illogical extention is Homicide is also part of Tommy Westphall's dream.

I do believe the theory has got out of control - the multiverse site claims there are 280 crossovers, but some are more tenous than others. For example, to get Doctor Who into Tommy's brain, they merely have to play Kevin Bacon thus:

St Elsewhere's Westphall, Craig and Auschlander visited Cheers' bar

Cheers spun-off Fraiser.

John Larroquette Show's John Hemingway called into Fraiser's show.

John Larroquette Show referenced Yoyodyne. Yoyodyne was also a client of
Angel's Wolfram & Hart.

Weyland-Utani is also a client of Angel's Wolfram & Hart. Weyland-Utani made
some of the weapons usedby Firefly's Malcolm Reynolds in the Battle of Serenity.

In the Red Dwarf episode "Psirens", the crew of the Red Dwarf come across a
space ship graveyard which includes a Weyland-Utani ship

The TARDIS from Doctor Who appears in the hangar bay of the Red Dwarf -
it can be seen during the launch of Starbug

They forget to mention that it's accepted fan speculation that Blake's 7 exists in the Whoniverse,
for various reasons I forget. I buy all this. I certainly feel the Doctor can exist in any continuum
he wants to exist - the TARDIS is a crossover device extrodinaire, we've seen it cross
paralell timelines before, and furthermore Iris Wildthyme's TARDIS actually does intrude on other fictional texts all the time while fully being aware they're fictional.

Arguably, we imagine things about people all the time, and they still have real lives outside of our dreams - Brian Wetherstone, philosopher, points out we can dream about meeting Gordon Brown without invalidating his entire existance. Yet St. Elsewhere doesn't define what is or isn't real - so if he's dreaming about two doctors, then that's fine and Homicide happens (as far as fiction can happen.) But potentially they don't exist at all. And in that case neither does Homicide, he's imagining the lot. Just because McFly endorse Saxon in Doctor Who, doesn't mean they were created by the production team, and in turn by Tommy.

Oh yes, Wikipedia links to several websites all saying the same thing: this is bloody nuts. And arguably, there is something bonkers in proving that a bunch of fictional TV shows are even more fictional than they were before, but I think that's mostly because the implications are so terrifying.

Because there is a very solid crossover with Law & Order. In which Michael Bloomberg plays city mayor. A role he also inhabits in real life.

Suggesting that we too are part of Tommy's dream. Perhaps the worst bit is, I don't find that idea even remotely alarming...

Today has been appalling.

Things started off bad when I spent the entire night running around on Androzani Minor. This didn't upset me so much as you'd expect, so much as just make me cross. It's just such an obviously cruel subject for a dream. If I keep having distressing, first-person dreams as the Doctor, I'll go insane within a few months. Especially if I don't get out of season 21 soon (I did Planet of Fire a couple of days ago...)

I woke up at 8, for my annoying film studies lecture at 10 - why they can't arrange the early ones for Stamford Street sods with a 10 minute commute I don't know. Went down for breakfast, already feeling pretty rough. Had cereal. Warned Actimel that I was about to hurl up said cereal, then proceeded to do so. Off milk, early wakeup, lactose intolerance and morning sickness have all been suggested.

Still, I hauled myself off to my lecture, and felt guilty for the entire tube ride in the knowledge that I was a ticking time bomb of spew. All was well. I started reading Grave Matter - Six and Peri - under some duress. It's setting up to be an average, ordinary work of Doctor Who literature. I feel I should read it, but it's not going anywhere exciting. It's so far been defiantly average. The Sixth Doctor is quite nicely captured, however.

Film Studies was quite fun, because I got into an argument about whether or not "realism" is a genre. The argument was that realism is anti-genre, because of it's unconvential characters and plot structures. I was arguing (and I was right...) that unconventional characters become a cliche in themselves - the alcholic father, single mother, unemployed layabout are as much predictable archetypes as the Sherrif, Bandit and Hooker with the Heart of Gold. And films are marketed as realism too - so why is it not a genre?

