I had a Bulgarian student in yesterday asking me questions for her thesis about the EU’s role in conflict resolution in Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Macedonia. An interesting trio, and I think it will not be an easy task for her to pull parallels out of them.

Very often people come to me and ask what the master solution for conflicts like these is. I reply that countries are a bit like families, as Tolstoy described them: “Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему” – “All happy families are alike; all unhappy familieies are unhappy for different reasons”. There is no systematic reason as to why power-sharing / consociationalism has worked best in Macedonia and worst in Cyprus. Consider the following :

Really the biggest determining factors are local political culture and the personalities of the leaders. The one factor on which Macedonia does score better than the other two is the violence of the conflict, at least in its most recent phase, which was clearly worse in Northern Ireland and worst in Cyprus. However there are

Thanks to ‘s generosity and a mishap with the Belgian postal system, I have an extra copy each of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin, both of which are Hugo nominees this year.

Anyone interested? Especially people who are within range of Brussels or Leuven, and who are likely to write about them on their own lj’s?

The Italian ambassador I mentioned previously has replied to my email:

Not in my empire, but I will enquire and come back to you. It seems tailor made for you.!

I hope he’s not just being diplomatic. (Actually I know him well enough that he would tell me if he thought it was a stupid idea.) Anyway, we’ll see what transpires.

I gave an impromptu talk on Tuesday at the Committee of the Regions (one of the more obscure bits of the EU). I did it in my usual style – drafted out a few talking points on a sheet of paper while the two previous speakers were speaking, and then attempted to deliver as well as I could. I was slightly distracted by the fact that the speaker immediately before me came pretty close to lying by omission about one of the countries I deal with. I decided to say that I regretted that the Commission representative had left out a few important facts, and that members of the Committee might therefore be misled unless I corrected them. Two people came up to me separately afterwards and said it was the best speech they had heard all afternoon, and one asked me for my script. (Which is why I got all excited when I heard from that she had seen me on TV yesterday, and hoped that my words of wisdom might have been preserved forever on film; but it seems that she saw an old interview being rebroadcast.)

Thanks to whoever it was in Northern Ireland that sent me three music CDs as a belated birthday present!

But I don’t recognise your handwriting, and so I have absolutely no idea who you are!

(Am trying to think of friends who live in NI and would know enough Dutch to write “Do Not Bend / Niet Vouwen AUB” on the envelope, but am really drawing a blank…)

Ambassador Alpo Rusi has emailed me a 16-page document in German which, he insists, completely clears his name (he was famously accused of being a Stasi spy). He asks me to disseminate it freely to any German-speaking friends who are interested in Finnish politics. I suspect this is a fairly small section of my friends-list, but if you are interested post below and I’ll email it to you. It’s quite an interesting read of how the East German spy network in Helsinki actually functioned.

(Locked entry, for obvious reasons; comments screened.)

Good luck to everyone who I know who is pounding the streets today in the local elections in England and Wales, whatever party you may be in.

In particular, good luck to my former Cambridge Lib Dem colleagues Max Boyce and Colin Rosenstiel, running for re-election, and to Marian Holness, a former housemate of mine who I discover is standing in a winnable seat there!

“Yes, I was. Now I’m Number Six.”

(hat-tip to )

Foreign Policy has just published its annual Failed States Index, ranking 146 countries from Sudan to Norway in order of vulnerability to state failure.

As with all of these things, it’s good to have a basis for argument. I do take issue with some of the rankings. While I don’t think many people would dispute that the top eight countries on the list probably are in pretty bad shape (Sudan, DR Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Chad, Somalia and Haiti) I’m a bit surprised to see Pakistan listed next, as being in a worse situation than Afghanistan, Guinea or Liberia. Serbia and Montenegro is very likely to split apart later this month, but is only 55th on the table. (OK, so it’s not exactly “state failure”, in that there will be little disruption to existing structures.)

