Five Miles Out

Now if I appear to be carefree it’s only to camouflage my sadness

Now if I appear to be carefree it’s only to camouflage my sadness

Smokey Robinson is a genius. Songwriter, singer, producer and one of the two men who created Tamla Motown. Somehow his legacy and influence remains under estimated. Without him (and Berry Gordy) would there have been the Four Tops? The Temptations? The Supremes? The whole sound of Young America?

Commuting to NewVic from Brightlingsea was not easy. I would get up at 5am and be in the car before 5.45am. Showered, dressed and with breakfast and lunch. The choice was to go from Wivenhoe or Colchester. Wivenhoe is a village the Brightlingsea side of Colchester, which meant less traffic, but parking became increasingly tough (I refused to pay the extortionate station parking fees). Neil had a house next to Colchester station and, as he did not have a car, meant there was a parking space. It also meant that there far more trains as there were not just the Walton branch trains, but also the trains from Ipswich and Norwich.

The next problem was where to get off. Stratford was the closest mainline station, but was a 20-30 minute bus ride from NewVIc. Not many trains stopped at Stratford. It was usually easier to go to Liverpool Street and then head back out East, even though this was several hundred pounds a year more expensive.

When trains no longer stopped at Stratford (due to construction) I did try to persuade British Rail that I should only pay the fare to Stratford but be allowed to get off at Liverpool Street. Unsurprisingly this was a total failure.

From Liverpool Street I would run (and this song was a great one for that on the Walkman) across the station and down the escalators. Two stops on the Central Line and then four on the District line to come out at Plaistow (Plarstow is the correct pronunciation – Placestow marks you out as a non East Londoner).

Even then it was a 15 minute walk or a bus ride to the College. Any time there was a problem in any section of this journey the time could balloon from an hour and 45 minutes to two and half hours quite easily. Luckily the hours were flexible but being stuck on a stationery train for long periods, cramped in a tiny space, was thoroughly unpleasant.

The reverse journey could be even worse. Whilst it was usually easier to get to Stratford, there was the constant chance of an accident or someone committing suicide on the line. This would shut the lines and mean that I had to go Liverpool Street as any train would be packed and not stop at Stratford. Commuters usually view on suicides is “Why could they have not slit their wrists?”.

The fifteen months I did this was rendered more insane by me visiting the gym at Ardleigh four night a week before going home. Plus, on the Thursday, there were pool team matches in Colchester, so I would not be home until nearly 11pm. On Friday it was the pub, followed by badminton on Saturday morning and gym in the afternoon. Pub on Saturday night then squash on Sunday and maybe the gym in the afternoon.

It could not last, which is why I moved to London. This song got me running on the tube – even now it is my alarm song to wake up because, despite the sad lyrics, Smokey just sounds so energetic. You have to love Smokey.

Tears of a Clown

History will condemn you

Doctor Who was off the air for 16 years (apart from the McGann movie) but it was not a dead zone. In fact it was a far more creative period for the mythos than the actual TV show.

A seems to be the way with any organisation or franchise or society in decline there was increasing squabbling and arguing about how it should continue and what its overall philosophy should be. I have seen this in various organisation in my life – the less successful it is the more people argue about what is left.

Doctor Who had continued after its TV cancellation in a book range called the New Adventures (NA) and later in a Missing Adventure (MA). Virgin publishing wanted stories that were “too big and too wide for the small screen”. This is an obvious outcome of a transition to a new medium – look at almost any novelisation of a film and it is a slim novel.

There was a lot of talk (and moral superiority) about how Doctor Who was superior to anything else as it could be historical, a legal drama, a romance, an action story, etc. Yet there were an influential group of people who wanted it just like it was on television – there had to be monsters and the story should be told in a very linear and simple way.

On the other side were people who wanted to exploit the new medium, with slightly more adult content, different methods of storytelling and more character development. The MAs were established to feed some of the traditionalists, though the divide did not really work that way.

(Traditionalists hated Transit)

(The most slavish recreation of a TV like story possible).