This was followed by Myths, which remains fascinating if unengaging. I had a careful lunch of ciabatta and cheese, and thence locked myself in the Maughan intent on doing work. I hate the 10 o'clock wake up because it leaves me tired for the rest of the day. I managed a very small amount of Latin, but gave up and had a nap instead. I deliberately leave my mobile on in the Maughan Library, just because of the sheer hating joy it gives me when my obnoxious Doctor Who ringtones go off in there. Calypso more or less woke me up, with the blessedly LOUD strains of the Trial of a Timelord theme tune.

We hung around in Chapters cafe for a bit, and arrived five minutes past closing at So-High Soho, a shop we'd discovered earlier in the week where Calypso had spotted something nice. She also managed to get me into a corset, which I can report is a painful but also bizzarely comfortable experience. It certainly does wonders for your posture - you have to move gracefully, there's no other way to do it. I'm thinking of one for Speech Day.

We then set off to see Lysisisisisisisisistrata, the Kings Greek play, and turned up 10 minutes too late. At which point, going back to a cashpoint to pay for tickets was superfluous as then we'd be 20 minutes late, et al.

I'd already gone off on yet another Ripper-inspired rumble about how wonderful London architecture was, because that particular area is packed with Victorian brickwork and stab-bety dark alleyways, which have aesthetic merit if nothing else. It's a gorgeous place, and I'd already rhapsodised at some length about the joys of Butler's Wharf, which was very nearby.

Butler's Wharf is a set of old, turn of the century warehouses which have recently been renovated quite classily. Yes, I first went there because they filmed Resurrection of the Daleks there, but I like it on its own merits too. Very atmospheric, and I'd always wanted to visit it in twilight or after dark. I suppose I'm obsessing about Jack the Ripper at the moment. This probably stems from an unsubstatiated rumour involving the Valeyard, which in turn probably inspired me to pick up From Hell, the Alan Moore Ripper masterpiece, and there's a great scene in that where a character takes another on a coach tour of London pointing out the layers. Ever since I can't help but think as I walk around "this is the London of Jack, and Mortimer, and Oscar Wilde, and King Charles I, all the way back to the Romans". There's history all over the place. Even the fact they filmed Doctor Who there is another layer of meaning.

There's a word Calypso uses about London, which I can't remember, which begins with p, and means "a text which has been overwritten by lots of other texts". She's right.*

*My father reminds me the word is "palimpsest", and that "this reminds me of Jack the Ripper" isn't necessarily a great reason to walk down a dark alley...

So we set off to walk to it, and never more has the principle been better demonstrated. We passed through massive, iron arches covering fruit markets which must have been there as long as they had been built. We passed a church chiming, surrounded by offices. We saw the Golden Hind and the HMS Britannia. We found a fake-tree, glowing neon beside real trees. We found some crazy modern architecture which Calypso determined was actually meant to represent a pot of bubble tea, pearl of tapioca and curly straw. This place never ceases to be beautiful.

Butlers Wharf was less exciting by night than I had anticipated, but I always love being there. It's a long, windy street with bridges joining the high windows, where dockworkers used to transport merchandise inland. We found a fountain entitled "Waterfall", which we decided was an blank excuse for seven, sculpted, naked women, with no nobler artistic merit. The whole experience was decidedly steampunk.

(PS, when I said the Doctor rugby tackles a Dalek out of the window...it's too late for me to actually post a photo, but this website has lots of screencaps including one of him after giving it a good shove.)

I had forgotten Tower Bridge was in this area, but the instant I saw it I had a mad crazy desire to walk across it - just to see what would happen. Because it was dark, because I had never done it before. Because it was there. I felt a little guilty about dragging Calypso across, with my ulterior motive already firmly in mind, as no one really deserves to have to deal with my curious neuroses - and as it turns out, I was as subtle as bagpipes, as she evidently worked it out within minutes, which made a lack of honesty from the start even worse. Yes, it's the site of one of Lord M's disasters. Perhaps, ultimately, his most defining disaster. One day I'll tell the story in full. Today, however, I'll leave it as "something bad".

