'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

And so the summer of superhero films kicks off with Thor, and we now seem to have reached the point where - thank the Allfather - a lot of the genre mainstays can be taken for granted. So rather than going through the standard plot beats and the origin and blah blah blah, Kenneth Branagh can stitch together a culture clash comedy, a conspiracy thriller and a high fantasy take on Shakespeare's histories, and it's still a viable blockbuster, even with near-unknowns in the lead roles. Both of them perfect for their parts, as well - Thor the affable dickhead, and a plausibly devilish Loki (and the idea that Hiddleston initially wanted to play Thor is baffling - if it were ever even remotely plausible then he must be an even better actor than he seems). The support includes some more familiar faces, almost all of whom seem perfectly at home in their roles - Idris Elba as Heimdall owns the role as well as winding up Nazis, Anthony Hopkins is a perfect Odin. The Warriors Three are a slight misfire: Hogun was always The Other One and the guy from Ichi the Killer can't change that; and even Titus Pullo was never going to convince as Volstagg when I'd so recently seen Orson Welles' Falstaff. Great Errol Flynn-ing from the guy playing Fandral, though.
And what do they do with all these ingredients? Smart things. Like, having the Earth action take place in a New Mexico town, because that's jeopardy enough and it makes a change from all the big cities that usually get imperilled, and besides there's Asgard for all that, and Asgard looks amazing - just Kirbytech enough without feeling like a clunky homage. And speaking of the comics references, ( spoiler ) in the post-credits sequence for which surprisingly few people stayed around. And it felt properly cosmic - stripping out the comics' usual compromise with christianity, when Jane Foster gasps 'my god' at the sight of Thor, you know it's meant literally. It helps that the whole thing looks and sounds so solid, right down to those end credits with Yggdrasil as a nebula. These are not aliens who've been taken for gods - they are gods.
Problems? Well, the Warriors Three I've mentioned, and Sif's not much better. Indeed, the female roles generally are a bit thin, except for Kat Dennings as Darcy, a character who if she was in the comics, I completely missed. Dennings is also in Defendor, an altogether less glitzy superhero film I watched this week. Essentially it's Kick-Ass with one quite plausible change: the would-be superhero is not an idealistic kid, but a mentally ill middle-aged man. Played with a brilliant mixture of anger, confusion and faith by Woody Harrelson. Well worth a look - but, let's be honest, not a patch on the punching-right-through-monsters fun of Thor.

On Saturday two places I've been past hundreds of times finally became places I'd been into. The Finsbury Park Nando's first, and later - after 'The Doctor's Wife', which was glorious in concept, and mostly in execution too, yet seemed oddly slow in places - the Unicorn. Which sits along the 29 and 253 route in that nowhere territory that is neither Camden nor Holloway, and which turns out to have the atmosphere and prices of a pub in at least Zone 4, and to feel oddly like a venue from a dream - "I was watching my flatmates play in a band, but when I turned around, we were all just stood in the corner of a suburban pub". And for all that I am now the non-musical inhabitant of the Maisionette Beautiful, the Indelicates album on which I am part of the backing choir is now available. And, regardless of my small contributions, very good indeed.

I picked up Edward Hollis' The Secret Lives of Buildings in the library more or less at random, but it's a fascinating read. Hollis is an architect by trade, but is fascinated by the great lies and false dreams of architects - the ways that buildings never quite turn out how they were supposed to, and that even if they do, people get in the way. And that then people get to a point where they start trying to pin down the authentic form of a building that never quite had one. It's psychogeography of a sort, I suppose, but nothing like the wandering, gonzo style with which the field has become almost synonymous. From the Parthenon to Vegas and Macao, it pieces together the story of humanity through what we've dreamed and built and repurposed.

