London Morbid

The flat opposite me has a balcony. I would like that flat.

The owners used to keep it immaculate, and neatly-trimmed window boxes would spill out glorious blooms all the year round. Now the window box is full of weeds.

A few years ago, I think the wife died. That's when he stopped coming out to look after the flowers.

One night last year I was woken up by a banging noise. It was the husband, come home late and drunk. He'd locked himself out and was trying to kick his own door down. He looked old and small but he was still hefting away at the door. I helped him jimmy the lock with a claw hammer. He said thank you and staggered in, all without really focusing on me.

I haven't seen him since, but recently a district nurse has started to call on him regularly. I've discovered that London Feeling - a mixture of solid regret that I don't really know him mingled with "I wonder how much that flat is worth? Can I buy it if he goes into a home or something?".

These aren't nice thoughts. But it's all very well to think them. Because this is London, and some day, someone will be looking out their window at my balcony and thinking "oh, the window boxes are full of weeds. I wonder...?"

Single or Double?

Twitter is cross. Twitter is always cross. This weekend it has been cross because a gay couple were denied the chance to sleep in a double bed at a hotel.

It started on twitter. It got picked up by proper media. And, as the BBC journalist started typing the story I wonder they didn't stop and think. Looooong ago, I did some basic BBC journalism training. Two bits of it apply here:
1) Thou shalt not run a story from a single source.
2) Always kick the tyres to see they're sound before buying it

(Mind you, most of the "journalism" I did was about vampires and Bagpuss, so who am I to lob a brick?).

Reading the couple's account does raise some interesting points. They were checking into a central London hotel on a Saturday night. At 11.30pm. And were then disgruntled to find out that their choice of room wasn't available. Well, frankly, I'm not surprised. Are you? 2000 years ago, Mary and Joseph understood the idea of a late check in.

I don't doubt the sincere upset of the couple concerned. Neither does the hotel, who hurried to say "we apologise for the way they feel". But... this really is a single-source story. Ringing up a hotel's PR department at the weekend for a quote doesn't count as verification. That's a reaction.

A clever friend went off and checked the hotel's booking conditions, which is a valid second source. Here we go: "Guests may check-in at any time from 2.00 p.m. on the day of arrival. All rooms that have been secured by credit / debit card or prepaid at the time of booking will be held until 12.00 noon on the following day. Any non-secured reservation will be held until 4.00 p.m. on the day of arrival at which time the hotel is entitled to re-let the room, unless the guest has notified the hotel of a late arrival." and "Rooms are subject to availability".

Sorry for the small print. Research? Yawn. But there we go. Nearly midnight on a Saturday. Central London. Rooms are subject to availability. Uh huh.

Then again, this took place in the Barbican, that famous centre of homosexual oppression. Mind you, as someone said to me on Twitter: "If homophobic, then there's a serious charge to answer, of course.". Yes. And if the hotel had also murdered them for the glory of the Dark Lord, then there'd be a serious charge to answer there, too.

Mind you, the receptionist apparently asked, when confronted by two young men asking for their room: "Are you sure you want a double room or do you want single beds?"

Years ago I was asked the exact same question. I'd been on a rather lovely date which had gone very well, and we were wondering about staying in the hotel above the restaurant. As she made the booking, the receptionist asked if we wanted a single or a double - neutrally - and when we replied "a double", she giggled and said "oh, lovely". But, first of all, she had to ask the question. I suspect a lot of hotels do so when two people of the same sex check in. Possibly because sometimes straight men decide to share a room, make a mistake in the booking, and are quick to take offence. Not that I'm saying all straight men are homophobic. Or that all hotels are. Just saves the trouble of sorting them out another room so they don't accidentally bum each other while reaching for the complimentary shortbread.

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick. Maybe I'm leaping to a conclusion without having read all the facts. Well, then I'm not alone. Here are a few tweets, all made, remember, before the hotel has properly had a chance to properly investigate and respond:

• "I'll make sure no one I know or work with books with you."
• "How he felt is because of what your employee did. He could sue you. And should."
• "Boycott is the answer here."

