Welcome, Intraloper, to the blog (otherwise the amber-shifted VR timecode for a portal to Hades II) of Vincent Marsden Hendrick, daydream navvy and insinceritist. Here, compressing unfeasible rage, I'll precipitate a meandrous downpour of wet thinking for the unparapluied.
The Eleventh of July Two Thousand and Fifteen. Saturday.
The Altrincham Line
So I hopped on the train at Manchester Airport up to Deansgate and headed for the tram again. I fully intended to cross the refurbished footbridge between the rail and tram stations but I took a wrong turn and ended up going up a load of stairs instead. Never mind.
DEANSGATE CASTLEFIELD
He looked away, back out towards the Golden Gate Bridge. 'Don't be sad, Grace,' he murmured. 'You will do great things.'
Golden Gate Bridge, Deansgate Bridge. Might have been more of a connection if I'd actually crossed over it. Can't win them all.
We've already visited Cornbrook, so on to
TRAFFORD BAR
Evans wandered to a nearby chocolate machine and gave the handle a hopeful tug. To his astonishment, the drawer opened, revealing a bar of chocolate. 'Well, there's lovely,' he said delightedly.
Trafford Bar of chocolate. Of all the stuff in The Web of Fear this scene with the free chocolate lodged itself into my memory. It just seems so odd to me.
OLD TRAFFORD
'Look at what, Trevor?' Scott asked, scanning the field for some sign of a four or six being hit. 'There's a police telephone box on the pitch.'
Some have made the case that a young Douglas Adams probably saw the episode of The Daleks' Masterplan with this cricket match and it inspired the bit in Life, the Universe and Everything. There's the unmade 'Krikkitmen' script too, of course. Not impossible, I suppose. Just highly improbable.
STRETFORD
He wore the sombre black tailcoat of an Edwardian gentleman under a heavy cape, with a Keble College scarf thrown over one shoulder.
Another Joker, although you could make a case for the birthplace of LS Lowry being an appropriate place to read a novelisation of a story made of moving drawings. Shalka is an odd cul-de-sac but there's some merit in a story featuring Bishop Brennan, half a dozen lines from a future Doctor, Sir Derek warming up for the Master and an Oscar-nominated companion. In fact a quick check has just revealed - much to my astonishment - that the original website is still active! If you haven't seen it, check it out: The Scream of the Shalka
DANE ROAD
'It's a TARDIS! she breathed, finally finding her voice. 'The Monk's got a TARDIS!'
Not sure if the Vikings in this story are Norse or Danes, but - y'know - close enough. SALE
But the Captain was continuing, disdainfully, 'A Lord of Time! Are there lords in such a small domain?'
Pun alert! Oh, but this is one of my favourite stories. How did something this gorgeous survive Eric Saward's editing?
BROOKLANDS
Edgar Lumb - Morestran Pioneer - Died here 7y2 in the year 37,166 Braun thought about gathering some jungle flowers for the grave, then shook his head wearily.
Erm, Braun was played by Terence Brook. This was on the Horror Channel earlier this week. That is all.
The corporal turned to look. 'Blimey, sir. How did that happen?'
Kklak! Had to get a 'Blimey!' in at the home of the Oh Blimey Big Band. You know I did. I really did. Thank you.
NAVIGATION ROAD
'A flying caravan, Marco,' Kublai said, 'there's something to tell the Venetians when you reach home.'
Navigation? A road? I think you can connect the dots on this one yourself.
ALTRINCHAM
This Brigadier had a black patch over his left eye, a scar ran from the patch down to his jaw line.
Where else but Alty for a story about an Alt universe?
Now time to retrace our steps and then continue through the city centre and up to Bury.
The Fourth of July Two Thousand and Fifteen. Saturday.
The Airport Line
BARLOW MOOR ROAD
'Off... Off Greymalkin... Off...' he panted, grabbing the warm fur in both hands and trying to fling the enormous creature aside...
Ian Marter always altered things in his novelisations. He renamed the Sontaran Styr and had this weird dream sequence with rats and a giant cat. Brilliant. The TV story was filmed on Dartmoor so why not read it at Barlow Moor Road?
SALE WATER PARK
He held up the Zygon device between finger and thumb. 'Here, boy, here!'
There is a lake in the Water Park. Fortunately, it does not contain a monster. I think.
NORTHERN MOOR
'Ah, a gentleman at last. Doctor von Verner at your service'
Culloden is a Northern Moor. Check it!