After a week which at times saw the first three TV channels all simultaneously screening oafs in shorts bothering grass with their balls, thank heavens for Channel 4 which, while it may be airing the undignified death throes of Big Brother, an experiment superseded before it even began (on which more in a moment), brought back The IT Crowd. Still far from revolutionary or life-changing, still a good, direct, paradoxically old-fashioned sit-com. Not that the other three channels had entirely lost it, because right on time (and thank heavens, I couldn't have waited a minute longer) along came ( the Doctor Who finale ) Though, semantically it's wrong to say that the Doctor is a Jesus figure. Jesus was a Doctor figure, or equally a Superman figure - the best a pallid, nasty, ersatz religion-substitute could come up with in the dark centuries between the fall of the old gods, and the creation (or discovery) of superheroes and Doctor Who. And just as christianity stole the festivals from the old religions, so Doctor Who is stealing them back. The prime significance of Easter? NEW SEASON! The prime significance of Christmas? SPECIAL!

That Big Brother comment above? Don't worry, I'm not watching the new series (and if anyone else is, they've not mentioned it, which is in some ways a shame as following it through my friends' posts was far more edifying than watching the real thing). Rather, I watched We Live In Public by Ondi Timoner, the maker of Dig!, and if you follow that link any time over the next 17 days then so can you. As in Dig!, she follows someone generally regarded by those around him as a genius/messiah, but who would in fact appear to be a loon. Internet pioneer Josh Harris is essentially Nathan Barley as played by Eugene Mirman. He starts off with Pseudo.com, an internet TV network, but is edged out after attending business meetings dressed as a scary clown. Instead he sets up Quiet, which is something between a Berlin squat and a cult bunker (and this in the run-up to the Millennium), but is also the Big Brother house, except less boring (there's loads of shagging, unlimited booze, and guns in the basement - what could go wrong?) and less humane (CIA-trained interrogators, cameras in the loos). And after that's run its course, he sets up home with his (first) girlfriend in full public view - there's even a camera in the bowl of the loo, pointing up, though mercifully the only footage we see from it is the cat having a drink. There's a bit of a rubbish coda, but the film is otherwise a fascinating look at a very damaged man - and proof that the Big Brother 'experiment' was outmoded from the off.

What else? Well, I went to the N19 two nights in a row, and the Camden Head two nights in a row, but my life is in no way in a rut, honest. Oh, and then N19 again, but only after heading up Parkland Walk for a picnic and some art (a bunch of installations up the Highgate end, returning this evening from 6 if anyone needs the excuse for a summer's evening walk). Oh, and I read Evelyn Waugh's final novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. An autobiographical account of an ageing Catholic writer who mixes his medicines and starts hallucinating, it may only be 150 pages but that's still too long - like the genuinely insane, Waugh was clearly unaware of the need to edit, of how little illumination one sheds by repetition with minor variation. It has also that nasty Ricky Gervais quality, where the supposedly satirised autobiographical pratagonist is still sneakily presented as indefinably nobler than most of the other characters. And it comes in a book with two horrid, pinched little stories, 'Tactical Exercise' and 'Love Among The Ruins', which remind one of nothing so much as the weaker, more tiresomely reactionary writing of Evelyn's son Auberon - and if you don't know Auberon's work then put it this way - at his worst, he was Richard Littlejohn with the occasional good turn of phrase.

So there was enough to Friday that it got its own post, but there's been plenty of other stuff too. Impressive performances by Blood Angels and White Witches, the first semi-civilised sit in the park sociably reading the paper session of the season, and an attempt to celebrate Aug's birthday in spite of the birthday boy being incapacitated (hey, Jesus gets that treatment, and he wasn't even in Lifestyle). Plus - the Horniman Museum, essentially a massive collection of creepy stuff (and some peculiar musical instruments). It is famous for its impressively overstuffed walrus, but the taxidermy hall also contains the severed heads of several dogs and a spare fox for visitors to stroke - though the one item which really took me aback was the poor bloody passenger pigeon. They also had some mice which were still alive, or at least I really hope they were because they were definitely moving. Elsewhere, other items liable to terrify small children (and others) include ritual masks, instruments of torture, and quite the most lively/deathly statue of Kali I have ever seen. Oh, and there's an aquarium in the basement. Obviously. Where else would you keep the furry crabs?
Afterwards we sat in the sun with excitable doggies, and then I got to see how South and West London connect. I always presumed they did somewhere, I just wasn't quite clear on the details before.

