Dalek In Ann Street.

           And so The Dalek invasion of Earth begins. Step by step and one shopping center at a                          time. Can even a race of genocidal xenophobic mass murdering aliens handle Belfast City 
          center in July? Perhaps, as long as they remember to bring their own plastic bags.Even
           they agree that while five pence a bag will not break the bank it is just enough to irritate.

Clanger Homeworld.

Oh My Giddy Aunt! The Master has made it to The Clanger Home-world. Lured there by the rumoured restorative capabilities of The Soup Dragon's fabled broth. Similar to the Golden Fleece as sought by Jason and his Argonauts or the Elixir of The Sisterhood Of Karn. The Master had intended to use it to increase his regenerative abilities way beyond the thirteen lives granted to a Time-lord, such was his wily intent. A self serving Galifreyan scoundrel and Jackanape hell bent on living forever. Or at least as close to that as he could manage. Yet things did not quite go as he had planned...The Best Laid Schemes O Mice And Men And Galifreyans/ Gang Aft A-Gley..as they say..

The Master Meets The Clangers.

There is a moment in the Doctor Who story The Sea-Devils when an imprisoned master is watching a very seventies telly, specifically an episode of The Clangers, believing it to be a documentary on a funny alien species. He is genuinely disapointed to discover they are in fact just a children's television creation. It was one of those meta moments that Doctor Who was capable of delivering in a way few shows before or since have done. And it was also an example of why Roger Delgado's interpretation of The Master was so beloved even though he could be terrifying and utterly untrustworthy.
            A meta moment when Peter Firman strayed into the world of Doctor Who. Happy Days.

Peter Firman.

Peter Firman has died at the ripe old age of eighty nine. He was the most imaginative of story tellers and his fertile creations have truly enriched the lives of millions, with a guileless clarity of vision that made it all seem so easy, which of course the creative process is generally not. More than just liked they were loved and what a host of characters he and his partner in creation Oliver Postgate introduced us to. Over the years, indeed over the decades we got to meet The Clangers, Bagpuss, Emily and friends, Ivor The Engine and Noggin The Nog and off course one of the few ginger immortals; Basil Brush himself. He brought so much love to his creations it could not help but be infectious. Charming stories with delightful characters all set in worlds of Peter and Oliver's making. Sometimes with animation so basic it was little more than a camera moving across a piece of artwork. But hey, that is more animation than anything hanging in the Louvre gets, and we are told they are the work of masters.(There is off course only one Master, and he must be obeyed; Roger Delgado.)
            The Basil Brush annuals contained stories and art by Peter himself, all well set in the world of the foxiest fox nature ever pinned a tail on, or a tale for that matter. Peter Firman was a gentle visionary and in this world it takes great strength to create something so kind and giving. To me, that makes him a giant. and while some giants have great broad supportive shoulders only one has a comfy cardigan with roomy pockets to keep great stuff in;The Lovely Peter Firman.

City Of Death.

What a vintage, what a fine taste, what a bouquet. The reworkings, the novels, the audio adaptions, the telly and dvd versions, the script that produced so many exquisite iterations, Douglas Adams yielded a bountiful harvest that year. I remember having read this very edition so many years ago, sitting in a train station in Dundalk waiting for my summer holiday with my family to begin.Which of course never happened to me as it only appeared in recent years as an adaption, lost in a copyright void. But possibly is happening to some curly headed iteration of me this very weekend in a back garden or a pavement somewhere near you. The old Target novelizations went out into the world and had adventures all their own. For hundreds of thousands of readers of all ages and these new ones certainly deserve to also do so... have adventures that is.
            James Goss has done an altogether more detailed and even more endearingly bonkers version of this story. Check it out, how he channels the wit and charm of Douglas Adams in his short series of adaptions of the said work. He has his own wee section in my book collection and I adore them. And that is a first for me. To say I "adore" someones writing. It sounds terribly bourgeois..don't you know.

Nemesis by Agatha Christie.

To me this is just one of the very best books she has written. A remarkable glimpse into the mind of a truly frightening old lady. One as adept at transplanting begonias as rooting out sleeping unseen evil. Ms. Marple recieves a a message, sent posthumously from Jason Rafiel a millionaire and ruthlesss business man she met briefly in a previous novel; A Carribean Mystery. He sets her a task, for which she will be richly rewarded should she succeed, to set right an unspecified wrong, to solve a mystery the world barely acknowledges. So off goes ms Jane Marple on a quest, a criminal pilgrimage, on a tour bus round the stately homes and gardens of Great Britain. sharing a bus with fellow travellers all the while believing evil stirs as she draws close to resolution.
             I believe this to be the last Marple Agatha Christie wrote. Although not the last to be published, that was Sleeping Murder. There is a dark melancholy at the heart of much of Agatha Christie's work. This novel is drenched in just such a mood, the cancerous ghosts of the past poisoning the now, disfiguring everything it touches. I think this book was published around 1971. The sixtes were over now, the long hot summer of love already seeming like an invented memory, not shared by all. Ms Jane Marple was getting older herself and though frail in body her mind was as sharp as ever.my favorite interpretation of the character being Joan Hickson (Although i will always reserve a special place in my heart for Margaret Rutherford. Not so much for being any one other than herself. Surely her greatest creation.) When I read Agatha Christie Ms Marple novels I see and hear Joan Hickson, her soft but precise delivery and those amazing eyes of hers. The eyes of a bird of prey. Eyeing her prey with steely precision until ready to deliver a wordy coup de gras. Delightful.

Whos That Man.

                                                 Oh my Giddy Aunt he is everywhere!
                                                  And Why Not? The world has never
                                                                needed him more.
                                                    Lets face it; He Walks In Eternity.