This was argued about on the rec.arts.drwho newsgroup, then on mailing lists like the Jade Pagoda (noting that I was one of the owners of the group so I am very biased) that at one stage had hundreds of posts a day on it. There was a move to private mailing lists where the more scurrilous gossip could be exchanged (again I was on some of these, despite having no literary talent, unlike most members) and then onto bulletin boards like Outpost Gallifrey.

Meanwhile Virgin lost their licence to the BBC. Despite early pandering to the trad fans with books like The Eight Doctors, they soon published Alien Bodies with its background of A War in Heaven (or Time War) with the Time Lords fighting The Enemy. It also introduced the time travelling voodoo cult Faction Paradox. Traditional fans hated this and were happy when Justin Richard (the range editor canned it) and wanted to focus on the Doctor. The novel Interference was a source of particular hatred. The blurb says: “The Third Doctor, the Eight Doctor, Sam, Fitz and Sarah-Jane Smith. Soon one of them will be dead, one of them will belong to the enemy and one of them will be something less than human.”

Faction Paradox changed history so it is the Third Doctor who dies on Dust, rather than on Metebelis 3.

In the end when Russell T Davies brought Doctor Who back with a Time War and the death of Gallifrey (the enemy in this were the Daleks, The Enemy remains unknown after over 20 years) and Doctor Who focused on character in a new way. Faction Paradox lived on in a series of books and audio stories. As did the NA companion Bernice Summerfield (who shares quite a few similarities with River Song, though a lot of differences too).

The young turks won out, new Who was different.

Change is a constant in life and society. The current culture war is between right wingers, who hark back to past values – the exceptionalism of being British, a denial of the crimes of Empire, a time when whites were in charge and other people knew their place and the poor just shut up, a time when gay people stayed in the closet and transgender was not even known. Usually this is a recreation of the security of their childhood.

The younger members of society want a new normal of equality, consent, fairness and acceptance. An acknowledgement that, for the most part, British history has been appalling for people of colour, LGBTQ+ people and anyone who is not rich.

History says the young will win. You can’t go back. It is just a shame that, at the moment, there is a group of people in society willing to screw up the future prosperity of young people based on prejudice.

As the quote says – History will condemn you. Like it condemns Enoch Powell, Barry Goldwater, David Cameron and Theresa May and all those opposed to section 28.

Most of all history will condemn you Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Jai Bolsanaro and all the rest of the populist /nationalists.

Fire Wire

Let’s do it, and do it, and do it

When I was interviewed for the job at Monoux I had admitted I knew nothing about health and safety. But I was willing to learn. So, in 2008, I was booked on a four-day course in West London to learn something about it.

Like a lot of courses it was held in a hotel in a posh area near Green Park. The people on it were a very mixed group – people starting out on careers, one man who was a chauffeur to a very rich businessman and people from small firms that were doing it to cover that area in addition to other duties. A lot of people were concerned as it featured a one-hour exam on the last day – most had not done an exam for years. It had been 28 years for me, since the awful final chartered accountancy exam.

The instructor was a very personable guy and a good teacher. At one lunch break I spoke to him about what I had to do at the College to pass probation. One thing was to outsource the College’s disastrous cleaning service. Instinctively I was opposed to this, but, despite paying the highest cleaning wages in East London we had over 50% vacancies and a poor service. My predecessor had left a woman called Carol on the College staff to oversee the service. She worked 9am to 3pm. The cleaners worked 6am to 8.30am and 4.30pm to 6.30pm. Her management of this was not ideal.

Carol eventually took a voluntary severance package, though far later than I would have liked to have offered it to her.

The instructor said that he knew a woman who had recently set up her own cleaning company. She had spent her life cleaning and now she was 50 she was fed up working for men who had no idea what the work was like. I took her details and when we tendered the contract Maria Stallward’s company, Accelerate, was on the list.

We short listed two companies based on the tenders. Their responses were very similar so we agreed that both firms would meet the cleaning staff and they would choose which one to take over as they would be transferred across to them. They chose Accelerate, because Maria knew what they did.

