In previous years, we’ve done the Dumb Run, and it has been good. It has been great. I have splendid memories from those rides, from Will yelling “WILDFLOWERS AND SHAME” at the sleeping citizens of Linlithgow at 3am, to the little guy in hi-viz who threw a total hissy fit at us for taking pictures of jelly babies on the Forth Road Bridge at 4am.

But this year is different. This year I don’t have the motivation to ride a train all the way to Dumbarton, ride a bike to St Andrews, then ride in a car all the way back up to Aberdeen again. Frood doesn’t have the motivation to drive all the way down to St Andrews at silly o’clock on a Sunday morning, just so we can have coffee and beer at the side of a golf course. He’s not keen on being the calamity wagon if it’s going to take him 3 hours just to get there.

So we’re changing.

A couple of years ago, the LGC mooted the idea of the Aberdeen Assault – in addition to DR, not as a replacement. Well, this year it is the replacement.

If this is as nice a ride as I think, this is likely to become my replacement overnight Solstice Century. Most of the people who have done the DR in the past are either east coast folks or have been staying with me as a guest, so this is equally convenient. Aberdeen has better transport connections for the return trip than Leuchars, and the scenery will be much better.

I’ll report back and let you know how we get on.

My Dad. Scientist, engineer, aquanaut, racing driver, yachtsman, adventurer, philanthropist. Ambitious, driven, restless, passionate, romantic, generous.

My hero.

I mean ‘hero’ in the sense of Odysseus battling gods and monsters across the sea in his quest to return to Penelope and Telemachus. When I was young, he was this amazing figure who was as handy in a laboratory as he was under the bonnet of a car, and as useful under the sea as he was helming a boat over it. He encouraged me to participate in things most girls were too busy swooning over boy bands or collecting Cindy accessories to consider — I dived, sailed, snorkelled, beachbombed on uninhabited islands. I learned to track, to fish, to build fires.

He taught me to be independent: to have faith in my ability to learn new skills and look after myself. To be sensible and pragmatic in unfamiliar and scary situations. To think critically and not panic when things don’t go to plan. I wasn’t pressed into pretty pink dresses or told I was going to be a princess; my parents gave me wetsuits, snorkelling gear, ski lessons, a sailing dinghy. He gave me the support and encouragement I needed to step outside my comfort zones and rely on my own strength to get me through. It is possibly the most valuable lesson a father can give his daughter: to stand up for herself and know she can be strong and has the intelligence to work out solutions to her problems herself.

He raised and cultivated a family of do-ers, but do-ers who were also thinkers. My brother and I had an amazing childhood, and my Mum has never been the kind to sit in a kitchen discussing cakes and knitting while the men smoke cigars and talk about cars. Like all true heroes, he expected those who stood and worked with him to be loyal, courageous, practical and clever, and helped them achieve it.

Above all else, beneath all else, running through all else like butter gluing pastry layers in a mille feuille, I’ve always wanted to make my family proud, and never to disappoint them. This has been the compass in my cockpit, helping me navigate life. I have looked up to my Dad with the kind of hero worship young girls reserve for celebrities and women leave behind as they age.

Despite of, or perhaps because of, his foibles, imperfections and frailties, I never left it behind.

I owe him more than I can possibly recount, and he will always set the standard to which I hold myself.

My Dad died in a motor-racing accident at the Jim Clark Revival at Hockenheim, on 11th April, and while the phrase “he died doing what he loved” is of little comfort to those who have to carry on without him, in this case it is very true.

I am extraordinarily grateful to the people from the motor-racing community, both British and international, who came forward to support my Mum and my brother during that difficult time. A more generous, kind, thoughtful bunch of people I’m not sure you could meet. Their help and contributions, big and small, made a very difficult time that little bit less so. The friends and family who have given us their support and a steady shoulder are hugely appreciated by all of us.

