The Ghost Of A Flea.

(One of my favourite pieces of art. Painted by William Blake.)

Christmas 1976.

The Doctor Who annual for the year to come. Its completely bonkers this book. (Ooops, sorry for the Yoda grammar.) But even as a boy I realised there was some disconect win reality between whoever wrote and drew the stories and pictures in this very weird annual. But such was the genorosity of my Whovian spirit I was just grateful to have anything which extended the adventures of my hero.

The Great Rock And Roll Swindle.

I had to revisit this one, just in the mood for a bit of Anarchy,and a cup of tea. You know, the sort of Anarchy where nothing is actually demolished and no one is actually hurt. sort of; Oh that Malcolm Mc Clarnon, what a character, look at what he did with a series of plans that deconstructed what it means to be a rock and roll performer and sell things, making loads of lovely money thanks to his Maciavellian scheming. I just wanted a reminder and taste of what it was to be an impressionable teenager growing up in the nineteen seventies. As seen through the camera lens of Julian Temple and crew as adapted by Michael Moor cock from the screenplay which surely must have been like trying to distinguish smoke from a heavy London fog. We, the reader, gets to follow Steve Jones on his hunt for Malcolm Mc Clarnon( although more specifically the money owed to him and his er, crew.) Steve Jones is a much better actor on the page than up on the screen, so to speak. But it was not sort of film anymore than this is that sort of book. Mind you, I do not think Steve Jones ever pretended to be anything more than what he was, what he is. Some times in synch with what people expected him to be but mostly just being Steve Jones in synch with wherever he found himself, not a grown up pretender, or actor. I once heard a radio interview between Steve and Malcolm during g which they openly mocked John Lydon on a really base level, so if nothing else he did catch up with the man he was hunting. Whether he actually ever got the monies owed is another thing all together, and their lawyers off course. I was prompted to go back and read this error,novel. This novelization of The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, by a rather grueling conversation with someone who was the same age as me around the age I was when the whole punk thing still felt organic, even if it was truly not. Was I as pompous and full of myself as this you g person with all the answers. The film, and therefore the book, was within reach, so I took another look. Was I like that at that age? what did I think I knew? Was it possible to learn anything from this Anarchic piece of celluloid? And why do I keep using a capital A? Growing up in Ardoyne during the period I did gave me a taste of the real thing. And yet it seemed to me,at the time, more important that someone was singing about it rather than growing up in an area where the real thing raged. Perhaps it was because it was possible to face a sea of troubles while tastefully attired. Being picked on for being an oddball seemed a small price to pay, the notion I could defeat my enemies by being better dressed than them, Vive La Anarchie! Michael Moorcock took the material to a very meta place indeed. Had to I suppose. Elevating the script to an almost intellectual level where it really had no place going. I could see a desperate dinner table conversation attempting the same thing and in a real sense that is where it belongs. Looking for any sort of answer there is like looking for landmines under a cheese cake. scrambling g for hard earned wisdom in an Eton Mess. It's all sits and giggle, baby. Or something like that.

The Mekon and Me.

Lord Bath's Best Pals.

Came across this picture on Doctor Who Twitter, hope they do not mind me swiping it. Such a joy to see such Whoviam Alumni together in a former time and place. One imagines Mr Pertwee srolling down to his local news agent to pick up newspapers and milk dressed like this. And what a Diamond Geezer Anthony Ainley looks. I had imagined in his downtime he would have dressed like an aging Flashman from Tim Browns Schooldays. And dear Elizabeth Sladen and Carrole-Anne Ford look so untouched by the passing years. Oh, Happy Days

Billy Bunter Of Greyfriars School.

What a funny way to travel. In the company of Billy Bunter and his chums and adversaries at Greyfriars school As I was reading this on a train to Dundalk just reading, laughing and basking in a world that may never really have existed beyond the pages of Frank Richard's books but I hope in the very marrow of whatever makes me me that it did. and possibly that it still does somewhere.