Anyhow, food for thought.

Some of you will have seen my list of sf and fantasy novels set in Ireland. I have been living in Belgium now for over seven years, and it occurred to me that there must be a similar list possible of sf and fantasy set here.

I have two items to start off with:

Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell (2004): one of the nested stories is set in Zedelghem.

The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny (1972):

“From Antwerp we had traveled to Brussels, spending several evenings at a club on the Rue de Char et Pain before the man I wanted found me.”

Anything more?

(I’m specifically thinking of written sf and fantasy. If we expand the scope out to comics there are an awful lot more, starting with Tintin.)

Edited to add: reminds me – as I should have remembered perfectly well – of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke (2004) which features the Battle of Waterloo.

Michael Ross raises the question of Kate Elliot’s “Crown of Stars” series. As far as I can tell these are set in a rather distorted Europe, to the point that you couldn’t really count it as “set” in France, Belgium, etc. Same goes for the Kushiel trilogy (though as far as I remember they avoid the Low Countries entirely).

Alex Wilcock reveals the missing scene.

Slightly to my surprise I applied for a job with the European Commission yesterday. They put up an advertisement last week for a political adviser in an area I know something about and am very interested in, deadline for applications being 5 pm yesterday. So I pulled together the standard CV (and completing their CV tool is an experience in itself). I suspect I may just miss the cut in that I have been in international politics for only nine years and they want ten. Also the furtiveness of the advertisement suggests that they are only advertsising it in order to regularise the position of the temporary appointee who may be doing it at the moment (or that in some other way the post is already earmarked for someone). But nothing venture, nothing gain; I got the form handed in at 4.15 pm, and sent an email to the Italian ex-ambassador who would be my boss if it works out. (It occurs to me that this is a week when talented Italians who have been in political exile for the last five years may be heading home; perhaps this has created the vacancy?)

Never got around to writing up last weekend.

I took the Saturday as a day of relaxation in Stockholm. My Macedonian friends S and B (or perhaps I should say С and Б) and I spent the morning in the Vasa museum, which is absolutely superb. The centrepiece is this massive warship which sank in Stockholm harbour on its maiden voyage in 1628, and was successfully salvaged, pretty much intact, in the 1960s – an early example of a military project where the political necessity of meeting the deadline for the launch was allowed to supersede operational requirements, like making sure it would actually float. Great exhibits about life in the 17th century and the salvaging process, bilingually in English and Swedish.

I realised – as I should have done ages back – that Swedish, and I suppose Danish/Norwegian as well (and Faroese? Icelandic?), adds the definite article to the end of the word, so “Museet” for “the Museum”. The only other languages I’ve come across which do that are the Balkan Sprachbund of Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian-Romanian. (Insert conspiracy theory about ancient Scandiwegian/Balkan links here.)

We met up with and T for lunch, and then went on to the Nobel museum. To be honest this was a little disappointing. There was a nice little exhibition about Albert Einstein, and two audiovisual displays, one with extracts from speeches and interviews of a fairly random set of Nobel Prize winners, and the other with a series of short films about places where genius thrives – I did get a nostalgic kick out of the one about Cambridge, which seemed to highlight college catering: gasped with surprise at the New Hall serving area, which at one time I encountered several times a week. There was also a not very exciting set of relics from the life of Nobel himself. I would have liked some more exploration of the meaning of the prize, and most of all an actual list of the winners.

I have encountered several Nobel laureates. I chatted to Seamus Heaney one evening in a Dublin pub; had lunch with Robert Mundell in my previous job at CEPS; encountered both John Hume and David Trimble through my work in Northern Ireland politics; and interviewed Ernest Walton for my Ph D thesis a few months before he died. In addition I have at least shaken hands with Kofi Annan and Oscar Arias Sánchez, and also asked Brian Josephson to vote for me when I ran for Cambridge City Council in 1990. (I don’t think I persuaded him.) Oddly, I don’t recall bumping into any of the numerous laureates around Cambridge during my three years running to and from the Cavendish labs while studying Physics in the late 1980s (my minimal exchange with Josephson was conducted at his front door, and after I had graduated). Perhaps they were lying low; or perhaps it was an early sign, which I should have heeded, of the shallowness of my real interest in science.