And those are just the nice ones. 
Don't get me wrong - Twitter is often a very useful customer-service tool (especially with Train companies, who seem to reserve their huggy approachableness purely for social media). But this kind of situation, which sees a lot of people getting very cross before the facts have been properly stood up could be very damaging. At the moment it's just damaging for individual companies, but it may rapidly change the way that organisations react to a social media witch hunt.

Finally, I recently stayed at a Thistle hotel. It was rather lovely. Although a chambermaid did keep popping into my room without knocking. I was a bit surprised and mentioned it on Twitter. Oh, and I also mentioned it at reception when I checked out.

Co-habits

My boyfriend has moved in. Properly. As in I've had to email the council and declare that I no longer qualify for "A Single Person's Discount".

We've kind of lived together before, a bit. But it's only really been in chunks of days. Whereas this is like prison. Prison with cardigans.

My boyfriend has a lot of cardigans. And boots. And scarves. In fact, there's a lot of my boyfriend. Everywhere.  I'm having to mentally adjust. Previously, granting him a cupboard, the odd drawer or shelf has been an act of largesse, proving my generosity as a boyfriend. Now, anything less than half looks meagre. I've done my best, and thrown a lot of stuff away - but not enough. He's still confronted by crates of things which I've halfway done. And really will, honestly, get around to. One day.

That's another problem. Perception. If I leave a small pile of paper, string and USB-sticks on the floor, then it is clearly The Best Way Of Filing Important Work. If he leaves a pile on the floor it is obviously proof that he is The Untidiest Man Alive And Should Burn.

Years ago, I read a review of minimalist hotel The Hempel, where the writer had tested out the hotel's zen credentials. He'd emptied his bag onto the bed and gone out. When he returned, the contents of his bag had been arranged on the bed in a tasteful, colour-graded ziggurat. Frankly, we're currently lacking that kind of order. It's reached the point where I'm trying to work out if I should invest in a storage unit. As a temporary measure. For a few years. Ten at the most.

The sadness of stuff is realising how many things you have that you haven't looked at for a while. I have crates of my university course work and old student newspapers. Clearly, I've not looked at them for the five years since I was at uni. Which is okay. Only I left university nearly 20 years ago. The next time I glance at my old copies of Isis Magazine (edited with Ben Goldacre, fact fans) it will be 40 years. The time after that, it will be seen by whoever is doing the house clearance.

It's making me question my routine. For instance my approach to cleaning is to sneak up on it, pouncing on it on a Saturday afternoon during a decent Any Questions. I failed to explain this to my boyfriend, who looked up, bemused to wonder why I was stood in the kitchen holding a carpet, a mop and some paperclips. "Don't you think," he asked patiently, "You'd be better off tackling one room at a time?" I stared at him. He was proposing Change.

Now he has a proper job, he's also done away with my makeshift freelance lifestyle. Out has gone "Book til whenever o'clock and breakfast of yoghurt and crisps at some convenient point." Now the alarm goes off at 7. There's porridge.

It is regimented. It is neat. It is like prison. With cardigans.

An Editing Hangover

Today I have an editing hangover. Don't worry, it's nothing serious. I haven't had to fry a thing.

Several years ago I discovered there were two ways to edit your own work:

1) Leave it for six months and come back to it with icy detachment and a fresh pair of eyes.

2) Do it drunk.

Deadlines and the real world being what they are, 2) is more normal. It's curious. I can't actually write when drunk. I can barely operate a computer. But, get just a little tipsy, and I can almost disapassionately comb through pages of stuff I've written. I'll spot repeated words, factual errors, and even things which, cold sober, I'd let myself get away with. A little switch goes in the brain - it's pedalled to the top of a hill and is now cantering down going "wheeeeeee!".

It's quite nice. There are only a couple of problems. Firstly, waking up late the next morning with the urge for a breakfast of crsips. And second, trying to decipher margin notes. At about 3am I appear to have typed on page 13: "Biscuits. Biscuits. BISCUITS!!"

Perhaps I was hungry.

Bring Bring on the silence

I've decided I pretty much hate all forms of communication apart from a cat's purr. This opinion changes from time-to-time, but there's one constant - I REALLY hate the phone.

If you're reading this and you're a friend of mine, please don't phone me. If you're reading this and you work with me, please don't phone me.

When I was a child, I loved the phone. You could talk to distant friends and relatives. It was magical. Now it's just the equivalent of Claudius dripping poison into old Hamlet's ear.

