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I’ve yet to become a Good Omens fan, but I *AM* a Jon Hamm fan, and he’s filming Good Omens in Edinburgh at the moment, so it would be remiss of me not to head over for a nosy after work and take a really bad, blurry photo, right?

Just by chance, I timed it well and after only half an hour of hanging about he appeared at the door of a bar I used to drink in as a student *very* many years ago, and was whisked down the street behind the crew’s secretive black umbrellas. But I walked down the other side of the street, and then suddenly there he was, crossing towards me to get into the very car I was standing next to. Almost lost an eye to the umbrellas, but I did at least get a pic.

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Quinn finally takes an honest look at his past - and his future. It's been a while but finally came back to finish this work!

The final chapter of my two-parter, Explosives and Diamonds/The Reckoning.

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So who else picked up some loot in the Homeland prop auction? Given where my fics have gone, I was kinda emotional to successfully bid for & take ownership of these... 😭

Am hoping that someone at @hellyeahomeland at least got a Carrie wig?

(And yup, Carrie fans, she’s in the photo stash too, sorry - stopped filming before that because I didn’t have Max there to give me a hug so thought I’d quit my reconstruction while I was ahead...)

Particularly touching was the label on the lot when it arrived ❤️

Around the time of the auction I got some paid script work out of the blue so I’ll admit I spent more than I probably should have. I also got THE SNUGGLY GROTTY HOODY!

Which came with the rest of the grotty early S06 ensemble (it doesn’t photograph well, but man, they really went to town on making that T filthy)

And means I am also, not entirely voluntarily, custodian of these horrors😂

Can’t bring myself to throw them away, but what DO I do with them? (The label hidden right away under the tongue is kind of cool tho)

And finally... our poor dude’s medical records. Which don’t tell us anything except that he was age unknown (Everything unknown! He’s a spy goddamit!) And finally gives us the chance to see what was purportedly going on inside that poor beleaguered head.

Would love to know what anyone else got, if there was anyone else out there with an exceptionally well-timed bit of extra cash and/or a rush of blood to the head at ebay closing time. Feels simultaneously really daft and really lovely to own these wee treasures ❤️

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NEW HOMELAND FIC🥳! Quinn & Max go on a high-stakes road trip in Explosives and Diamonds 💥💎 A new tale (in fact, two!) from the Shore AU.

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FINAL CHAPTER! Can't believe it's over, but here we are - the last chapter of my off-and-on Giving-Quinn-The-Ending-He-Deserved fic, just posted: Sunset on the Shore: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14504904/chapters/46630135#workskin Thanks to those still reading, really appreciate your company all the way along <3

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Almost drawing to a close now with this long, slow fic dive into Quinn’s post Homeland life - in a world where he secretly survived S6 and escaped to a new life with Julia and Johnny. Two more chapters yet to post, both lovely reflective ones taking a look at the lives these characters have ahead of them. Today’s offering opens up a whole new chapter of Quinn’s life, sees him discover a new place that he belongs, and embrace it with joy ❤️

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So sad that we’ve lost the wonderful Simon Ricketts - a beautiful writer and a joyful presence on Twitter, he’ll be greatly missed, even by those of us who only knew him virtually. Bang! Bang! Bang!

Banging out

When I was about 11 years old, I was excited to go on trip to London with my family. In particular, my grandfather, Samuel. He had worked at the Daily Telegraph as what they called a ‘revise’ and he’d done it for more than 40 years, with only the pesky Second World War getting in the way.

So we went to see him retire from the esteemed newspaper. To quite literally pick up his carriage clock. That day I spent at the Telegraph I was mesmerised. Mainly because, almost constantly, small torpedoes of plastic would scoot through pipes in the ceilings and walls and arrive with a hurried hiss in the revise room where I was stood.