I’m also grateful to all those who came to the funeral. It made me incredibly proud of my Dad, to see so many come to pay their respects. My thanks to those who gave so generously in support of the RNLI in his memory — it meant a lot.

I’ve written several poems in my efforts to navigate this experience, but none of them does justice to the man, nor is a tenth as good as the piece my Mum wrote. The following poem was left in the book of condolences. It’s by Adam Lindsay Gordon and expresses something I will set next to my compass in memory of my hero.

Potters’ Clay
Though the pitcher that goes to the sparkling rill
Too oft gets broken at last,
There are scores of others its place to fill
When its earth to the earth is cast;
Keep that pitcher at home, let it never roam,
But lie like a useless clod,
Yet sooner or later the hour will come
When its chips are thrown to the sod.

Is it wise, then, say, in the waning day,
When the vessel is crack’d and old,
To cherish the battered potter’s clay,
As though it were virgin gold?
Take care of yourself, dull, boorish elf,
Though prudent and safe you seem,
Your pitcher will break on the musty shelf,
And mine by the dazzling stream.

Dr Al Fleming
21 June 1944 – 11 April 2014
(Photograph courtesy of John Allan, used with permission.)

I’ve been a long-term paying subscriber to Last.fm. Paying, mind. I include a link to my profile in any list of social media addresses. If you look down and to the right, you’ll find a widget showing what I have most recently listened to, a service provided by a Last.fm app.

Music is important to me for my writing. As a neuro-atypical synaesthete, for whom background noise can occasionally be physically distressing, music is an obligatory defence against the outside world when I’m trying to lose myself in a story, whether writing or reading. I listen to music when I’m training. I can’t imagine life without it. I spend more than I should on music – for the shapes, for the soundscapes, for the inspiration, for the motivation, for the rhythm, sometimes for the distraction – and I love discovering new artists. I used to be a heavy Pandora user. When that ceased being available in the UK, I switched to Last.fm, which offered a similar service.

Two days ago I received an email that said the service was changing.

From 28th April, our subscription radio streaming service will come to an end. This means subscriber radio will no longer work on any platform or device. We’re making this change to focus on improving scrobbling and recommendations, while continuing our goal of being your #onemusichome. Of course you’ll still be able to listen to all of your favourite stations on the new Last.fm Player, as well as listen to your favourite tracks with our recently launched on demand playback feature via Spotify.

If, like me, you’re not sure what that means, allow me to simplify.

The last.fm streaming service ceases to be from the 28th April. You will no longer be able to open the desktop app, turn on your favourite radio channel, and have it play for as long as you like with no ads. Instead, you will have to go to the website, where you can start your radio station, but it will stream videos from YouTube, complete with the adverts.

Even if you subscribe.

As a subscriber, you can get 30% discount in the forthcoming merchandise store (woot, I’m sure) and use tags to exert some illusion of control over your ad-filled youtube stream. And your avatar will say “subscriber”, so everyone knows you’re a sucker prepared to pay for a 30% discount on a lousy t-shirt.

Needless to say, I am cancelling my subscription.

I don’t know if there’s anything out there offering Last.fm’s comprehensive level of curation and discovery. They had one of the largest catalogues on the internet for streaming music and cross-platform availability. They had a range encompassing obscure industrial ambient and popular classical. I had prog rock, opera, trance, dance, electronica, baroque… I have yet to find a genre Last.fm has excluded, whether by act or omission.

Last.fm claim that they are going to focus on scrobbling, but I have no idea where they get the idea that anyone is going to pay for a service that merely records what one has been listening to recently. Don’t get me wrong: it’s fun knowing how my musical habits are changing, but my musical habits are constantly changing. I don’t really need something to tell me that.

There are plenty of artists who have earned royalties because I discovered them on a streaming service. Artists I didn’t know, like Roly Porter (I now own his two most recent studio albums on CD); artists I knew and loved but whose catalogue included songs I hadn’t heard before, or hadn’t heard in a very long time. Streaming radio is a way for people who love music to discover new things to love, and people are willing to pay for things they love.

