Nurse, The Screams! The One That Got Away.

When the body of a murdered nurse is found in the woods near Pembroke Dock in South Wales, it has all the hallmarks of a previous double murder case from twelve years ago. A case believed solved. A case where the killer, it is believed, is safely incarcerated.

Could it be the work of a copycat killer or was the original conviction incorrect/unsafe all along? In the contrived yet tense (and, ultimately, pretty bloody dark) police thriller The One That Got Away (BBC4/iPlayer, originally aired February of this year and an English language version of S4C's Cleddau, written by Catherine Treganna, directed by Sion Ifan) we're taken on an ever evolving journey into the investigation behind the most recent murder and the (unofficial) reinvestigation of the earlier murders.

It's quite a ride and watching it one vacillates regularly between believing a person innocent and believing them guilty. The original team of DI Ffion Lloyd (Elen Rhys) and DS Rick Sheldon (Richard Harrington) are reunited to work the case but they have their own history. They were once engaged but when Rick cheated on Ffion with his now wife, Helen (Rhian Blyth), Ffion moved away to Cardiff to work. Now she's back they have questions unanswered about the end of their relationship and Helen fears they have feelings and desires left unchecked too.

Will that get in the way of their police work? Will that cause problems in their personal lives? Have a guess. But first they have a case to solve. Abbi (Bethan McLean), the most recent murder victim, has been in an interesting relationship with gym bunny, and likely 'roid rager, Darrell (Rick Yale) and her ex Ryan (Gwydion Rhys), an amateur artist partial to a bit of nosebag, also comes under suspicion.

For perfectly understandable reasons. Yet when the original killer Paul Harvey's (Ian Puleston-Davies) wife Anna (Eiry Davies), who is dying of cancer, visits the police station she delivers a revelation that shifts the whole story on its axis. It won't be the final twist. Some of them I saw coming, some I most definitely did not and some of them were utterly chilling. More worthy of a horror than a police procedural.

There are a lot of questions need answering. What is Mel Owen's (Matthew Aubrey) story? A homeless man who drinks in the woods and is believed to be suffering from PTSD following active service in Afghanistan? Why are there heartknots at the murder scenes (and everywhere else)? Is Alex (Sule Rimi), one of the earlier victim's husbands hiding something? What is Rick and Helen's daughter Mati (Lily Williams) getting herself into?

Whatever it is it seems highly inadvisable. Ten minutes into The One That Got Away there's a lump in my throat and I'm emotionally invested and by the end of the first episode there's a chill up my back and it's one that will return plenty of times. I even felt the need to put the heating on in August and it's not that cold.

Six hours seems a bit long and there is a slight dip in the middle but great performances throughout (props also to William Thomas as Ffion's dementia suffering dad, Sion Alun Davies as his carer, Hannah Daniel as Ffion's sister, Sharon Morgan as her mum, Mali Ann Rees and Aled Pugh as two officers working the case with Ffion and Rick, and Ioan Hefin as DCI Alan Vaughan their boss) and a skilfully executed, labyrinthine plot made The One That Got Away a hugely engaging watch. It doesn't end how you might think.

Construction time again #7:Marina Tabassum and the Serpentine Pavilion

Yesterday it was my (almost) annual trip to check out the Serpentine Pavilion. Regular readers (as if they exist) of this blog will know by now that each year the Serpentine commission an architect that has never built in Britain before to construct a temporary summer pavilion by the Serpentine South Gallery in Kensington Gardens and this year it was the turn of Bangladesh's Marina Tabassum. 

Or, more strictly speaking, Marina Tabassum Associates. Tabassum has built houses, mosques, museums, and spas in Dhaka and elsewhere in Bangladesh but as far as I can see this is her first project outside of her home country. It's a good one too. Possibly more formal than you might expect but certainly practical and attractive.

Tabassum is interested in environmental degradation and is always keen to interact with local communities when building - although it's uncertain just how much discussion she had with the folks of South Kensington in this instance. She's called this pavilion A Capsule In Time because she's fascinated by how architects have, since the advent of architecture as a concept, grappled with the relationship between time and building.

It's also said to be inspired by the Bengal delta but not having been there I couldn't comment on that with any degree of authority whatsoever. Tabassum has built her pavilion so you can view the Serpentine South Gallery in all its fullness and possibly compare the two very different constructions. Again, time is a factor.