Also - Doctor Who! 'The Time of Angels' is the first episode this series which I've seen twice, and the second time it's not just better, it seems shorter - no longer than an episode of the original show. Which is unusual, and brilliant. Rewatching it after the two multi-Doctor anniversary extravaganzas (and a couple of delicious sonic screwdriver cocktails) emphasises how much Troughton there is in Matt Smith's Mr Grumpyface performance, though what makes him truly magnificent is that he has elements of all his other predecessors in there too. And 'Time of Angels' itself...so far we've had Moffat writing an establishing story, simple classic Who. Then we had him writing an incoherent mess of a Rusty-style dystopia. But this is what we'd come to expect from his contributions - creepy, tense, potentially even better at giving kids nightmares than 'Blink'. He's mixed the Weeping Angels in with Aliens and Ring, shaken well, and run off cackling. I love it. But he still has space for mucking about as well, because if you know you can be scary you don't have to be po-faced about it. Hence Mike Skinner, masturbation jokes and that wonderful line about the brakes. I love it.

Stringer Bell is going to be in Branagh's Thor film. And we already knew Titus Pullo was involved, probably as Volstagg. I SAY THEE YAY. And speaking of things HBO, while the final Generation Kill did editorialise a little, while I don't think it's ever going to be as beloved as The Wire, that was an extremely good series - maybe even more so than The Wire it did a brilliant job of humanising the characters you hated, showing why they were such utter dicks, with even Godfather getting his moment at the end.

To my amazement, the proposed internet laws in the Queen's Speech were even worse than expected. If you've not been keeping up with the minutiae: the Government commissioned a report, Digital Britain, on how to reconcile the interests of the creative industries with those of net users. This report said that while unlicensed file-sharing was indeed rather naughty, internet disconnection was too draconian a penalty even for the guilty, never mind how many innocents would also be punished (Mum and Dad for the kids' filesharing, or a whole town for one illicit movie). So obviously, because we know how the government regards facts as dangerously subversive (just ask Professor Nutt), Peter Mandelson elbowed the relevant minister out of the spotlight, countermanded the report his own government had commissioned (they obviously didn't appoint a tame enough investigator, Hutton must have been busy), and countermanded anything sensible in it to put three-strikes disconnection back on the agenda. And, we now learn, so much more.
This in a world where Rupert Murdoch, until recently New Labour's bestest pal, talks about putting a pay wall around the websites of his various ghastly papers while stealing content from Edgar Wright. But you can bet that even if that happened two more times, even under the new rules, News International wouldn't get disconnected. In spite of how even musicians who don't make nearly as much money as they should would rather be ripped off online than live in a country which thinks disconnection is acceptable. The only consolation is that the relevant bill is profoundly unlikely to make it through before Goooooordon Brooown loses the next election. Not that I expect the other flavour of scum to propose anything better, you understand, but sometimes delay is the best you can hope for. After all, the horse might talk.

The Black Casebook collects a dozen strange Batman stories from 1951-1964, which is the period when the comic was as stupid as the old Adam West TV series, but without having to worry about the limited budget. So, Batman could be turned into a hulking monster, or find himself on an alien world called Zur-En-Arrh - which, if you've read Grant Morrison's run on the character, should explain why this collection has been put out, and why I was reading it. He contributes an introduction (although one which disagrees in some respects with the contents - he mentions 'The Rainbow Batman' when the book instead has 'The Rainbow Creature'. All the campy old elements are here - Bat-Mite and Ace the Bat-Hound - and by no sane standard are the stories or the art any good. Even the ideas are not so much "mad, brilliant ideas" as half-formed and hurries, born of desperation. Mainly it serves as a testament to Morrison's own talents, going back over the history of Batman and managing to find resonance even in these stupidest of stories which most modern writers would prefer to forget about.
Also, I know it's hardly novel to suggest Batman and Robin came across as a bit gay back in the day, but this book opens with 'A Partner For Batman' where you really can't avoid it. Robin has broken his leg just as Batman is about to train up a new Batman-type for an unnamed European country. Except Robin is convinced this is just a cover story and Batman wants to drop him in favour of Wingman! Cue such lines as, while Batman carries the injured Robin like a bride, "Batman's doing his best to sound gay. But I can tell his heart isn't in it!". And, from one onlooker, "A man is better than a kid any day!". Poor discarded twink.