When the phone rings, I no longer think "oooh!". I think "what now?". At best, it'll be someone trying to sell me PPI. Otherwise, these days people only really use the phone for bad things.

If it's work, it's seen either as a humane way of firing you or for demanding extra stuff from you immediately. If an email says "Great. Can you call me to chat this through?" it's never a good sign either. Similarly, if someone rings me to say "Good news!" on closer examination it's always bad news disguised with a cheery tone.

I was talking to someone who is brilliant at managing computer programmers. He says the trick is leaving them alone. Don't pop over to see how they're doing, don't drag them into meetings every half hour - just leave them alone for nice, long blocks of thinking. If they decide to check Facebook or gmail, that's fine - they've selected to do that. But don't run over and interrupt them. And whatever you do, don't ring them.

It was cheering to hear this. If I'm working and the phone rings, it can often take me about an hour to get back to where I was. By which time I'll probably need another cup of tea. When I had a proper job, I was forever on the phone. It was nice. It was chatty. We were always phoning each other, for advice, for gossip, for setting up meetings. And, at hometime, I'd wonder why I needed to stay late for a couple of hours to get the day's work done.

This is beginning to make me sound like an information hermit. But I am at my most productive at my parents'. They live in a mobile phone blackspot, and the nearest internet is a walk down the hill. I can get days of work done in a morning, and still find time for an afternoon nap.

Currently, I'm researching contact lenses that will beam emails into our eyeballs and drill phonecalls through our skulls. It doesn't just sound like medieval torture. It's also my idea of hell.

I prefer the silence.

Getting London wrong

I am in danger of becoming a shut-in. As the transport links improve, I'm finding London harder and harder to get around. It's my own stupid fault. In the old days, I'd have stuck post-its over my mini A-Z and then got on my bike.

But last night I tried to get to a pub using the new shiny Overground and my iphone. Google told me the pub was next door to an Overground station and there's one a short walk from my house - I should try it. What happened next is a bit of a blizzard. I think there was some engineering work and talk of a replacement bus that didn't exist, and then another bus and a man on the bus who stank like a corpse.

But it all just went so wrong and confusingly wrong. When I was a child I used to have a stammer. It was accompanied by a twitch. Both only nowadays appears at moments of stress. A rail replacement bus really shouldn't qualify.

The stammer is just there as a wall. It's my body's way of saying "Leave me alone, don't ask me questions." It used to be very handy at work, although as a management technique probably up there with electrifying keyboards.

Unfortunately, at this moment, my boyfriend was asking lots of questions. As in "Do you think that's the right bus?", "What does that sign say?" and "Is that tramp wearing someone else's skin?".

When I started jerking and spluttering like a broken Churchill dog, we gave up. It had taken us a bit over an hour to get to one of the Dalston stations. We went home to a warm fire and a film in which Doug McClure fought the warlords of Atlantis because reasons.

Annoying. I really wanted to go out last night. Although quite what social value someone constantly saluting the Fourth Reich would be, I dunno. And this morning, using a different app, I discover I could have WALKED to the pub in about forty minutes.

There's a lesson in here. Possibly about modern technology. Or the death of map-reading. Or that, if you are going to fit your slave workers with gills, remember to hire a really big squid.

On hoping for a refund

Dear First Great Western

I'm writing to you to ask for a refund. Apologies in advance for the length of this letter. Hopefully you won't roll your eyes at this (I know how tiring long customer services letters must be), but this is just to make you aware of the process I've been through to try and get a refund.

My mistake (and I fully admit it) was to arrive at the station with the wrong debit card by accident. I know it was wrong, but I didn't think it'd be that bad. After all, thetrainline allows you to use “any valid debit/credit card” to pick up a ticket. And, the Paddington ticket machine seemed to agree with me. It said that, yes, wrong card, but I could go to the ticket office to pick up the tickets.

After queing at the ticket office, the man there sent me to the Information Desk, saying the woman there could help me. Her response was to inform me, in an exasperated sigh, that I shouldn't have been sent to her, and that my best bet was to either contact First Great Western to change the booking or buy a new ticket.