Home on Saturday; spent Sunday alternately watching Doctor Who and trying to finish a piece of writing. Monday was a grey day, unfortunately, but we had a good time with and , visiting on their Benelux honeymoon. The plan to do the Atomium and Mini-Europe was aborted by the weather (and long queues for the Atomium), but we just came back to our house, consumed beer, and set the world to rights. Always nice to meet folks from livejournal who are passing through!

…it was the pilot I watched yesterday morning, because we watched the real thing later on in the evening. Thanks to , and Paul Cornell for putting me right.

Didn’t think there was much to choose between them, to be honest. The broadcast version is a slight improvement, with the Doctor’s costume and the line “Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be travellers in the fourth dimension? Have you? To be exiles?”.

I’ve compiled a list of School Reunion entires from other people’s LJ’s, not just my own f-list but following links from comments to other pages. Haven’t done it systematically but some highlights that caught my eye below:

To start off with, I’m with :

Oh, I am so relieved that Doctor Who was good this week. This is the kind of stuff I want to see. A really excellent episode. What a relief. Delivered on all accounts I think.

And :

Well, that was practically perfect in every way.

And :

Sarah Jane! Sarah Jane! Sarah Jane! And done so well, not only acting but writing. And how the Doctor was so pleased to see her, though he couldn’t let her know who he was, though he gave her a hint with his “John Smith” line. And how she figured it out as soon as she saw the TARDIS.

To which revealingly adds:

Oh, Sarah Jane. Never watched a single DW episode before the new series, so I can’t even imagine how cool seeing her must be for Old School Whovians, but she is so clearly Teh Awesome. The fact she never quite managed to move on is both inevitable and heart-breaking. And yet, how amazing is it that she wouldn’t change the experience for the world? She’s right, some things *are* worth getting your heart broken for.

:

Now we begin to see that the Doctor not only has his own agendas, but also quite frivolously wrecks lives, by picking up mere mortals, putting them through what is essentially the most exciting kind of whirlwind romance (a one night stand surely, from the perspective of a Time Lord) and dumping them, before he has to watch them wither and age. Not for their sake, but for his.

comments in reply to :

It also explained why they gave the Doctor delusions of godhood last week – so that the temptation scene this week would be even more effective. (The programme has always borrowed ideas from all over, but last night’s was the first that I can recall to borrow from the New Testament, with the Doctor in the role of Christ and Finch in the role of the Devil.)

noticed:

that little moment where Rose reaches for the sonic screwdriver, but Ten is already handing it to Sarah

reflects:

The in-story isn’t gendered but it is being presented in a gendered way, specifically about female ageing. I try not to get all FemLitCrit too often, because I think it’s over-used and often whiny, but seriously, would they have written the same story for Peter Purves? (if PP had been dumped the same way and had a longer history). Would RTD have directed the confrontation to be written like a ‘Sex And The City’ scene? Actually, imagining Peter Purves in all these scenes is very funny. Here he is, geting outraged at being left behind, bitching about school lessons with Rose and then getting a ginormous huggle. Cheering me up no end. Especially if you imagine it all in a big aran jumper.

See also vast comment thread over at ‘s invoking comparison with Whedon and Highlander, and the usual indepth from the Behind the Sofa crew. Minority views from here and coleberg.

I’m with the majority here, for all the reasons mentioned above.

It is getting increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that Billie Piper has not featured once in this season’s Doctor Who Confidentials. Anyone know what the story is there?