I've spent about three years obsessively attempting to capture it all on paper, and then a few months ago I evidently succeeded. I haven't felt tempted to draw the scene again since: I consider the matter closed. So this was a final piece of catharsis. And it didn't matter that it wasn't built even remotely at the right time isn't the point, nor that the east footpath was closed and we could only approach from the west, nor that the sun was still going to rise in the wrong direction contrary to what I had written. Standing there did feel weird - as weird as Butler's Wharf. You've got a twin impression of alienation and familiarity - you've never been there before yet you recognise it so well. And then the weirdest things are different - things are out of proportion in the weirdest ways. But the blackness of the water was just right, as was the approach through the abandoned warehouses and dockland. Especially considering that during the regency, all that ambient London light would have been absent. We stayed a long time there, as the whole experience was quite moving - even discounting the fictional angst angle.

We went down off the bridge and had a look from lower down - the north end of the bridge has a series of steps and slopes beneath it. We attempted to find a way down, to no luck - which was a shame because there was something very atmospheric and creepy with this area in particular, in what I can only describe again as "Jack the Ripperly" - all alleyways, angles and gaslight. I've never felt comfortable with dark, inland water - though I'm not sure whether it's something I've always had, or just more recently. There was something tragic, sinister and very quiet in those massive iron girders, just the sense of something hidden beneath the bridge itself. And on coming back up, we discovered via a handy sign that this particularly emotive piece of architecture was where bodies fallen from the bridge would be fished out, and be stored in a morgue on that very site.

I slumped on the grate. It didn't suprise me - I'd already been struck standing under there by the image of a body washing up on the slope, and I suddenly realised that I'd never established whether this fictional corpse was found or not. "I bet Lord M's reeling", Calypso commented - to which my only response was "I'm reeling"!

Just as we were leaving, I took one last look over the edge, and to be honest, felt a bit sick - although whether that was concience, vertigo or just the cereal resurfacing, I couldn't say. A man passed on a bicycle and told me not to jump. In jest, I'm sure, but under the circumstances it was an interesting comment to make. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to kiss him or slap him.

So as evenings went, totally magical. Having not known what to expect, I took the bridge experience better than expected - the sense of walking across a place with such history, albeit a totally fictional one, was invigorating and I feel better for having done it. So the end of the day circles around to Androzani Minor again, because I walking across that bridge was something I didn't really think I'd ever do and emerge sane, and I felt extatic on reaching the other side. I am going to have to do it again, in appalling and dangerous weather, to get a proper feel for it. I'd also like to sit there and watch the sun rise. Just to establish, once and for all, which direction...

I enjoy sleeping a lot, it's one of my favourite things, so it's natural that dreams mean a lot to me. I'm actually quite a bad dreamer - I never have the classic ones. Never lucid dream, fly, get chased, see the future or have recurring ones as much as I'd like. To be honest, it's rare that I don't dream about Doctor Who these days, which is always an enjoyable experience.

In this post: the educational merits of Doctor Who; your humble narrator falls into peril with the College Chaiplancy; an adventure to Aldwych abandoned tube station, Strand Roman Baths and the Temple Church.


I can't remember who it was, but one of the many, many interesting people I've met here claimed there was nothing which spanned all three catagories: entertaining, educational and on television. I instantly countered, perhaps predictably with Doctor Who, yet I do believe this to be true.

Doctor Who was at the very start concieved as an educational show - the Doctor was originally accompanied by his granddaughter, Susan, and her two nosy schoolteachers whom he refused to let leave after they saw the inside of the TARDIS. Ian Chesterton, as well as occupying the role of chief Hero (the Doctor was too old, Barbara and Susan too female), was a science teacher - which meant that every other week he could interject "look, it's electromagnetics! This means..." and explain it for the audience. Barbara on the other hand was, being a history teacher, was handy in episodes in the past.

Before you dismiss them as walking exposition, Ian and Barbara were also great companions in their own right. And even though Doctor Who lost the educational edge very quickly, the bredth of issues and topics addressed across a 45 year old show leave you with a wealth of useful, random trivia -histories, places, people, even words (recursion, Grand Guignol, adumbrate and apostate being four which spring to mind). Why, even Just War made me feel more genuine interest and outrage at the German Occupation of Guernsey than ever before - and this is a place I've lived in for some 16 years!!