Yes, there will always be those who say why pay for something if it’s available for free, but they’re the hawks of Game Theory, and they’re outnumbered by those who want to reward the creator of something good. If we don’t reward our artists, they will stop making art. Most people with half a brain cell can comprehend that.

I have spent 6 years teaching Last.fm what I like, which is a considerable investment, and now starts the difficult quest for another streaming service, and the painful process of teaching it what I like.

Any recommendations?

I have a Ford Mondeo Estate. He’s called Claude, in line with the Frood Standard Naming Convention^*. I do love my car. He’s big and red and swallows two bicycles without thinking about it. When I race, I can lay Thokk or Peregrine nicely in the back and don’t have to worry about them being damaged.

The one problem is the stereo.

Back in the day, this thing had a 6 CD multichanger, but it ate my CDs. It just swallowed them, much like Claude swallows bikes. I ended up with 8 CDs in there, all trapped, while the CD player insisted it was empty.

Feed me, it said, whenever I pressed the eject button. I’M HUNGRY.

Needless to say, it wouldn’t play.

So we had to use the radio. Which was fine, until the radio started cutting out. Initially we thought it had got damp in the car wash, but no. It was merely possessed. After a while, whatever demon was infesting it and eating the tunes gave up and went away, presumably sated, and I have spent the last couple of years listening contentedly to Classic FM while driving around in my big red Claude (not a euphemism).

When Frood achieved New Job recently, we had to acquire another car, as he needs one for work. We now have a small, greenish-grey Ford Fiesta, called Bill for short (we’re still working on pronunciation of his full name). Claude took against Bill – not in any specific, spiteful way. He’s a big boy, he’s above that sort of thing. He knows Bill can’t take two bikes and all our plush camping gear. He knows he’s more comfortable for long journeys and is one of my most important pieces of triathlon gear. He knows he’s loved.

Nevertheless, he has decided to host a radio demon again, and my FM radio is now cutting out after a couple of minutes. I don’t know if he felt sorry for the one living in Bill’s radio when we first got him (as Bill’s radio was doing the same thing but works fine, now), or what, but Classic FM is lost.

I’ve been listening to Absolute Radio on Medium Wave, instead. They have a no-repeat guarantee, and that means they play a lot of old favourites, including songs I haven’t heard in years.

I listen to music when writing, and need to match the shape of the music to what I’m writing. Thus, I necessarily have a wide range of music in my collection. I acquire music usually by hearing something I really like, or which matches a specific shape in a work in progress, or gives me an idea for a brand new story. My most recent purchases have included Verdi’s Macbeth (they used Patria Oppressa as the music in the Hannibal episode Sorbet and I fell in love), Sky (a prog group with John Williams, ermagerd – one day someone will buy me a copy of the now highly-collectible Cadmium and I’ll have a wibbly-wobbly flashback to being 11 years old and reading Ursula Le Guin in bed), and Aion (I love The Serpent’s Egg).

Then along came Absolute Radio, and I’ve had too many moments of “Oh gods, I love this!” over the past couple of weeks. I’ve had to add two R.E.M. albums (WHY did we not have any already?) and today I gave in to the impulse to grab some Kula Shaker.

I need to stop. I know this stuff is cheap, mostly – certainly cheaper than a night out, which we don’t do – but, seriously, I have books and bike parts looking at me reproachfully from my “to get” list, and I’m at serious risk of falling out with Fingal permanently.

I should persuade that radio demon to depart from Claude so I can have Classic FM back. Or switch to the Gaelic language radio station, which is largely unintelligble.

*Names must use the final three letters of the number plate in order, although they may occur any place in the word. Claude’s number plate ends AUE. I’ve also had cars named Rasputin and Voltaire.