Accelerate have retained their contract and their work has been brilliant. It was very early in their history and they could only afford to take the contract if the College paid its invoices in advance of Accelerate paying staff. We agreed to that as we were cash rich. We have also insisted that the outsourced staff still get the London Living Wage. It is possible to outsource without being horrible. What Accelerate give us is procurement power and expertise in cleaning that we could not have in house. This is how we run all our outsourced contracts.

I spent the night before the exam cramming. It turned out I still had it. 23 minutes and 100%.

Health and Safety is regularly derided by free marketers as a barrier to “flexible working”. Health and Safety in dangerous work environments saves lives. The real problems are people who use it as an excuse not to do things that they do not want to do.

Most people do not have the knowledge to call bullshit on people using health and safety as an excuse. If you work in industrial environments or with dangerous chemicals or electricity then health and safety is what saves your life. The people who use it as bullshit are hurting the people who work in dangerous places.

I Gotta Feeling

The fifty years of sweat and tears

Doctor Who in the 1980s was, at best, a mixed bag. Let’s pretend the 80s start with Peter Davison’s run as the Doctor in early 1982 so I will talk about Tom Baker another time.

Davison was the youngest man to pay the Doctor, until Matt Smith, and he is a very fine actor. Up until this point Doctor Who’s senior production staff (producer and script editor) had turned over relatively frequently. Now John Nathan-Turner and Eric Saward would oversee almost all of Davison and his successor’s stories. What this highlighted to me was how great an influence that Saward’s predecessor as script editor, Christopher Bidmead, had on Nathan-Turner.

Davison’s era is overlit – everything is so damn bright. There is no mystery or horror in neon lighting. Scaring people is much easier with shadows in the dark – leaving it to their imagination. Saward also loved violence. There are more massacres on screen than ever before.

There are particular failings in individual stories. I should love Black Orchid, set in the 1920s. Yet they try to shoehorn in a type of monster plot and there are holes in the story a truck could go through. There are stories like Earthshock, which feature the Cybermen for the first time in 12 years. It is an open goal, but the plot is a total mess, every episode belongs to a different story. There is the over ambition of Time Flight, using Concorde is spectacular, but it lands in a crap studio set. As for Warriors of the Deep, using a sea monster operated by the Rentaghost pantomime horse men – well the panto horse would have been scarier.

The 20th season was full of returning monsters and characters. It seemed like these were meant to offset the mostly stupid stories.

In the end, despite being a fan there are only three Davison stories I can recommend. Chris Bailey’s two Mara stories – Kinda and Snakedance are fine TV. Kinda is slightly spoiled by a pantomime snake in the climax (but on DVD you can watch an upgraded version) and Saward’s rewrite to mix Christian myths into the Buddhism, but is still better than everything apart from Davison’s swan song.

Davison’s last story was The Caves of Androzani. Written by the talented Robert Holmes it remains a violent nasty story. The Doctor and Peri are buffeted by forces outside their control and do little to influence the outcome. Some great performances from the supporting cast and the feeling of doom as the two leads are poisoned and heading for death add a level of suspense absent so often from this era. At the end the fifth doctor gives the only dose of the antidote to Peri, dying to save a friend, rather than the spectacular ends of other Doctors.

This all only gets worse with Colin Baker in the lead role. Cast after he amused John Nathan-Tuner at a drunken wedding reception he could have been as the Doctor with the right people running the show. Instead there is the awful costume and his unlikeable character, including attacking his companion, Peri.

The stories became even more violent. The Doctor uses a gun, he pushes a man into an acid bath and make fun of a creature with a disfigurement. Not surprisingly the BBC tried to cancel the show. Michael Grade famously hated it.

I had only missed four episodes in ten years when Colin Baker started (and I saw a couple of those on repeat). At university I missed most of half the 23rd season and was not worried about it. The cancellation did not even upset me.

There was an awful charity song to bring the show (feeling like this was as important as Band Aid – in the minds of the people doing it) produced by superfan Ian Levene. It was not quite Bono and Sting but there were Faith Brown, Sally Thomsett and Tight Fit. It is worth watching once as it is a truly terrible song.