She's also placed a gingko tree in the middle of the pavilion and used bamboo in its construction as a kind of nod to the sort of work she's made in Bangladesh. There are books you can read, seats you can sit on around the edges, and a little coffee bar selling drinks and snacks.

I just took in the building, the gingko tree, and the views in on a rather pleasant sunny Sunday afternoon before heading to this year's supplementary pavilion just a few yards away. Sir Peter Cook's Play Pavilion is made in conjunction with Lego and looks like a giant version of the big yellow teapot kid's toy.

Except orange instead of yellow. It's garish and it's not for the architectural purists but I'm not sure it was intended for them anyway. It's for the kids and sure enough plenty of them were lining up to go in and to slide down the slide that protrudes from the pavilion. Some of the adults went down the slide too. But probably only the ones with kids.

I didn't hang around too long. Taking photos of what is essentially a children's playground is frowned upon these days. But it looked a fun building for kids young and old. I enjoyed the juxtaposition with Tabassum's more elegant structure. Lego 1 Bamboo 2. Next year it'd be good to get a small crowd to go so I can harvest your opinions on this annual edifice.

A Business Of Codes:Black Doves.

"I have no idea who I am .... and neither does anybody else" - Helen Webb

Shootings, stabbings, throat slittings, exploding Christmas decorations, and a threat to use a Nutribullet to turn someone into a smoothie. The London of Netflix's Black Doves (created and written by Joe Barton, directed by Lisa Gunning and Alex Gabassi) is certainly a more violent London than the one I recognise and live in.

Even if it is, in many other ways, very much the London I recognise and live in. Waterloo Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Leadenhall Market, Liberty's, Arnold Circus, The Coal Hole pub on The Strand, The Kings Arms on Roupell Street, and The Windmill Theatre in Soho. This is the London I live in and it's also the London that Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) lives in.

Helen Webb is a 'black dove'. A spy for hire. She's married to Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan), the Tory Secretary of State for Defence and has two young children in Jacqueline (Charlotte Rice-Foley) and Oli (Taylor Sullivan) with him. They live in a big posh house and to all the outside world appear to have a very nice life. 

But Wallace doesn't know that Helen is a spy and is, anyway, dealing with a big scandal involving the murder of a Chinese ambassador and the disappearance of the ambassador's daughter Kai-Ming (Isabella Wei). When Helen's boss, Reed (Sarah Lancashire), informs Helen of the murder of Helen's lover Jason (Andrew Koji) and two others (reporter Philip Bray (Thomas Coombes) and Maggie Jones (Hannah Khalique-Brown) who works in a jewellery shop) and tells Helen she herself is in danger it seems inevitable that that story and the story of the Chinese ambassador and his daughter will eventually come together.

Reed calls in 'triggerman' Sam Young (Ben Whishaw) to protect Helen and help her investigate Jason's murder but, of course, in the world of spies, nothing is ever as it first seems. Sam and Helen have some history but it's not initially clear what that history is. Why did Jason, Philip, and Maggie get killed? Who killed them? Will they stop there? What do CIA black arts operatives have to do with it all? And who are the Clark family? A criminal organisation so powerful that even the black doves don't seem to know about them. And the black doves know a lot about a lot of things. It's a business of codes.

In trying to answer all these questions Black Doves proves to be highly enjoyable, slick, and compelling yet also very far fetched and with a plot full of holes. It's best to ignore loose ends that don't tie up and sign up for a thrill ride and a story of murderous stepsisters, former SAS killers, Croydon drug dealers, gang hideouts in Peckham, false identities, Kent Brockman from The Simpsons, and a Brita water filter.

There are lots of great supporting performances. Omari Douglas as Sam's ex-lover Michael, Paapa Essiedu as contract killer Elmore Fitch, Gabrielle Creevy and Ella Lily-Hyland as comical killers Eleanor and Williams, Adeel Akhtar as the Prime Minister, Agnes O'Casey as Wallace Webb's secretary Dani, Kathryn Hunter as mob boss Lenny Lines, and Tracey Ullman as another gangland supremo. In fact hearing Tracey Ullman say the word 'cuntstruck' is worth the viewing time alone. You don't get that on a 7" single of Move Over Darling.

