Heathrow: My Part In Its Downfall

There has been much fuss and brouhaha about a judicial decision to rule out the further expansion of Heathrow, the large aerodrome to the west of London.

And quite right too.

As you both know I work for the Submerged Log Company, whose orifice is in Central London. I've worked there for more than 30 years. At first, when there was no internet, one perforce had to commute to where the work was, and live within an easy distance from the orifice. Nowadays, though, I work increasingly from home, at Cromer, in Norfolk. The family moved to Cromer in 2006, not long after the arrival of broadband. 

At first, connectivity was achieved by small pieces of damp bailer twine loosely knotted together, but now it's a respectable 37 furlongs per fortnight.Easily enough to work seamlessly even when the family is looking at youtube videos, catching up with TV on the iPlayer and so on and so forth in like fashion.

When I made the move, my London-centric colleagues were aghast. We are required to do some air travel for work, and how was I going to do that once I'd cut the apron-strings to Heathrow? My reply was simple - Norwich International Airport.

They laughed - lots of unfunny and patronising metropolitan jokes about Sale-of-the-Century and Normal-for-Norfolk. But no longer.

Norwich has no queues. Sometimes, the person who gives you your boarding pass is the same as the one who checks it as you get on the plane.

Norwich airport has no pre-Heathrow traffic gridlock.

What's more, Norwich airport is less than an hour's flight to Amsterdam Schiphol, and from there, the world. Schiphol is a much nicer airport than Heathrow. Everything is all in one terminal, and perhaps because it's in Holland, everyone speaks perfect English.

And there is a gate at Schiphol (D6, for those interested) which is like a bus waiting room for KLM City Hopper planes to take you to just about any UK regional airport you can think of, from Bournemouth to Newcastle to Humberside to Exeter to Bristol, and, of course, Norwich.

The flight home, from Schiphol to Norwich, is so short, that, given the time difference between Britain and Europe, the ticket shows you landing five minutes before you take off.

In the past 13 years, I've had to travel from Heathrow no more than once or twice. If we want to build airport capacity, there are plenty of UK regional airports with much more space and fewer environmental concerns than Heathrow.

Honestly - Heathrow - who needs it?

How The Light Gets In

I know you'll both be agog to learn that I have been enticed roped in corralled invited to take part in a festival called How The Light Gets In, which takes place in Hay-on-Wye between 22 and 25 May. This festival, which is distinct from the better known Hay Festival, is a grand conglomeration of music, comedy and ideas. This year's festival theme is Uncharted Territories, which is very much my kind of thing.

I'll be giving a solo talk entitled The Limits of Knowledge:

The more we discover, the more we realise we have yet to learn. So says Nature editor, Henry Gee, as he explores the limits of knowledge, and dares us to look over the edge.

I'll also taking part in a more intimate Inner Circle seminar:

What makes humans special? According to senior editor of Nature and author of The Accidental Species Henry Gee: absolutely nothing. Join him to discuss humankind's place in the world.

 ... and featuring in three debates as follows:

The Key To Progress (Saturday 23rd at 12:00) It was the vehicle of progress and the solution to the world's ills. The core philosophy of the West and our time. But the halo has slipped. Science is now seen by some as a potentially malevolent force. A key element of the industrial military complex, challenging the environment and supporting a damaging raid on world resources. While many doubt the idea that science is the single objective version of the truth. Should we welcome this shift in our perception of science as the end of an unquestioned belief in a false god? Or is it a dangerous and potentially disastrous slide into prejudice and superstition, that will leave us poorer, less safe, and less in control of our lives? Senior editor of Nature Henry Gee; Professor of Cosmology at Manchester Sarah Bridle and philosopher and author of Galileo's Error Philip Goff evaluate the scientific establishment.

Extinction and Renewal (Saturday 23rd at 13:15) Citing evidence that species are becoming extinct at a thousand times faster than the background rate, many argue the Sixth Great Mass Extinction is already upon us. And for the first time caused by a single species, humankind. Others contend that at current rates - 100 species a year - it would take a 1000 years to lose just 1% of current species. In the meantime the number of new species is continuing to grow - exceeding the number of species lost. Are we facing a profound crisis? Do we need to radically change our behaviour and way of life to save the planet's animal life? Or are our conservation efforts proving effective and nature stronger than we suppose and capable of creating entirely new life forms without our help? Producer and director of Blue Planet 2, Frozen Planet and Planet Earth Kathryn Jeffs; director of the International Centre for Birds of Prey Jemima Parry-Jones; senior editor of Nature Henry Gee and co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association David Pearce get to the bottom of the apparent extinction crisis.