The BBC relented and brought the show back for a shorter season after two years. Despite two years to prepare for it the stories were lame. The violence was mostly gone (there was an offscreen genocide though, but they were just sentient plants), but nothing replaced it. Colin Baker was sacked, but the BBC seemed too scared to cancel the show after what had happened, but they had a better plan to kill the show – scheduling it against Coronation Street.

If you really must watch a Colin Baker story it is hard to pick one unreservedly. There are the unremittingly awful ones like Timelash, The Twin Dilemma, Mark of the Rani or The Ultimate Foe. The continuity riddled ones like Attack of the Cybermen, Revelation of the Daleks or The Two Doctors. The dull ones like Terror of the Vervoids, Mindwarp and The Mysterious Planet. I suppose that just leaves Vengeance on Varos, which at least has a commentary on the violence of the era (though The Two Doctors is more fun due to the presence of Patrick Troughton).

Big Country were big in the mid-80s. Stuart Adamson could make his guitar sound like the bagpipes, I’ve never heard anyone else manager that. Their first album, The Crossing, is their best, but this is their best track. Stuart Adamson committed suicide, after alcohol issues, in 2001, he was just 43.

Wonderland

Count the days into years

When you reach a certain age mortality looms larger and larger in your life. My generation are seeing the passing of their icons, like David Bowie and Prince, as they are years older than we are.

Death is not fair. I have been undergoing treatment at the London Hospital for Integrated Medicine since 2016. This is next to Great Ormond Street Hospital. I see the children with severe medical conditions going in and out. Sadly, it is obvious that many will die before puberty.

There were about 120 people in my year at St Catherine’s. Not a large group of people, all of whom were 18 or 19 in 1984. The College has an annual magazine which includes births, marriages and deaths. There has already been one death from our year group, during the 1990s (a motoring accident in the Australian outback), this was someone who had been in my supervision group of three in the first year, though we were not close. Every year there are deaths from recent years.

A lot of my family seem to be long lived. Three out of four of my grandparents lived to their late 80s/ early 90s. I remember two of my great grandparents from my childhood. My maternal grandmother had two brothers and two sisters and there sadly seemed to be a period when that generation had a funeral very year. It got to the stage where Mike and I thought that we may have to alternate attendance due to work demands.

They all lived long lives. Two people went early, when they still had so much to give.

My grandfather, John Wood, died in 1989 at the age of 73 You really should not pick out favourites, but I will say that he was my favourite grandparent because I do not think that many family members would disagree. He is a man I think about everyday and try to be as good as he was. He was the nicest person I have ever met and was so kind. I always wonder what he would have thought about what I am doing and whether he would approve. I am well aware I may be over idealising him by making him my moral compass and I am sure that he had flaws that as a child I missed.

He was such a good person. Even after my parents divorced he remained on good terms with my Dad (who adores him too). Our weekends with Mum would start with Grandad picking us up after school and there would always be chocolate on the 24 mile drive to Newmarket (Cadbury’s dairy milk, yorkies or crème eggs). There would always be coke when were out at a pub. Days out there would be ice cream and ploughman’s lunches. Our frequent trips to Pin Mill were a joy, as were the ones to Southwold (before it was trendy). His job meant he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of East Anglia.

I missed his death. I left work at lunchtime when I got a call that he was nearing the end. I drove as fast as I could from Ipswich to Newmarket, trying to eat as I went. I missed his passing by minutes. My Nanna made me go and look at his body. I wish I hadn’t – I want him to be the vibrant man I remember, striding across fields and knowing everything about nature. I never made that mistake again – remember your loved ones in their prime, not as they are at death.

The other person who went too soon was my stepmother, Anne. I was/ am so lucky with stepparents (and Richard will get his entry later). Anne died in 2007 after six months battling cancer. Dad, Alison, Fran, Mike and I were at the house in Lower Park Road when she passed, it was late and Dad was holding her hand. We sat together afterwards until the undertakers came. (I had got a phone call at 8pm saying it was nearly time, but not to worry. I had a “go bag” ready and drove the 75 miles in 65 minutes).

(Great Gable 1977. Judy the dog, Anne, Fran, Me, Alison, Mike).