Haven't had the energy or the funds to be out and about so much this week; even daytime wanders have been a bit sub-optimal, like yesterday when Highbury was deserted and instead of relishing this, I just wondered if it was anything to do with how very tentacly those red-leaved plants look once the leaves are finally gone. But, this just makes me look forward to tonight's Black Plastic all the more. Makes the weekend feel like a weekend, something which can rather slide when one is away from the habit of the working week.

I thought my policy of always giving a new HBO show a chance might have hit its limits with Hung. Especially since it's on More4 on Thursday nights, at an end of the week already overloaded with Sarah Jane Adventures, Wednesday night's HBO double-bill, Friday's comedy options...but much to my surprise, the first episode at least was excellent. The trailers have been going about it all wrong, emphasising the comedy/prurient angle we've all seen before. Whereas the show itself...in much the same way as The Wire used police and drug gangs as a way to examine the decline of the American city, or Deadwood looked at the birth of the nation by way of a psychopathic publican, Hung examines the squeezing of the middle class through the example of a hard-up history teacher with a really big cock. It's more about the way everything seems to be falling apart, and the sense that our working life is not working out like we were given to expect, than Thomas Jane's endowment.

Wednesday night: augstone brings billetdoux along on a mini-US deputation to the Noble, establishing that even if Obama has more sense than to be seen with Gordon Brown, the special relationship is alive and well at the level of indie pubbing. Thursday: a Brontosaurus Chorus show, the first I've seen since icecoldinalex joined and the first time I've really heard the song for which I spent two days filming - Johnny and I have to resist the urge to re-enact the video on stage. The gig's in a weird little basement venue on Denmark Street called Peter Parker's; there's no Spider-Man iconography that I can see, but the cocktail 'Peter Parker's Cvm Shot' still makes me think 'thwip!'. The support are a noise duo whose name is never announced (my own guess: Sine Cosine Tangent); they're playing in front of a projection of Akira, the subtitles on which provide a perfect excuse to stare at the girl's fairly impressive cleavage. All told, I probably had enough material for a post on Friday, but I had to dash off to catch Seizure (ignore all the pretentious guff in the leaflet, the key details of this art project are that it is very blue and very shiny and quite magical). However, this is probably for the best as it means I can gently draw a veil over the weekend.

I keep hearing good things about the comics of Matt Fraction, so I keep picking them up when the library has them, and I'm still not convinced that he's anything but Warren Ellis's even more try-hard younger brother. All his characters sound the same: "Let's make out and whip up more plans for mass slaughter", cackles the villain. Whereas Iron Man himself gloats "Your tax dollars pay me to beat the Hell out of people like this. (I decline the paycheck, by the way)". Which is identical in tone, and also completely meaningless - he just came up with a line he liked and deployed it even though it required a caveat that then made no sense. The only way I could persevere was by pairing it with the disappointing Micro Men on BBC4, there being a strange congruence of themes. "My biggest nightmare has come true...Iron Man 2.0 is here...and I'm not the one that made it" - the cheap, easy to use and ultimately disposable new technology as plot driver, all made me start identifying Clive Sinclair as a British comedy version of Tony Stark. I don't know what that says about anything but it says more than Fraction's Iron Man.
(Also read something where he at least tried to ditch the tech fetish and the KEWL! - Secret Invasion: Thor. And that was just horribly characterless, in spite of featuring Beta Ray Bill, so maybe the usual mode is the lesser evil for him. The failure of this one was thrown into particular relief by how funny and characterful and cosmic and generally *fun* Secret Invasion: Hercules could make a story starting from a fairly similar premise)

*Although having made derogatory mention of Ellis, it's only fair I acknowledge that the final issue of Planetary was beautiful - the first comic since the end of Captain Britain to leave me both crying and laughing in public. Even if that doesn't explain why it was so ridiculously late. Or why newuniversal is. Or Doktor Sleepless.

