Most of the time these suggestions (“There’s this whole galaxy in space, right, run by the Catholic church, and its entire economy is geared into the production of rosaries and statues and crucifixes… “) are made with the either humorous or completely serious demand for 50% of the proceeds.

That is, you, the writer, do 99.9% the work, while the non-writer gets half the royalties for nothing more than communicating to you a flash of inspiration they had when peeling the spuds or sitting in the bath.

The thing about ideas, though, is there’s no such thing as an original one. All art is plagiarism, and all that. In sf for instance, there’s no end of great stories about computers taking over the world. There are also a lot of dire tales about a couple who, in one way or another, end up going back to the beginning of time and who find, hey wow, that they’re Adam and Eve. Someone writing in Interzone years ago dubbed such tales “shaggy God stories”.

Ideas, like information, want to be free. The idea is not in itself the big thing in any creative venture; it’s the graft that goes into it. The finished work should be copyright to the creator, not the first notion.

I mention all this because a thing in yesterday’s Observer put me in mind of a story I wrote about 25 years ago. I’m not sure it was ever published and can’t find it anymore as it was probably lost in the Great Amstrad PCW Meltdown of ’89. The story mentioned, merely in passing, that in this world, artificial meat was produced for the masses in big vats. I called this stuff “shamburger”.

As the newspaper article states right from the start, though, my idea (apart from the name) was in no way original. Winston Churchill certainly got there first, and artificially-cultured flesh is probably a feature of countless sf stories since (I can’t think of any off-hand, although the thing about classic spec fiction ideas is that Isaac Asimov usually got there first. )

So now we’re on the verge of it becoming reality, raising all sorts of interesting questions for vegetarians and vegans.

But here’s an idea for you … Once the tech is established and working, it’ll only be a matter of time before some attention-seeker or celebrity chef will be offering human flesh on the menu. It may just turn out to be a gimmick, or more likely one of those things which a minority of folks seeking “decadent” thrills try and find they like. You get some human stem-cells, turn it into muscle fibres. Nobody gets hurt, and “long pig” is on the menu.

There are all sorts of moral objections to this, and of course religious types would probably be outraged, your publicity-seeking chef would say where’s the real harm? After all, how is this in any way worse than eating human placenta?

The question “who does it hurt?” is a reliable starting point for constructing a speculative fiction story.

Here’s one steer. That artificial human flesh would have to contain someone’s DNA. The stem cells have to come from someone. To start with, it’d probably be that same controversy-seeking celebrity chef. Maybe then it’d move on to the DNA of other celebrities living and dead, with or without their consent.

You figure out the rest of the story. I’m giving you this idea for free, don’t want 50% or even 1%. Ideas are free. The real work, and consequently the real value, is in turning them into stories with a beginning, middle and end. And the process of writing gives you loads more ideas as you go along, like a throwaway line about vat-grown shamburger.

The tomb is nowt to do with the Venturers, though. It is generally thought to be the last resting place of a guy named Edmund Blanket, and of his wife, Mrs Blanket.

Local history enthusiasts will tell you of the local legend that Edmund Blanket invented, well, blankets.

Bristol’s most colourful Victorian newspaperman, Joseph Leech, wrote an extremely fanciful account of the blanket’s invention/discovery. In a story in Brief Romances from Bristol History (1884, a collection of what were originally articles in the Bristol Times) he imagined ‘Edward’ Blanket struggling to make his weaving business a success. One very cold night he and Mrs B were shivering in their bed covered only by a ‘camlet’ of goat hair. Then he had an idea; he went to his loom and took a length of woollen cloth he had been working on that day, and covered the bed with it. They slept snugly, and the following morning he told Mrs Blanket that he was going to go into the bed-covering business.

“My dearest dame,” said he, “I shall have the honour of giving a name to the article that will make my fortune and carry down my name to all future ages. Let others devote themselves to making cloth to keep them warm by day; be it my business henceforth to manufacture only that which will keep folks warm by night.”

Leech went on to call for an annual Blanket Day, in which Bristol would celebrate Mr Blanket’s most excellent discover/invention.

Of course the whole idea of the blanket being invented here is just a particularly bovine bit of local nominative determinism. The idiot and famously unimaginative ancestors leaping to a ridiculous conclusion, eh?