I had introduced Anne to The West Wing. She had watched it, but in as she fought cancer was sleeping more and more as she got to season 5. In August she told me that she was not going to finish it, so I told her that the quality went down anyway and summarised the events of the last seasons. Bartlet’s presidency ending and Matt Santos winning the election, with Josh Lyman as Chief of Staff, despite Leo’s death (and the actor’s death in real life) on the election night. She was happy about that.

Anne ran a tight ship. We did more chores as kids than our friends did. Some of our friends did nothing and it seemed unfair. Of course, when we were adults, it stood me in good stead.

We shared a passion for the work of Dorothy Sayers and Mary Stewart. We liked a lot of the same TV programs – she recorded Edge of Darkness for me while I was at university – totally out of the blue, just because she thought that I would like it (it is brilliant and you should watch it).

Sadly, my paternal grandfather, Tom Ball, died just 24 hours after Anne in a quite devastating blow for the family, but especially Dad. I stayed with him for as long as I could to help sort things out (we managed probate ourselves as well as all the arrangements).

At Anne’s funeral (the first of two in a week) somehow my niece Lucy ended up in a pew with me, rather than with her parents, Alison and John. We were both crying. Ostensibly I was comforting her, but I am not sure that it wasn’t the other way round.

I am still incredibly lucky that my mother is alive and no one could ever replace her. Some of my friends lost both their parents years ago, yet I still have two parents and one step parent alive.

I miss so many people, but John Wood and Anne Ball went too soon.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Excerpt From a Teenage Opera

Always chasing ideas when they are Forever changing

Role Playing Games (RPGs) have a bad reputation as being for geeks and losers. This was still being perpetuated on The Big Bang Theory, a sitcom about very intelligent people. At least it actually showed people paying Dungeons and Dragons (D&D).

In the late 70s and the early 80s there were really no TV fantasy shows. There were a few science fictions shows, but the view persisted that the only respectable Science Fiction was things like John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids. Fantasy was even worse treated. There really was nothing to watch, in the mid 80s the BBC did The Chronicles of Narnia, but CS Lewis came from the “respectable” end of literary work and it was a children’s program, as was The Box of Delights. Partly this was because special effects were really not up to it at prices that television could afford but iut was mainly an attitude from those in charge of television.

For those of us who loved fictional worlds there was nothing beyond the books. The Hobbit was usually the gateway book, followed by The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). There were many more books beyond this, but by some quirk many of them were out of print in that era. Being out of print for three or four years may not seem much, but when you are twelve that four years is a huge period. There is also the point that some books are right for you at a particular stage of your life, so coming back into print later in life means that you are past appreciating them.

D&D is widely perceived to be based on LOTR, there are elements from that and they did have to change Hobbits to Halflings to avoid copyright issues. It is more than that though. There are elements from Robert E Howard’s Conan the Barbarian series (luckily this was reprinted in 1980 with completion of unfinished works by Lin Carter and L Sprague De Camp). Conan was popular as he was the antithesis of most players – physically strong and a womanising warrior. Red Sonja, who was actually created for the comics in the 1970s had other appeal to teenage boys. I found Conan through a British Marvel comic reprint. The art was very different and there were topless women, I was 11 and scared anyone would find out what I had inadvertently bought.

(Conan and Red Sonja in the infamous chainmail bikini, though Conan is not overdressed either).

There were the Fritz Leiber stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

Michael Moorcock had written a huge number of books about various heroes, linked in a cycle saying they were all facets of an Eternal Champion. The most famous is Elric, an albino Prince of very dubious ethics. The twist was that he was very weak unless he had his evil sword, Stormbringer. My favourite was Dorian Hawkmoon, one of my earlier D&D characters was named after him.

(Elric)

D&D had multiple long and detailed rulebooks, starting with The Players Handbook. This gave you rules on generating your character and their abilities. As you killed monsters and found treasure you would increase levels and gain more abilities.

