Marcus Chown
Science writer Marcus Chown speaks up for reform of the libel laws, does coco crispie calculations and is outmaneuvered by the postman.
Wednesday
E-mail from Abba, my publicist in New Zealand (Her parents were not fans of the Swedish pop band). It confirms the date and time for an interview I am doing with influential New Zealand radio show host Kim Hill. Last time she interviewed me, I was really busy and had to run a mile to the BBC in Portland Place. When I got on air, hot and flustered, she laid into me. But Abba says that, actually, she liked me. "If she hadn't, you would have known about it!" In New Zealand, Kim Hill is affectionately known as "Kill Him" (though, probably, not to her face!)
I walk through the West End of London to my publisher. Until recently, Faber was in a grim 1960s' office block but now they've moved into the literary heart of Bloomsbury. From the tall windows of their high-ceilinged period building you can see a secret walled garden and the British Museum. Somehow it seems that Faber, the company where T. S Eliot would climb a rickety staircase to his garret office, has come home.
I meet with Miles, the overseas marketing manager, and we go to the coffee shop at the London Review of Books. Faber has about 80 people working for them, all responsible for the UK. Miles does the rest of the world.
The last time I was out with Miles was earlier this year when I was in New Zealand at the Auckland Writers' Festival. As we sip coffee and eat lemon cake, he enthuses about the new house he's moved into, just outside of London. He also tells me how many copies have been sold of We Need to Talk About Kelvin since its publication 6 weeks ago. I am elated. I've had only one review in a national paper and I know how difficult the book market is in these recessionary times. But the number he has told me is good. Reg, my goldfish, won't have to look at me hungrily any more.
Back home, I push open my front door and see a red "Sorry, you were out" card on the mat. I can't believe it. I work at home. I'm almost always in (friends say I haven't got a life!). But, whenever I go out, even to get a pint of milk at the supermarket across the road, the postman sneaks in and stuffs one of those cards through the letterbox.
Thursday
Back to Faber for second time in two days. Am seeing the marketing manager, John Grindrod. He got me going on Twitter and he is my Twitter-mate. John tweeted the other day that a well-known TV personality was "a self-fellating sleaze dwarf". "So you're not keen on him?" I tweeted. "I'm ambivalent," he tweeted back.
John and I go to a "Costa Coffee". We have to discuss my book, Afterglow of Creation, which Faber is publishing on 21 January 2010. I am so pleased it's coming out again. It was my first popular science book and one of my best. Oddly, it was commissioned by an editor at Jonathan Cape, who is now at Faber. I follow Neil Belton from publisher to publisher. I am his stalker.
Afterglow of Creation is about the people who discovered the "afterglow" of the big bang fireball. It's all around you now. Tune a TV between the stations and 1% of that static on the screen is the afterglow of the big bang. Before being intercepted by your TV aerial it had been travelling across space for 13.7 billion years and the last thing it touched was the fireball of the big bang. The afterglow of creation carries with it a "baby photo" of the Universe, and that's why so many people are interested in it. In fact, two of the scientists I interviewed for the book just got the Nobel Prize.
The updated edition means a lot to me because, by coincidence, the day I had to write a new Foreword happened to be the 10th anniversary of my dad's death. He was my greatest fan and had a quite incredible degree of belief in me. Once, when I told him about a friend who had won a science book prize, he said: "You should have won that prize, Marc."
"But I didn't enter for it, dad."
"You're much better than him, Marc."
"But I didn't even write a book this year that was eligible."
"I'm telling you, Marc, they should have given you that prize."
"But, dad..."
In the end I gave up arguing. There was no dissuading from his view that I had been scandalously overlooked.
I sat under a tree in Hyde Park and wrote about my dad. It seemed a fitting way to spend the anniversary.
Friday
A feature article I wrote for New Scientist is e-mailed back to me. It's about our Milky Way and how the "jet" from a supermassive black hole may have triggered its birth. The physics editor has a bunch of questions and she needs the answers back this morning. I've been doing this for years but, somehow, when I submit an article, I always think: that's it. I forget the editing. Fortunately, I get on with editor, Valerie.
