That's a crop from a brochure produced for the current redevelopment; officially begun in 2012 but wouldn't have opened this year even without the virus.
I cranked out 1,400 words of the Battersea Power Station excursion yesterday. Add 1,700 words for the UXB scene and that's a good weekend's work. Feels nice. I was still hot and feeling drained today -- I'm hoping it isn't mild/asymptomatic virus because I haven't been self-quarantining. But I'm hoping to get through the scene with the death-defying abseil stunt.
I do need a light rewrite or two. The "animals" is still happening on the coaling jetty but the framing is different. And it is so good to finally meet Guy (the closest thing I have to a pure antagonist in this book).
Just for my peace of mind, nobody on the Battersea hack has a regional dialect. Or an unusual way of speaking, even. There's only four of them and they are never coming back and Cynth is doing most of the talking anyhow so I am fine with just having a bunch of dialog tags here.
And the luck for this evening: I decided I really wanted to know which was Station A and which Station B. It took a bit of searching -- search results clogged up with far too many articles about the various redevelopment schemes -- but the one I finally found gave me the older Station on the West. And since the infiltration starts from the East, that means they will have to cross No-Man's Land (and, yes, real urban explorers gave it that name).
***
The thing that's worrying me more is, yes, that is a real redevelopment. A consortium of Malaysian developers, and several big names signed on for shop space and office space, including Apple Computers.
The big word around trademark questions is "Don't mess with the mouse." Well, I'm not sure I'd want to mess with Apple, either. Charlie Stross did, though. He had his character talk about "the cult of Jobs" in one book, and blame "a level-III glamour" on his purchase of what he identified in narrative as a Jesus-Phone. Which he booby-trapped, leading to a bad guy being magic-enhanced electrocuted by the ear buds, dancing in place with the wires white-hot before turning into a blackened corpse.
But then, Stross can afford lawyers.
My current rule of thumb is, if I am going to mention a real business it should be treated neutrally at worst. In fact, I just edited a line I had written about the fish & chips you can buy in the museum cafe at IWM London; from "They weren't good," to "They were better than I'd expected." Okay, honestly, museum food? Despite that particular cafe going out of its way to strive for and claim a higher standard. But it didn't harm the scene for the chips to be actually good.
The point is, during the Battersea hack I'm going to be saying some mean things about SP Setia and Sime Darby. And this is where I have to fall back on the second line of defense; it ain't libel if it's true. There should be a certain protection for opinion of characters and author, especially if it falls well within what a review or opinion piece might say.
Yeah, great time to realize that. The London Field School, the Lambeth Larks, two pubs, several shops and a few social clubs are all fictional. However, I'm also not just mentioning, but actually doing things in or with Transport for London, Crossrail, the Northern Line Extension, IWM London, The New Globe Theatre, the Trafalgar art project, Bradgate Park, the University of Leicester, The Foundry, The India Club, Potter's Field, Highgate Cemetery, Doctor Who, James Bond, Time Team, Detectorists, Dad's Army...
And Battersea Power Station.
I guess this is another bright line problem. Parts of this are historical fiction. Sure, the Nine Elms Shelter is fictional, but I am staying within what is reasonable for the place and time and I am very much getting the details right about the "ladder" shelter at Kennington Park or the Balham Station disaster.
And it is in part still travel fiction, so yes Trafalgar Square and the Tower of London and Black Cabs and, yes, fish & chips should be right.
So it just feels weird and wrong to have events suddenly happening at Chelsea Power Station and The Museum of the War and Bushby-on-Thames and The Wooden O, just because I might have a sword fight happen on the premises or say something mean about the fish & chips.
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