Mixed Batteries

I just finished reading another of the Rivers of London series of extremely-urban fantasy. This one had a lot more in South London and in various underground locations and it was neat being able to figure out more-or-less where the characters were. (Having been reading a lot about those locations).

They are good popcorn reads and if they weren't ten bucks each on Kindle plus the time to read them I'd be shoveling them in. This one in particular I was conscious of reading it in three minds.

One was just enjoying the story. Another was taking notes. And the third was watching the craft.

On the notes; happily for me, they visit the New Covent Garden Market, and he describes the (early days of) construction in the Battersea area. (Among the small notes I took is that Aaronovitch chooses "Portacabin" over "Portakabin" -- the latter being the original trademark, the former a slightly more common usage as a generic for those construction site office trailers).

I didn't learn anything I'm going to use out of his various descriptions of the Underground, including one of the Deep Shelters, but it was nice to see the name-drops of everything from Bazalgette to the Ghost Train. And, yes, there were places where I could tell he'd re-arranged things for dramatic purposes.

Now, I don't know if Ben was writing for a general audience or if he simply wrote for the UK audience and trusted that those across the pond who wanted to try would make the effort. There is a lot of UK slang in here, and London geography is presented constantly in a form that would make a Black Cab driver take notice. Bits like commenting "Nobody takes the Vauxhall Bridge in the morning unless they are working at MI6."

And it isn't strictly a style choice; police slang, he explains. So he is trusting his audience to either know or to make the effort to figure out the rest.

***

My big accomplishment yesterday was to go through a whole bunch of scattered references and try to stick highlights into a relative chronology:

22 July 1940 LDV renamed the Home Guard
Aug 1940 the “Invasion List” circulated
the London Blitz 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941. 
It is described that heavy raids were on 7 and 8 September with heavy crowding. The 7th struck the East End hard.
8th September East Enders forced their way into the Liverpool station.
By the end of September 79 underground stations were in use.
The Occupy Savoy took place in 14 September 1940
14 Oct 1940 Balham station flooding 20:02 
Evening of Oct 15, 1940 was Kennington Park disaster. 
Mid-late October “it was decided” to build the deep-level shelters.
Construction began 27 Nov 1940. No new stations were begun after mid 1941, and everything but Oval (and two others) were finished by 1942
By the end of 1940 the situation in the tube was settled and comfortable with stoves, sanitary facilities, food services.
14 November Coventry bombing
In Nov 1940 Brandt was publishing his pictures, and there was extensive journalism into the shelters.

So turns out the mobilization is lagging well behind the bombing and the shelters, meaning my Blitz Diary will run through '41, quite possibly into early '42. Which means I don't get to do the Blevin's Boys, or V1/V2s. Well, not in the diary, at any rate.

And, yes, those are just bookmarks to the research. I remember enough of the Kennington Park collapse that I can put a mention in, then flesh it out from my collected research and resources (I have an entire pdf on just that one).

Sigh. Podcasts, I can do while working or walking. Videos, I can do while eating. Finding time to read is tough. I have so many books I would feel better if I had read.

But then, I'm not writing history, exactly. The diary is going to take up no more than 5K out of the target 70-75K page count. Which according to my current outline and estimates I will probably hit even without it. I would love to keep reading those books and write the entire story of "Linnet," from Battersea bookshop to overseas with the SOE. But that's a different story. And quite possibly a different me.

Instead I'm aiming at finishing this one as quickly as I can. I don't have much hope of finishing this month, though. These are the second-hardest chapters (the opening being the hardest). This is where I try to build the arcs and weave the themes. This is where it stops being "London is weird" and turns into living there. And this is where Penny's story becomes once again an Athena Fox story.