Why is half my friendspage posts about moving there? Have the Russian Overlords done something drastic, or is everyone just getting Gadarene on my ass in the spirit of these swinish times?

In other news: watched a bunch of Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes, and every story involved an animal as a crucial player in the crime. I'm now waiting for one in which the murderer is a quail with a blunderbuss.

The new Phonogram: I can see why everyone is getting Best Issue Ever about it, but feel less so, simply because while I can appreciate that it is an astonishingly well-constructed and resonant tale, Marc is essentially a fairly normal chap, and as such, not really like anyone I know. And a large part of why I love Phonogram is that the characters are the sort of people I might easily know.
(Really looking forward to the Mr Logos issue, though, if he gets one. He deserves one)
Gillen's contribution to this week's Dark Reign one-shot, on the other hand, is exactly the sort of thing I'm after, because the utter superciliousness of Namor...well, he's long been a role model of mine, clearly. Except for the (lack of) outfit. Peter Milligan's Loki effort and (surprisingly) Jonathan Hickman's Doom bit also very good, but I still don't really get why everyone loves Matt Fraction, and Rick Remender...well, his name sounds like 'remainder', which always put me off his comics, and this story gives me no reason to reconsider that.

Bloody Mary: nasty piece of work as a monarch, but a truly wonderful thing as a beverage, particularly when consumed after a NYE on Archers & lemonade, which as well as getting you drunk leaves you feeling like you spent seven hours eating sweeties.

The new generation of mice seem not to have inherited the immunity to the poison which is still down. Evolutionarily interesting, and also quite handy in terms of simple mouse death.

"An intruder...was chased from the Edinburgh flat he was breaking into by a man dressed as the Norse god Thor." The story does not record whether the intruder was met with a cry of "I SAY THEE NAY!" but I think we can safely assume so.

It may be the night when the boundaries between the worlds are at their weakest, but the main thing I expect from Hallowe'en is a chance to have a dance in my cloak. Which I got, plus the chance to stalk home through Stoke Newington and Brownswood Park afterwards. Although on this of all nights, I find it unbelievable that you can still get catcalls from oiks. It's Hallowe'en, you dreckwits! It's the one night of the year when you're meant to be dressed like this and are not being even mildly controversial by so doing! Also, you know how some people pronounce 'nuclear' as 'nucelar'? There's a reverse one about too, because I definitely heard a few 'Draclua's.
('Count Fvckula', on the other hand, is a perfectly acceptable alternative)
Anyway, Nightbeast - very rocking, but with a name like Nightbeast I fear they'll never find another gig which will live up to a Hallowe'en debut.
On Saturday I went to Feeling Gloomy's Leonard Cohen special. There should be more clubs playing Leonard Cohen.

Execrable hack Jeph Loeb has been sacked from Heroes, so I may give it another go once we get to the relevant episodes. Sadly, Marvel comics have not had the sense to do likewise. Maybe I should fake his voice, ring Sarah Palin and claim to have done her daughter?

In the run-up to the US election, I find myself very receptive to TV touching on the American Dream; I'm misting up at Simon Schama's The American Future: A History, and devouring HBO's John Adams. Which is a peculiar series, every episode seeming to exist in a different genre: the first sees a mild man radicalised, like a Mel Gibson film done right; the second, leading up to the Declaration of Independence, is the one brimming with patriotic pride; when Adams goes to Europe in the third, his hopelessly undiplomatic diplomacy in the structured courts of Europe turns the whole thing into a comedy of embarassment. And through it all comes a sort of higher patriotism - because I am, after all, not American. I'm British, hence one of the bad guys in this story (The American War of Independence - is it the only war it was ever right that Britain should lose? I'm struggling to think of another). But the ideal of America, like the ideal of Greece before it, is part of the shared heritage of humanity's better part - even if, being in the hands of humans, it has shown the human tendency to fall terribly short of the ideal.
It's weird, though - being a young country, America has a national epic where the facts and figures are a matter of record. The rest of us have myths we can recast and reinterpret, but theirs...well, the DVD finds the series accompanied by a feature called Facts Are Stubborn Things. They can play a little loose with some details - the editing of the Declaration of Independence feels like a scene from a student newspaper office, with Franklin distracted by Jefferson's other great creation, the revolving chair. But Franklin still talks mainly in Franklin quotations, and we have yet to see George Washington with an outfit or facial expression other than the one from that portrait.