And so to today - that digression on fiction's hottest physics teacher has a purpose, never you fear. The Adventuress of Henrietta Street by Lawrence Miles has the Doctor helping out a coven-cum-brothel in Regency-era England, but brilliantly is presented as a novel of that era also. Letters, weird spellings, citing sources and surmises for events when no one was present. It's practically set at my university - Henrietta Street itself adjoins Covent Garden (I visit it more often than I should, because the road sign still excites me), and events take place up and down the Strand.

Did you know there was once a menagerie on the Strand? A zoo for posh people in a second floor apartment? More importantly, for today's events, did you know that the Temple the whole area refers to was once a genuine Knights Templar temple built around here? Temple walk, Temple place, Middle Temple, Temple tube station - even the Knight's Templar pub where Geeksoc meet. I'm reminded of one chapter of From Hell, when one of the characters takes another on a tour around London and strips past the layers and layers of past. I could stay here forever, because the mess of architecture and history is just so appealing.


It all started when my Myths lesson went missing. It's always at 11, 3rd basement, along to the left - but I arrived late, and none of the class were there. In its place, another very settled lecturer who seemed suprised indeed at the suggestion that he shouldn't be there. I half heartedly went looking for the class, but the Strand Campus comprises the Norfolk, Kings, Chesham, Philosophy buildings not mentioning the Classics wing, all of which have their own staircase and floor labelling system, linked up in an irrational manner known only to Escher. I had in fact just the day before discovered a passage directly from Classics to Film - a long, sickly lit corridor made up of tiny doors, winding staircases which lead nowhere and doors surely containing professors long-forgotten by the college who haven't left their offices since 1943 and have no idea the war is over. You could certainly starve to death and it would be at least fifteen months before anyone discovered the body.


To digress, that little voyage of discovery brought me to the College Chaiplancy Common room - "please enter, open to all" ominously written on the door. In any case, I took a peep - I've been longing to find a place in the college I can nap when I get exausted during the day. Then I spotted a poster on the wall - advertising for singers to sing mass on a Sunday morning. Brilliant! I thought - I've been longing to join a choir, but it seems my voice is just a bit too classical for the pop/rock groups, yet not classical enough for the serious groups. So I went in to take down the details, and that's when the trouble started.

Religious people are like tigers. I love tigers, I'd hate it if they went extinct. Tigers have a very important role to play in the world's ecosystem - they're a vital part of the way it all works. And individually, they're some of the most incredible things in the world. It's just...you don't want to end up alone in a group of more than five tigers under any circumstance, especially not on their own territroy.

And indeed I did feel I was being checked out by everyone - oooh, a new person, I wonder if she's edible? Inexplicably - probably because of my previous blog about Remonstrances - I suddenly got Cousin Jasper's advice about avoiding Anglo-Catholics pounding through my head.

Eventually, one of the group came and asked if they could help - and it turned out they were all genuinely very nice people. I was made the best hot chocolate in the universe - cream, sprinkles and everything - and I'm sure a mounting sense of discomfort when I realised I was trapped between a shelf of Vatican Discources and a pile of Bibles was more from my own prejudices than anything which actually happened. I'll probably find it again sometime, if I have a sour day. Will I sing in the choir? A better question is, will I be able to get to Holborn before 11 on a Sunday morning?


In any case, looking for my Myths seminar was a courageous but foolish idea - and while poking around for it, I ran into Spirita who was using her height to balance precariously at the top of a staircase and to put up a "revoke Peres' honorary doctorate" poster so high it couldn't be removed. Typically, she did not object to putting up posters against Kings regulations - but objected strongly to me pinching blu-tack from a nearby noticeboard to back up her own poster. With a little help from my umbrella, we stuck down the corners she couldn't reach.

We're on the eighth day of the Kings Occupation - and the occupiers have got all their demands met bar one. Kings are going to give Palestinians scholarships and send surplus equipment (to explain, Palestine just got its university blown up), organise funding events and open up their books to clear up allegations of involvement in the arms trade. But they won't revoke Shimon Peres' Doctorate, so the occupation continues. My views? My view is I still don't know enough about the scenario to judge, it still hasn't been explained to me adequately and impartially enough. They have my thoughts, if not my physical presence.