Characters have six attributes – Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. The idea was that you rolled three six sided die and got a score for each and then decided what king of character to be. Fighter, Paladin (like a Knight), Ranger (think Aragorn in LOTR), Cleric, Druid, Thief, Magic User, Illusionist or Assassin. In reality most people wanted to be some kind of warrior. Given that the chance of rolling 18 was one in 186 it was amazing how many characters had scores at that level. Magazines proposed official ways to cheat – like rolling five die and taking the best three or even rolling 30 times, picking the best 18 and assigning them as you wanted to a category.

The handbook contained hundreds of spell descriptions. Tables for fighting with a huge variety of weapons. How much damage weapons could do and prices for basic equipment. There were also details on alignment (moral outlook, of which nine categories were available).

One person actually has to run play – a Dungeon Master. There was an even longer book of rules for them to use. Plus another book of monsters called The Monster Manual (plus its sequels).

This amounted to over 400 pages of densely packed rules. Yet game play was also surprisingly free form. You bought (or the Dungeon Master would write) a scenario for players to take part in. These could be exploring underground dungeons or exploring wildernesses, temples or fighting slavers. Later on there more and more set in cities. These would require characters to treat it like a story where they role played their way though, choosing whether to fight or talk. Investigating and extracting information. The Dungeon Master would be in control and run all the characters in the scenario who were not players. This was a mix of acting and war gaming.

Different die were used. Six sided die generate a range of probabilities, but the more you use the more it is on a probability curve. D&D required 4, 6, 8, 12 and 20 sided die to generate probabilities and damage scores.

Scenarios (or modules) could least a few hours or days on end – depending on how big they were. The first I played, run by Graham, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, took several days and a weekend. Probably around 24 hours all told. It was the best thing we could do without TV or films to watch and much more pro-active.

Looking back on it this was actually good preparation for life skills. Confidence, decision making, problem solving, imagination and planning. Plus, with all those different dice, our probability understanding was great.

D&D is just one of the games that were available – Traveller, Runequest and The Call of Cthulhu were other good ones.

Classix Nouveau should have been big in 1981. They did have one single a bit later – Is It A Dream? This is their best track.

Inside Outside

There’s a hidden door she leads you to

I have struggled with weight all my life. Both of my parents have trouble losing weight, even if they do exercise. Mike seems to have inherited John Wood’s frame – but he does do a lot of exercise.

In 1989 I started playing Neil at tennis. Tennis was great even though Neil was a lot better than me. Played outside on a nice day it is lovely. I managed to slip a disc flying backwards to try and reach a lob and was on my back for a month.

Dad taught me to play badminton with him and I slowly improved. Then over a Christmas break I played Dave several times. With Dad I went from consistently losing by a couple of points to winning easily. Playing Dave was hard – his reach made it incredibly hard to get the shuttlecock past him. I also started playing squash with Neil and Mike, which is really intense. Of them all it is the most tiring – I could play badminton for 2 hours, but 40 minutes of squash and that was it.

I also took up going to the gym. To avoid the traffic in I joined one in Ipswich and would leave at 6am to work out. Then shower and dress for work. This was partially spoiled by stopping at a bakery to get breakfast each day. This was Gym ‘n’ Trim. Ahead of its time in one way – there were separate gyms for men and women, however the women’s gym was smaller.

(Proof that I was once a lot lighter)

When I left Grant Thornton, and was no longer going to Ipswich, I joined a very nice gym at Ardleigh called Ardleigh Hall. Swimming pools, a sauna, a café – it was lovely and the cost was very reasonable. You could buy a life membership for the same as five years membership. The finances of this made no sense to me as well as wondering how anyone could know how long it would last. I discussed this with other members who were all for doing it, I did not. Six months later the owner sold the gym (the life memberships had been a desperate attempt to increase cash flow) and the new owners offered just two years free to people who had paid – they did not even have to do that as it is was a totally different organisation. When I moved to London I gave up membership and the building no longer exists.

I even formed a hockey team at work to play in some business league. We were just playing for fun, but it turned out that everyone else was actually good and we were totally hammered. It was on AstroTurf – which we found out burns badly if you slide on it and quite dangerous.

One game I led the way on blocking a short corner. The other team were good, but the ball bobbled as they stopped it. This meant that I was right on top of them when they hit it. I got the ball and the hockey stick in my head.