Well, yes, probably. But not definitely …

The words ‘blanket’ and ‘blanchette’ (plus assorted other medieval spellings) had been in use for at least 150 years before Edmund Blanket’s time. The Blanket family themselves might have got their name from being makers of this cloth, just as medieval blacksmiths acquired the surname Smith, and bakers became Bakers.

If you look closely enough, the idea of woollen bed-coverings being invented, or at least popularised, by a Bristolian is not completely ridiculous. It might, just might, have happened.

Only it wasn’t Edmund Blanket who did it. It was Thomas Blanket, who was Edmund’s brother, or possibly his father. Or maybe his son.

Weaving was medieval Bristol’s main industry, underpinning most of the town’s seaborne trade. It was tightly regulated by the guilds and the corporation to maintain the quality of the finished cloth and protect the interests of the weavers and associated trades.

King Edward III (reigned 1327-1377) started to change all that. He wanted the vast English cloth industry to be more profitable, all the better to tax it to pay for his wars. He restricted the wearing and importation of foreign cloth and the export from England of raw wool. He encouraged Flemish weavers to settle in England in order to build up the cloth industry. Some of them came to Bristol; the Blankets may have been Flemish themselves, or they may have brought in some of these foreign weavers.

In the late 1330s, Thomas Blanket set up several looms at his property in Tucker Street, just south of the Bristol Bridge. He was effectively setting up a factory, employing weavers rather than working as a self-employed artisan. Presumably his weavers hadn’t had to serve long apprenticeships in the traditional manner. The guilds and the Corporation didn’t like this and tried to put a stop to it.

Immediately, however, word came back from the King saying that Blanket was not to be impeded in any way:

“The said Thomas and the others who have chosen to work and make cloths of this sort, and also the workmen, should be protected and defended from injuries and improper exactions on that account. Order you, that you permit the said Thomas and the others who are willing to make cloths of this kind to cause machines to be erected in their own houses at their choice for the weaving and making cloths of this kind … “

The direct personal support of the king means Blanket was no mere clothier, but a very significant figure. The Corporation got the message and hurriedly performed a u-turn, and Thomas Blanket was made a local official in 1340. Blanket’s importance and royal support would have made him a well-known figure.

We don’t really know how people slept in the 14th century. Most poor people probably slept on the floor (perhaps on straw), fully or partially clothed, though getting completely naked to sleep was often favoured where possible as it helped get rid of the lice which infested most of our ancestors’ bodies.

The more prosperous classes owned beds, and may have slept in linen sheets under animal skins. Woollen cloth, meanwhile, was expensive stuff, produced by artisans … Until ruthless entrepreneurs like Thomas Blanket came along.

Blanket’s industrial production methods, however small they were by modern standards, may well have gone some way towards making woollen bed-coverings more affordable and fashionable. It’s possible that they became known by the name of the family who were making them.

There’s another intriguing scrap of circumstantial evidence from Witney in Oxfordshire. Witney was famous in the 19th and 20th centuries as the centre of Britain’s blanket industry. Until the duvet came along, almost everyone in Britain went to sleep under Witney blankets. Two separate 19th century histories of Witney both credit the invention of the blanket to “Thomas Blanket” or “Thomas à Blanket” of Bristol. (Giles, J.A.; History of Witney (J.R. Smith, London, 1852) and Monk, W.J.; History of Witney (J. Knight, Witney, 1894))

The good folk of Witney would have no reason to credit the main source of their prosperity to a Bristolian unless there was a strong local legend there, too.

So then, in summary: Few people, if any slept under woollen blankets until they became affordable and/or fashionable. Thomas Blanket’s industrial production methods would certainly have brought down the price of woollen cloth. He was a minor celebrity who was known throughout the land, and he was credited with inventing blankets not just in Bristol, but in the Oxfordshire village where their manufacture would become the main local industry.

Nope, we can’t yet definitively prove a Bristolian named Blanket invented woollen bedclothes. But I don’t think there’s any definitive proof that he didn’t either.

1. Lose a bit of weight.

2. Get a bit more exercise.

3. Learn to play the trombone.

4. Research and write a history book that won’t make much money (possibly none at all) and which very few people will read.

5. Put fewer cigars in my mouth, or put the same number in, but set fire to fewer of them.

On second thoughts, I might pass on 3.

The best advice I ever heard to would-be writers goes like this:

Don’t do it. Unless you have to.