Inside each little torpedo - I discovered - was a short paragraph of newspaper copy, needing to be checked for grammar, sense and accuracy. My grandad (and colleagues) would open one of those little squat cylinders, studiously pause, read the copy, mark the corrections as they saw fit and then send the little missives back into the pipes. Onto the next part of its journey. Which was mainly straight on to the pages of the newspaper to be perused over the next day’s boiled eggs and soldiers. Of course, as an 11-year-old boy, I was easily as entranced by the whooshing, hissing network of mystery as I was to what the point of it all was. All day, I was allowed to load up - and empty - those little pellets. (Grandad had long been whisked off to the pub). I was in heaven.

But I also grew gradually intrigued by the process of making a newspaper. The studied brows, the shouts back and forth, the inky smell and the clashing cacophony of type, metal and people that seemed to make the whole building resonate, to hum, to breathe.

The spoken language in the room was ripe, ribald and loud. But the written language on the scraps of paper in there - that was crafted. Meant. Deliberate. It was spelling meeting spartans. By the time Grandad rolled back from the pub like a matelot on his first day of shore leave, it was time for us all to go home. What happened next is where the die was cast.

We trooped through the building. Memory tells me that we went down into the bowels of the edifice. Wherever we were, it was getting noisier. A distant. rhythmic banging became a nearer, rhythmic banging. A nearer, rhythmic banging became a VERY CLOSE rhythmic banging. Then, we were going through a very warm, very loud room full of men clanging chunks of hot metal against any surface they could find. CLANG, CLANG, CLANG as Grandad shook some hands unsteadily, emotionally, and carried on his way. Claps on his back augmented the rhythm as we went. I found it all a bit overwhelming and, I fear, spent much of the walk with my hands over my ears, frowning in disdain at the din. Soon, we plopped out on to the pavement and into a waiting taxi. That was 'banging out’. That was Grandad being given the traditional print/newspaper farewell. It’s a raw, simple, noisy, almost brutal show of comradeship and affection that has stuck with me ever since. A banging out still moves me greatly. Even though they now happen in metal-free newsrooms, the smell more likely to be that of artisan coffee than ink, there is still something primal about them. A gathering of noise and energy. They make me think of the traditions of journalism, those that went before, the truth tellers, or at least the truth seekers. The late night shouts, the breaking information, the truly historic stories, the presses being stopped in a hurry, then started again with more urgency.

They make me think of Grandad, of course. And how, all those years back, the seeds of my love affair with news and newspapers were planted during that trip.

They also make me realise how grateful I am to this fantastically flawed industry for keeping me in beer and sandwiches all this time. But now my time has come to an end and I will be departing. Not just the newsroom, I’m sorry to say. My illness means I am leaving for good. This terminal cancer has lived up to its name and will be seeing me off very soon.

I will be leaving the building but I won’t have the carriage clock.

That’s something I can’t be happy about. What I can be happy about - what I can hope is – at some near time in some near place, even if it is inside your minds, some of you will have a little 'banging out’ ceremony for me. I’d like that. I’d really like that. If you do, then make it loud. Keep the noise up. Just for a little bit.

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Killing Eve & Homeland locations

So I’ve finally got around to starting to watch Killing Eve, and couldn’t help but notice that when Eve and Bill go to Berlin, the show filmed in and around Dar & Quinn’s Sandwich Park...

That’s a shot from Killing Eve, right by the *ahem* clinic. Check out the bridge in the background, the riverside park, the trees and the iron railings...

and here’s the park with our Killing Eve Chinese diplomat friend, right by those railings, facing back the other way.

And now here it is in Homeland, facing front again with Dar & Quinn settling in for their sandwich on the bench on the left.

And just for good measure, my own pic from my trip to Berlin in the summer.

That’s all!

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NEW FIC CHAPTER POSTED! The road to parental bliss is not smooth - there's a baby on the way, but it's time for a showdown between Julia and Quinn - he has to face his fears - and face the past.

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Latest chapter of Scenes from the Shore is up, with Quinn & Julia discovering they have a little Quinn Diaz on the way...

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Hunting down Homeland in Berlin

So I was just in Berlin - lucky as I am, I got to go for work, to cover the European Athletics Championships, and then tagged some holidays on the end.