WYTHENSHAWE PARK
'Dad, this is Gordy,' said Kate with the broadest smile she had ever given him. 'Gordy, this is Grandad. Say hello.'
Was stuck again, so here's another joker. Downtime was another Nineties straight-to-video story to fill the echoing void left by Doctor Who's absence. This one had quite the pedigree - written by Marc Platt, author of the last TV story made up to then and directed by series veteran Christopher Barry it featured several characters from its parent that weren't owned by the BBC: The Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith and Victoria Waterfield all portrayed by their original actors. The Yeti were the monsters and it's here that the character of Kate Stewart, now head of UNIT in the new series, first appeared.
MOOR ROAD
'Sure,' she said, in relief. She sucked a smear of lipstick from a front tooth. 'Great tits, though.'
Barry Letts, for shame! Another joker, this time an adaptation of the second Jon Pertwee radio serial that was eventually transmitted on Radio 2. I don't remember such vulgar language in the on air version. It was a different time.
BAGULEY
He fished a paper bag out of his pocket. 'Here, would you like a jelly baby? No, I suppose not!'
Hmm, this is a bit of a rough patch. A bag of jelly babies at Baguley. I promise you, my favourite, the absolute best one is coming up in a few stops time.
ROUNDTHORN
'What have you done to her?' shouted the Doctor. 'Janis thorn. Something you hadn't thought of, Doctor.'
I am certain that Janis thorns are round.
MARTINSCROFT
'Half a dozen will have to do,' said Ashe. 'Put a guard on the Martins' dome, just in case.'
Come on! There's more than one person called Martin in this book, so it fully ties in with the pluralness of the stop's name. That ain't too bad, if you ask me. Also, since this is the first book with Jo and the Master in it serves as an introduction story for them both even though they were well established by this time on telly.
BENCHILL
Later, forced to leave Telos, the Cybermen took refuge on the long lost sister planet of Earth... Mondas.
There you have it. The books, especially those written by the Cybermen's co-creator Gerry Davis, definitvely state that Telos was their home planet, contradicting the telly. Continuity, schmontinuity. This was my first Target novelisation. It features the Doctor's companions Polly and Ben, who must be very cold because this story is set at the South Pole. Benchill. Boom! Admit it - you're impressed with that one. It's certainly my favourite.
CROSSACRES
'I could tell you... that I came from another world. Ruled by insects. Or that my friends and me recently visited Nero's Rome. Before that, we were in an England far into the future.'
Crosses and crusades. So it goes...
WYTHENSHAWE TOWN CENTRE
Peri followed his gaze three hundred feet down to the sight of Blackpool, spread before them like a toy town, the trams clattering along the promenade towards the funfair in the middle distance.
Most of the jokers seem to be on this line. Another novelisation of something that never was - the abandoned first story of the original 23rd Season. Big Finish produced an audio version years later, but this novelisation was written by former producer Graham Williams who was responsible for the original script.
ROBINSWOOD ROAD
'Trapped like this, like a sponge decaying in some murky sea... No, even a sponge has more life than I do.'
Scripted by Terrance Dicks who asked for his name to be taken off as editor Robert Holmes had changed it too much for his liking. Dicks told Holmes to replace his name with a bland pseudonym and thus was created Robin Bland's one and only credit. Dicks wrote the novelisation, though, so he must have made his peace somewhere along the way. Probably when he received the cheque.
PEEL HALL
Kane didn't move. He watched, as the shutter opened wide, then he stepped into the burning light.
Kane was played by Edward Peel.
SHADOWMOSS
The Shadow's voice echoed through the tunnels, as though the asteroid itself was speaking. 'I too serve a Guardian, Doctor. A Guardian equal and opposite to your own. The Black Guardian. He Who Walks in Darkness.'
Yeah, the Black Guardian's servant was called The Shadow. Pretty easy, that one.
MANCHESTER AIRPORT
'In this place all things obey Kalid. Come!' He led the Doctor to the crystal in the centre of the room, and began to chant. 'Vizaan, vizaan, zanoor minaz...'
I didn't realise when I took this photo that the Concorde that was used in this story - G-BOAC - is the one that has been retired to Manchester Airport! Well, there you go!
Hokay, time for a quick rail journey into the centre of Manchester and then out on the Altrincham line.
The First of July Two Thousand and Fifteen. Tuesday.
Hello again. We've just changed trams on to the
The East Didsbury Line
We're just going to zoom through Trafford Bar for now and jump off at the first stop on the East Didsbury branch.