I went back to the ticket office and had the good fortune to speak to the same man. He offered to sell me a new ticket and suggested that I contact First Great Western for a refund on my original ticket. “But I am contacting First Great Western,” I said. “I'm talking to you.”

At this point the man in a First Great Western booth, wearing a First Great Western uniform and a First Great Western badge, said proudly: “I am not First Great Western.”

I'm very proud of the fact that I did not at this point lose my temper. I may have gaped, but I think that's reasonable. I bought a new ticket and he went away and eventually came back with a phone number for me to ring.

Sitting on the train, I rang the number and spoke to a very helpful man who told me he couldn't actually give me a refund, but how I could use my laptop on the train to do it. This was partially true. What he did not tell me was that my laptop needed to be connected to a printer. Unaccountably, I had failed to pack my printer, so sadly, could not print out the resulting PDF in order to mail to you.

Not to worry, I thought. I'll do it when I get home. By the time I got home, my session on your website had expired. When I logged back in, it claimed “Aftersales Performed” on that journey, and wouldn't let me print out the PDF.

So I rang the helpline again. Perhaps someone there would tell me how to get to the PDF. I explained my situation. Not a problem, the man said, all I needed to do was to write you a letter and attach the tickets.

I then reminded him that I did not have the tickets. At which point he suggested my best bet was to travel across London, back to the station, with the correct debit card and collect the tickets. Startled, I queried this. Not only did this seem a very laborious process, but I also questioned whether a ticket machine would even issue tickets for a journey now long in the past. He agreed that this seemed unlikely.

He came up with another solution. He suggested that I write this all down in a letter to you and that, once I had explained my case, you might send me a refund request form.

Stunned, I asked him if, perhaps, you'd simply refund me after reading the letter without the added complexity of then sending me a form, me having to fill in a form and then send it back to you. He said he rather doubted it.

And, after the day I've had, I rather doubt it too.

It's just data

A thing I have learned in the last couple of days is an important thing about our modern era of digital video: It's just data.

In the old days when I filmed something, it would be on a tape. I'd digitise that, and then the tape would go and sit in a box in a cupboard. If a hard drive melted, that's fine, cos there's always that tape in a cupboard.

It's all changed since we all moved over to the glossy, baffling world of HD Video (what is the difference between i and p? Can anyone ever explain that in a way that doesn't make you want to burn their star wars figures?). You'll film stuff. It'll sit on a card, which is like a tape but a hundred times more expensive - so you don't keep the card, you back it up onto a hard drive. Which... in theory is fine.

Until something goes wrong. A couple of nights ago, halfway through some work, a hard drive just wandered   away. As it went, I started frantically moving stuff off of it. I was glad of the warning, and so acted quickly.

In my completely calm and rational search for 500 gig of space, I noticed a project on a random hard drive. "Oh, that old thing" I thought, and deleted it.

A day later, looking for something, I realised. I hadn't deleted a random backup of an old project. I'd deleted the project itself. Months of editing work, gone. But, you know, I could always get it back from the rushes.... only, also gone were all the rushes. With the same click.

In the old days, if I'd had to, I could have reassembled the project - I keep copies of the project in dropbox, so it's just a matter of redigitising the rushes. Only the rushes no longer sit sleeping in a cupboard. There is no cupboard. They nestle snugly in the folder itself. Until I pressed "delete".

That's the difference between tapes and tapeless. In a crisis panic, I'd never open up a cupboard and throw out my rushes. Even if I'd bought an especially mimsy cardigan that needed hanging up really quickly, I'd never do that. But it's not the same with tapeless rushes. They're just space.

Clearly, I need to think differently about backing up projects - no longer is it enough to have a spare copy on a hard drive. I need to buy a hard drive that is effectively that box in a cupboard. And even so, a hard drive is not as reliable as a box in a cupboard. We all know that feeling where you plug in an old hard drive after a couple of years and it goes "hmmm" like a winky Sauron, its contents shifting into a Schrodinger state. Does that happen with a box in a cupboard? No.

A cameraman told me a relevant story about digital projection in cinemas. A hard drive of the "film" is delivered. Each time you play it, it needs a code fetching from a server to unlock it. A problem that cinemas (especially small, independent ones) are experiencing sometimes is getting onto the server to get the code to unlock the film. So they end up showing the film from the emergency backup DVD.