In any case, we got chatting in a stairwell about the most random things - Abba, Celine Dion, the Sphynx without a Secret and the house we're all going to get next year, which probably deserves a post all of its own. Along the way, I tried explaining my theory of auras - that when something repetitve happens in an area, it does affect the area in some way. This arose because we had both visited Bodmin Gaol, one of the most evil places I've ever been - it just had uncomfortable scratched into the walls, and that was before they decorated the ex-Victorian prison with grotesque mannequins of the dead inmates. Ellis Island Immigration Centre was another - as if the terror and expectation and the weariness of thousands upon thousand travellers had got absorbed by the building. Almost like a sense that it was holding it's breath, waiting to exhale all its stories. I feel the same way about churches and libraries, as if the respect and silence of everyone who has passed through has somehow left a mark on the places themselves.

A bit new age spirital - and Spirita offered some rational suggestions, which may have been correct - but in those two places in particular did give me the spooks on a level other than the rational. Certainly Ellis island, which was open and spacious, redecorated and wasn't so obviously unsettling as Bodmin Gaol, made me feel physically sick, bizzare and just disquieted in a way I couldn't define. I would strongly object to returning to the latter; the former, I would if only to get a handle on what worried me so much about it.

I'm not necessarily claiming I feel a so-called "psychic connection" to any of those places. To my mind, it would be pretensious - and it would suggest firmer beliefs in new age spiritality than I actually hold. I'm interested, and a percieved personal reaction to these places is one of the things which spurs this interest - but still not wholly convinced. One thing I have always thought curious is that places where genuinely terrible things have happened - I have visited Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and I've been in the courtyard of Kilmainham Gaol where the Easter Rising leaders were executed - the places you would expect any "psychic sympathy" to just be unbearable are empty, completely emotionally empty. They're like completely blank areas, as if the events there have just rubbed the land raw.

As I said above, this doesn't necessarily prove anything one way or another. Maybe it's all real, maybe it's in my head. Maybe I really am a powerful psychic, maybe there's no such thing. In any case, even though Spirita was twice as sceptical as I was about this whole idea, we decided to go and see if we could get into Aldwych Tube Station and see what the "psychic vibrations" left by an abandoned tube station would be. Along the way, we bumped into fellow Geek Caterpillar who joined our quest.


Fans of Lara Croft will recognise this as a location from Tomb Raider 3 - the fact as a functional station it is no more will explain a quibble I always had with this level, namely "why are there armed men, angry dogs and absolutely no civilians on that branch of the Underground?" I've enjoyed delving into the history - did you know the station opened on my birthday, 1907? But it was hardly ever used, so it was more cost effective to just shut it in 1994 than pay for a replacement lift. Somewhat frustrating, because a tube straight from Kings to Holborn would make the Maughan trip far more appealing - as it is, the walk is unpleasant and it's impossible to reach on a sensible tube line. Yet it's been useful in its own way - as an air raid shelter during the war for both humans and British Museum treasures, and a testing space for innovations on functional tube lines.

In any case, I've longed to have a look around there - actually, I really want to have the best goth disco in the universe down there, but I suspect the hire would be more than Geeksoc could afford. Spirita had had a peep a few days ago when there were builders, and indeed there were people there when we visited - a man had popped out for a cigarette.

We tried to gain entry as politely as possible, but he revealed that the police were using it as part of a training simulation so naturally we couldn't go in. The policeman also pointed out, fairly enough, that it was the tube station we saw in every tube-station movie - Atonement, Prince Caspian and V for Vendetta to name three - and that it just looked like every other tube station. Here's Aldwych Tube station in action in the infamous "Firestarter" video by Progidy:

Great video, by the way. Disturbing as hell, but still great.

Seeing the Tube on video wasn't exactly the point, but we thanked him. Looks like, for now, I'll have to make do with the photos on Subterranea Britannica - which do seem to have a certain sickly karmic something to them. I've always felt abandoned places do have an energy.