That’s resolution 4 in a nutshell. I’ve been thinking about this project for a while now. I know no publisher will want to pay much for it, if anything, and I know that when it comes out, in whatever form – it may be a self-publishing e-reader only job – no more than a few thousand people will read it. Many of them will be known to me personally. It’ll take two or three years to research and write. There’ll probably be a grand or two in costs for the research; a bunch of photocopying here, a journal subscription there. I’ll probably even have to pay for the launch party. You’re all invited; hope you don’t mind snacking on zbywoxlqurts and oskrapogis, but these east European meat product snacks from Lidl really are very competitively priced.

The upside? If I do this it’ll appease the angry wasp. The insect inside my skull that keeps nagging me to do this.

So there you go. Loads of time and effort for little reward. If it goes well it may earn some praise from people whose opinions I value, but praise don’t boil no cabbages.

Writing? Don’t do it. Unless you have to.

No, I’m not yet ready to reveal the nature of this project. I’m not bothered that anyone’s going to “steal” the idea for this history book, as there’s no real idea to steal. Just want to explore a few possible business models first. Hell, I might even come back to you via this here blog looking for some crowdsourced funding or summat. Give me £20 now and I’ll give you a signed copy and come round your house to do some ironing for you, sort of thing.

Who wants another oskrapogi?

In 1878, the  Bristol Tramways Company was trying to extend its network of horse-drawn tramcars into Clifton. A lot of the locals didn’t like it, fearing it would bring working men and their families up on Sundays and public holidays. This here letter appeared in the Bristol Mercury, October 17 1878.

TRAM-CARS TO CLIFTON!

 Sir – Is it not something terrible and most wicked that the disgusting tramway is to bring the nasty, low inhabitants of Bristol up to our sacred region?

We have nothing common of unclean amongst us at present. Poor people do not walk about our Clifton streets. We have no common people at all here. We have no maimed or aged beggars calling at our doors. We have even no vulgar dogs running about pell-mell. All is orderly and decent, for we lead our dogs by silken cords, and they are very, very proper.

And now here are those money-making plebeians of Bristol talking about running tramcars through our beautiful and lovely Clifton! I suppose those cars will be running up close to all our houses everywhere. I mean off the roadways up to our gates for fish and vegetable people to ask our servants to buy their goods. And these cars would come into our gardens and destroy our croquet lawns, and make all kinds of disagreeable disturbances. Why, I should not be surprised if they did not absolutely cut up the verdant meads or the Downs. And then, too, the people they would bring into this splendid suburb! Why is this to be? Why must the common people be allowed to walk here? They should stay in their own homes. They would feel more comfortable, surely, among their own houses and streets than here. The policemen should stop it.

Now, I hope our gentlemen in the Town Council will put a stop to the projected cars coming here. They must do so, or we shall go away to live in the quiet valleys of Westbury or Shirehampton. Nobody in Clifton would think of riding in a car! It is fearful to contemplate so mean a thing. Who is there who needs to ride in tramcars? Faugh! It is demoralising to speak of such a thing!

I hope my letter will be read by the Council, and that they will never allow the cars to come here.

Yours, in much sorrow,

NOBLESSE

Clifton, October 16th 1878

Every time the good burghers of Clifton object to any new development, or who, say, cause a struggling public house to lose its music licence, think of Noblesse, taking a rise out of them more than 130 years ago.

Meanwhile I’ve been going through lots of old stuff for Venue’s news review of 2011 and found this. They were looking for a national anthem for Bath earlier this year (see http://www.songforbath.co.uk/), but somehow I never got round to submitting it.

Oh, I’m only pulling your leg, Bath. It’s just a bit of fun. Honest.

Oh Bath! The jewel of Bath and North East Somerset

Jane Austen hated you (at least some have said)

But I love to be in Beau Nash’s party town

‘Cos when I’m with you I’ll never wear a frown.

Oh Bath I love your swinging nightlife best of all

Gonna shake my big ass at your  Literary Festival

And at the Theatre Royal I’ll get stuck into the melee

To see middle-aged luvvies who are famous from the tellee.

While your critics carp and chafe

That you’re middlebrow and safe

Snooty, menopausal and complacent

There’s nowhere else in Blighty

Where I’d rather take a high tea

Or be pampered in Spa waters phosphorascent.

Everything that’s in Bath is lovely, clean and gay

Except of course for Twerton, which we wish would go away

Be posh, or be bohemian, be arty, rich or crass

Be anything you like – just don’t be working class.

This is the Bath Preservation So-ci-ety (etc. Fade out).

Then you need Bristol-CON ’11.