My birthday haul was (mostly) waiting for me when I got back from Sweden, and was much appreciated:

• The Medieval Cookbook, by Maggie Black;
• Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi and Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (actually not explicitly a birthday present, but happened to arrive at the right moment)
• Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
• The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The DVD set of Doctror Who: The Beginning

I am going to watch last night’s episode again later on, but Anne and I watched the very first ever episode of Doctor Who from November 1963 more or less as soon as I could got the wrapping off. It is rather surprisingly good.

Did the theme music continue playing over the opening scenes with the policeman, after the title sequence had finished, when it was first shown? An awfully good touch.

Susan’s line about decimalisation must have sounded a bit irrelevant in 1963. In 2006 it is a really palpable hit.

The title character does not even appear until over halfway through the 25 minutes, and unless I missed it, he is never once addressed as “Doctor”. The answer to the question “Doctor Who?” is really given only in the closing credits, when you have to work out that he was the character played by William Hartnell.

Once he is there, though, he totally owns the show. The lines themselves could have done with a little fine-tuning, but are delivered with great conviction:

You have heard the truth. We are not of this race. We are not of this Earth. We are wanderers in the fourth dimension of Space and Time. Cut off from our own planet and our own people by aeons and universes far beyond the reaches of… err, your most advanced sciences.

The “aeons and universes” are at the centre of a dubiously mixed metaphor, in that they are both a mechanism for cutting off the Doctor and Susan from their home, and also potentially within the reach of sufficiently advanced science. But if I hadn’t had the subtitles on, I would not have picked up on this point.

I was actually expecting also the lines, “Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be travellers in the fourth dimension? Have you? To be exiles?” – and am now wondering if I accidentally watched the pilot episode by mistake. No doubt someone knowledgable on my friends list will put me right.

When I first saw this in 1981, the repetition of the title sequence over the Tardis dematerialising seemed to be tedious and long, but trying to imagine how it would have seemed to a new viewer in 1963 I felt it was pretty memorable and effective.

Some day I’ll read through all this commentary. But in summary, I thought it was pretty good.

There are no words.

I didn’t cry very much.

Right, better watch it again.

Because this is work-related, it’s a locked post; the contents are not especially confidential, it’s just that it would be a bit odd for colleagues to see me writing it; people would wonder why I am pimping this particular report, and also I have some small points of criticism which it would be inappropriate for me to make them publicly. The way our organisation works, of course, I don’t even know for sure who the primary author was (though if it is who I think it is, he modestly cites himself only once, in a footnote).

Our report on the Iraqi insurgency from February is a cracking good read. The main interest for people who see this is that it shows how you can use the internet and the latest in technology to run – and indeed increasingly to win – a guerilla campaign against the largest military power in the world. Absolutely fascinating, and all I can say is go and read the full thing.

A few other points that leapt out at me were:
i) the report comprehensively disproves the idea (advocated, among others, by Stratfor) that the insurgency was planned by Saddam Hussein’s regime before it collapsed. In fact there were only three combat deaths in the first month of the occupation, insurgents generally are very critical of the former regime, and those few insurgent groups with formal links to the Baath party or old Iraqi army are pretty insignificant.
ii) Al-Zarqawi, despite his prominence in the media, is in fact the leader of only one of three or four leading factions among the insurgents, and not necessarily the strongest one of those; and the influence of foreign elements among the insurgents has been exaggerated. Inevitably the media, looking for an easily identifiable Bad Guy, have zeroed in on him, and presumably he is therefore also the focus of much analysis from the international intelligence community. But concentrating on him runs the risk of leading the US into the trap of assuming that if they eliminate him they have won.
iii) I did wonder why the concrete policy recommendations made, for a report so impressive on the analysis, are really pretty scanty, relating only to the US and the wider political process. I suspect this is because it is the main report-writer’s first piece of work for us, and the art of writing the right recommendations is one of the peculiarities of the way my organisation does things. One recommendation that should have been made up front, and is implicit in the report: whoever it is (not looking at the CIA at all) that is crashing insurgents’ websites by denial-of-service attacks should stop it, as it only makes their communications more difficult to monitor.