Language, Animals and Us (Monday 25th at 10:30) Many think language makes us uniquely human.  Yet bees communicate precisely how to reach a source of pollen from the hive. Birds warn of a predator. Dogs call to each other with their barks and understand our verbal commands. And new studies show that baboons' grunts align with human speech patterns and even plants send signals to each other through their roots. Is language just one type of communication, and have we wildly overestimated its importance? Are humans no different in principle from other animals and plants? Or is language profoundly different from all other forms of communication and the enabler of consciousness itself?

The Festival website has all the details and is constantly being updated, so visit it often. You can also follow it on Twitter at @HTLGIFestival, just as you can follow me at @EndOfThePier.

Desert Island Discs

I am unlikely ever to be invited to be a guest on Desert Island Discs, the BBC's long-running radiophonic emission, though I did take part in BBC Radio Norfolk's version once. The pain of being overlooked, week after week, is lessened, as one can do much the same on social media: a facility denied the late Cabinet Minister Herbert Morrison, who kept a list of his favorite gramophone records in his pocketbook in case he was ever asked. (He wasn't). Notwithstanding inasmuch as which I was tagged by a friend on Facebook (but only because I begged him) to list ten records that had shaped my character, such as it is, on ten consecutive days, and tag another friend to take up the baton. And so, here they are, collected all together, at once, simultaneously, and at the same time, although (as they say on all the best game shows), in no particular order.

Queen A Night At The Opera.

This is the album that contained 'Bohemian Rhapsody', of course. One of the very few 45s I ever bought, and I played it until it wore out. As Dr Johnson never said - when a man is tired of 'Bohemian Rhapsody', he is tired of life: for there is in 'Bohemian Rhapsody' all that life can afford.

I still remember when, as a schoolboy, I bought the album, in a record store in Sevenoaks, Kent. Thanks to Queen featuring a lot in 'Good Omens' on TV, it's now on heavy rotation in the car. Nothing matches it for musicality, sheer ambition of orchestration, clever songwriting -- and fun. When you are feeling low, just fling in a few more Galileos. darling, and get Scaramouche to do the fandango.


Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, the 'Pastoral' So it was that the Infant Gee was placed in a playpen within earshot (but out of reach) of the Gramophone, where a classical music disc had been placed, the idea being that music would soothe the Savage Beast. The Pastoral was a favourite. I don't know the precise recording, though I suspect it wasn't Happy Herbert and the Sunshine Band, as here. Even today, it's one of my favourites. The thanksgiving theme that comes in after the storm sequence can still move me to tears. If I should die and have a postmortem, you shall find it inscribed on my soul.

 Deep Purple, Deep Purple in Rock 'Listen to this,' said my pal Zak Chaudhury, placing the disc on the School Gramophone. It was 1976. We were 14. The explosive sound of 'Speed King' astonished my ears. I had heard nothing like it, the mixture of classical sensibility, supercharged blues, and hard rock ferocity. What I remember most is track 3, 'Child In Time' - an ethereal sound, drenched in reverb, of what I later learned was the Hammond organ of Deep Purple's founding maestro, the late, great Jon Lord. That was Day Zero, Year Zero, of my love of all things Hammond -- and the moment when I discovered the blues.Deep Purple In Rock came out in 1970. It was the group's fourth album. Before that they had been a very 1960s pop group, more popular in the US than their native Britain, fronted by an old-style 1960s crooner. Their repertoire of pop cover versions sat uneasily with the moody stylings of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and Lord's classical ambitions. So after they staged Lord's 'Concerto for Group and Orchestra' at the Albert Hall, Blackmore demanded and got his part of the bargain -- a record of all-out hard rock. It was visionary, as hard rock had hardly been invented.And they had a new ingredient. Out went the crooning -- and in came the screaming. Of a young man called Ian Gillan, who'd lately starred in the West End in the lead role in 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. Deep Purple had found its voice, and for a while, could walk on water. 