In the same time period, I've finally finished the Talleyrand biography I've been reading on-and-off for ages. Was amused to read that after Waterloo, various well-meaning English liberals attempted to use writs of habeas corpus to prevent Napoleon's rendition to exile in St Helena. This, remember, is after he has already escaped from one, gentle exile on Elba, left Europe in tatters, caused the death of thousands and even left France in a considerably worse position than it was after his first defeat. And yet, still, some people are primarily worried about the possible infringement of his human rights.
I do love Britain's liberal tradition, but it hasn't half bred some soft idiots in its time.
(Talleyrand himself is a strange figure - a man who prized stability and good governance above all things, but had the misfortune to be born French. Had he lived in Britain, and been able to curb his taste for backhanders, he'd have done very well in the Civil Service**, and his name would now be forgotten. But living in France...he never managed to direct events half so much as he would like or even as much as this adoring biographer contends. Consider, this is a man who felt that among the things France most needed were a free press, the rule of law and lasting peace with England - and yet he ended up intimately involved with the Revolution, at the right hand of Napoleon, and in practice acted as precious little brake on either. And yet, for what little he did achieve, he has attained immortality - albeit by being remembered as a byword for duplicity, vanity and greed. Oh, and his legendary wit? Either it just doesn't translate, or it was rubbish in the first place and people only laughed like they do at any powerful man's jokes. Like Wilde in Stoppard's Invention of Love, he lives in history simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Suddenly, obscurity doesn't seem so bad. And if any of that seemed like patriotic chauvinism, I refer you to Talleyrand's own summary - "The English do everything better than we do". This in a letter to a countryman, mark you, not as part of his usual sycophancy)

*Cloaks are so great. I sometimes seriously suspect that as much as I want to set the world to rights, the primary appeal of superpowers is that they'd give me more excuses to wear a cloak.
**"They think I am immoral and Machiavellian, yet I am simply impassive and disdainful. I have never given perverse advice to a government or a prince, but I do not go down with them. After shipwrecks, you need pilots to rescue the shipwrecked. I stay calm and get them to port somewhere. No matter which port, as long as it offers shelter." - that could be Sir Humphrey in an unusually open moment, couldn't it?

As of Thursday evening, I'm heading off to Ireland for a long weekend. I will likely be away from the Internet as well as London; if all goes according to plan, I should be returning to both late on Sunday, and then out on Monday to see Los Campesinos! live for the first time - anyone else planning on attending that? Meanwhile, am mainly emptying bottles of eg bubbles in order to transport <100ml of shampoo, facewash &c. I really would take a slightly increased risk of being blown to smithereens over all this faff.

As with The Sarah Jane Adventures, it was only through iPlayer's 'you may also like' smarts that I learned of the existence of The Scarifyers, in which Nicholas Courtney (basically playing the Brigadier) and Terry Molloy (basically playing a cuddly, ineffectual Davros) ally with Aleister Crowley against the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. It's neither as funny nor as thrilling as I think was intended, but still, it does have the Brig! And through its outro I also learned that Paul McGann's Doctor will be back on Radio 7 in a six-part adventure from this Sunday. The title, and whether it's already been released as by Big Finish, were not divulged, but I know from the excerpts that I've not heard it.
And speaking of the Cthulhu Mythos - you might thing that investigating the 'ghost peaks' of Antarctica is about as Mountains of Madness as it comes, but just to make sure, read down the article. Read down to the bit where one of the scientists explains how these mountains should not be, how "it's rather like being an archaeologist and opening up a tomb in a pyramid and finding an astronaut sitting inside. It shouldn't be there." Then lose 1d6 SAN.