Netflix dropped the show last Christmas so, of course, the soundtrack is full of festive cheer courtesy of The Pogues, Mud, Eartha Kitt, Paul McCartney, East 17, The Ronettes, Slade, Wham!, and Johnny Cash (Raye chips in with a cover of Cher's Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) - can you see what they've done there? - over the end credits) and there are excellent levels of duplicity throughout which, depending on how your own family rock, may also speak to you of the festive season.

Some of the shoot ups look as if they've been stolen from computer games, many of the fight scenes could be ripped straight from Tarantino films, and the banter (often reminiscent of Martin McDonagh's In Bruges or the work of Harry and Jack Williams) is witty rather than outright hilarious. Apart from, perhaps, the line about somebody drinking as heavily as a "Russian submarine captain having a mental breakdown". I can see myself using that in the future.

I'm not sure I was ever emotionally invested in the story of black dove Helen Webb, triggerman Sam Young, Tory MP Wallace Webb, or the frosty jefe Reed but I binge watched Black Doves not just because there wasn't much else on but because it was tense and addictive. The characters didn't seem real, the story didn't seem real, and the action didn't seem real but the enjoyment and the thrill all felt pretty real and sometimes that's enough. As a door closes, a window opens.

Give Me Some Skin.

"Am I the happy loss? Will I still recoil when the skin is off" - The Cutter, Echo And The Bunnymen.

The cutter was one thing that artist Katie Taylor most certainly did not spare herself when she underwent a rather delicate sounding procedure and turned herself into art. Sort of. On Tuesday, I was at The Bell in Whitechapel with the London Fortean Society and I was both doing the door and operating the slideshow as the person/people who'd normally do that job were too 'squeamish' to attend Katie's 'An Unusually-Inked Artist' talk.

In truth there was nothing to worry about but it was certainly a rather unusual, niche, subject that Katie bought to our attention and which I shall try to relay to you as accurately as possible. Not having been able to make notes (too busy with my other 'jobs') and all that. 

Katie spoke a bit about her life as an artist and a little about the debate about what we do with human remains. If they should be exhibited even as scientific artefacts let alone art. We were only a few minutes in and she was already talking about the genocides in both Bosnia and Rwanda.

But her own story begins with weight gain. Katie found herself weighing in at more than nineteen stone and knocking at the door of twenty. She showed us a picture and yes she was big (hardly recognisable from the Sue Perkins lookalike she is now) but more clearly she looked very unhappy.

So she lost the weight. No gastric band, no fad diet, no Ozempic. Just the old fashioned, tried and tested, method of eating less and doing more exercise. This, however, had the side effect of leaving her with lots of yellowing dead skin. The slide of this, I was later informed, was the only one removed as it tends to cause people upset.

She arranged an operation to have this now excess skin removed as many have done and will continue to do so. But where Katie's story differs is that, being an artist and all that, she asked if she could keep her former skin once it'd been removed. It was hers after all. 

That's still an unusual thing to do. I've never heard of anyone asking to keep their old hair after a haircut or collecting all their old bogeys, and kids only keep teeth that come out so they can put them under their pillows for the tooth fairy. I wonder what the tooth fairy does with all those teeth. It doesn't bear thinking about.

Once Katie had checked with the hospital that she could keep her excess skin (they agreed to it but were surprised at the unusual request, as you might expect) she had a dilemma. They couldn't keep the skin overnight but Katie needed to stay in overnight. Her partner and grown up kids weren't up for collecting the skin but a friend was. Said friend took the skin back to Katie's place and shoved it in her fridge alongside the butter and cheese.

When Katie left hospital she came up with an idea of what she wanted to do with the excess skin. She wanted to turn it into leather but all of the male tanners she spoke to about performing this task were either disinterested or slightly repulsed. A female tanner, however, was curious and eager and set about slowly turning Katie Taylor's excess skin into leather.

 

And that very leather was in The Bell on Tuesday night. Katie inviting people in the break to go up and give it a touch (I opted for another drink at the bar instead). The skin looked like .... you guessed it, skin. There was even a belly button shaped and sized hole where they'd cut round her belly button. It wrapped nicely around a waist like a heavyweight boxing belt but there wasn't enough of it to make a jacket.