J. S. Bach, The Art of Fugue I was a graduate student in Cambridge in 1985, which happened to be the 300th birthday of J. S. Bach. I got rather caught up in the tercentenary celebrations. I went to Bach concerts, and read Douglas Hofstadter's masterpiece of nerdery, Goedel Escher Bach, the Eternal Golden Braid. I went to organ concerts at the Royal Festival Hall, which had all the ambience of a bike shed. It was only much later when I happened to visit St Thomas' Church in Leipzig, where Bach spent much of his career as choirmaster and composer-in-residence, and the organist struck up what sounded like a Bach chorale just as I walked in, that I could experience the full Majesty of Johann, the Mystery of Sebastian. For me the zenith and apotheosis of Bach was his final work, The Art of Fugue. This is a long and yet incomplete exposition of the height of counterpoint, of which Bach was the greatest exponent. Bach invented the rules of fugue -- and broke all of them -- to create a masterpiece. Austere and yet sportive, The Art of Fugue is, superficially, as undemanding as elevator muzak. But listen closely, and you get drawn into its web. Just when you think you've understood it at a deeper level, you find more depths to explore. The Art of Fugue is 'pure' music, not created for any particular instrument. I first heard it arranged for solo organ, in a record in my father's collection, but as such it tends to blur into one long dirgy smurge. You really need to be able to follow each part individually. That's why in later life I bought it arranged for a string quartet, as here, by the jewel-like Juillard. Were I on Desert Island Discs this would be the one disc I'd rescue, for The Art Of Fugue isn't one piece of music -- it's a collection of all the music that ever was, is, or ever will be.  

The Limeliters, 14 14K Folksongs Everyone’s musical tastes are first shaped by their parents’ record collections. As well as the classics, my parents clearly had had a brush with the US folk revival of the early 1960s. There was a Pete Seeger '45 in there, along with three albums by the Kingston Trio, and two from this group, the Limeliters: this one, 14 14K Folksongs, and the gospel-tinged Making a Joyful Noise. This disc has both sorts of music - Country and Western — from an age as yet uncorrupted by glam and rhinestones, when traditional American music still looked back to its pioneering days. It was this disc that gave me my first taste of how folk music could evoke America’s wide-open spaces. There’s blues in here (‘Betty and Dupree’, ‘Gambler’s Blues’) but also convict songs (‘No More Cane’); songs about building the railway (‘Drill Ye Tarriers Drill’); genuine old-fashioned westerns from the days when cowboys actually chased cows rather than shot one another (‘Whoopee-Ti-Yi-Yo’); the hardships of going west (‘Sweet Betsy from Pike’); and much, much more. I expect a lot of the atmosphere came from the lush reverb (oh, those old plate reverbs have a lot to answer for) but this is a record that resonates with me to the present day.

AC/DC, Highway to Hell
I was introduced to the rough-hewn pleasures of AC/DC at school by my friend Nipper, a cheeky chappie who probably identified with Angus Young, AC/DC’s lead guitarist who inevitably appeared as a naughty schoolboy in shorts, cap and satchel. He did this well into his sixties, when the effect was more, well, Krankies than Kerrangg, but one can excuse it all because he was (and is) one of the finest rock guitarists who ever lived — and his band, one of the purest, clearest and most disciplined combos to tread the boards. And the finest record by AC/DC is this one, their sixth, and the final featuring, on lead vocals, the drunken swagger of Ronald ‘Bon’ Scott, who died not long afterwards from rock-star excess. But don’t be fooled by the blather and braggadocio — Highway to Hell is a perfect record. Every note is pin sharp. Producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange took an already well-honed rock’n’roll band and pared it down to its minimalist essentials. The result is less a brawling sucker punch than a stiletto of catchy numbers ('Touch Too Much', 'Shot Down In Flames', 'Girl's Got Rhythm', 'If You Want Blood', and of course the title track) that drills directly into your brain. I have so many rock albums, so why this one? Partly because, at the age of 19, I drove from leafy Sussex to see AC/DC headline at the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington in 1981. Sharing my Mini Clubman on this epic trek were Nipper and our mutual friend Ratty. AC/DC (by then fronted by their new singer Brian Johnson, who grew up in Newcastle where he gargled gravel washed down with liquid helium) were magnificent. The band was to go on to even greater heights - the first album with Johnson, Back in Black, is a classic - but Highway to Hell is more accessible, less knowing, less monolithic, and dare I say, more loveable, the last time AC/DC really lived the Dennis-the-Menace personae of a gloriously mis-spent youth that we teenagers all longed (and feared) to emulate.

