7 January: The Forsyte Saga

On this date in 1967 BBC1 began serialisation of The Forsyte Saga. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. It was based on a series of books by John Galsworthy, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.
2. The story follows the fortunes of the upper middle class Forsyte family; themes include duty versus desire, and generations and change.
3. The 1967 TV series was the last major British drama serial to be made in black and white. While colour technology was available then, and producer Donald B. Wilson said he would have loved to see it in colour, but it would have meant delaying filming, and the cast might not have all been available.
4. The series starred Eric Porter as Soames, Kenneth More as Young Jolyon and Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene.
5. Kenneth More is actually two years older than Eric Porter, who played his father.
6. The series was first broadcast on Saturday evenings between 7 January and 1 July 1967 on BBC2. At that time, not many people in the UK could even get BBC2, but it was repeated on BBC1 on Sunday evenings, and it was those repeats which pulled in the viewers – 18 million watched the final ever episode in 1969.
7. In fact, the show was so popular that some churches changed the times of their evening services so that the congregation could get home in time to watch it. No such thing as video recording or watch on demand in them days!
8. There wasn’t much in the way of a musical soundtrack. The theme tune was Halcyon Days, from the suite The Three Elizabeths written in the early 1940s by Eric Coates.
9. Before this series, there was a film adaptation released in 1949 which starred Errol Flynn as Soames, Greer Garson as Irene, Walter Pidgeon as Young Jolyon, and Robert Young as Philip Bosinney.
10. In 2002 the series was re-made by “the other side” aka ITV. In this version Soames was played by Damian Lewis.

Character birthday

Ninja, a trained assassin and martial arts master, though he’s not an actual Ninja. He originates from a similar culture in the Infinitus dimension, resident in Scotland with others who came through a wormhole to Earth and formed a band of heroes known as the Earth Guard.

6 January: Poseidon

In ancient Greece, this month was dedicated to the god Poseidon. Ten facts about him:

1. His parents were Cronus and Rhea, who were brother and sister, the children of Uranus (heaven) and Gaia (Earth). His siblings are Hades, Zeus, Demeter, Hera and Hestia.
2. Hades was the firstborn. While Rhea was expecting him, Gaia predicted that one of Cronus’s children would overthrow him. So when Hades, and later Poseidon, were born, Cronus took them and swallowed them. By the time Zeus came along, Rhea was wise to this and managed to save him. When he grew up, he made his father throw up all the siblings which had been living in his belly and together, they fulfilled the prophecy by starting a war called the Titanomachy, and winning it. In the ensuing division of the spoils, the three brothers each took a territory to rule. Zeus took the Sky, Hades took the underworld, and Poseidon took the Oceans.
3. Poseidon is not only god of the sea, but all waters on Earth (the gods ruling rivers and so on are ruled by him) and also Earthquakes, horses and fertility.
4. He married a sea goddess called Amphitrite, the daughter of Oceanus. They had four children: one son, Triton, who was half human and half fish; and three daughters, Benthesicyme, Kymopoleia and Rhode.
5. Poseidon was unfaithful to the long-suffering Amphitrite on many occasions, although she stayed faithful. Poseidon is said to have fathered about 75 illegitimate children, which is why he is considered a god of fertility.
6. Which brings us to why he’s the god of Horses. Several of his children were horses: Pegasus, the winged horse, from Medusa; The immortal horse Aerion from his sister Demeter; and Despoina, a shapeshifting horse goddess.
7. His other children include heroes like Orion the hunter, Aiolos, the god of winds, and Theseus, prince of Athens, but also man eating monsters like Polyphemus, the giant Cyclops who was blinded by Odysseus, and Laestrygon, who fathered a whole race of man-eating giants. Charybdis, the monster that created whirlpools to capture ships whole so he could eat their crew was another of Poseidon’s kids. Poseidon is portrayed as a loving father who advises and guides his children; but he is also quick to anger, and woe betide anyone who kills any of his offspring.
8. He is said to live in a palace on the ocean floor crafted from gems and coral, and travels around in a chariot pulled by creatures with horse bodies and fish-like tails.
9. His symbols include Dolphins, and his trident, which was made by the same cyclopes who crafted Zeus's lightning bolt. By wielding the trident, Poseidon could cause havoc both at sea (tsunamis) and on land (earthquakes).
10. In art, Poseidon is usually depicted as a strong, muscular man in his 40s with a lush Beard. He has long, curly hair, which often appears wet.