I injured my foot back in 2010. According to the person posting to Runner’s World social media at the time, what I did wasn’t possible: I’d ruptured my plantar fascia. For 9 months I was reduced to hobbling and limping. I was signed off field work – I couldn’t drive; could barely get from my desk to the staff canteen, never mind walk far enough to do my routine work. I could just about cycle, as long as it wasn’t for more than 30 minutes.

As far as I could tell, my racing career was over. And I’d just bought a TT bike. It wasn’t cheap.

Malheureusement.

Late that year, while camping, I discovered I was just fine when barefoot. In fact, I was just fine when I was wearing a pair of neoprene booties that formed part of my wetsuit. This got me to thinking, and so, although I did seek the advice of both a private podiatrist (rubbish AND expensive) and the NHS biomechanics specialist (brilliant and FREE), what I ended up with was a set of Vibram Fivefingers.

In 2013, after spending about 2 years re-learning how to run, having suffered swine flu and ended up with exercise-induced asthma (but of course), I went back to racing.

And it has been my most successful year ever.

My first race of the year saw a PB in the run. I DNSed one, because of illness, and completed four. I’ve won prizes worth 40 quid (which isn’t a lot, but is more than I’ve won in all my previous races). In my last race, I suffered a 3D failure, fell flat on my face, and fractured my wrist (which is why the blogs have been lacking in updates of late).

So imagine my surprise when Triathlon Scotland published the rankings (MS Excel spreadsheet) for 2013 and I discovered I’d come top in my age group for the North Region Sprint series. I was more surprised to discover I had the second highest points accumulation at Sprint distance in the whole of Scotland for my age group.

I am, needless to say, chuffed to bits. In 2007 I did my first race, for a bet. In 2013, after a 3 year break for injury and illness, I won my first race. And here’s the joy of triathlon: yes, the elite racers are untouchable by most of us Age Groupers, but that’s no barrier to success. You might think you could never do a tri, that it’s too hard or you’re too unfit. Give it a go. There are plenty of events aimed at beginners, nice and short to give you a taste for it. Or, indeed, any other sport. It’s never too late, you’re never too unfit to start. Everyone starts somewhere, and everyone, ultimately, is competing against themselves. Just taking part, whatever your chosen sport, means you’ve achieved something fantastic.

You never know. You might win something. It might even be a prize.

I had my last race of the season, Huntly Sprint Triathlon, on the 22nd, almost two weeks ago. Usually the last race of the season imminently precedes a blog post about how the year went, lessons learned, successes and failures, goals for the following year etc. There’s been a bit of a gap this year.

I started racing back in 2007, and I’ve been pretty lucky, in the sense that I haven’t really had much in the way of serious injury in races or training. Other than the foot injury that saw me stop racing for three years, clearly. What I mean is, I haven’t crashed.

Well, until now.

The swim was okay. Not great — I’ve been struggling a bit with asthma recently, and the chlorine can set it off, so I couldn’t turn properly. Back before I injured my foot I was on course for a 13 minute 750m; this year I have been working my way back down from over 15 minutes. It has been hard, and progress slow, not helped by lack of easy access to a gym. I used to be doing somewhere between 12 and 16 hours of training a week. These days I’m lucky to get 6, and that’s including my cycle commute. But my time at Huntly was 14:34 (plus the run to the timing mat), which is better than it was at the start of the year, so not bad considering my eye fell out halfway through and I had to stop to put it back^*. There was also a ridiculous amount of cheating going on in the swim. NO OVERTAKING IN THE LANES. It’s not hard to understand. The guy in my lane who overtook three people right down the middle (reported to me by Alibarbarella afterwards — no wonder I was getting hit in the face) should have been penalised.

The bike was a bit of a disaster. The course was beautiful, and I should have taken the Stealth, but I was on the Pinarello because I didn’t know the roads and was worried about surprise descents. I pushed too hard, knowing it was between me and another woman in my age group for the series. We’d competed in the same race in Turriff, in which she was about 3 minutes slower than me in the swim, 4 minutes faster in the run, and we were evenly matched on the bike. The conditions in Turriff were dreadful, and I was sure I could outpace her on the bike leg in Huntly.