This disappointment didn't deter our adventure, however, and we went off to see the Roman Baths. They are located under the King's building, right next door to the entrance - but my love of Classics has always been overcome by my hatred of small, dark pokey alleyways. The idea seemed much safer in company, however, and in that particular London rain which makes everything grey and gorgeous, we went looking for Architectural Treasure no. 2.


The alley itself was thoroughly Dickensian, and in it's own Jack the Ripper way, quite beautiful - vents, ducts, windows and mess, in that uniquely London manner of making architctural chaos appealing. From the bottom, we could see the whole belly of the university, and it's crazy-paving layout. The back of the chapel is only held up by two very determined columns, and we walked under several very high tunnels which we pass through without thinking every day. Aptly enough, the Classics department is actually right on top of the Roman Baths...

...which were being redecorated or something - in any case, two builders fixing doors ensured that we couldn't actually see them. At this point I saw a dead mouse and almost hurled. I hope I never see a real human dead body, because even though my mind can objectively cope with the idea, in actual fact I always react to animal corpses with far less dignity than I would like.

At this point, you'd think we would be deterred by our double failing. Yet I started rhapsodising about London history, including my much-quoted trivia lovingly ripped off from Henrietta Street as mentioned above. Which reminded Spirita, when I came to the Knight's Templar, that someone had told her there really was a very old chapel about somewhere. So we trotted down to Temple Tube to ask the man there for directions, and he helpfully pointed us right.

Which was weird in its own right, because I take the crossroads from the Strand to Temple every day but never go any further - it's as if the world just stops there. So walking down this new road was a particular treat. If I had a massive wall-map of London, I'd ink in the roads I'd visited and make a point of seeking out those I hadn't. Because I'm sure all my activity would clump around one or two areas, when there's just so much to discover all over the place.

Luckily, at this point Caterpillar suddenly realised where we were heading and lead us through the most brilliant maze of buildings - imagine Hogwarts, Oxford and a set of church cloister gardens crunched together and rearranged. Temple Court Chambers, as I understand, is a little isolated village of barristers and bores in suits - and it occured to me that the three of us all looked like undesireable delinquents. There were pathways with iron fences and stone flagstones, a fountain, lines of trees, columned arcades - and finally, after feeling like I'd accidentaly wandered into Florence, we came to the Temple Church, built by the Knight's Templar as already noted above and as used in The Da Vinci Code, and responsible for the naming of the whole area.

And in keeping with the theme of the trip, the church was closed until later in the afternoon.

History was everywhere, and I longed to go examine all the Latin (we found a Gurney on a tombstone) and go explore more winding streets - but the group voted for lunch, and we went on another trek of quite a different kind in which my desire for a peking duck wrap but refusal to pay coffee shop prices (£5 to eat in?! seriously?), our ethical aversion to the evil of chain brands, my friends' vegitarianism and Caterpillar's various allergies/intolerances made agreement of any sort completely impossible. Indeed, the lunch quest took longer than the architecture one and is far too tedious to recount. Except that Tango new brand lemonade is worth trying.

And that's that. We met Calypso later, and then all of a sudden it was 6 in the evening and time for tea. But a very exciting day, all in all, and I forsee more Random London Architecture rambles in the future.

In this post: creepy going ons in Camden, gripes about academic essay writing and the inevitable Doctor Who connection to my latest piece of coursework.

The danger with clothes shopping is that my chief style icons are Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning from 70s Doctor Who - yes, a mix of miniskirts, fluff, ruffles and velvet would keep me going just fine. Indeed, the Doctor full stop - I've always thought his costumes were adorable.

This means there's always a very real danger with me coming back with one of the following items:

Yes, Camden really does have those fine cricketing jumpers - though luckily for my finances, I've only ever found them in blue, not red. More dangerous is the velvet jackets, which are all reduced to £5 currently. Yet having been sent to find trousers, I set out for the latter.

Epic fail. I found lots of yellow, but none striped - and they were all skinny fit jeans. I'm not a fan of jeans at the best of times - but skinny fit just betrays a little known fact, namely that my hips are massive. "Surely not!" I hear you say, and indeed - when compared to the worlds' largest woman they probably look quite comely. And it's not like I'm so worried I'm going to exercise more or eat less - it's just a genetic thing, nothing to lose sleep over. Yet drainpipe jeans really do advertise the fact for all to see. After an hour or so, I gave up and walked back towards the Tube, hopping in and out of shops just in case. No joy.