It was always a bit odd that a place the size of Bristol didn’t have a proper con for years, but now, thanks to a huge amount of hard work by some very dedicated volunteers, we have one that’s not only entering its third year, but keeps getting bigger and better.

This year they’ve got a hugely impressive line-up of folks coming, including fantasy bestseller Juliet McKenna, yer classic sf artist Jim Burns, and Keith Blount, creator of Scrivener, the software specially designed for novel-writing. There’s loads more writers as well; John Meaney, Paul McAuley, Paul Cornell (whose many achievements include writing some recent Dr Who episodes and generally being the nicest man on the planet) and loads more.

I’ll be doing a turn as well, talking about some more local myths and urban legends, but don’t let that put you off.

That’s Bristol Con ’11, October 22, Ramada Hotel, Bristol. Details here.

Anyway, Downton Abbey. Brilliant, or what?

I expect it’s now fashionable in some circles to sneer at it, and at author Julian Fellowes’ egregious snobbery, and at how it depicts a somewhat over-idealised vision of noble nobility and servants who knew their place. Well maybe, but it’s more accurate than not in that it makes a halfway reasonable fist of depicting the attitudes and values both above and below stairs.

But only up to a point.

It’s probably a bit of a spectator sport to spot the inaccuracies and anomalies in it. Maybe there are TV aerials in some shots, or the contrail of a jet airliner in the sky.

Being a historical pedant, I’ve spotted a few. You really don’t want me to go on about the errors regarding WW1 military dress in the latest series. Let’s focus on a couple of other things instead.

1. Moustaches, lack of. In the early 20th century, around 50% of the adult male population of Britain had a ‘tache. Growing one was a manly man-type thing for a man to do. No evidence of this in Downton, or indeed any British-made costume drama set in that period made in the last two decades. The British moustache is now almost extinct whereas beards are merely on the endangered list. There should be whole academic papers on this, but I think it’s that somewhere along the line we started to associate moustaches with people being devious or untrustworthy. More research needed here.

2. Religion, lack of. It’s all well and fine to dress actors in period costume, but if you care about historical accuracy you have to dress them in period mindset as well.

(NB: There is no reason whatsoever why anyone *should* care about historical accuracy; costume drama’s just a bit of fun. Just don’t kid yourself it was “really like that”, is all.)

Period mindset means an overwhelming consensus for conventional Protestant Christian belief and observance. Most people attended church services regularly, almost all professed religious faith and for a very sizeable minority of the population religion was very important indeed, informing their everyday actions. There were also deep and very real divisions between individuals and groups along sectarian lines, the most basic being Anglican vs. Nonconformist. This stuff mattered a great deal to most people until really quite recently.

Costume drama scripts avoid this stuff, and with good reason. Modern audiences can’t relate to religious characters. Many of ‘em don’t even understand some of the basics of Christianity.

The erosion of religion in British public life is, as far as most of us would be concerned, a blessed and welcome thing, one of the great unspoken achievements of postwar society. But it wasn’t always like that and if Downton was really striving for accuracy, there’d be a shedload more God-bothering in it. And moustaches.

But there aren’t. But it really doesn’t matter.

Buses have two other advantages over cars. If the bus has a top deck you can see more. Double-decker buses are the best way to explore any place. Also, you can earwig other people’s private conversations.

So the other day I’m on a Bristol bus (First put their fares up every time I use the bus. Fortunately I am wealthy enough to afford the sort of fares they charge in Bristol, and can travel in style, not like those mere proles reduced to driving around in BMWs and Porsches) … I’m on the bus and close by are two men, one tall and thin, one tall and portly.

They’re both in their early 20s, and we’ll call them Portly and Thinny.

They’re chatting for ages about some online fantasy game, maybe WoW, giving it lots of recondite stuff about rules, technology and this environment they plainly spend a lot of time in.

The conversation moves on to Portly’s state-of-the-art new phone. Dead expensive, it was, but it can do all manner of amazing stuff. Cue more technical talk. He gets on to the subject of the phone’s camera, 8 gazillion megapixels, with automatic veeblefetzers and self-correcting spunduddle.

Portly shows Thinny some pictures he’s taken of his cat, whom we are given to understand is big and rather overweight.

Portly: “Yep, that sure is a lot of pussy.”

(Slight pause…)

Thinny: “We don’t know a lot of actual women, do we?”