Howard Shore, The Fellowship of the Ring, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
I'd been captivated by the works of Tolkien as a child, but I'd put them aside in my late teens. The advent of Peter Jackson's movie trilogy of The Lord Of The Rings in the early 2000s rekindled my interest, and fanned the flame into a firestorm. I read just about everything Tolkien had written on his fictional Middle-earth; I became a member of the Tolkien Society, editing its scholarly journal Mallorn for eight years; became the science correspondent for TheOneRing.net, and even wrote a book about Tolkien's works. As everyone knows, the best bit about the movie trilogy is the score, written by Howard Shore. When the CD for the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, came out, I played virtually nothing else for a year. Shore's music, for me, became the very essence of Middle-earth, from the rustic playfulness of the hobbits to the chilling deeps of the dwarves (my favourite part of the soundtrack is 'A Journey in the Dark' when, at about 2'35" Gandalf lights up his wand to reveal the magnificent vastness of the Mines of Moria.) The key ingredient, to me, is the frequent addition of a choir which, especially in the lower registers, adds a chill that emphasizes the whole mythic mystery of the tree-tangled landscape.  

Michael Flanders & Donald Swann, At The Drop Of A HatFlanders and Swann was a musical comedy duo popular in the late 1950s. This record is a live performance recorded at the Fortune Theatre in London during their successful run in 1957. My mother, a student at the time, saw them, and this record is a souvenir, in my mother's collection. It was part of the soundtrack of my childhood. Flanders and Swann, who described themselves as 'a drawing-room farrago', were probably the very last expression of highbrow Edwardian home entertainment. They are best remembered today for their songs about animals, especially 'The Hippopotamus Song' ('Mud, mud, glorious mud', and all that). They represent comedy in its pre-satiric innocence, when humor could be intellectual simply for the sake of it. Audiences of today would probably require footnotes:

1546 was a very bad year for the theatre. Gorboduc was doing very poor business at the Globe. Gammer Gurton was still giving everyone the Needle. ... Shakespeare hadn't hadn't even started, of course. Beaumont had quarreled with Fletcher - joint tenants...' ('Greensleeves')

Those too impatient or insufficiently educated would no doubt dismiss this as elitist. Some of it would probably be dismissed as sexist:

And the girl in my arms is Mabel Figworthy, and if she says "oooh reeely" once more, I shall break her neck' ('A Song For Our Time')

 ... elitist and racist ...

And to think, he used to be a regular anthropopha-guy ('The Reluctant Cannibal') 

... sexist and racist ...

Oh it's hard to say "holimakitilukacheecheechee",
But in Tonga that means "no";
And if I ever had the money, '
Tis to Tonga I shall go;
For every lovely Tongan maiden there
Will gladly make a date;
For by the time she's said "holimakitilukacheecheechee"
It is usually too late. ('A Song For Our Time')

... or elitist and sexist ...

And he said, as he hasn't to put out the cat, the wine, his cigar and the lamps,"Have some M'deira, M'dear" ('M'deira, M'dear?') 

Back in those days, before offense and sexual intercourse had been invented, F&S were as charming and witty as could be, and probably more so than anything that has happened in the subsequent sixty years. Of course, the Offensariat will probably drone on about the 'privilege' of two privately educated white men, never mind that Flanders was in a wheelchair, having contracted polio, not that he ever drew attention to it -- identity politics hadn't been invented then, either. F&S did react, in later years, to the then modish stream of infantile profanity masquerading as intellectual sophistication:

Ma's Out! Pa's Out! Let's talk Rude!
Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers!...
At Oxford and Cambridge, and Yale and all,
and at Berkeley, they really have a ball,
'Cos the higher the brow, the harder they fall,
For Belly Belly Bum Bum Belly Belly Bum Bum Pee Po Belly Belly Bum Bum, Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers. ('P** P* B**** B** D******') 

No prizes for guessing which tendency won out, and the world is far poorer for it, in my opinion.  