FIRSWOOD
Just a wooden horse, after all... but no - there was more to it than that. I tell you, my hackles rose at the sight of it!
There's a lot of these. They can't all be gold standard. Wood. The connection here is wood.
CHORLTON
'Time Lords are forbidden to interfere, Leader,' the Deputy objected. 'This one calls itself "The Doctor",' the Leader boomed, selecting a programme from the holovisor's memory and switching it on again. 'It has assumed a number of regenerative forms and it does nothing but interfere...'
He was credited as Cyber Lieutenant on screen but here Ian Marter calls him Deputy - probably because it's easier to spell! He was played by Mark Hardy and here I am in Chorlton-cum-Hardy...
ST WERBURGH'S ROAD
Cameca turned to him and kissed him on both cheeks. 'Oh, sweet favoured man, you have declared your love for me,' she said, 'and I acknowledge and accept your gentle proposal.'
Before River Song, Elizabeth I and Marilyn Monroe the First Doctor was engaged (albeit accidentally) to an Aztec by the name of Cameca. She was portrayed by Margot van der Burgh which is close enough to the name of this place.
WITHINGTON
The Doctor was drumming on the table eyeing the ranks of Sontaran troopers, and cursing in very low Gallifreyan.
First joker. I couldn't figure out a link so I chose this book. Shakedown was orginally a straight-to-retail video featuring the Sontarans that materialised in the Who-less Nineties. Terrace Dicks novelised and expanded his own script as part of Virgin's New Adventures range.
BURTON ROAD
At last Burton cleared his throat. 'Let me get this right - you're telling me that you aren't the Happy Hearts Holiday Club from Bolton, but instead are spacemen who fear an attack from other spacemen.'
Burton, of course, was the head of the Shangri-La Holiday Camp in this story. I think Delta and the Bannermen is fab. Doo-wop doo-woo. Love is the answer.
WEST DIDSBURY
The Doctor sat up. 'Ah, Lethbridge-Stewart. Do you think you could find my clothes? It's a trifle parky in here?'
Another joker. What a strange time the nineties were. With no Doctor Who on telly, Jon Pertwee returned to the role on Radio 5 back when they used to do drama. On medium wave! The sound quality was atrocious so we lapped up the stereo cassette when it was released. Here, Barry Letts novelises his own radio script.
DIDSBURY VILLAGE
Seconds later a sibilant voice filled the air. 'Axos calling Earth, Axos calling Earth...'
There is a butchers in Didsbury called Axon's! No, seriously! Here it is:
I remember being freaked out seeing this book in Menzies on the Precinct way back when. I had seen the Axons in the Doctor Who Monster Book but had never heard of Axos. It seemed strange and new. And that Achilleos cover - the beams coming from the Axon's eyes. Brilliant.
EAST DIDSBURY
'Stupid oafess!' squealed Sil.
A few jokers on this line. Mission to Magnus would have been part of the original Season 23 before it was cancelled and later replaced by The Trial of a Time Lord. Philip Martin novelised his script and then later adapted the story as a Big Finish audio. It's fitting that a series about time travel has so many different versions of the same events, all produced at different times, each slightly different. It delights in thwarting any notions of canon at whenever it can.
Back up the line to St Werburgh's Road now, and then a change on to the Airport Line.
The Thirtieth of June Two Thousand and Fifteen. Tuesday.
"Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple
adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum
wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe."
Lex Luthor
(1986 rates: $1,000,000/hour)
At four in the morning on the Fourteenth of June Two Thousand and Fifteen (Sunday) I sat on the floor of the ancillary bedroom staring at a pile of Doctor Who books, bleary-eyed, knowing I was due in work in less than five hours, thinking "what is the point? Go to bed".
This Sunday, St Peter's Square tram stop in Manchester was closed with a view to demolishing it. They're building a new one, tying in with the new 2nd City Crossing (2CC) but for now the line is closed and the stop is gone. Kaput. I had a notion - I can't remember exactly when - to visit every tram stop on the Metrolink network in one day and if I was going to do it it would have to be on my last free day off before St Peter's Square closed: Monday the 15th. I propped open my eyelids with matchsticks and continued my prep.
"What prep?" I hear you ask. Well, just visiting each stop seemed a bit straightforward. So I determined that the only sensible course of action to take was to ensure I was reading a Doctor Who novelisation in the selfies I intended to take at each stop. But this was not something that could be done willy-nilly. There had to be rules...