This year, though, just for shits ‘n’ giggles I thought I’d make an unofficial Doors Open Day Google map. The big idea here is that close to most of the places open on DoD there’s something else which you might also want to go and have a look at. Usually something fairly trivial, but with a bit of a story to it.

(Heh! Did you see what I did there in the picture? I used a bit of the map with a rude word in to excite your curiosity!)

This is just me mucking about a bit. As per an earlier post, I’m collecting local stories and urban myths, and I’ve started putting them on another map (not for public consumption yet!) because, well, actually I’m not completely sure why …

Anyway, Venue’s Google Map for Doors Open Day is here.

Please note that it is not in any way endorsed by the proper Doors Open Day people, whose own website is here.

I’ve tried to make it as geographically precise as possible, and have added in whatever changes and additions to the Day’s programme that I’ve heard about.

You can use it from your web browser, or if you’d prefer it on the all-singing, all-dancing and frankly awesome Google Earth, click on the KML link towards the top left of your screen.

If you do happen to use it, either to plan your Doors Open Day from your home computer, or on the day from a mobile device or smartphone, mail to let me know how you get on, why don’t ya?

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

A similar argument was made about NASA’s space programmes back in the 1960s and 70s. Why are we spending all this money sending men to the moon, or to muck about in an orbital laboratory when half the world’s population goes hungry?

As if it was a straightforward choice between space and food.

The Apollo programme, particularly, mobilised vast amounts of money, creativity and ingenuity for a project which fired the imaginations of the whole world. No, we didn’t just get Teflon from it. We got a thousand other things, the most important of all of them being the sort of giant forwards technological leap you only usually get from a world war. Without Apollo, without what scientists and engineers learned about everything from materials to project management, we’d probably still be waiting for the internet and mobile phones. Big, imaginative technological projects make people want to build stuff.

And Concorde? Concorde was our Apollo programme. It attracted some of the best talent in Britain and France to solve innumerable technical problems no-one had ever faced before.

Its legacy was a huge fund of technical and scientific breakthroughs and know-how which stood Britain – and Bristol – in good stead ever since. This knowledge, in its turn, was founded on previous projects – Britannia, Brabazon, Blenheim and all the way back to the first Bristol aircraft so carefully ripped off from a French design.

That same powerhouse of know-how turned out down the years to be capable of also producing everything from temporary pre-fab houses which were still lived in 60 years later, to hugely successful spacecraft.

Bristol still has a successful aerospace industry. Anything which can survive three decades of government indifference to engineering in favour of allowing spivs to gamble other people’s money and calling it “wealth creation” isn’t just good, it’s the best in the world.

But BAe Systems’ announcement that they’re shutting down Filton Airfield next year means the slow death of Bristol’s aerospace with it, no matter what spin they come up with. The bean-counters have probably said there’s more money to be made by turning the runway into a housing development. (“Brabazon Close!” “Blenheim Avenue!” “Concorde Way!”)

But if you don’t have a bloody airfield, it stands to reason that sooner or later you don’t have a local aerospace industry. It’s that simple!

Until lately, this baleful development hasn’t caused much alarm in official circles. One suspects that letters and emails from constituents, as well as the Evening Post’s letters page, finally woke up a couple of somnolent politicians over the summer. So we’ve recently had statements from the Labour group Leader of BCC (calling on BAe Systems to re-think their plans as 30,000 jobs could be at stake) and from the leader of the LibDems on BCC calling on South Glos to make sure the area is used for job creation.

This, of course, is just ineffectual posturing by two politicians who know they’re powerless in the face of a powerful global company. These feeble efforts also (yet again) illustrate the insanity of a gerrymandered local government structure in which huge chunks of Bristol’s conurbation are run by neighbouring authorities, in this case South Gloucestershire. This cuts both ways of course; because most of the aerospace industry is actually in South Glos, it rarely enters the purview of Bristol council officials, even though it’s a hugely important part of the local economy.

The world needs engineering know-how now more than ever, and if Bristol really wants to be at the cutting edge of everything from aviation to wind and wave energy, you need things that soar, and you need to attract the brightest and best young talent. You need engineers, you need people who invent and make things that enable us to prosper. Or maybe just survive.

Because the alternative is that most of the brightest young minds you have, the ones with the firsts in physics and maths, end up going into the various forms of legalised theft known as “banking”.

The choice between a wrecked economy and soaring to the stars might seem  a no-brainer. Yet the decision turns in practice on little things like closing runways in order to build bunny-boxes.