By the time I die, we'll all exist backed up on hard drives. Which will be fine. Until someone can't get onto the server, or find the right power cable. And then we'll sit there. In a box in a cupboard.

Once I had a stalker

And I've just found my old emails about it. It was a curious affair, so I'd better hide a few names.

It all began in the October 2000. I'd just got a job running the BBC Cult site. The BBC at the time had a Cult TV messageboard. Ironically, I didn't yet have access to moderate it, as I'd only just got the job. However, just before I joined:

1. The BBC had changed the timeslot of the X-Files (nothing to do with me)
2. There'd been a mistake in an X-Files quiz (nothing to do with me)
3. Some members of the messageboard had complained that the atmosphere on there was unfriendly.
4. One of the messageboard moderators had, without my knowledge, grandly announced I'd been appointed to run the new site which the X-Files messageboard would become part of.

With me so far? First of all (we'll call him) Mr Stalker posted an angry message to me, blaming me for changing the scheduling of the X-Files. This was removed, but not by me. IT being as slow to set up an account as it was, I couldn't have, even if I'd wanted to. I had no direct contact with the BBC Messageboard team (they were a pretty independent bunch paid for out of my budget). Mr Stalker then posted the following about "my actions":

This is without any doubt the strictest and most disgraceful moderation I’ve ever seen. I would like to propose a Week Long Blackout of the BBC X Files Forum starting from Monday Morning. If you would be interested in Operation ‘BBC BLACKOUT’ please say so here. I don’t want to do this, but the moderation is disgraceful. Does the host have any comments to make ? 

What? No posts about the X-Files? For a whole week? The Head of the BBC Messageboards sent him an immediate email:

"Hi [name removed],
  

It seems I need to sit down with the hosts and moderators and talk about this message board and how it is run.  It's YOUR message board... Let me sort this one out for you.

Please send me your thoughts.  Ring me if you like too."

I know she sent this email. Not only did she then forward it to me, the forum moderators, my manager, and my manager's manager ("Can we organise a meeting to discuss this urgently please?"), but... well, we'll see why later.

The moderators were actually quite unhappy with the Head of the BBC Messageboards' instant response (They copied me in on a lengthy report to her which concluded "It's simply not true that we delete 'whole threads of relevant posts' as Mr Stalker is suggesting. We're disappointed that in this instance you didn't feel it necessary to consult us first").

This is when it gets weird. A strange message appeared on the board from Mr Stalker:

"Jim, did you get my phone call?"

I hadn't. I was curious as to why he was calling me Jim, and to what phone call he was referring. I wondered if this explained the sudden number of empty voicemails we were getting on the home answering machine (mind you, at the time, we had "Livin' La Vida Loca" as our answering machine message). 

He then continued to post. Apparently I "had a nice house". Mr Stalker also had some observations of my personal habits. This was getting creepy. 

We now reached December. And Mr Stalker posted the following:

"Jim,

Maybe you should start by accepting help when you are offered it. You ignore me. Well... If your going to treat your regulars like sh*t then you can shove your fuc*ing quiz... Trust me Jim, you wouldn't appreciate help if it came up and bit you on the ass. And if the moderators are going to delete this, please advise Jim that I think that even rapists show respect to their victims, than James does."

It was eventually taken down, not because it compared me unfavourably to a rapist, but because he'd gamed the swear-word filter. 

I considered this was progress. Not only had he got my name right, but he was now sending me abuse. Perhaps he could be banned? Instead, here's an apparent response from the Head of the BBC Messageboards to Mr Stalker:

I thought you might want to have a 'between you and me' type discussion so that I can sort this out.  I can do some internal stuff to improve the situation.  I have already spoken to James Goss today about this, explaining that I feel you may have a point/deserve a hearing.

(I say "apparently" because this email wasn't copied in to me. However, as you'll later see the style is quite consistent with it being from the Head of the BBC Messageboards.)

As a result he wasn't banned outright, just suspended. Shortly afterwards, he was allowed to rejoin. At which point he posted the following thread about me. Its title? "how he likes 2beat himself". 

The moderators removed this (thankfully before referring it to me for fact-checking) and suspended his account for a short period of time.