The Rules
The basic unit of currency would be the novelisation - book adaptations of classic series television stories. There should be some sort of connection between the book and the stop where the photo was taken, however vague. If a connection couldn't be found, then a 'joker' could be used - a novelisation of something other than a televised story. It had to be a novelisation, though - not an original novel.
But I was going to start in Eccles so I thought I'd break that rule straight away.
The Eccles Line
ECCLES
'You see?' said the Doctor triumphantly. 'Scratch the surface and there's usually something going on underneath. Fantastic!' He seized a handful of Rose's chips and stuffed them in his mouth.
There was no way I was going to overlook the opportunity to include the Salfordian Doctor, who happened to be called Eccleston, in a book written by a Salfordian author who I went to school with. But that's the only one. Honest.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to point out I actually started at the nearest stop to my Mam and Dad's, Weaste, and then got off at Ladywell to go to the McDonald's for a breakfast wrap, hash browns and coffee and then walked to Eccles.
LADYWELL
Lady Eleanor's eyes gleamed. 'You will mix a potion and poison the dog?'
June (Dot Cotton) Brown played a Lady in this story. I told you some of the links were vague. There'll be vaguer still before we finish.
WEASTE
The Doctor grinned. 'Romana, you're wonderful.' 'I suppose I am. I've never really thought about it!'
The working title for State of Decay was The Wasting, and Weaste is derived from the wastes where the village was founded. Disappointed I couldn't find the 'The Wasting is... the Wasting' quote from the TV version. I think Terrance probably excised that cos it's daft.
LANGWORTHY
'Logopolis is the keystone.' The Monitor's face was ashen. 'If you destroy Logopolis, you unravel the whole causal nexus!'
There's a community centre in Langworthy called the Cornerstone. That's a bit like a keystone. And Langworthy and Logopolis sound a bit similar. Ish.
BROADWAY
Puffing contentedly at his cigar, Jago stood watching in the wings, as Chang moved toward the climax of his act.
A theatre plays a large part in this story. The stop is called Broadway. Simples.
MEDIACITYUK
Scanning around the Punishment Dome through the lenses of his 207 video cameras, Bax considered what best to offer the early morning viewers of Varos.
Another straightforward link - a story about television at the station where the BBC's Salford studios are located.
HARBOUR CITY
'Ben?' whispered Vince fearfully. 'He be coming back. Coming back for me!'
Well, the yacht in this doesn't make it to the harbour - it crashes on the titular rock - but it's close enough. I think this is one of only two stories with someone named Vince in them (although bizarrely, the audio description track for Love & Monsters calls Victor Kennedy 'Vincent' (2021 edit: no it doesn't! I've completely Mandela Effected this memory.)
ANCHORAGE
'I'll cast a spell on ye, my pretty death's-head, a spell that'll run from ear to ear!'
A straightforward one, this. Story about Cornish smugglers, searching for hidden treasure while their ship is anchored off-shore.
SALFORD QUAYS
Years of patient scheming had brought Yartek to the threshold of absolute power.
Salford Quays of Marinus. Genius.
EXCHANGE QUAY
It was all rather ridiculous, thought Romana. Like one of those romantic videonovels she'd viewed when she was very young.
This is one of the Key to Time stories and has an exchange plot reminiscent of the Prisoner of Zenda. Boom!
POMONA
'I don't like Romana,' she objected, panting for breath. The Doctor shrugged. 'It's either that or Fred,' he said. 'I prefer Fred,' she said after a brief pause. 'Good. Come on, Romana,' the Doctor cried, setting off once again.
I always think of Romana when I pass this stop. That's a good enough reason I believe.
CORNBROOK
Trickster and his doll turned and looked wonderingly at each other, as if unable to believe their eyes.
Erm, the Trickster in this story was played by Lee Cornes. Yes, some of these are that tenuous.
Time to change lines and head toward East Didsbury.
The Twenty-Eighth of April Two Thousand and Fifteen. Tuesday.