Character birthday

Jester: An enigmatic villain, a member of the villainous team, the Bruisers. He’s an accomplished acrobat and trickster with probability altering powers. He has a tendency to dissolve into uncontrollable fits of laughter at the misfortune of others.

5 January: National Bird Day

National Bird Day. 10 things you might not know about birds.

1. There are about 18,000 species of bird in the world. The British Ornithologists Union estimates that there are 628 species of birds in the UK. In the US, there are 1120 different species of birds.
2. National Geographic studies suggest that the world bird population ranges from 50 billion to 430 billion. The most common type of bird is the passerines, or perching birds. Their common characteristic is having three toes pointing to the front and one toe to the back so they can perch on things. Many of them are also songbirds.
3. The largest bird in the world is the ostrich. They can grow to be up to 2.7 metres tall with a wingspan of up to 2 metres. They lay the largest Eggs, weighing in at up to 1.5 kilograms and about the size of a melon. They also have the largest Eyes of any land based creature. Their eyes are the size of billiard balls and are bigger than their brains.
4. The smallest bird is the Bee Hummingbird, which measures a minute 5.5 centimetres long and weighs no more than 1.9 grams. Needless to say, it also lays the smallest eggs. Their eggs are about the size of a Pea.
5. The fastest bird on earth is the Peregrine Falcon. It can reach an Airspeed of 389 k/h (242 mph) when diving for its prey.
6. The most common bird in the world is the Chicken. The rarest is a type of duck, the Madagascar Pochard. There are only about 25 of them in the world.
7. The Pitohui of Papua New Guinea is the only known bird in the world which is poisonous. The venom is in the skin and feathers.
8. All birds have feathers, whether or not they can fly. No other type of creature has feathers, only birds. Birds spend around 9% of their time every day grooming their feathers and preening, because their feathers are vital for survival. They also have hollow bones which make them lighter which helps them to fly.
9. Birds don’t have teeth. They swallow their food whole and a muscular organ in their stomach called the gizzard grinds it up ready for digestion.
10. Birds evolved from a group of Dinosaurs called Theropods. The Tyrannosaurus rex belonged to this group, so birds are the nearest living relatives to a T Rex. The earliest known bird is the Archaeopteryx which lived around 150 million years ago in the Jurassic period.

Character Birthday

Unicorn(James Lovell): Scottish geneticist, founder and first leader of the Freedom League superhero team, based in Birmingham, England. Appears in Running in the Family, Eternal Flame, Who’s That Girl. An accident in a science lab gave him his powers which include flight, hypersenses and the ability to shoot energy bolts from his hands. He has been a mentor to many young heroes and is the leading expert in genetic variance and superpowers. He founded a database of people with powers. Although he handed over leadership of the team to Target, he remained an active member for many years. When he grew older and retired from active duty, he returned to his studies full time and works for the Freedom League as an advisor.

Running in the Family

An alien craft approaches Earth. The alien on board is a fugitive, fleeing from an arranged marriage to freedom on our world. She befriends James, a genetics student, and shares her knowledge about the future of the human race with him. 

A science experiment gone wrong gifts James with superhuman abilities; but they come at a price, leading him to mentor others like himself. He founds a group of amateur heroes called the Freedom League.

The Freedom League suffers a string of losses and tragedies; it seems doomed to failure; but one of its members, Peter Mayfield, has vowed to form a group of his own. He is determined to keep his vow, despite having lost Rosemary, the one person he wanted by his side to help him.

Lizzie Hopkins is a talented young athlete and dancer. Peter sees her in action and guesses her exceptional abilities are far more than they seem. He offers to train and mentor Lizzie - but her mother is violently opposed to his suggestion.

As soon as she is old enough, Lizzie takes matters into her own hands; she seeks out Peter and his group for herself. She soon makes a discovery which shakes her world at its very foundations. Her search for the truth will resolve many unanswered questions, but it will also stir up old heartbreaks dating back to the Freedom League's early days.