I stuck my head through one door, and was about to leave when the owner insisted I look properly. I was feeling too glum to argue, so I pretended to rifle through the hoodies. After a brief moment, he loudly declared "trousers!", and ushered me upstairs two floors with his female assistant into this massive room of the things. Which was spooky enough, except then this young lady asked me what I was looking for, and before I could speak my eyes settled on that dream item - the yellow and black striped trousers I'd been seeking all day.



When I finally found a fitting pair (just so you don't think I was being all female-neurotic about the trouser thing, these are actually 16s), I asked the girl honestly whether they made my hips look wide. She replied that stripes are slimming, and she was right - despite the tight fit they looked far better than anything else I'd tried all day.



At that point, I could barely refuse. The weirdness of the situation was too much. And just so you know my Brehaut genes are good for more than making drainpipes look unflattering, I haggled the shop owner down from £45 to a slightly more reasonable £33 (well, £35, but I ran out of coins and he spared me the difference). About £10 more than I intended to spend, but they were exactly what I wanted, and buying trousers isn't something I do very often - I hope these will last me a while.


So that was that. Now I'm back at home, feeling slightly less bereaved than I did yesterday and working hard on my essay: beguiling, trecherous females in Greek myth. I'm trying a new approach - the previous three, I started by working things out, and then investigated other scholarship. I got criticised all three times for not citing enought, which was doubly frustrating - I just want to write the essay, not write an essay about other people's essays; I want to explore my ideas. Oscar Wilde has a line I can't quite remember about historians quoting each other.

True, I haven't done the research in Greece myself - but surely I don't need a footnote to substantiate the claim that "buildings fall down because they are old"? And in all three cases, finding useful books in the Maughan was impossible, as detailed before, which makes it hardly my fault. In any case, avoiding plagarism is impossible - you've got to cite when you use someone else's idea, but what if you come up with the idea independantly? So this time, I am putting as few as of my own ideas as possible. Instead, I am going to repeat what other critics have said, and see if I get better marks.

Doctor Who connection of the day: Pandora's box is naturally a famous facet of Greek legend, but in the original myth it was actually a jar. Pandora's jar doesn't have quite the same ring. It did, however, remind me of Curse of Fenric - in which the Doctor finds Fenric, an "ancient evil" of chaos and destruction, trapped in a jar. And it's the maidenly Ace who opens it, and releases all the trouble. Coincidence? Well, Curse of Fenric is obsessed with runes, vampires and Viking mythology, so it wouldn't suprise me if the connection was entirely deliberate.

Hmmm...maybe I should put this in the essay for extra credit?

In this post: Propaganda Factory learn to free run and rescue a friend. Sort of; I complain about student life; shock news: Doctor Who merchandise is a rip off; musical fusion

On Tuesday, we went free running!

Free running/parkour is at its essence the art of getting from Point A to B in the urban enviroment as quickly as possible. The terms are used interchangeably, though I think technically parkour is more of a speed thing - free running includes more showing off, flips and the like. The world woke up to parkour about five years ago and discovered it was BLOODY AWESOME, with everything from Britain's Got Talent to Hollywood using it's damn coolness on screen.

At it's heart, however, it's still a sport for the urban child, free from rules or responsibilities, as evidenced by the number of homemmade Youtube videos cut to cool sounding music. After months of dedicated training and hard work, me and my cool London crew decided to follow in their footsteps and film some of our moves and shapes. This city - our playground. Here are the results...

• A TARDIS, which I got with a Sonic Screwdriver Doctor, but with a Doctor in Long Coat figure which is supposed to come randomly. So if you buy this pack you've also got to buy a single TARDIS or you'll never get the other figure.
• A Chula Ship with Captain Jack, as per usual, a set I bought as per usual.
• An Ood - which is meant come randomly - with a "ood transport ship", actually the Sanctury Base rocket, which I already got with a Spacesuit Doctor, but painted red and with a differently designed base.