I found an old diary entry tucked away the other day. It was a Word file that I had carelessly saved and it had ended up in some nondescript folder that I happened to be rooting through. Myself and my two offspring are engaged in that pilgrimage that all Doctor Who fans must undertake at some point - watching every television story in order. It's all been a bit casual so I'd lost track of when we'd actually started. Typically, we'd watch an episode or two when the boys were over and we were having our tea. But here it was - documentary evidence of when it had all started: a viewing plan for the first ever series, episode-by-episode starting on the Nineteenth of May Two Thousand and Six. I don't know how rigidly I stuck to that plan but the end result was we completed the 'Classic' series earlier this year. In a move that I think the Doctor would approve of, we didn't actually watch them all in order, though. No, in order to accommodate weekend/tea plans we swapped the viewing of the 2-parter The Awakening with the 4-parter Warriors of the Deep. I know some of you out there are already gasping at the heresy of Peter Davison's Doctor apparently getting a new jumper only for it to disappear in the next story and then reappear again after that. Don't worry - I've written some fanfic that helps define this as my own headcanon. And an extra biscuit for anyone who mentioned Flower Child's earring appearing before The Greatest Show in the Galaxy aired legitimising this sort of nonsense.
See? This is why I don't normally talk about Doctor Who. Hopefully, the normal people are still sticking with this.
With the "Classic" Series digested we took a short pause. The 10th Anniversary of the revived series was just around the corner and we thought it would be a nice touch to watch the first episode on that date and continue from there. So here we are, about a month later and the that's the first "New" series over and done with and Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor has come and gone.
But the real stand out of that first series was Episode 11, Boom Town. (What?) Here's the description for that episode from the original pitch document:
The New Team
The Doctor, Rose and Jax (sic).
A small-scale adventure; character stuff.
That's it. Admittedly, it was always designed as a cheap episode before the budgetary demands of the two-part finale. At one point it might even have been written by Paul Abbott, but in the end Davies was given the opportunity to consolidate everything that had been achieved so far. Having kept continuity with the original series down to a minimum, here he revels in the lore of the new series. The TARDIS visit's Cardiff's rift in time, Mickey returns as does Margaret Slitheen. The team are seen bouncing off each other and unseen adventures are alluded to, including one of the novels that had just been released. Time is taken to establish this as the status quo, before everything is changed in the next story and then the ghosts of the past start to filter through in the next few series. It's a breath taken that puts all the pell mell escapades around it into context - something I wish we'd seen in the last few series (in fairness there are such moments, but they tend to be confined to DVD mini-episodes). It's an extraordinarily confident move in a series that nobody could have conceived of succeeding a few years earlier. I love it to bits.
So the Salford Time Lord has gone on his way and this new bloke has arrived. I wonder if he'll be any good?
The Twenty-Ninth of March Two Thousand and Fifteen. Sunday.
How's your afternoon going? I'm listening to my vinyl copy of Television's Greatest Hits Volume II. Spider-Man's just been on. Nothing makes my heart soar more than a cracking TV theme and this is, of course, championship material. The lyrics are by Paul Francis Webster who won Oscars for Secret Love (off of Calamity Jane - and how fab a movie is that? Enough to make it my Tenth Film Recommendation)and Love is a Many Splendored Thing. If you could sum Spidey up in a couplet, it would be "wealth and fame - he's ignored, action is his reward". That's genius. And his name's Webster!
(Right, the first side's just finished with Mr Rogers' Neighborhood. I've got to get up and turn it over. I'll tell you where you can shove your retro...)
Yes, even though I am a grown man I still like to read about people in tights beating each other up. Thinking about Spider (hyphen) Man it dawned on me how my tastes have changed over the years. I was a dyed-in-the-spandex DC follower in my younger days. I'd buy the occasional Marvel book, but all my favourites seemed to be Metropolis and Gotham rather than New York.
More specifically the Metropolis of the 30th Century. The one comic I made sure I never missed an issue of was The Legion of Super-Heroes. It's difficult looking back to identify what exactly draws you into something. Every superhero has their own roster of rogues and supporting characters, but I suppose there was something about the Legion's huge cast of characters, set aside from the rest of the DC Universe by a thousand years, that appealed to a list-loving teenage nerd. For the most part each Legionnaire had a single power unique to them - you weren't allowed to join their club if you duplicated someone else's abilities. These arbitrary rules made perfect sense to a certain mindset, one that I definitely possessed (and still do - why do you think I work on the railway?)
I guess it was the intracacy of the 'rules' of DC's storytelling - with its multiple worlds and colour-coded kryptonite - that hooked me more than Marvel's 'messy' characters. Struggles with prejudice, alcoholism or even making rent money didn't resonate with me in the way that continuity minutiae did. I think most of my Marvel knowledge came from the black and white weekly UK reprint titles of the seventies. I'm looking forward to the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie coming out in a few months as it chimes with a hardback Avengers annual I had way back when that revealed Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch's true parents. My dad copied a portrait of the Vision from it in coloured pencil. I remember being surprised at this previously unseen artistic side of him.