Available from:

Amazon Paperback;   Amazon Kindle

4 January: The Doors

On this date in 1967 The Doors released their self-titled debut album The Doors. 10 things you might not know about The Doors:

1. The Doors were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The members were vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore.
2. The band’s name came from a book by Aldous Huxley, The Doors Of Perception, which got its title from a quote by William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
3. The band was signed by Elektra Records in 1966 and went on to record six albums in five years.
4. Their first album was recorded in just six days. This was in spite of Jim Morrison expressing concern that they didn’t have enough original songs. Robby Krieger turned up with Light My Fire the next day.
5. Morrison’s father, Steve, had a distinguished military career. He was an elite US fighter pilot in WWII, earned a Bronze Star in the Korean War for ‘heroic achievement’ in a combat zone and became the youngest admiral in the US Navy at 47 years of age, just as Light My Fire reached number one in the charts. Jim Morrison had originally decided to change his name to James Phoenix in case it affected his father’s career. He was talked out of it before the album artwork went to print. Morrison and his father didn’t get on. His dad was a disciplinarian who thoroughly disapproved of his son’s choice of career and didn’t believe he had any talent. Jim distanced himself from his parents to the extent that he’d tell people they were dead, when they weren’t.
6. The Doors have more songs in the film Forrest Gump than any other band. Six of their songs feature in the movie.
7. They were the first band to have an album advertised on a billboard. Elektra Records paid $1500 to promote their first album on LA's Sunset Strip.
8. One of the people who helped set up filming equipment for The Doors’ Live At The Hollywood Bowl recording in 1968 was a young carpenter named Harrison Ford.
9. Morrison witnessed the aftermath of a road traffic accident as a child, which had long lasting effects on him. A truck carrying a number of Native Americans had crashed, and they were lying dying in the road. Morrison believed that a couple of the departing souls were absorbed by his own, “like a sponge”. He would later write the incident into a song, Peace Frog, on The Doors' 1970 album Morrison Hotel.
10. Jim Morrison was one of several rock stars of the time who died at the age of 27. He was found dead in his bath by his girlfriend, Pamela Courson, at their apartment in Paris. The official cause of death was a heart attack, but rumours and conspiracy theories abound. It was a drug overdose; he’d actually died in a nightclub toilet from an overdose but his dealers carried him home and put him in his bath; he was killed by the CIA; he faked his own death. Morrison was buried in Paris and his headstone reads: "Kata ton daimona eay toy," Greek for "True to his own spirit." As for the Doors, the band continued as a trio until disbanding in 1973.

Character birthday

Technocrat (Roger Barnes): A member of Combat Team Beta. Not in a book published at time of writing. He is a genius but very shy. Studied at Cambridge and was noticed by the secret organisation, the Vipers, but turned down an invitation to a recruitment event because the person asking him was a beautiful woman and he was too flustered by her attention to accept. He regretted this, and so when a representative of Combat Team Beta came to ask if he would be their healer and fixer, he accepted at once.

He has a reputation among his team mates for being a loner and preferring machines to people; although he secretly envies the ease at which the others make friends and get along. While his genius level intelligence is within normal boundaries, his healing ability is genetic variant in origin.

Fire in her Blood

A Superhero love story.

Sent away to school to get her away from undesirable company, Agnes finds herself homesick and lonely. A brief connection with Jason Warner leads to the teenage crush to end all teenage crushes. Jason is barely aware Agnes exists, but she plans her whole future around him.

It is only when they meet again as adults that the connection becomes mutual; but before it can develop, Jason makes a discovery which rocks his entire world. He needs time alone, away from everyone, including Agnes. When Jason is finally ready to go back to his old life, Agnes has moved on and he cannot find her.

Agnes is now a single parent to the remarkable Seraphina. The Power League want to harness Seraphina's powers for evil before the Freedom League become aware of her. Agnes has no idea her new colleague and friend is a supervillain with his own agenda, and his willingness to babysit is not as innocent as she thinks. As Incendio starts teaching Seraphina to use her powers, the Freedom League intervene. Little do they know that they have found one of their own.