Anyway, feel free to discuss this in public, just please don’t associate me with the above comments.

13) The Moon Pool, by A. Merritt

Have been reading this adventure story, first published in 1919, on my Palm T|X over the last few weeks, really reminded of it by Charlie Stross’ use of the phrase “moon pool” in The Jennifer Morgue. The plot is classic enough: on an isolated tropical island, the Moon Pool is in fact the gateway to an underground world where the struggle between the forces of good and evil (each led by a beautiful priestess) is resolved by the agency of our narrator and his chums.

The characters are utter clichés. The Scandinavian sea-captain is, in fact, a Viking; the Russian is villainous (apparently a German during first magazine publication); the priestesses are both beautiful and nearly nude at all times. Most striking of all is the central character, Larry O’Keefe, with whom both priestesses (and, pretty clearly, also the male narrator) fall deeply in love. He is supposedly an Irishman with strong American connections, but I bristled rather at the cod-Oirishness of his dialogue. The son of The O’Keefe of Coleraine (that well known haunt of the old Gaelic aristocracy), he reminisces at one point:

An’ once I saw an Annir Choille, a girl of the green people, flit like a shade of green fire through Carntogher woods, an’ once at Dunchraig I slept where the ashes of the Dun of Cormac MacConcobar are mixed with those of Cormac an’ Eilidh the Fair, all burned in the nine flames that sprang from the harping of Cravetheen, an’ I heard the echo of his dead harpings—

Carntogher is real enough, and credibly reachable from Coleraine, but the Annir Choille, Dunchraig and Cravetheen are all taken from the works of Fiona MacLeod (real name William Sharp), at least in the first instance.

For all that, Merrit’s descriptive prose has power, coherence, and energy, and you can see his influence on Lovecraft; the first few scenes after passing through the Moon Pool in particular are very reminiscent of Lovecraft’s Land of Dream. There is still something a bit more visceral and twisted in Lovecraft’s writing that I think makes him the superior craftsman, even though his prose is sometimes just a bit more over the top than Merritt’s.

I know I still owe questions to a few people. Anyway, here are my latest set of answers.

From :

1. Are you worried you’ll get brain cancer from flying so much?!
   I was doing an outside physical labouring job (working on an archaeology site) the week that the Chernobyl fallout dusted the area (in southern Germany) so I think that if I’m destined to go that way, flying’s not going to make much difference. Anyway it’s the cardiovascular system that has tended to kill off my relatives.
2. Which is your favourite/least favourite airline?
   I have had a very good impression of United in my last couple of transatlantic flights. Comfortable and cheerful service. I hope they can keep it up. As for least favourite, I won’t name them but I’ve had some uncomfortable and horribly catered experiences on the national carrier of one of my Eastern European countries. Having said which, Ryanair are pretty crap too.
3. Could you see yourself ever standing for election for anything again?
   Yes, once the kids are no longer absorbing so much of my time. I’d very much like to get back into electoral politics at some point in the future. But it won’t be for another few years.
4. What do you miss most about living in Ireland?
   Second-hand bookshops in English. This would of course apply to the UK as well, or the USA.
5. What’s with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
   I have penetrated your sinister plan, Wall. As you well know, in the next line of the song Anya suggests that it may be midgets. You cannot distract my attention so easily.