Now, DC's reliance on complicated and rewritten histories is a bit of a turn-off to me (a notable exception being Grant Morrison's Multiversity, which positively revels in the notion of there being 52 different Earths, each with their own variation on the classic DC heroes). Somewhere, in the last couple of decades, Marvel's focus has shifted away from the perpetual second act structure of an ongoing narrative to discreet volumes of work where creators tell a story with a definite beginning middle and end before putting the toys back in the box for someone else to play with. I've spoken here about Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four comics. I think this is probably now my favourite run on a mainstream comic and he's following this up superbly with his work on the main Avengers titles at the moment.
So let me wrap up this vague waffle with a few recommendations.
I've spoken about Dan Slott, Michael and Laura Allred's take on Silver Surfer here. Now ten issues in, this title has only gotten better and better.
This morning I was reading Mighty Avengers, written by Al Ewing, with art by Greg Land and Salvador Larroca among others. Just good, action-packed, funny superhero comics by a UK writer.
But fully worthy of my Eighth Comic Book Recommendation is Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber's Superior Foes of Spider-Man. It's easy to poke fun at the super-hero genre, but that's a cheap laugh. Altogether more satisfying is humour that works within the tights and codenames paradigm, bending those conventions without breaking them. My friend, this is the book for you.
Featuring the Sinister Six (although, in true Blake's 7 style, there are only five of them), it relates the 'reality' of being a B-list supervillain in the Marvel universe. You can't help but root for these nearly-men even as they rob, double-cross and generally sell out in the search for that one big score that'll put them on the villain map. I know it's fashionable for comics fans to bemoan the quality of superhero movies in comparison to the books that spawned them, but there is no way that Sinister Six film is going to be anywhere near as good as this.
The Sixth of January Two Thousand and Fifteen. Tuesday.
Hello. My name is Vin Smarsden Hendrick and this is the first in an occasional series of blogs where I tell you about a shortrain journey I've made and the stories I've bumped into on the way.
I recently completed my first rail journey of 2015. It began in the picturesque Cambridgeshire city of Ely. I was heading for the 1815 service to Peterborough and as usual I was a little behind schedule. The sun had already set on the imposing cathedral which was now tastefully floodlit by a passing police helicopter, making an eerie crenelated silhouette. 2015 might have been around the corner but I could have sworn I was in the Middle Ages of England! The fierce light also drew me to the new Subway concession installed within the lantern tower next to the Bishop of Huntingdon's chancel. I grabbed a quick lunch surrounded by clunch and made my way to the station. My sandwich was a simple three cheese affair, modest yet satisfying.
On the platform I encountered Haraparit Kaur Gill, a laser eye surgeon from Chatteris. Drawn to the 'Game of Thrones' ring tone on her phone (she had just completed a short call when we met) I asked her if she was a fan of the epic fantasy television series. She replied she wasn't, but had been making her way through the boxed sets on the recommendation of a work friend who had lent them to her. Haraparit had got as far as the third series when she made a curious discovery. All of the discs in that box contained only a single episode repeated ten times over. I asked Haraparit which one. Apparently it had Dennis Pennis in it or something. Nevertheless, Haraparit's friend had never mentioned this despite claiming to have watched them all and read half of the books. The fibber! I asked Haraparit if she was going to call her friend's bluff. She told me that she didn't want to risk upsetting her and was content to pretend that she too had watched the series confident that she wasn't going to be asked to comment on something that her friend had no knowledge of anyway. At that point my train arrived and I left Haraparit to unravel these intrigues worthy of Westeros.
My journey took around forty minutes from start to finish. One of my favourite things about rail travel is the opportunity to catch up with books, comics, podcasts or audios that somehow get missed during the hurly-burly of everyday life. On this occasion I reacquainted myself with recordings of the dead caught on electronic equipment that had come free with The Unexplained magazine many years ago. It's complete guff, but it still manages to give me goosepimples. Who knew Latvian was the preferred language of the dead? I arrived on time in Peterborough where I was met by my friend Ramon - an old Spanish penpal who moved to England after a lottery win. He was kindly lending me a couch for the night. I asked if he had any tales he'd like me to pass on in my blog, but other than a time he saw David O'Leary of Arsenal buying lightbulbs in Wilko's he didn't have much to add. Perhaps that was as well. I think I had had enough excitement for one day! More soonliest.