But the Turriff conditions, perversely, suited me. I can cope with freezing temperatures and wet, agricultural roads (albeit not on my TT bike). Huntly was baking hot and there was an insane wind in the back leg of the bike course. I swear it blew my eyelids inside out at one point. Despite doing my best to keep my hydration up, I found myself wishing I’d fitted the XLab Torpedo rig to the bike. There was also a fair bit of drafting going on, which is a personal hate of mine in amateur races where there is a no-draft rule. NEED MOAR DRAFTBUSTERS THANKYOU PLEASE.

When I came out of T2, not too shabbily considering I’m running in VFFs these days, my legs were dead. I’d blown my pacing. I couldn’t pick my feet up, I felt numb from the waist down, my posture had collapsed and I was close to tears. One of the things you learn when taking part in endurance sport is that your mood is very closely related to the state of your body. Anyone who thinks they are a being of pure consciousness riding around in a meat vehicle needs to do an overnight century ride or something. When you hit the wall and force yourself to keep going, your body protests by releasing a flood of chemicals in the biochemical equivalent of a temper tantrum. It affects people in different ways, but I’ve learned that my body makes me cry and tries to make me stop by insisting it’s not going to be able to get to the end and I’m going to have to quit eventually, so best get it over with early.

I’ve also learned to ignore it.

Then came the 3D fail. Being in possession of only one eye, I don’t see in stereo like people with two functional ones. This is generally no biggie, but there are some things that are difficult for me, and one of those things is seeing small changes in topography in the immediate vicinity. There was a bus stop with a slightly raised piece of pavement about 1.5km into the run. I failed to see the rise and I had dead legs. My foot caught the pavement and I went down. Hard.

After what felt like an eternity rolling around on the ground, while my body said, “Told you so,” in a cutting-off-its-nose-to-spite-its-face smug kind of way, I got up. I was disorientated, I had major road rash on my knees and I thought I’d probably broken my wrist. I’d lost sight of the people ahead of me and was confused about which way to go. I went back to the last sign to check I was going the right way, then carried on. It was slow and painful, I was bleeding, I was crying; but I was also furious and determined.

By the time I crossed the line, in serious pain and with blood streaming down my shins, I’d lost about 10 minutes. And the series.

My thanks to the lady competitor who paused her bike to check if I was okay and needed any help, and also to the lady in the car who stopped and got out to see if I needed to go to hospital. Your concern, whoever you are, was very much appreciated, although I’m not sure I was appropriately effusive with my gratitude at the time.

Next year? Better training. I can shave oodles of time off both swim and bike. Maybe get me a sperm hat. Lose some weight. More consistent winter training. Get back to the strength work. HILLS. But you know what? I did a PB in the run in Turriff this year, and what I wanted to do more than anything was find out if the permanent damage to my foot spelled the end of my ability to race. I came second in the series overall and was either 1st or 2nd in category in every race this year, including the Inverurie Sprint that was so badly flooded they had to cancel the bike section.

I’d call that a success. In 2014, I think I’m going to go even faster.

My wrist isn’t broken, thankfully. There’s serious soft tissue damage, possibly a hairline fracture in the radius and a little lump that needs further medical attention to find out if it’s a displaced fragment of cartilage or something. It’s still pretty painful, though, and makes typing hard, which is why you’ve had to wait for the race report.

Could have been a lot worse. At least I didn’t fall off the bike.

* No, really. It can happen. It’s why I have a black one for swimming. I don’t understand why it happened for the first time during a race — I’m careful with my goggle choice for races — but I’m guessing it was a straightforward case of This Was Not Meant To Be.

Today it’s the Autumn Equinox, although autumn arrived here in the ‘shire a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been grateful for getting our first wood delivery in early; the fire has already been in use on the cold evenings as the nights draw in. It’s remarkable how quickly things change when they get going. It’s almost as if winter has attached a big bit of elastic to the sun, and while summer clings on as long as it can, eventually the strain gets too much and it snaps back. We’re in the penduluum stage right now, with cold nights and warm days, sudden showers and oddly hot, humid lunch breaks.

