The Book Tower

From The Pickards.

1. Available: Mondays and Fridays
2. Birthday: June
3. Confused: You will be
4. Last Drink You Had: Grolsch
5. Easiest Thing To Do: Drink Grolsch
6. Favourite Music/Group/Band: All time: Beatles/Smiths, currently: Good the Bad and the Queen/Cherry Ghost
7. Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms: Both
8. Hometown: London
9. Instruments: Surgical
10. Juice: Orange
11. Killed Someone: Only in my dreams
12. Longest Car Ride: Bristol to the South of France
13. Milkshake Flavour: Strawberry
14. Number of Pets: Two
15. One Wish: It’s already come true
16. People you hung out with last: See above
17. Quiet or Loud: In between
18. Reasons to smile: See two up
19. Surgeries you’ve had: Extreme dental
20. Time you wake up: In the dentist’s chair, screaming
21. Underwear: Mondays and Fridays
22. Violent: Only in computer games
23. Worst Habit: Memes
24. X-Rays You’ve Had: Teeth
25. Your Favourite Animal: Cat
26. Zodiac Sign: Gemini

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‘I am pursued with blasphemies, cries of despair and appalling hatred. I hear those dreadful sounds called after me as I turn the corners of the streets; they come in the night-time, while I sit in my chamber alone; they haunt me everywhere, charging me with hideous crimes, and – great God! – threatening me with coming vengeance and eternal misery. Hush! do you hear that?’ he cried with a horrible smile of triumph; ‘there – there, will that convince you?’

Sheridan Le Fanu, The Familiar

I’ve been meaning to read In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu for some time. This is a famous collection of five supernatural stories, first published in 1872. I’m a fan of M.R.James, who described himself as a disciple of the Irish writer. I’m also partial to a gothic tale or two, and Le Fanu’s stories also stray into this territory.

Green Tea opens the collection and is easily Le Fanu’s best known ghost story. Quite simply, it’s a magnificently constructed and well written tale. It’s also very scary. It concerns the doomed Jennings, who begins to see a menacing small monkey wherever he goes. This is perhaps a hallucinatory symptom of the green tea he has been overindulging in, or perhaps it is something more sinister. The most chilling aspect of this story is, whether or not the monkey is real or in his disturbed imagination, that he is most troubled by the fact that the monkey appears to relish the fact that he can see him. And only he can see him. What can be worse than being a lonely demon that nobody can see? What can be better than being allowed to suddenly haunt somebody to death? You’d really pull the stops out, wouldn’t you?

In a Glass Darkly is framed by the case notes of one Dr Hesselius and Green Tea is a study of Jennings’ deterioration. Hesselius treats his patient as an interesting specimen rather than as a friend or as a doctor treating a troubled man, but this is also exactly what the reader does. If they are really honest about it. We know that Jennings is a hopeless case. We know the monkey is going to get him. Like the monkey, we relish that fact.

The next two stories, The Familiar and Mister Justice Harbottle, follow similar themes. Both deal with personal hauntings with inevitably gruesome endings. Both follow men with guilty secrets, men responsible for the death of others who will get their comeuppence. In The Familiar, Barton is haunted by a menace that only he can see and one, like in Green Tea, that will claim its victim in the end.

The longest story in the collection is A Room at the Dragon Volant. Here Le Fanu can take his time to establish atmosphere and subtle menace, a menace so slight it’s like a nagging itch. At times it is difficult to see where this story is going; the exciteable narrator relates more of a mystery tale than supernatural or horror and it’s nowhere near as disturbing as Green Tea or The Familiar. Still worth a read though, as is the final story Carmilla. This is notable for being an early vampire story, and the tale influenced Le Fanu’s fellow Dubliner Bram Stoker for Dracula. Carmilla is the story of a lesbian vampire, predating such Hammer classics as The Vampire Lovers and Twins of Evil by a century:

I stood at the door, peeping through the small crevice, my sword laid on the table beside me, as my directions prescribed, until, a little after one, I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl’s throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a great, palpitating mass.

If you’re a disciple of the ghost story or the gothic tale, even a Hammer Horror or two, it’s worth spending some time with Sheridan Le Fanu.

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A big chunk of our home life disappeared last Saturday. Zap and it was gone. Or, more appropriately, it dematerialised whilst accompanied by a familiar high pitched whirring.

For 13 weeks my family have been glued to Doctor Who, witnessing encounters with William Shakespeare, Daleks and pig men, terrifying stone statues, menacing scarecrows and the return of The Master. All in all it’s been an excellent ride, and although the two part finale has received some criticism for being too ridiculous I’m refusing to knock the series. The period between 1989 and 2005 was a fallow one for TV sci-fi, wasn’t it?

Most enjoyable for me has been the opportunity to enjoy this with my daughter. With perfect timing, the BBC decide to bring back Doctor Who just when she is at the right age to enjoy it, understand it and be scared by it. Our favourite episode of this last series by far was called Blink. It was inventive, unusual and – oh yes – quite scary. I’ve watched it three times now and it improves with viewing; the plot is quite complex and it includes an excellent one-off character called Sally Sparrow (who many Who fans have been demanding to be picked as the Time Lord’s next companion – although this is not (yet) to be).

Blink was this year’s Doctor Who lite episode, where The Doctor doesn’t actually feature much in the action. He’s on the periphery, appearing only briefly (mostly as a mysterious extra feature on a DVD) whilst others (namely Miss Sparrow) have to sort everything out instead. The Weeping Angels, the terrifying stone statues, do terrible things to people who happen to avert their gaze from them. Hence the DVD Doctor’s warning don’t blink. Despite this, my daughter was unable to look at all on first viewing.

Other highlights for me have included the excellent Human Nature episode, where we meet a man called John Smith, a teacher in 1913 who looks just like … well, you know who. Cue a very clever story about a Time Lord’s ability to disguise himself as a human, all with the aid of a pocket watch. This paved the way to another series highlight, where a bumbling professor played by Derek Jacobi is plagued by voices and dizzy spells … something to do with a pocket watch and a twist I didn’t see coming…

This series has been controversial partly because of the new assistant Martha Jones (to some an unpolular choice), and partly because of the two part finale already mentioned, which has led to accusations that head writer Russell T. Davies might not be able to hack it as a sci-fi scribe. Many tabloids were claiming that the actress who plays Martha had been sacked; the final scenes left it open whether she would return for Series Four. In the last week announcements regarding the future of Doctor Who have come with a regularity that’s as exciting as the series itself. Martha will be coming back at some point but only after a spell in Torchwood, Kylie Minogue will be guesting in this year’s Christmas special, Catherine Tate will become the Doctor’s new companion. A surprising choice but I still can’t wait, and I’m not going to use her famous catchphrase as part of this post.

A friend of mine was enthusing about the new Who the other day, saying he thought it had captured everyone’s imagination. He’s right. The ratings are high, and the Minogue story is deemed worthy of a BBC News item. The best thing about Doctor Who is being able to talk about it without it seeming childish. I feel (within reason) that I can go up to people and ask “did you realise that Captain Jack was the face of Bo?” or “is The Master really dead now?” But I hope I can still take it all with a pinch of salt.

“If Jack went back in time to 1869, how come he didn’t meet any other incarnations of The Doctor..?”
“At the end, the Prime Minister had still murdered his entire cabinet, so what happens about that..?”
““Who picked up the ring at the end, was it The Master’s wife..?”
“Was it Catherine Tate..?”

Okay, I’ll stop now…

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