From :

1. If given the opportunity, would you change your children in any way?
   Next question, please.
2. Does Irish Catholicism really differ from European Catholicism and if yes, how so?
   I think it’s Catholicism in Belgium (and perhaps the Netherlands as well) that is outside the European norm. Fifty or a hundred years ago, Irish Catholicism would have been unusual in that its adherents were attending Mass much more than other Europeans, and were much more conservative than European Catholics. My perception is now that in Ireland, like in most countries, the number who are actually practicing Catholics has dropped dramatically, and those who are left are almost all pretty conservative in their views on what are loosely called “moral issues”. However in the Low Countries the more progressive elements seem to have remained active within the Church rather than leave.
3. You’re given the opportunity to claim one book as a book you have written. Which one would it be?
   asked me this in a slightly different way – which book would I like to have written, rather than which book would I like people to think I had written! So I think the answer is different, and probably it is The Lord of the Rings.
4. Would you become the head of the United Nations and if so, what would you change?
   I think I’d rather be a senior political adviser than be the man right at the very top; and that’s a general comment rather than a specific UN feeling. Having said that, the single most obvious thing to change about the UN is the structure of the Security Council, which reflects the balance of world forces in 1945 and not 2006. If I had a clean slate I would give seats with vetoes to the top ten countries ranked by population and by GDP (so USA, Japan and China qualify on both criteria, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Nigeria make it on population grounds, and Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Canada, Spain and South Korea [which is just ahead of Brazil and India] get in on the size of their economies). Then you would balance out the geography by having a similar number of elected members. But on top of that, countries who actually contribute troops to peacekeeping missions should have an extra say in how the troops in those missions are used.
5. The US and Europe go at war with each other. How will the conflict be solved and with whom will the Russians side?
   Hmm. The second bit is easier; the Russians will sit back, and sell oil and weapons to both sides. In a purely military sense, the US is much stronger and of courfse has much better intelligence about where European military assets are than vice versa. But I think they would find that having won the war it would be pretty difficult to stay dominant for long in peacetime.

And from :

1. How many languages do you speak?
   English (obviously); reasonably fluent in Dutch, German and French. Tourist-level Serbo-Croato-Bosnian and Macedonia, and Italian if I try. Used to be able to read medieval Latin but haven’t tried for a while. Vestigial Russian. Say four for safety.
2. Please explaing what psephology is?
   The study of election results. I hadn’t realised when I wrote my profile, but it is considered an obsolete and slightly pompous term in the USA, whereas for British and Irish speakers (at least those of us who are fascinated by elections) it is a normal term of conversation.
3. What are your top 3 criteria when choosing a new book to read?
   I am trying to be a bit more systematic about this, as recent posts show. In general it tends to be “whatever catches my eye”. At present I am attempting to plan against various criteria: i) diminishing the unread list; ii) reading Great Novels; iii) reading Great Science Fiction; iv) this year’s Hugo nominees; v) whatever catches my eye. It is not easy to combine these various criteria into a workable strategy.
4. Who’s your favourite Bond?
   Oddly enough, Pierce Brosnan.
5. How long does it take you to get to work and do you take the same route/method every day?
   I almost always head in along the E40, and then down through Montgomery and up the whole length of Avenue Louise, which can take as little as 25 minutes if traffic is clear (ie at weekends) but is more usually about an hour, worse if there is bad weather or worse than usual traffic. One alternative I have sometimes tried is to skip the motorway altogether and go in through Tervuren.

I spotted the mysteriously bold letters, but did wonder what it was all about.

Why is it that when I am updating via Firefox, the text window gradually gets wider and wider?

There is no word for ‘reconciliation’ in either Tamil or Sinhalese. (What does this mean for the peace process? Discuss.)

…that I flew Brussels to Stockholm yesterday rather than this morning.

Today is the Day Of Statehood Of Serbia And Montenegro – probably the last one…

10) You, The People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration and State-Building, by Simon Chesterman
11) International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction, by Richard Caplan

Two books on very similar topics. Don’t really have the energy to review either right now. Chesterman’s slightly the better read, though also less accurately titled in that he deals with post-1995 Bosnia and post-2003 Iraq, neither of which is really UN per se. Both very good and detailed.