Having finally finished reading the short-story collection, When it Changed, I write an 800-word review for The Guardian newspaper, then speak it into my computer, using Dragon Naturally Speaking. It's much better than my last speech-recognition software, which responded to taxis passing in the street and refused to understand a word when I had a cold or the microphone was a nanometre too far from my mouth.
I have beans on toast for lunch while watching the Channel 4 news, then a bit of Loose Women. They are discussing: How do you know when a man fancies you? Whenever my wife, Karen comes home from work, I always tell her I've been working hard. Unfortunately, I always seem to have remarkable amount of knowledge of who was on Phil and Holly or on The Paul O'Grady Show!
Now I have to answer some questions from a blogger. Scott Pack, who used to be chief buyer for the Waterstone's, the UK's biggest book chain, suggested I do a blog tour for my new book, We Need to talk About Kelvin. He said put out an appeal on Twitter for bloggers to host my tour, offering to do a Q&A or post a book excerpt or run a quiz with the prize being a copy of the book. Nervously, I did what he said... and was overwhelmed by the response! The latest questions are from a blogger who is a lab technician. She is interested in things like how do I think we can get kids interested in science at school.
Feeling a bit brain-boggled after answering all those questions, I treat myself to a cappuccino and a coconut macaroon at "Apostrophe" on Baker Street. I walked past here recently when they were filming the TV advert for Gocompare.com with that larger-than-life opera singer (Personally, I prefer Alexander the meerkat in that ad for Comparethemeerkat.com). It seems, when you walk about London, there are always things happening. Sometimes I come across the Queen's Household Cavalry training in Hyde Park. Or I bump into a soap star in Selfridges. Or stumble on a Zombie sports day in Leicester Square. I love London. It's my city and I was born here. I feel like launching into a chorus of "Maybe it's because I'm a Laaahndoner..."
I answer some questions sent me by another blogger who's hosting my blog tour. He wants to know things like: How many coco-crispies would it take to cover the Moon? I do a rough calculation and come up with "enough to fill a breakfast bowl the size of Dublin" (the blogger is in Ireland).
Can't believe it! Come home to find a courier has stuffed a card through my door again, saying "We tried to deliver a parcel but you were out." I was out for no more than half an hour. I've been in pretty much all day. I'm in pretty much every day.
Off to a Christmas Do. It's a nurses and doctors thing for Karen's work colleagues. I work freelance from home. If I have a Christmas Do it's just me and Reg, the goldfish. I always try and get myself invited. Whether they are going out for an Italian or and Indian or a Mexican, I always tell them "It's my favourite food!"
This year's Christmas Do is karaoke bowling! Don't ask...
Saturday
Karaoke bowling wasn't as bad as it sounds. It was bowling followed by karaoke. Nobody had to sing while bowling.
Karen's nurse friend, Jose, from Harrogate has come to stay. She slept with the British ambassador while doing VSO in Africa. Well, actually, what happened was there was only one bed and it was too late for the ambassador to get home before dark. Jose and her colleague created "lanes" down the bed with wads of clothing. Barricaded like this, the ambassador spent an interesting night sandwiched between the two women.
Out shopping in Covent Garden, Karen and I bump into a homeless Big Issue seller and buy a magazine for £2. He tells us it's been such a bad day he's made only £8 in 8 hours. I give him another £2. He is so incredibly grateful that we've brightened up his day that Karen gets out her purse and gives him another £2. Her absolutely insists we take three copies of the magazine, though we only need one. It seems churlish to refuse.
The bus home passes Tottenham Court Road station, which is being rebuilt for the new Crossrail link. The demolition has exposed the wall of a building that has been hidden for a long while. On it, painted in fading red paint, are the words: 'Veglio & Cos Café. Est. 1854'. Almost certainly, Charles Dickens would have seen that sign.
Sunday
Walking into Hyde Park a man passes Karen and says: "You look nice!" We laugh. He looks back over his shoulder and says to me: "And you look nice too!" We walk on with smiles on our faces. Surprising how little it takes to brighten up a day.