Shortly afterwards, the BBC received the following email (edited) from Mr Stalker:

Mr. Stalker wrote:

To: cult@bbc.co.uk 

Dear Sir/Madam,
Recently a new HOST has been appointed, Mr.James Goss. I have reason to belive he is conspiring to repress me.... A moderator/s also continues to harass me on the forum by deleting every single message that I post... He has intimidated me through private mail from his private AOL address... It's making me really upset, as there are no grounds for deleting my messages... I hope there is a line of investigation you can take for this matter. Could I have a BBC contact number!

!

, where I could telephone a complaint in person as this problem has reduced me to tears on many occasions.

Now, this was a serious allegation.  His email had come through to an inbox I had access to. I read it, and then duly passed it to my manager and asked him to start an investigation. Luckily, the investigation into me was helped by Mr Stalker. Here's a sample email I apparently sent him:

Snowie[deleted]@aol.com

Good to hear from you! 

I know I can be a bit of a wally sometimes-like with the WMM topic- but would like to think that I am a fair and reasonable person and I don't mind a bit of good humour even if it is directed at me!

So as of next week I am going to start to email you the quiz for you to proof  read and I would welcome any other contributions/suggestions/ideas you may have in making the board the success it is.

Cheers

Jim :0)

PS Ok Snowie is a bit fluffy but it is a nick name that was given to me by an 

ex-partner which has kind of stuck!  lol!!!! I will consider your suggestion 

of something a little harder!! lol!! 

It's weird reading an email that's apparently written by you. I didn't write it. Here's why:

1. Why  would I email someone not from my BBC address about BBC business?
2. This is "intimidation"?
3. Much as I love Tintin, no-one has ever called me Snowie.
4. lol!!

This didn't stop us all taking it very seriously. My manager looked into it. It was decided the emails were forgeries and we asked that Mr Stalker be permanently banned. Lol!! 

Instead, the Head of the BBC's messageboards continued to "reach out" to Mr Stalker, asking him for more evidence and allowing him to continue posting on the boards.

I'll look for your reply tomorrow. Hold tight and I'll try and improve things. Once I have your permission, then I'll have a quiet word with James Goss.

So, to summarize, Mr Stalker had likened me to a rapist, talked about my masturbatory habits, and claimed to know my home number and where I lived.... and, instead of banning him, the Head of the BBC Messageboards seemed to think Mr Stalker "may have a point" and that a "quiet word" needed to be had with me. 

Maybe she was just acting as a genuine peacemaker in the best interests of the community, but from my point-of-view I was trapped in a situation that was uniquely BBC Kafkaesque. I was the subject of a hate campaign, much of it published on the BBC website, and the person responsible for overseeing that bit of the site wanted it to continue. I was alarmed and scared and my flatmates wondered about changing the phone number.

Which is where my manager came into his own. I had an... interesting relationship with him. He could be very intimidating. But this was definitely his finest hour. He summoned the Head of Messageboards to a meeting. This is how I remember it going:

MANAGER: Ban him. Permanently.

Head of Messageboards (HOM): No. We can't. It's a community.

MANAGER: So, you intend allowing this persecution to continue? 

HOM: Persecution, that's a strong word.

MANAGER: Where does your traffic come from?

HOM: From the... er... users. The community.

MANAGER: But how much traffic comes from the links to the boards from the Cult site?

HOM: uh... I'd have to go through the logs.

MANAGER: James?

ME: About 90%

MANAGER: And how long would it take you to remove all those links from the Cult site?

ME: Er, about half an hour.

MANAGER: Do it.

HOM: Wait... wait!

This is when my manager played his trump card. You see, Mr Stalker had started up a website. Where he not only posted up all the email he had purportedly received from me, but also all the (seemingly genuine) correspondence from the Head of the BBC Messageboards. Such as:

Would you like to have a chat with me to discreetly air your views re: the Cult TV Message Board? Thought you might like to be given the opportunity. I'd like to help (discreetly and confidentially with no-one else knowing)...I promise, faithfully to do what I can to resolve your situation.

Best wishes...

Her reaction to finding this had been republished online was rather less conciliatory. We know this because Mr Stalker also helpfully published it:

I went over to see both the Host and Editor of the Cult TV message board this morning.  I have also had a meeting with the BBC Moderators, and our lawyers. You are presently breaking BBC Copyright/the law by hosting a website which is defaming a BBC employee - it also contains BBC copyright images. 