Jeff Beck, Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group, Live I can’t remember when I first heard this, or when, or who switched me on to this. I think it was at university, and it was a crummy copy of a copy on cassette. Much later Mr S. W. of Berkshire gave me the CD. I seem to have had a yen for guitarists who break the mould. First it was John McLoughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I since became keen on Scott Henderson. But most of all it was and still is Jeff Beck. Alone among rock guitarists he is still breaking new ground, squeezing sounds out of six strings that seem unimaginable. This album, recorded somewhere in the US in the mid-1970s, is a double whammy, as it is with one of my favourite keyboardists — Jan Hammer. Most people associate Hammer only with the theme to a televisual emission called Miami Vice: a mere bagatelle. For you will never hear a Moog synthesizer played with such flair, such fluidity and such style as under the dext'rous digits of Jan Hammer. Jon Lord of Deep Purple, long an admirer, said that Hammer ‘can make a synthesizer talk’. And with Beck, on this record, it’s very hard, and sometimes impossible, to tell where guitar stops and synthesizer begins. Believe me, I have tried. I confess to be rather fond of jazz-rock-funk fusion noodling, but there is noodling, and then there is noodling, and what stands out from this record is its infectious sense of fun. You can’t help get carried away with it. This record always leaves me with a smile. This is a live album I always come back to, and it always leaves me wanting more. If there was a concert in the past I’d like to have witnessed at first hand, this is the one.
Rush, Moving Pictures
'Little Red Corvette'. 'No Particular Place To Go'. 'She Loves My Automobile'. 'Wish I Had A Grey Cortina'. 'Crazy 'Bout A Mercury'. 'Fast Car'. 'I'm In Love With My Car'. 'Drive' (by the Cars). The love affair between rock'n'roll and cars goes back to its earliest days. Just like rock'n'roll itself, cars represent youthful liberation and rebellion. A wag once noted that the history of popular music would have been very different had Bruce Springsteen never met a girl called Wendy nor learned to drive. But for me the ultimate rock'n'roll song about cars has to be 'Red Barchetta', the second track on Moving Pictures, the eighth album by Rush, the ever-quirky power trio -- and, in my opinion, their best, and vindication of the adage that three blokes from Toronto can make a helluva racket. 'Red Barchetta' is more than about rebellion against one's parents, or convention in general, or a metaphor for sex. It's about rebellion itself. The song is set in a sci-fi dystopia about cars in a stifling future world in which cars had been banned ever since the 'Motor Law', in which a Sunday drive by a young man is a 'weekly crime' against the all-powerful state. The lyrics of the late Neil Peart, the virtuoso drummer for the band, often touched on science fiction and libertarian themes. They were also far more literate than one generally expects from rock music. Here's the heady rush of speed -- the sounds, the sights, even the smells, of driving as though your life depended on it:

Well-weathered leather, hot metal and oil,
The scented country air;
Sunlight on chrome, the blur of the landscape;
Every nerve aware. 

All put together with the thrawn, sinewy and muscular music by bassist and singer Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson, complete with an amazing variety of serpentine riffs and changes in time signature. It's a whole album in one six-minute song. And that's just one song out of seven, each one a feast.

The New Chronicles of Pupperino

Notwithstanding inasmuch as which we gained a new dog and lost another of long standing, although in later years mostly lying down, I have a further addition to report, in the shape and form of this adorable pupperino:

An Adorable Pupperino, Recently.

The circumstances are as follows. The loss of Heidi hit us hard -- especially Mrs Gee, who was present when Heidi had to be put to sleep. Ronnie the Jack Russell, Heidi's longtime companion, has aged noticeably and has become slightly grumpy. The atmosphere in the house has become spiky. We felt that shalom bayit could not be restored without the cuddly warmth and benign presence of a golden retriever.

Mindful of the fact that many golden retrievers suffer grievously from inbreeding (witness this case history, which you shouldn't read while eating peanuts or any other choking hazard); and that Heidi suffered from hip dysplasia and came from a slightly-less-than-reputable breeder; we resolved to do it better this time.

Offspring#2, who has sourced most of our pets on the internet, looked for any golden retriever pupperinos advertised by the Kennel Club. Just before Christmas she found a litter, born on 2 December, less than two hours drive from Cromer. (This is itself quite a feat as most destinations of note are at least two hours drive away from Cromer.) The breeder had gone to great pains to ensure the genetic health of her charges. The litter of four pupperinos has a pedigree that includes every ancestor back to the great-great-great grandparents -- more complete than most human pedigrees with the possible exception of royalty.

For example, although I know the identities of each one of my four grandparents, I know the names of only three of my eight great-grandparents and just one of my sixteen great-great grandparents.

