Moonbounce

Just back from a terrific day at Jodrell Bank (above) attending the ‘moonbounce’ event to commemorate Apollo 11. There were talks from a number of luminaries that kept us entertained all day .
Speakers included Sir Bernard Lovell, the founder of the telescope here at Jodrell, Andrew Smith, the writer of ‘Moondust’ (a must-read book for all Apollo buffs everywhere) and Colin Pillinger, the scientist who shot to prominence as lead scientist on the Beagle II project.
I especially enjoyed Andrew Smith’s reading – an extract from ‘Moondust’ that was set against archive film of Eagle descending to the sea of Tranquillity, and a haunting sound track by Brian Eno. The timing of the reading was perfect and it captured the atmosphere of the moment in a way that words alone could not have done. Everyone in the audience was visibly moved by what they saw and heard.
Then in the afternoon Colin Pillinger spoke, in a way that offered hope, about NASA’s plans to revisit the moon via the Ares project. There have been plans before and as I said yesterday there’s no money and these things come and go, and yes, I’m still a bit sceptical. But Professor Pillinger was so positive and optimistic and... well, wouldn’t it be fabulous if this really did come to pass.




Here's me, (in blue) standing in front of the 250ft telescope at Jodrell Bank. Yes, it really is that big!


And then it was time for the ‘moonbounce’ itself. Competition winners were invited to speak into a microphone and have their words relayed to the telescope in Cambridge, transmitted out to the moon where they bounced back to be received by the 250ft telescope at Jodrell Bank. We all heard the words as a ghostly echo 2.5 seconds later.
It sounds trivial. It wasn’t.
It was done in a way that thrilled us all.
In the end we were all invited to shout out “Hello moon,” and 2.5 seconds later the ghostly echo of our voices came back.
Wow! My voice has been to the moon and back.
I’m still smiling.

Forty Years

How about the picture? Does that stir something deep inside?

It’s been quite a week for recalling the heady days of the Apollo programme. But what has surprised me is the number of people I’ve spoken to who don’t remember it – at all! This is not because they have bad memories it’s because they weren’t even born at the time. This comes as quite a shock. Some of these children are forty! What happened there? For me all the memories of Apollo are fresh, as if it only happened a few short years ago. I’ve come to realise that I share this world with quite a lot of people who regard Apollo as a dry history-book episode rather than as that wonderous, breathtaking, live event that I clambered out of bed in the pre-dawn hours to watch live on telly.

I miss it. I hate that it’s history. I want it back.

It’s frustrating each time there’s an announcement: we’ll go back to the moon, we’ll go to Mars – and then it all fizzles out. Come on Barak, I know the globe is a bit strapped for cash at the moment, but how about another Kennedy-esque announcement that we’re going to do something big and bold and mad before this decade is out (or I suppose it’ll have to be the next decade – it might be a bit too bold to expect something by Christmas). Those who worry about the money, the cost, don’t really get it. NASA didn’t send all that money into space at all. The bits that went up into space were just a minor part of it. The real money stayed on Earth, in the US, and grew. Investment encourages investment. Just like Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 30’s it does no harm to spend a bit on grand schemes when things get are getting a bit rocky in the economy.
You’ll notice, by the way, my use of the royal ‘we’. I’m a Brit. My particular ‘we’ would be hard pressed to move a man from here to the Asda car-park (and return him safely) by rocket. Men on the moon are a bit out of our league at the moment. So we’re relying on you guys in the US to pull-off another big one. China could do it sometime soon, but then it wouldn’t be on the telly, so what use would that be to any of us. The US would have HD cameras and live internet feeds, and the astronauts would be on Twitter!
Anyway, there’s another TV documentary about to start, so I’m off to get a bit more of the space-geek out of my system. Oh and tomorrow I’m off to Jodrell Bank for an Apollo anniversary special in the shadow of the big dish. Can’t wait.

Publicity Photos - or the art of making silk purses from sow's ears

The challenge: Create a publicity photo without recourse to body-doubles.

Lesson One: Set the camera auto timer to more than two seconds

Lesson Two: Crop in close to avoid showing the desk clutter.

Use all the props. Can't afford dental work, double-chin's here to stay, so note the crafty use of hands.

Lesson Three: Lose the young and hip Animal hoodie. Black is good. And what's with this asymetric thing he's doing with the eyebrows. Keep that in. We're going for the inscruitable look.

The background though. Don't like all the bits of intruding angle lamps and wall hangings.

That's better. Lesson Five: move the writer in front of his bookcase. Make sure that at least one of the anthologies with his story in it is on the shelf. We've going with three copies here just to be on the safe side.

But there's another problem. What about the unruly, sticky-up tufts of thin grey hair, that 50 years of hard combing could never fix?

Yeah, baby. Bring on the hat!

Lesson Six: Hat trumps talent every time.

Now we're cooking. Here's where we hang a left and head down the dark and mysterious route.

Lesson Seven: Monochrome. The killer app. In one move we go all arty, we get mysterious, and we eradicate all signs of the pasty British skin pallor. And the exagerated wrinkles add gravitas.

And now, at last, we're ready for the final crop.

Look at that. Not even his own mother would recognise him.

Would you buy a used car from this man?

Long Words

Never use a long word when a short one will do.