The weather isn’t the only thing that’s changing. In some vague effort to tidy things up and make this blog slightly less disjointed^*, I have started a new blog over at ravenbait.com. I will use that to focus on my writing, leaving this blog — my home on the internet for 15 years now — for all the random stuff that fills in the gaps^§. I’m not a big one for cross-posting, although I’m not saying I never do it. I doubt I’ll take all the writing away from this site as it’s such a big part of my life, but I won’t be cluttering up the writing blog with Playstation posts, recipes, triathlon, wittering about adverts, complaining about Doctor Who (unless it’s a comment on specifics of the writing), gear reviews or odes to bicycles. And Stitch. Mustn’t forget Stitch.

If you come here for the velocipedes and the wittering, carry on as you were. You won’t notice much. If you come here to read what I think about writing, specifically my writing, then take yourself over to ravenbait.com where I’m slowly building up steam.

* ‘Less disjointed’ is all relative, you understand. This is me we’re talking about.
§ And it’s a tight squeeze for a lot of it, I can assure you.

I am thrilled and delighted to announce that my science fiction story When Shepherds Dream of Electric Sheep will appear in the Looking Landwards anthology from Newcon Press. I am over the moon to share a table of contents with such well-known and exciting authors, and my thanks to Ian Whates for picking my story. The book launches in October at BristolCon, and is being produced in collaboration with the Institution of Agricultural Engineers to celebrate their 75th anniversary.

Thanks are also due to my British Science Fiction Association crit group, Orbiter 6, whose harsh on writing but supportive of writers attitude has helped me enormously in the time I’ve been with them.

On the 14th September, at the Douglas Hotel, Market Street, Aberdeen, we will launch the next Lemon Tree Writers chapbook, Point of Balance, containing 6 pieces of short and flash fiction from LTW members, including me. The cover is by Alibarbarella and we are looking into making it available for sale as a print (minus the text, obviously!) at the launch.

I can also report that my flash homage to Russell T Davies, Why Don’t You Switch Off Your Television Set And Go And Do Something Less Boring Instead has been picked for performance as part of the Aberdeen Literary Festival, New Words. I will be reading this piece at the Lemon Zest event at the Peacock Visual Arts Centre on Castle Street in Aberdeen. The event starts at 19:30 on the 15th September, which is the day after our chapbook launch, so it’ll be a busy weekend. Luckily I’ve no races planned!

Speaking of races, I’m feeling particularly kick arse today as, on top of all of the above, I won my first ever race, even though the bike leg was cancelled due to flooding. I will post a full report when the final times have been released, but I can say in summary that today is made of AWESOME and WIN.

More days like today please!

Something has to be exceptional to end up reviewed on this blog. There are a number of ways to be exceptional, but most of the time I review something either because it’s very, very good or because it’s really, really bad.

Hannibal, the TV series currently showing on Sky Living in the UK, depicts Thomas Harris’s eponymous serial killer during the time prior to Red Dragon, when Jack Crawford was hunting the Chesapeake Ripper.

And it’s very, very good.

I’ve seen mixed reviews of the series, and I’d not expected to like it. Hannibal Lecter, for me, is one of the great character inventions of modern fiction. He’s a serial killer who isn’t the typical sociopath or psychopath. He’s a man of refined tastes. He eats the rude, and that, for me, is delicious. I disliked what was made of the character in Hannibal Rising — Harris took something monstrously pure and gave it a reason to be. He tried to make Lecter a sympathetic character, someone for whom we should feel pity and understanding.

I think Lecter would have despised him for that. Lecter needed no reason to be. He just was.