I thought that I was ok but don’t remember going home, though Mike was there and I followed him. My wing mirror was damaged. It turns out that I had a concussion and my hockey career was over.

No talent but a lot of enthusiasm is not a good combination in hockey.

Year of the Cat

Smouldering and smouldering, with ignorance and hate

2000AD is the longest running, biggest force in British comics. My opinion of 2000AD is a story for another day. In the late 80s the team behind 2000AD decided to start a new bi-weekly comic for an older audience. Crisis.

To start with it had just two strips. New Statesman, a superhero strip to appeal to that market, though like so many British superhero strips it would probably put genre fans off.

The Third World War. This was not some war comic but a play on the term third world which was what was used to describe the Developing World at that time (the changes in acceptable names is important as words have power, but it is hard for people brought up using a term to change if they have used it for many years – be sympathetic, it may not be a deliberate slur – if it is rip them apart). This was written by Pat Mills.

Pat Mills had been behind 2000AD’s predecessor, Action, and the launch of 2000AD. He created a huge range of famous characters like Slaine, Marshall Law and Nemesis the Warlock, as well as being involved in the development of Judge Dredd.

This was a political drama. It showed the effect of capitalism and globalisation on the developing world through the eyes of a “peace volunteer” – a female lead no less. This is so far ahead of its time I am still shocked. With a few changes it could still be published 32 years later and seem contemporary.

The second series saw the series relocate to the UK and look at the issue of racism. This is where I first heard the term Babylon used to refer to European oppressors of people of colour and corrupt, tyrannical regimes.

Mills deserves kudos for highlighting issues that were needed to be seen. Hopefully he influenced a lot of my generation The Third World War is still being fought in the developing world and on the streets of Western cities.

There is a great line when the lead character sees a white character in the Black African Defence Squad and queries his membership. His answer? We all came from Africa. Which is true – it is just when our ancestors or we left. We are all descended from a tiny group of hominids and the divisions people try and foster are just ridiculous.

Rebellion have collected the first series of the strip and are planning to collect the rest – about time, but Rebellion are doing a great job getting these strips available again.

I first heard a cover version of this song on a Top of the Pops album. These were collections of hits, covered by a house band. Thus, saving a fortune on royalties. They were good quality, but always lacking something, especially for harder tracks. The Now That’s What I Call Music and Hits series of albums destroyed the market for this by collecting originals. That is why on the adverts for them back in the day it is so clear that tracks were by the original artists.

I had no idea what this was about when it came out in 1979 – I was sure that classical Babylon had not burnt down. So much to learn.

Babylon is Burning

Seventh he retired from the scene

Breaking Glass is not a musical. I mean it is a film with lot of music in it, but it is the story of the rise and fall of a punk star so there would be a lot of songs. There are no song and dance routines and there is a proper story.

For a while it looked like Hazel O’Connor was bound for superstardom, but after this album her singles did not do as well – even the good ones like Cover Plus (We’re All Grown Up). She still performs live – Mike has seen her live in the last few years, but she never did anything as explosive as this.

Breaking Glass is typical of the late 70s/ early 80s films. Set in a grim dystopian London, full of racism and violence (no wonder I had no desire to go there for many years). Eighth Day was a huge single in the summer of 1980, ahead of the film’s release. Forty years ago it told a story of robots destroying the world- predating the Terminator films and current concerns about AI (wouldn’t it be amazing if James Cameron was inspired by this). Now I know it’s A Star is Born transferred to a punk London, but the music is better than any version of that film.

It now has a 15 certificate, but in September 1980 it was an AA, you had to be over 14 to see it. I was just over 14. Graham looked older than me and there was a moment when the cashier looked at me sceptically when we went to see it.

(Stock image of the Priory cinema in Royston).

We saw it at Royston’s Priory cinema. One screen and the films changed nearly every week (unless it was a smash like Grease). Going to the cinema without parents was one of the rites of passage of teenage-hood in a commuter belt town. Getting into an AA (and an X if you could swing it) were badges of honour. Graham and I saw quite a few films there – like Hawk the Slayer. I quite enjoyed Hawk the Slayer but it was made so cheaply, I’m glad no adults were with us.