Far too often I hear from the semi-literate that a given deck-monkey has "literally blown the roof off the club" or a particular slice of vinyl "literally set the club on fire". Saturday's Seven Inches/Penny Broadhurst/New Royal Family Show did end with the club at least smouldering; even if causality cannot be proven, that leaves them well ahead of the pack.

I didn't think it was possible, but I find myself feeling as if I've had enough Stephen Fry for the moment. Perhaps it's just that his tour around the USA launched over the same weekend as Simon Schama's American Future: a History; I get very picky when multiple things seem to cover the same ground (consider how much less forgiving I am of Heroes now it's not only overlapping comics territory, but screening in the same weeks as No Heroics). This is the sort of stuff Schama does best - big ideas, neither yoked too much to specific camera-friendly events nor floating off into the swamp of spurious Adam Curtis generalisations. It's what first drew him to me back with Landscape and Memory. The only problem is that as he tells us how the US has always had a tension between an optimistic belief in perpetual abundance, and the cautious counsel of realists, he is operating on a BBC far too awed these days by the false idol of 'balance'. So he can select clips which hint that Obama is a wise man and McCain another dangerous snake-oil salesman, but he can't say as much, only make vague references to the importance of this election. It's still worth watching, but I hope that once the good guys win in November (please gods), it can be repeated in an extended, re-armed version.

Kenneth Branagh would appear to be confirmed to direct the Thor film if he's cancelling other engagements. If anyone can handle it so as to make Thor sound Shakespearean, as against the ghastly Renaissance Fair approximation with which the ever-incompetent Stan Lee burdened him, then it's probably Ken. Still, after Stardust I think the loss of Matthew Vaughan remains unfortunate.

The Wilton Road exit of Victoria underground - why exactly was it closed for a fortnight? They've not even stuck up electricity-hungry mediatronic ad screens, which seems to be the main 'improvement' visible after all the other disruptive works on the station, or replaced the broken tiles on the floor.

The British Museum's Hadrian exhibition is well worth a look if you get chance. It's nothing like as caught up in tendentious claims of contemporary 'relevance' as the advance press could suggest - yes, we get it, Hadrian pulled out of Mesopotamia aka Iraq. And Rome was very dependent on olive oil. And...the Wall has something to do with the rise of the SNP, maybe? Forget that, all of it. If you get chance, read Marguerite Yourcenar's literal ghostwrite of Hadrian's Memoirs* beforehand, that'll bring you closer to how much he has in common with us simply by being recognisable as a human and an individual across all that gulf of years. Somehow it helps that one of the statues of him - the only one native to Britain - is rubbish, making him look like a monkey. The most impressive one's at the entrance, fragments only pulled from the Turkish sands within the last year, unseen between Then and Now. Flawed and human, but with all that gulf of years...it brings time home to you, or it did to me. Surprisingly few things can do that.
The statues of his lover Antinous are interesting. The giant head is beautiful, but the one of Antinous as Osiris is a puzzler. I've never seen a statue look embarrassed before; noble, nonplussed, even long-suffering like the !William Huskisson statue in Pimlico Gardens, but never like they'd been caught in a sex-game by someone inappropriate. And really, who makes a statue of a male lust object as Osiris with a notable bulge under the loincloth in place of said god's mythical lack? These Romans were crazy!
What else? Some giant metal peacocks from Hadrian's mausoleum - I wondered whether people living in an age before Ray Harryhausen would have been as certain they were about to come to life. And a glass bowl from the Jewish revolt which didn't even look old, much less historical; if you found it you'd just use it for fruit, not call a museum. That says so much more about the relevance of history than some cheap line about the turbulence of the Middle East.

Guy's hospital is so much more impressive and ominous than the cheap facsimile they had the Judoon nick in Doctor Who, isn't it? I do wish they didn't always have to use the London Borough of Cardiff, it's really not an adequate substitute.

*Her manuscript is there, tucked away to the side of the route in, easily missed.