Hey, this is good advice, even if not exactly original. It keeps people turning the pages. So what were they thinking of when they came up with the name for this village on Anglesey?

This is the original sign on the railway station platform.

Arriva have been helpful on this, their sign offers some guidance on the pronunciation.

I could have done with this half an hour earlier, on the train. You see, it's a request stop. You have to ask the guard to stop at this station or you'll be hauled off to Holyhead.

So how do you ask?

"Excuse me, we'd like to alight at Llanfairthingy."...Nah.

So I went with: "could you put us off at the first stop after Bangor please?"

The guard smiled. He's heard every angle, of course he has. He's probably even taken a few of the extreme linguistic failures all the way to Holyhead.

So how did it happen? Years ago the local council had a meeting to decide what to call the town, and maybe some bright spark councillor stood up and said "let's call it: The church of Mary in the hollow of the white hazel near the fierce whirlpool and the church of Tysilio by the red cave," because then we can build a massive visitor centre and sell all kinds of stuff to the coach loads of tourists who come to have their photo taken standing under the sign. Only he said it in Welsh.

And perhaps the mayor stood up and said, "ie." Which means "yes".

Because a short word is always best.

Writers of the Future

It occurs to me that I haven't said anything about Writers of the Future in my blog posts. There's a perfectly good reason for this omission, and goes something like this:

There are good things that can happen to a writer who is looking for the big break. Getting published is, of course, a good step forward. Getting paid for something you've had published is, without question, a huge leap along on the rocky road. There are competitions. Sometimes they pay and sometimes they might even include publication.

And then there is Writers of the Future. For the amateur genre writer this is the big one. This one has it all: publication, payment, kudos, not to mention a paid-for week in the US hanging out with fellow writers and getting an education from the pros. WOTF is the one every hopeful SF writer wants to bag and it's the one they should try to bag. So when I got the phone call last summer to say I would be one of those fortunate few I was... astounded.

After several weeks of walking around in a daze the doubts start to creep in. They've dialled the wrong number. My name's been mixed up with the wrong story. It's all been a big mistake. They'll find me out.

Then, after a while, the publishing contract arrives and it's got the right story name on it. So then the next round of doubts can start. The global economic collapse will cause it to be cancelled. Swine flu will spread and they'll ban all international travel. Or maybe I'll just simply freak out and they'll have a rule that prevents hair-rending dribbling maniacs from boarding planes bound for California.

But really, at the heart of all this there is the simple conviction – this can't be happening to me. How did this happen? It is a dream.

So I avoid blogging about it. I shy away from even talking about it. I am terrified of putting the mockers on everything. But suddenly there has been a rush of activity. Trans-Atlantic telephone calls, discussions about flights and hotels and... oh my. This thing looks like it's really going to happen.

So there's a new countdown panel on the blog. At time of writing it stands at 75 days. I'll blog about the lead-in. If I can, and if there's time (and if I can find enough wireless hotspots) I'll blog about the event.

Watch this space.

Hay at Home

Back home after a brilliant, hot and sweaty Hay festival. It feels a million miles away already. We had one last event this morning: Dr Raj Persaud had Quentin Letts in his psychiatrist's chair as an excuse to talk to Letts about his book - 50 People who Buggered Up Britain. This was a great way to round off the Festival, it was lively and topical and very very funny. And it was over far too quickly.
A final coffee at the festival site, lunch in The Grannery (I'm going to miss it, you just can't get veggie food like this in our neck of the woods) then we packed up the caravan and left.
Three hours later we were home. Tomorrow I must don the sober tie and the grey pallour and return to the real world of accountancy.

Morning and Evening

Events at both ends of the day today, leaving plenty of time to lie around in the sun and complain about it being too hot. Never thought I'd be doing that this year.

Started the day with Deyan Sudjic talking about The Language of Things. Sudjic is the Director of the Design Museum and his talk was essentially about design. Never let it be said that we don't try different topics here at Hay. I quite enjoyed this one. It made us think about the impact of design vs fashion vs utility. He covered a lot of ground and it was interesting stuff.

But then came Alain de Botton, the novelist/philosopher. His topic was The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. This is a topic close to my heart, especially as the clock is ticking and our last day in Hay approaches. Soon the sorrows of work will be all too evident. Alain de Botton manages to look at everyday simple things and make them fascinating, funny and entertaining. He looked at jobs that don't get the publicity in fiction that they deserve. How many shows do we see about Police officers, criminals, news reporters? They are well represented occupations in fiction. Aliens might look at book shops and conclude that we spend all our days fighting, murdering or solving crimes. There are other jobs. He looked at Logistics, in particular tracking the lowly Tuna fish on its long journey from ocean to plate. He looked at the biscuit factory worker, and one that is especially on my mind at the moment, the Accountant. (Although, if the accountant is poorly represented in fiction this may soon be addressed as I have just passed 75k words on my novel – watch this space)

This accountant felt real resonance with the picture Alain de Botton painted of this overlooked vocation. Not always in a good way. It was a terrific talk, one of the best so far. I'll probably buy the book, but I'll have to work through the pending stack first because I really am beginning to suffer from books-I-really-have-to-read-but can't-find-the-time anxiety.

This evening we have Jeremy Paxman on The Victorians and an illustrious panel under the heading Dark Matter: Poems from Space. I'll let you know.