Local cinemas were destroyed by multiplexes. Brightlingsea’s cinema had closed long before we moved there, which meant seeing films meant a trip to Colchester. An effort until driving tests were passed and cars became available.

The Priory Cinema has long gone (as well as the Green Plunge swimming pool next door and the local Indian restaurant) – with its Pearl and Dean ads (generic adverts for Indian restaurants or local shops shot to be used anywhere with a photo of the local details stuck on the end, often with someone else doing a brief voiceover).

This song is the climax of the film.

Eighth Day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBkvcQEGq9k

And if there’s anybody left in here

By the late 1990s/ early 2000s I had not bought any comics for several years. I had been intrigued by some graphic novel collections I had seen in the newly opened Piccadilly Waterstones, but money was tight. Then in one of the online mailing lists that I was part of Simon Bucher-Jones advertised that he was selling four Stormwatch and one Authority collection – the iones that intrigued me. I jumped at the chance. When I got them I realised that there was one more Stormwatch collection that led into The Authority.

Both series were published by Image comics. Image was formed by a group of artists who left Marvel in the 90s. Their comics were very art focused with poor stories. Eventually they started hiring writers to revamp their books. Warren Ellis took over Stormwatch – an Earth defence team based in a satellite. He added new, interesting characters – Jack Hawksmoor, the god of cities and Jenny Sparks, the Spirit of the 20^th century.

The books were set in a world appreciably different from ours (something Marvel and DC, despite their world bending storylines, never accepted). A character called The High wanted to use superhumans to create A Finer World. New characters were introduced at a dizzying speed.

I wanted Final Orbit, the last story of that Stormwatch incarnation (because my OCD will not let me read a story unless I have all of it) and found there was a comic shop called Rods in Barking. The Saturday after the book was released I went in (after putting in a morning in the office) and found a comic shop that looked like it was out of the 80s. All back issues and new comics with a tiny corner of graphic novels. Luckily they had Final Orbit.

(Final Orbit cover – note the impossibly positioned woman in the lower right corner).

Rods built up his graphic novel section over the next four years. I spent many a happy Saturday afternoon chatting with Rod, his staff and the other customers So much so that one Saturday I turned up and there was a queue about three hundred yards long to get in. I just wanted to shop so went in. I had a push chair and Rod helped me get it in. Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch were there signing collections of Ultimate X-Men. Rod got me signed copies of both collections without queuing. They also recommended The Walking Dead to me – this was years before it was on TV. . It was also a centre for Magic the Gathering games – not that I had time for that.

Eventually they moved to Romford and that is actually quite a journey from me so that was that.

Apparently Stormwatch was popular in the Image office but did not sell well. Final Orbit killed off most of the characters not created by Warren Ellis, setting up the foundation of Jenny Sparks’ new team – The Authority. The Authority was the first “widescreen” comic – designed to outdo films. Big threats (starting with a terrorist nation, then an invasion from a parallel reality and the run ended with the creator of the Earth returning to the solar system and trying to destroy Earth). Mark Millar used the concept to reimagine The Avengers as The Ultimates (in many ways The Avengers films that have been so successful are actually The Ultimates and not The Avengers).

Ellis’s run ended with Jenny Sparks’ death – at the end of 1999. She lost a year’s life because idiots did not understand when the 20^th century ended. She was succeeded by Jenny Quantum – the spirit of the 21^st century. Mark Millar took over the book for another 12 issues, but it remained mired in controversy. DC had bought Wildstorm, the Image imprint that published it. They did not like comics that were not suitable for children. The gay relationship between Apollo and Midnighter (fairly obvious Batman and Superman analogies) really riled them.

(The Doctor, Swift, Apollo, Jenny Sparks, The Midnighter, The Engineer, Jack Hawksmoor – Jenny Quantum above them – The Authority).

I had pretty much not read any comics for five years – but this showed me that the failures of comics in the 90s were now in the past.

I Predict A Riot