Bryan Fuller, who developed the series, has stated that he consciously tried to imagine what David Lynch would do with a Hannibal character. But that doesn’t mean this is Twin Peaks with a more expensive taste in wine and patisserie; this is dark, eerie, intelligent, moody and stylish.

Lecter is portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen (who narrowly pipped David Tennant for the role) with admirable restraint and good-natured, predatory grace. Although initially doubtful, having previously seen him as the unnamed warrior in Valhalla Rising, I was won over within a couple of episodes. His accent is going to make it difficult for him to speak perfect Tuscan when he finally gets his job in Florence, but it’s perfect for this series. He has a poise and presence that make him eminently believable as the psychiatrist whose solution to dodgy flute playing is fine dining.

Will Graham, the FBI profiler with the empathy disorder, is played with beautiful sensitivity by Hugh Dancy — who, it must be said, would make a fine Doctor on the back of this performance. His performance was one of the factors that hooked me in the first episode. Over the course of the series — we’re up to episode 11, with a further 2 to go in this season — his portrayal of deterioration has been believable and moving.

The other cast members also do a good job. Will’s doctor friend, Alan Bloom, for this series has become Alanna Bloom, played with forthright conviction by Caroline Dhavernas. Freddie Lounds, the Tattler reporter who loses his lips to the Tooth Fairy in Red Dragon, is also played by a woman in this version, which should make the reinvention of that scene, when it comes, very interesting indeed.

Best of all is the writing. There is a very strong team here, including (huzzah) a woman writer — Jennifer Shuur. (She might be the only one so far, but that’s one more than Doctor Who, at least.) There is nothing in the storytelling that is wasted. There are no plot elements there purely for the sake of being there. This isn’t one of those series where there’s a different story every week with some meta-arc crowbarred into the plot, punctuated with a Hulk smash double episode just to make sure. Every single element of every episode is related, in some way, to the overall arc. Everything — everything — is about Will and Hannibal, which makes it all the more remarkable that it’s not immediately obvious exactly how the relationship is playing out, and yet, once it’s clear, the clues have been there all along. In everything. This is what I call fractal storytelling, and it gives me goosebumps. Exposition, the technique of stating everything explicitly, just to make sure the audience understands, is a strange attractor. Everything weaves and twines around it without ever touching it. I’ve not seen a television series do this comprehensively in a very long time; nor one to place such trust in the intelligence of the audience.

It’s not perfect. I’d be worried if it were. In the last couple of episodes the depiction of real medical conditions has been slightly haphazard and the writers have cherry-picked symptoms to fit the story (a particular bugbear of mine). This is, however, my only complaint to date, and the number of people who will be familiar enough with obscure conditions like Cotard’s and Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis to pick up on where artistic licence has come into play is probably small.

Bryan Fuller has done a fantastic job and I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do with the rest of the material.

I hadn’t heard about the Lynx Apollo mission. Now that I have, I can feel a full-on rage attack coming on.

“…press representatives of the Axe-Apollo project in the UK were genuinely surprised that the campaign might be perceived as sexist and reassured that women are more than welcome to join.”

Because of course, the tagline “LEAVE A MAN, COME BACK A HERO” isn’t sexist at all. Neither, clearly, is the poster.

Or the ad.

So I’m now rooting for Kate Arkless Gray, @spacekate, who’s not only passionate about getting into space, but also about keeping sexism out of space. Thanks to her efforts, Unilever was obliged to revise competition rules in countries such as Russia, Mexico and the Ukraine, which previously had explicitly banned women from entering.

She’s competing against 249 people for one of 4 spots this weekend. Unfortunately, it looks like the competition is rigged to favour men after all. With the best will in the world, as a competing athlete myself, I know that in a strictly physical competition that isn’t ultra-endurance, the best men will always beat the best women.

There are ways around this, of course, the simplest of which is to take 2 men and 2 women and take the best 2 of each. But will they do that?

Take another look at the poster, at the ad campaign, at the fact they had to be shamed into not excluding women from the competition in some countries. What do you think?