But wait - there's more. Although the dogs in the pedigree came from a necessarily restricted range of registered breeders, no individual dog makes more than a single appearance in this extensive chart. This means that the pupperino is as outbred as the albeit limited breeding stock allows. The pedigree of a golden retriever that adorned my teenage years, on the other hand, contained a number of repeat appearances. As I recall, his father, grandfather and great-grandfather might have been the same dog. As for Heidi, her ancestry is a blank. We never received her pedigree as the breeder hadn't paid the fee to the Kennel Club to register her.

The breeder of the adorable pupperino shown above, had gone even further to ensure that her charges were as outbred and healthy as possible. She had commissioned detailed veterinary checks (including DNA tests) on the pup's mother and father to eliminate risks of the skeletal and eye problems that afflict this breed.

So it was that between Christmas and New Year we travelled to visit the litter, a tumble of lively pups attended by her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. The density of golden retrievers was gorgeously overwhelming -- and on Sunday 26 January we went to collect the latest addition to the menagerie. She is just a shade over 8 weeks old.

Now, I know parents like to boast about the accomplishments of their Offspring (and pets), but even on the first day in her new home she answered to her name, which is Posy, and three days later is beginning to have some idea that one goes outdoors to commit elimination and egestion.

She is a playful bundle of energy and floof who is growing almost as one watches and is likely to be quite a big dog when she grows up. I mean, just look at those feet. I suspect that the father was the size of one of those bears in His Dark Materials: you know the ones, like polar bears only much bigger, and wearing bicycle helmets.

She has the golden retriever's uncomplicated attitude to food, and, like Heidi, loves ripping up pieces of paper (something we missed this year, as we opened our Christmas presents for the first time in more than a decade in the absence of Heidi's Festival of Ripping Up Wrapping Paper.)

She wants to play with Ronnie and Lulu, but they are currently aloof, as they are progressing through the stages of disruption from Anger, through Bemusement, to Resignation and, hopefully, Participation. In the meantime, Posy interrupts bursts of frenetic activity with long periods of lying at my feet in the Home Office.

She is still young for walks, or visiting the beach - she hasn't had her vaccinations yet -- but the summer will be something to look forward to. We have so many memories of Heidi on the beach. Because that's where golden retrievers belong.

My Reads of 2019

This year I only managed to read 18 books, which is pitiful given my reading record in earlier years, especially 2018. In mitigation I'd like to offer that for some of 2018 I had been immobilized by a broken ankle so had little else to do except read; and this year I had planned to do more writing.

I did indeed finish the first draft of a book provisionally entitled John Maddox: His Part In My Victory, but on advice from those in the know, I am recasting it as something more saleable, mainly by taking out all the jokes.

But I digress.

Given the smallness of my list, which lacks entries from favorite authors such as Gaiman, Simmons, Dickens and LeGuin, I don't feel I can select a top ten, so this year you'll have to make do with a top five instead.

As they don't say in all the best game shows ... in no particular order ...

Tombland by C. J. Sansom. Imagine my pleasure when I learned that C. J. Sansom was going to resurrect his fictional Tudor barrister and sleuth Matthew Shardlake, whom we'd last seen as the personal lawyer to Catherine Parr (in Lamentation) and thought, that with the death of Henry VIII, we'd never see again. Tombland is set during the reign of Edward VI, but is rather different from the other Shardlake books. First, it's less a detective novel (although there is indeed a whodunit) and much more a straight historical piece. Second, it's set in Norwich, a city I know very well, and which still retains much of its Tudor street plan - increasing my enjoyment. Third, it's all about Kett's Rebellion (much of the action of which took place in Norwich and the Lands Adjacent), a period of history concerning which I knew little, and was thus considerably informed; and finally, it's a whopper of a book. So enjoyable, though, that I didn't want it to end.

Circe by Madeline Miller is a retelling of Greek Mythology from the point of view of one of its minor characters - Circe, the witch who ensnares Odysseus on the island of Aiaia in the Odyssey. It's a poignant tale of love and loss, with a great deal of fantastical elements as you'd imagine, and even if you think you know your Greek myths, there are some surprising twists.