I was joking with some HL pals about the fact the Berlin tourist industry lacks a Homeland tour - we thought there’d be a market for a “peer through this glass, looking grief-stricken, while your friend lies twitching on the other side” stop-off, and a souvenir shop selling “Cinder block and cable tie” sets.

It didn’t take too long before I started tripping over some of the big locations as I went about the city - first Hauptbahnhof -

Where I took the escalators but nobody thrust a phone in my hand and asked me to contact Saul, much to my regret -

and then there was Straße des 17 Juni with the Victory Column at the end -

I’d not really intended to look for any other spots, especially as I’ve not watched s5 for ages so wasn’t sure I’d recognise much. But I was curious enough to have a look online to see what there was, and found this brilliant article. Turned out I’d already been in and out of Hackescher Markt Bahnhof a few times, where Laura met Numan to pick up the memory stick of hacked files (I think?!) so the next time I went through, I snapped it -

And just around the corner was the During foundation, but meh, it was just a fancy office block so I won’t bore you with that one. This were only a block from the river, which set me wondering, and wandering - and sure enough, two  minutes’ walk away is what I now think of as Dar Sandwich Park, where our perforated hero went and met his handler to tell him he’d accidentally fallen in with a bunch of the CIA’s most wanted. Here it is then -

and now -

still looking much the same, tho missing the park benches, which I’m guessing HL brought along themselves - there were just a couple of cheap looking plank & metal benches. Wider view then -

and now -

I had a lie down on the grass where they’d had their talk, to rest my tourist-weary feet, and imagined I was listening in to a plot to foil international terrorism against the rattle of the S-Bahn.

A short walk south along the riverside and you reach Imma Jump In The River Now, I’ve Really Had Enough of This Shit Quay -

Then -

And now, in daylight, minus a hot spy with a hole in his middle -

I would never have known it was there without the article, as it’s basically under the bridge with no direct pedestrian access, but photographable and pretty unchanged.

Then I was trying to work out whether the next span of the bridge was Fuck It, Maybe I Just Climb In This Dumpster That Might Work Archway - here it is then...

and now...

I wasn’t sure it was the same spot, but when I looked carefully at the wall at the end, you could still just see the faint remains of the ‘e’ in the graffiti that Quinn staggered by.

So that pretty much confirmed it. Good graffiti-ing, Berliners.

And that was that!

I really enjoying spotting a few familiar places in between my touristing, was newly-amazed at the way location scouts/directors/actors manage to weave together different locations into a smooth whole. And I still had lots of time left over for being a normal sightsee-er and completely falling in love with the rest of Berlin, which is just the most wonderful city - go visit if you can.

And if you’re not into Berlin, I’ve just resumed ficcing over on Archive of Our Own, continuing my alternate happy ending for Quinn, where he goes off to find Julia and help her raise young Johnny…

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Scenes from the Shore: Chapter 2 - Being normal

Another fic chapter from me - Quinn reflects on the challenge of being normal... https://archiveofourown.org/works/14504904/chapters/33647712

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New fic from me...

Thought I might as well post some of the unpublished scenes from the ‘Shore’ AU that have been sitting on my comptuer for ages, so here’s a dose of father & son sweetness :) https://archiveofourown.org/works/14504904

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Apparently this account turned 1 today! What an emotional rollercoaster of a twelvemonth...

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My final fic for the @hellyeahomeland Advent Calendar - Carrie and Franny meet Quinn’s new family at Max’s Christmas wedding! Featuring: EVERYONE (almost) Festive feelgood fic with just a little heartstring tugging too (of course).

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Here’s my next fic for the @hellyeahomeland Advent Calendar! Back in the On the Shore of the Wide World AU, it’s Quinn and Julia’s ‘first’ date - and beyond…

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My first fic for the @hellyeahomeland Advent Calendar! Carrie and Quinn feel their way through the Christmas before s06. (Now actually posted after a brief hiatus when AO3 hid it as spam)