Themes

Superheroes and villains, family, romance, DNA,  friendship, celebrities, hero worship, jealousy.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

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3 January: Clement Attlee

Born on this date in 1883, in Putney, Clement Attlee was leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955, and served as Britain’s Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born into a middle class family. His parents were churchgoers and read prayers and psalms each morning at breakfast. One of his brothers became a clergyman and one of his sisters a missionary. Clement, however, is regarded as an agnostic, although when asked if he was, he said he didn’t know. He said he believed in "the ethics of Christianity" but not "the mumbo-jumbo".
2. He studied modern history at University College, Oxford. He had little interest in politics while at university.
3. After university he trained as a lawyer and then got a job managing Haileybury House, a charitable youth organisation in Limehouse, east London. This opened his eyes to the grinding poverty in the East End of London at the time, and helped shape his political views.
4. When the first world war broke out, Attlee applied to join the army, but was initially turned down, because at 31, he was considered too old. However, he was eventually commissioned as a temporary lieutenant and reached the rank of major.
5. He was put on a ship bound for England after collapsing with dysentery, but insisted that he wanted to get back to the action as soon as possible and asked to get off the ship in Malta, and recover in hospital there. While he was there, the Battle of Sari Bair happened. When he left hospital, he was informed that his company had been chosen to hold the final lines during the evacuation of Suvla. He was the penultimate man to be evacuated from Suvla Bay.
6. After the war, Attlee began his political career, and was Mayor of Stepney in 1919 before becoming the MP for Limehouse in 1922.
7. He married Violet Millar, who he met and fell in love with during a holiday in Italy with friends in 1921. The marriage lasted until she died in 1964.
8. He was the Prime Minister on whose watch the NHS was created. The National Health Service Act 1946 made healthcare free on the basis of citizenship and need rather than the payment of fees or insurance premiums. The National Insurance Act 1946 was another of his reforms. People of working age paid a weekly contribution and in return were entitled to a benefits when they could no longer work.
9. He was known for being a man of few words, and upon winning the election, he went to see King George VI, another man of few words, at Buckingham Palace to be appointed Prime Minister. Neither of them spoke for some time, but Attlee eventually broke the awkward silence by saying, "I've won the election". To which the King replied "I know. I heard it on the Six O'Clock News".
10. Attlee died of pneumonia, at the age of 84 on 8 October 1967. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Character birthday

Sophie Challenger, minor character in Tale of Two Sisters. She has no powers. Sophie is Jill Warner’s rival for the affections of Christopher Johannesjaegervitch.

A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

Available on Amazon

Paperback

E-book

2 January: HG Wells

For National Science Fiction Day, here are ten facts about HG wells, who, along with Jules Verne, has been dubbed “The Father of Science Fiction”.

1. He was born in London on 21 September 1866. His father was a shopkeeper and also a professional cricketer who played for the Kent county team.
2. Wells’ love of literature began in 1874 when an accident left him with a broken leg, and he started reading to pass the time during his recovery.
3. Before he was a writer, Wells worked as a draper, a Newspaper writer and a science teacher. During his time as a teacher, A.A. Milne was one of his students.
4. He didn’t just write fiction. He wrote books on science, history, politics, and sociology. His first published book was Biology text book in 1893.
5. He was a war gamer. He used to play games with toy soldiers with his children and ended up writing books about that, including discussions of the rules. Hence he is described as as the father of modern war gaming as well as of science fiction.
6. He’s on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
7. Things he wrote about in his books were sometimes quite prophetic. He envisaged the atom bomb, Wikipedia and The EU, but didn’t believe that Submarines would ever work. He couldn’t imagine “any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea.”
8. He supported votes for women and human rights. He drafted the Sankey Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was incorporated into the United Nations 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. As a socialist and critic of the German government in the 1930s, he was one of the people included in the SS Black Book, which meant had Hitler invaded Britain, he would have been arrested.
9. He was diabetic and helped set up the UK’s leading diabetes charity, the Diabetic Association, now known as Diabetes UK.
10. He died on August 13, 1946. He’d said he wanted his epitaph to read “I told you so. You damned fools,” but in the end, he was cremated, and never got a headstone.

Character birthday

Lily Webster: Appears in Who’s That Girl? She is the younger sister of Matthew (Laserlight), a member of the Freedom League. It looks likely that she is a genetic variant, like her brother, with the power of flight.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

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Top of the Pops

The first edition of Top of the Pops was broadcast on this date in 1964. Here are ten things you might not know about this programme.