Monday
I'm at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Portland Place, a stone's throw from BBC Broadcasting House. I've come to read out a monologue I've written for an ABC science programme called Ockham's Razor. I'm nervous because reading out something cold in a studio, rather than simply chatting to another human being on-air, is hard. That's what actors do. And I'm not an actor.
Kate, an Australian who tells me she's been in London 4 years, takes me upstairs to a studio. What a fabulous old building. Out of a window I see a secret, secluded garden - the only one, Kate tells me, left in the street.
I'm doing a mock award ceremony. Awards that scientists should have got but didn't. Silly things. Like "The award for 'Most baffled by the concept of a cat flap' goes to... Isaac Newton" Apparently, he cut a hole through his study door for his cat - a sort of 17th-century cat flap. And, when his cat had kittens, he cut a row of little holes... one for each kitten!
Keep looking at Twitter and telling Karen how many followers I've got. Jenni, who is doing a BBC costume training course and is staying with us, says I should get out more.
David Whitehouse, who used to be the BBC's science correspondent, tweets: Everything we need to build a moonbase is at the lunar poles - we need only take our ingenuity and imagination
And a warm coat! I tweet back.
Someone else tweets back: You made me laugh on packed train!
Tuesday
At the Law Society in London's Chancery Lane for the launch of a national campaign to reform the UK libel laws. I'm here to support Simon Singh. Simon's a science writer and author of Fermat's Last Theorem. He's also a friend. When, recently, he got married to Anita at London Zoo, it was the best wedding ever. How many weddings do you go to where the groom arrives on a white horse with pink glitter hooves and is sawn in half by the best man at the reception? Or where you get to stroke a skunk? (de-scented, of course!).
We're here at the law Society because Simon got sued by the British Chiropractic Association for writing an article in The Guardian newspaper pointing out that claims that chiropractic could treat childhood asthma were supported by little if any evidence. Incredibly, in British law, the truth is no defence, and Simon lost the case. It's already cost him £100,000. The case caused an outcry, with science journalists and scientists concerned that the courts could be used to silence criticism of pseudoscientific claims. Which is why were are here today to launch the campaign to change the libel laws.
There's a real mix of people. Journalists like Nick Ross of BBC TV's Crimewatch and Roger Highfield, editor of New Scientist, and me. Scientists and thinkers such as Raymond Tallis and A. C. Grayling. Comedians like Dara O'Briain of Mock the Week, Robin Ince and Alexei Sayle. I sit next to Dave Gorman and ask him whether there's going to be a new series of Genius. Karen particularly loved the "Bird hood", a flap a bloke could pull out of his anorak to shelter a woman from the rain if she had come out without a coat. Not only does it keep her dry but it gives him the opportunity to put his arm around her!
One by one we have to give a short speech and sign a giant petition with a black marker pen. I'm nervous, especially since I've got a cold and my voice is croaking. When it's my turn, I make a chiropractic joke about my voice being fine when I got up this morning... but I can't say in case I get sued for libel too! My speech is very short: "Few of us would be here in this room were it not for the successes of evidence-based medicine over the past 100 years or so. In fact, most of us would have been dead by the age of two! In the future, with an ageing population, we are going to need evidence-based medicine more and more. The fact that it is impossible to criticise non-evidence-based medical claims for fear of falling foul of the UK libel laws is not only deeply depressing but very, very scary indeed."
Karen phones and says: What would I say to having a dog? She's a terminal care nurse. A patient has died and the family don't want the dog. I quiz her about it. I am cautious because the last dog she got offered barked all the time, had cancer and was doubly incontinent. None of these things put Karen off. That happened only when she learnt that the dog's owner was in hospital... with four of its teeth embedded in his arm.
............................................................................................................
We Need to Talk About Kelvin is published by Faber.
............................................................................................................
Tuesday, 22 December, 2009
In My week
Newsletter
Untitled Books
Your account
Register for an account and review books, comment on articles and build a list of your favourite reviews. Coming soon.