The site was taken down and he was permanently banned.

End of story?

Not quite. It became a case study for safer management of BBC Communities and the protection of BBC Staff. I was even allowed to host the BBC Messageboards, but under a pseudonym. A happy ending?

No. A year later, the BBC Communities team launched a series of chat rooms. Understanably nervous/terrified about this, I warily agreed that there could be a weekly "Cult Chatroom", but wanted nothing to do with it. It lasted three weeks and then, the morning after the third one, I received an email from one of the community team:

Something happened last night. Ask to see the log of the Cult chatroom.

Intrigued, I asked the manager of the Chatrooms. There was a long "I don't think you  need to see that" delay. Eventually, after some chasing, the log turned up. It made increasingly painful reading as the moderator clearly didn't know anything about any of the BBC's Cult television programmes, and the chat moved from gentle mockery, to abuse, to name-calling to angry chaos. The name of the moderator? "James Goss".

Worse, the chat ended with "James Goss" announcing  "We're closing tonight's chat and the Cult chatrooms until further notice." And then, "If you have any comments, please email [myemailaddress]@bbc.co.uk"

Guess who emailed me? Mr Stalker.

A restricted view of tonight's Martian Invasion

War of the Worlds live.

Yes, it was all kinds of amazing, but... (oh, how hateful to carp about these things) but... but for £50 tickets I'd hoped for something a bit better than a view of some speakers and the lighting rig. I'm sure there's a very exciting, engaged debate to be had about non-subsidised arts, but really and honestly, I can't remember a notice when I was booking saying "There'll be a restricted view of your Martian Invasion".

Being a long way away from these things normally doesn't matter. After all, in these arenas, there are usually screens. And yes, there was one screen showing what was going on - it was the screen hidden behind the speakers and the lighting rig. Hum.

If you're going (and do, if only to marvel at the Martian War Machine on stage), then clearly, if you want to see death rain down on you, you're going to have to pay more. There, an actual Death Tax.

Not keeping up with 70s concept albums, I was unaware that this was the dubstep remix on tour. I had no idea a dubstep remix could tour. Indeed, I've only a hazy idea what a dubstep remix is, but it seems to be a bit of "wobblewobbleboosh" over samples of Liam Neeson saying "black clouds" (Note: the Gran in After Henry once peerlessly described Walkman music as "going wickaboom wickaboom, that's all it is"). Anyway, if you're going to fiddle with something, you may as well fiddle with it harmlessly. And it gave us the joy of watching Jeff Wayne conduct the dubstep bits using Dad Wedding Dancing.

Looming over the action was a big screen. The big screen we couldn't properly see. From our £50 seats. (Yes, I am going on about this, but you can't help sitting in a packed arena and doing "How much is this making?" maths). On the big screen are a lot of computer graphics. It's as if Jeff's popped down the local technical college and told them to go crazy for their summer project. And go crazy they duly did. Some of the results are amazing and impressive. Some of them... well, Jason Donovan's suffered a lot of indignity in life, but to see him dragged off stage and then rendered as a CGI barbie doll being devoured by a tripod against clip art of a church is possibly a new low.

Maybe I was missing the full beauty. Due to the speakers and the lighting rig getting in the way. Of my £50 seats. That's the real victory of the Martians. Making you feel cheap for only spending £50 on tickets.

Do go, though. There's a lot of spectacle you can enjoy, really enjoy. You can also marvel at how tiny the average human bladder is. War of the Worlds is not a long show - it's two 45-minute albums, after all. With an interval. And yet there was a constant trickle to-and-from the bogs. As the Artillery Man commented, the nice thing about the Martians invaded was that the sewers were flushed clean and sweet.

The final shame was that, if a stadium could be said to scarper, it scarpered before the end. This wasn't a matinee showing of 27 Dresses at the Vue. This was War!of!the!Worlds! Live!on!Stage! with a Real!Live!Tripod!, but the people of Manchester grabbed their coats and made for the exit before Jason Donovan had even finished his curtain call. Which is a real shame, as they then missed the genuinely impressive bit at the end where they let off all the remaining pyrotechnics. Which looked amazing. Even from my £50 seat.