The three real killers for international interventions post-conflict are, according to both writers:

i) wishful thinking about conditions on the ground, rather than proper planning for the circumstances of the mission, often driven by domestic political pressures on key players
ii) failure to establish purpose of the mission (and thus conditions for eventually terminating it) right at the very start
iii) failure to establish rule of law very early on in the process, ie police, courts, enforcement mechanisms.

Very useful food for thought, anyway.

While on the plane I also read Spyridon Kotsovilis’ paper on Greece’s policy towards Macedonia, picked up on a Google trawl since he references me briefly in a footnote. An attractive argument about international relations in general, and how the Realists and Constructivists are Both Wrong; unfortunately his English lets him down in one or two key places, but I think I basically agree with what he’s saying and must read more of the writers he references positively (other than myself).

As one often does on birthdays, I’ve been trying to pin down an elusive detail from many years in the past. In the summer of 1989 I saw a play in a London theatre, set on a Greek island. In the first act, set several decades ago, a young American writer had a homosexual affair with a local chap. In the second act, set in the present day, the same guy, much older, is being cared for in his declining years. The play ends with a volcano exploding, and the old man, who has problems finding the right words, uttering the immortal line “The apricot is erupting!”

Well, the power of Google has tracked it down. Just doing a search on “greek island” play homosexual volcano pulls a New York Times review of a more recent production of Michael Sherman’s “A Madhouse in Goa” as the first hit. Investigating a bit further, I find to my surprise that the production I saw starred Rupert Graves and Vanessa Redgrave. I have seen fewer than half a dozen London shows, and am amazed that I had forgotten the star quality of the production. What I do remember is that it really wasn’t a very good play, and at one point Larry Lamb (playing the writer in the second act) started visibly giggling at the end of one of his scenes.

Anyway, just thought you would like to know. The birthday link (which I had also forgotten) is that the second act of the play explicitly references the Chernobyl disaster, which of course happened on my 19th birthday.

Happy 39th birthday to:

Trish Doller, self-described “morning radio jock, punk rock mom, high priestess of DIY, bleeding-heart liberal and all-around awesome babe”
Simon Le Roux, South Africa-born architect and set designer for Finland’s Ismo Dance Company
Dominic Jermey OBE of the British Embassy in Madrid
The Reverend Andrew Karnley, Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Monrovia
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, actress (Secrets and Lies, Without A Trace television series) and composer
Glen Jacobs, aka Kane, “professional wrestler”
Rainer Salzgeber, Austrian skiing champion
Monte Warden, country musician
Philippe Bertaud, jazz guitarist
Sascha Draeger, German actor and voice-over artist
Klaus Merk, trainer of the Berman national ice-hockey team
Hindy Najman, theologian
Cornelia Schaub, Zürich city councillor
Ludwig Stefan, mayor of the east German city of Königs Wusterhausen
Tim Moore, member of the Michigan State House of Representatives
Francesco Primo Vaccari of the Italian Institute of Biometeorology
Brian K. Lawson, Michigan lawyer
Petr Šulc, CFO of Zentiva
Toomas Tõniste, Estonian winner of two Olympic sailing medals
Alf Kåre Tveit, Norwegian footballer
Konstantin G. Kozhevnikov, president of the Russian Golf Federation
Randy Patterson, American racing driver (stock)
Wolfram Centner, German racing driver (sidecar)
Lorenzo Ward, defensive backfield coach of the Virginia Tech Hokies
Andy Schmeltzer, midfielder of the Charleston Batteries
Sean Boxall, Scottish snooker player
Milan Dvořák, Czech chemist
Zvi Pasman, biochemist
Swen-Uwe Volker, German journalist
Stefan Wiemer, Swiss seismologist
Renee Maritza Vargas, Peruvian sculptor
Marcel Raaymakers, drummer with Dutch band No Fuzz
Kathy Manners, artist

and me!

Just watched last Saturday’s Doctor Who Confidential. Great fun, again, but, as Anne pointed out, still no interview with Billie Piper!

‘s basic guide.