(From my sketchbook.) Back in the day this Armada paperback for boys and girls would have cost one 2/6! "Oh crikey" I hear you gasp. And it would have been money well spent. Mine was even better value, it was gifted to me by Jim Mc Kevitt of Atomic Comics. That much missed collectable shop from Lower North Street. It is not so long gone but it feels like a different world in the time since he pulled his scribbled over shutter down for the last time. One of the remaining bright lights on that street going out. And it used to be a lively and varied street. Anyway, he gave it to me in order to counter the daily bombardment of grim news through the mainstream media. "Stop watching the news, it contrives to frighten you" Saint Stephen Morrissey warned us and like all heavenly observations we listened without really hearing. Jim described this book as laugh out loud funny and ,you know,he was laugh out loud right. It was the only book I took with me on my family Christmas visit in December past, one I started reading on the train to Dundalk. And it turned me into the funny old fellow sitting on his own laughing to himself. I must have looked like the ghost of Christmas Past. I know I feel most Dickensian these days. Not that anyone in my carriage would have noticed. They all looked pretty wiped out, slumped in their seats or sleeping across their table. Probably all post party so near to Christmas day. Billy Bunter is a very funny very likable character, constantly on the look out for his next feast. Using every ounce of his considerable wits to fill his belly. He lies, steals and cheats and yet is constantly dumbfounded when his plans and schemes go awry, which they invariably do. The other boys of Greyfriars School and even the teachers are on to him and all his myriad ways. Yet they expansive genorosity of spirit and good humour will always allow him enough room to pursue the moveable feast which is his life. Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry, Johny Bull, Frank Nugent and Hurre Jamset Singh are as rounded as Bunter ( actually no one is as rounded as Billy Bunter.) feel real and with minimum description come alive in the skillful hands of the Mercurially talented Frank Richards who brought to life as real as anything born and created in print and on paper. Warm, witty and timeless.

When We Were Six.

Happy days on Rathlin at Garth's stag weekend. Old chums. You know who you are.

Prospero's Island.

(From My Sketch Book.)

Mad About Shakespeare.

What a thoroughly enjoyable read, picked up on impulse only this week. it might seem odd to start a review with the kind of words one might save for a closing paragraph but this is not one of those pages. I am not trying to sell anyone anything, just hoping to share a little enthusiasm for some bits and pieces I am lucky to come across. This book is part memoir part creative critique of Shakespeares body of work. Along the way exploring many other themes, touching on the work of other writers, including TS Eliott, Ted Hughes and Virginia Woolf. While proving mostly scrutable to someone as thinly read as me it probably reads a bit disjointed when examining the various ouvres and formative genre definers as those named. For someone who appreciates the odds are landing this is a book you might enjoy for those who ge really breeze past the Penguin classics sections in a book shop. I particularly enjoyed the earlier chapters when he pulled back the curtain obscuring the details of his father's life, who sounded like a very fine da indeed. Jonathan Batex writes movingly and honestly as he wrestles with the minutae of memory, reassembling the furniture of the rooms in our heads where memory resides. I wonder if he experienced trauma at picking at the scabs of memory. I say scabs but I am not suggesting memory as wounds, just that sometimes raking the past does indeed hurt. As I have grown to appreciate the works of Shakespeare I see the misnomer of labelling them comedies or tragedies. None of his plays are entirely tragic nor are all of them are funny. Very much like real life. But what do I know. As I said, the book is part memoir, appreciating his luck is having a da who loved the work of Shakespeare, which aided him to survive some traumatic war time experiences, at least buying his spirits. In those early chapters we learn that Mister Bates Senior had a set of Shakespeares Complete Works. Books which he read not only read and reread, but books which he annotated, writing in the margins. Actually listing performances which he attended, with such legendary performances as John Geilguid and Laurence Olivier. So much was left unsaid between father and son, in the way of such things. The hubris of youth plays its part but that does not come across in the memoir. The Bate family units, both generations, sound like they did their very best to enrich each others lives, rich in feelings and support for each other. The reader does indeed follow the writer from class room to an emergency room, with a few steps at theatres along the way. Life might well be a stage but life leaves us unsure of its entrances and exits. We spend a life time learning. In shakespeares company, if we have grace an wit to invite him into our lives. He always accepts.

Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With The Daleks (Illustrated.)

Doctor Who does not get more High Church than this. The first of the many, many novelizations. Although this would have been considered more of a tie-in than a novelization.Twas the way of the word then, so to speak. One of the standout features on the very recent Doctor Who Season Two Bluray Set was an amazing documentary piece on the life of David Whitaker, the writer of An Exciting Adventure With The Dale's. David Whitaker was the first Doctor Who writer I became familiar with, being old enough to have found a copy of the Armada paperback, a few years before the Doctor Who novelizations really kicked in with Terrence Dicks which helped them become as familiar a bookshop mainstay as Agatha Christie or Zane Grey or Sven Hassel( Like I said, old enough.) Toby Haddoke investigates the life and times of a writer of legendary status in the Whoniverse. And what a great job he does of that investigation, narrating with precision, care and wit. An unexpectedly moving piece in a blurry set which had already proved itself an embarrassment of riches. I had been gifted the boxset by my two chums Jim and Jamie at Christmas while Santa Claus had gifted me a copy of the new illustrated edition of Doctor Who and The Daleks. Which I jumped right back into, as I have reread it at different times in my life. I think I might also have jumbled up different interpretations, or is it iterations, from the original text to the television series or the Peter Cushing starring movie adaption. The passing years pays tricks, the lumpy organic sponge which is my brain gets jumbled up. My brain is a house with many rooms but sadly the doors to those rooms are hanging on broken hinges. The original I interior sketches I remember as moody pencil sketches with a scratchings that strikes me as almost meta by the standards of the day. I remember owning two of these books, another being an adaption of David Whittakers own scripts for Doctor Who And The Crusades. As a boy Wiliam Hartnell was a high church figure to me, the original who bestrode the alter of The Whoniverse. I actually still have those books somewhere in my Steptoe And Son set of a home. Like the documentary The Illustrated edition of Doctor Who And The Daleks is a charmingly familiar step into another time and place. The artist Robert Hack takes us on a journey to the planet Skaro and brings an Armada style epic storytelling quality to the yarn. There are some page filling additions to the story as seen through the eyes of hijacked companion Ian Chesterton. As it is quite clear The Doctor abduct both him and Barbara Wright as neither e aptly volunteered to take this insane trip to a terrifying world populated by killer mutants in travel machines. Skara is an ashy petrified wilderness whose inhabitants also petrifying all who come into contact with them. Skaro will either poison you, eat you or most familiarlally exterminate you. Originally published at the height of Dalekmania in the UK it was considered a tie-in as opposed to the now familiar idea of a novelization. in a world where you generally only ever had one chance to view something upon point of transmission, before it drifted off on an endless journey through space. For so many of us this was generally the only way to re-experience a classic yarn. There would be differences off course, from a title change to different scenes that were never in the original transmission which served to flesh out the story in another format. These moments could prove a joy to diehard fans and pass relatively unnoticed by casual readers( And The enormous success of the Target novelizations would suggest a casualty in readership that is a little unlikely. So many readers would strongly imply the readers knew what they liked.) This version began quite differently to the introductions of the companions in an Unearthly Child ( What a great title.) with a fog bound heath, a traffic accident and an unusually dressed man with a perpetually burning match stick. The bones of what we know are there but theres a multiversal quality to the yarn, familiar yet different. The character of the Doctor is somewhat changedas well. He is a tad more mysterious, even sinister but before too long he has his new crew dancing in the middle of his palm. As they look to their next adventure and beyond. And that's a tale that's still being told. lass="separator" style="clear: both;">