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart is, like Circe, a novel twist on a mythological theme. This time the fictional autobiographer is the wizard Merlin, born a prince in South Wales; exiled to Brittany to join the army of Ambrosius Aurelianus, and returns to engineer the conception of Arthur. The author admits that it all comes from The History of the Kings of Britain by that deranged fabulist Geoffrey of Monmouth but it's none the worse for all that. And given that Britain in the fifth century is almost as entirely free from actual history as is the Odyssey, it's a wonderful playground for a good historical novelist. Which, of course, Mary Stewart is.

This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay is a memoir by a young man from a family of medics who follows the well-worn path into medicine, makes it to Senior Registrar, and burns out. It is killingly funny, even though you think it shouldn't be. The message is that we expect our health service professionals to be superhuman, working impossible hours at the cost of a great deal of things the non-medic world takes for granted, such as family life, relationships and the ability to take a holiday. (Add Kay's Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas as a seasonal addendum).

And finally....

My Read of the Year is...

The Vorrh by Brian Catling. The Vorrh of the title is a vast, dark forest somewhere in Africa, and the effects it has on a cast of characters who are either intimately connected with it, such as the cyclops Ishmael -- raised in a secret basement by robots -- or observe it only as a dark shadow on the edges of their consciousness -- such as the real-life-yet-fictionalized pioneer of photography Eadweard Muybridge. I have to say that it is one of the strangest books I have ever read -- and also one of the most beautiful. The events described are weird, astonishing, ghastly, fantastical and compelling, driven by writing of a quality and texture I have never seen before: muscular, synaesthetic and quite original. Comparisons made between The Vorrh and the works of Mervyn Peake are entirely justified. I am at a loss to say what The Vorrh is 'about', or even to summarize the plot, if any. What I can say is that The Vorrh is a book that will live long in the memory. Approach The Vorrh at your peril - once you are ensnared by it is hard to emerge, and if you do, you will be irrevocably changed.

A Recent Arrival

I am ashamed to say that I have been less than immediately alacritous in announcing a relatively new arrival chez Gee, although she did get a walk-on part in an earlier post. Here it is -

Her name is Lulu. She is nearly 3, and came to us six months ago (!) from friends who were unable to look after her, through pressure of work. She is a cross between a Jack Russell Terrier and a Dachshund (Dachs Russell, anyone?).

As you can imagine this a dynamite combination.

Lulu is loving and loyal. Although rather fierce with other dogs, she is intelligent and eager to learn, and is calming down under the benign influence of Ronnie (now aged 12) ...

Ronnie, on receipt of the news that we shall be about to commit perambulation. Recently.

... and as she came to us when Heidi was still with us, she received some Golden Retriever calmness vibes. When Lulu first arrived, Heidi woke up, gave Lulu a lick, and went back to sleep. Taking all three of them for a walk simultaneously all together and at the same time was, how shall we put it ... fun.

Starter For Ten

It seems like only yesterday when, as a young, slim fellow with hair, I took part in the iconic TV series University Challenge. My team, the University of Leeds, dispatched a college from Oxford and another from Cambridge, before wiping the floor with University College Swansea by 415 to 70, one of the highest scores ever. We were eventually knocked out by Dundee, who went on to win the championship. Here is the mighty team of the far-off days of 1983.

Very little video survives of University Challenge from those days, but I have a rare clip of us in action here:

Imagine my surprise therefore when I was invited back for another go. For the past nine years, University Challenge has had a short series at Christmas featuring notable alumni - and now, me. I can now reveal that I've been up to Salford Media City to join this Happy Few, this Band of Brothers, and so on and so forth in like fashion. And here we are!

My colleagues are, from left to right, Jonathan Clements, author and TV presenter (BA, Japanese with East Asian Studies); self (BSc Genetics and Zoology); Rev Richard Coles (vicar, former pop star, broadcaster, TV personality and team captain, MA Theology) and Tim Allen (photographer and film maker, BSc Zoology). If you'd like to see how we got on, tune in to BBC2 at 19:30GMT, Monday 23 December. And if you missed it - here is the episode on YouTube. Enjoy!

*** UPDATE ***

I can now reveal that of the fourteen teams entering, we were one of the four to score enough points to qualify for the semifinals. We won our semifinal against UCL, and went on to win the final against Wadham College, Oxford. So that means we are now University Challenge Christmas Champions! This is the first time the University of Leeds has won any flavour of University challenge, and the first time that a non-Oxbridge institution has won the Christmas alumni edition. TV’s Jonathan Clements sums it all up better than I can here. All I can add is that the Rev Richard Coles is a National Treasure.