She thought about turning it into either a bag or a belt (a bit Ed Gein that) but decided she just wanted to keep it how it is and even had a tattoo she proudly showed off to celebrate the event. When asked if she'd sell it she claimed not for even a million pounds. Not for any money. It's part of her. Sometimes it sits in a bag in her front toom. Sometimes it travels on the bus with her in her bag.

When she goes she'll leave it to her seemingly disinterested kids but while she's here it's hers and it's staying hers. In our divisive age, the reporting of this led to her receiving loads of abuse but also lots of support. All of it, it seems, like water off a duck's back to an artist who has already undergone far bigger challenges in her life and now speaks about them to the likes of me.

Thanks to Dewi, Jade, David, Tim, Veronica, and Vyvy for joining me, thanks to The Bell and the London Fortean Society for hosting, and thanks to Katie Taylor for an evening I won't forget in a hurry. Katie Taylor is one person not only comfortable with the skin she's in. But comfortable with the skin she is no longer in.

Read It In Books:Coming Up For Air.

"He's dead but he won't lie down" - Gracie Fields

George Bowling, 45 and overweight, knows that war is coming and he fears it. He fears modernity too. He fears much. So he spends most of his time living in the past. Thinking of what life was like when he was a child. He doesn't seem a happy man but then he doesn't, particularly, seem an unhappy man. He seems an unlikely person to base a novel around.

In George Orwell's 1939 novel Coming Up For Air we're introduced to Bowling at a crucial point, a crisis point, in his life. He's getting fed up with family life. His wife Hilda and kids (Lorna, 11, and 7 year old Billy) just seem to annoy him, he lives in an ordinary house in anonymous suburbia (which, for some reason, made me think of Radiohead's Street Spirit and also No Surprises), and he's just got some new false teeth.

He constantly rakes over the past. In fact he does nearly as much remembering as one of Peter Kay's mediocre, and increasingly irritating, comedy routines. If he's not remembering the price of sweets when he was a kid, he's remembering the time someone he knew stole some turnips. If he's not remembering when it was two pence for a pint of beer he's remembering the time he went fishing and caught a stickleback. And if he's not remembering any of that he's remembering playing conkers and masturbating as a school boy. Not at the same time though.

More then anything though he seems to like remembering the very few times he went fishing. Catching a cod to George Bowling is better than any woman. His incessant obsession with the past reminded me of a guy I used to know called Denim Nick (he rocked the double denim look at the time it was considered terminally uncool). Denim Nick's catchphrase was "it's not as good as it used to be". George Bowling lives that catchphrase.

Both the book and George Bowling's life become far more interesting when war arrives. Initially, World War I but later World War II (or at least the threat/inevitability of it). The war(s) change Bowling's status, change his life, and change his perspective. His observations become both more acute and a lot drier. He starts to understand class distinctions and how they're not so simple as upper/middle/lower. He can see how things people have believed to be certain and still for years have been, or will be, uprooted. When he visits his friend Porteous, a man who believes nothing of worth has happened since the fall of the Roman Empire, he marvels at how Porteous is not the only one not to worry about the danger of Hitler and the Nazis.

But he also sees how those who oppose fascism are creating their own rules and their own form of hatred. At times like this it's hard to distinguish between George Bowling the fictional character and George Orwell the author. Not much at all actually happens in the story. Bowling thinks about the past, speculates about the future, and goes for a few days away which he lies to his wife about.

Orwell/Bowling considers such questions as how it feels to have a soapy neck ("rotten" and "sticky all over"), how people murdering each other in Spain and China is "as usual", and what it means to live in suburbia where the houses are "a line of semi-detached torture chambers", "a prison with all the cells in a row", and yet comes to no firm conclusions.

The first person stream of consciousness narrative reminded me of J.D.Salinger's Catcher In The Rye (written over a decade later, it's not inconceivable at all that Orwell was an influence on Salinger) and some of the observations that Orwell/Bowling make seem like prototype ideas for a future manosphere. Killing things is as close to poetry as a boy can get and no woman could ever understand how great it feels to be a man. Elsewhere, and as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell fetishises the proles who he sees as free.

Or is that Bowling? A book that starts off seeming to be about George Bowling ends up slowly morphing into one about George Orwell himself and it's all the more interesting for that. The first half wasn't particularly interesting but the second half was a very good read, full of Orwell's precise, accurate, and funny observations. It's not his best book (that's a bloody high bar) but it's well worth a read.