1. The first song ever played was I Only Want to be With You by Dusty Springfield. The Rolling Stones were the first band to perform, with I Wanna Be Your Man. The Hollies, the Swinging Blue Jeans and The Dave Clark Five were among the other acts who appeared.
2. The show, originally intended to run for just a few weeks, lasted 42 years and 2,166 regular episodes, plus specials. The final show was broadcast on 11 July 2005, although there was a special “swan song” which went out on 30 July 2006.
3. There have been more than 150 presenters, including guests, 13 different opening sequences and nine theme tunes. These include Top of the Pops, by the Dave Davani Four; An instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin-Willie Dixon composition Whole Lotta Love, Yellow Pearl, The Wizard, by Paul Hardcastle, Red Hot Pop by Vince Clarke of Erasure and Now Get Out of That by Tony Gibber.
4. The record for the most number of appearances on the show is held by Cliff Richard, who featured 160 times. Status Quo were the most frequent group with 106 performances, and Kylie Minogue is the female singer who has appeared the most times on the show, with 50 appearances.
5. Old episodes are repeated on other BBC channels, but there’s no way you’ll ever get to see all 2,166 episodes, for two reasons. Firstly, the BBC had a policy of re-using tapes and as with many classic shows of the 1960s, many episodes were simply lost. There are no surviving episodes with live appearances by The Beatles. Secondly, various presenters and artists have been disgraced, for example, Jimmy Saville, who presented the first show and was a regular presenter for many years, so no episode featuring him will ever be shown. Likewise any show featuring Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris or Gary Glitter is also banned.
6. The longest song ever performed on the show was Jesus of Suburbia by Green Day, which lasted 9 minutes and 10 seconds.
7. The record for the number of people on stage during a performance was Fat Les singing Jerusalem with 70 people on stage.
8. There were a series of dance troupes which would perform when a band was unavailable and/or there was no music video. The first of these was called the Go-Jos, which also performed on the Val Doonican Show. They were replaced in 1968 by Pan’s People who were regulars until 1976, when several members of the group retired. For a few months after that, there was Ruby Flipper, which had both male and female dancers. However, it seems the world wasn’t quite ready for that yet, with one dancer commenting "It's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies. They do not want to see other men," before resigning. Ruby Flipper was replaced with Legs and Co, another all female troupe. In 1981, they were replaced by Zoo, a twenty-member dance troupe (ten male, ten female). By the early 1980s, record companies were offering the BBC free promotional videos, so dancers were no longer needed.
9. It was 20 years before Top of the Pops got a full time female presenter, Janice Long.
10. The final episode featured no live acts in the studio, so the last act to perform live were Snow Patrol with Chasing Cars.

Fire in Her Blood

A Superhero love story.

Sent away to school to get her away from undesirable company, Agnes finds herself homesick and lonely. A brief connection with Jason Warner leads to the teenage crush to end all teenage crushes. Jason is barely aware Agnes exists, but she plans her whole future around him.

It is only when they meet again as adults that the connection becomes mutual; but before it can develop, Jason makes a discovery which rocks his entire world. He needs time alone, away from everyone, including Agnes. When Jason is finally ready to go back to his old life, Agnes has moved on and he cannot find her.

Agnes is now a single parent to the remarkable Seraphina. The Power League want to harness Seraphina's powers for evil before the Freedom League become aware of her. Agnes has no idea her new colleague and friend is a supervillain with his own agenda, and his willingness to babysit is not as innocent as she thinks. As Incendio starts teaching Seraphina to use her powers, the Freedom League intervene. Little do they know that they have found one of their own.

Where to get it:

Paperback

E-book

Character birthdays

In 2023 I will feature one or more of the characters from my novels or short stories with a brief description and which books (if any) they appear in, on their birthdays.

Today there are two:

Tri Bot

Professor Power’s robot. This is an activation date, rather than a birthday. Tri Bot has various functions which include hacking computer and security systems, drilling, repairing electronic gadgets and as a weapon. It can get into places too hazardous for humans as it can withstand extreme temperatures and explosions.

Chain II

Real name Timothy Winchcombe, the son of the original Chain, Gary Winchcombe and Amanda Somerset-Liquorish. When Gary moves on to intelligence work, Timmy gets Gary’s superhero suit and begins training as the next “supercop”.