Make Burgers Great Again

We used to call them beefburgers, on the very sensible basis that they are made of beef. As we have fought against transatlantic currents this has been shortened to simply burgers. Burger is short, to the point and crucially doesn't need bother you with its content. This is fine, and I have no problem with this linguistic shift. What I do have a problem with is the shift in proportions of said burger.

Burgers are essentially sandwiches. This makes even more sense when considering sandwiches outside of the relatively spartan prepacked meal deals of the UK. Burgers are substantial sandwiches, but fundamentally they are still meant to be eaten with your hands. Now, I know this isn't a particularly original observation, but at some point burgers went from a squat shape to a tall one that no longer fits in my mouth. This is something that perennially irks me. Why does it need to be so big? The ratio of height to diameter of some is now so large that it's almost a good eating strategy to skewer it through the centre of the buns and gnaw at it like corn on the cob. Inevitably I resort to pressing it down in an attempt to flatten it, removing slippery tomatoes or slicing it into more manageable chunks. Ultimately however I end up with grease everywhere and cheese stuck to my chin. There is little dignity in the process.

For some of you, this may not seem like much of a big deal. In fact some people may even enjoy the messiness of the process. If this is you, then I have good news - very soon your entire digital experience will be one gigantic, misshapen calamity that you will be incapable of handling without getting mess everywhere.

I've complained about AI and enshittification before. This is definitely part of the problem, but it's dangerously lazy to think that the worst will be done by AI being sloppy. The absolute worst will be done by people using it well. These people will be those who want to make money from you, and they will come at you from both ends of the law. At the one end, which currently drifts in a haze of legal possibilities, is privacy at scale. The zettabytes of data that now links us all in in a global network is ripe for exploitation. The boundary of that exploitation is constantly shifting, but as more wealth and power transfers to the tech giants, its direction of travel is a weakening of data protection in its most absolute sense. Exceptions are made, and with them our sense of what is normal shifts. When Facebook first introduced facial recognition there was a backlash of concern over privacy. However since then Google Glass has been and gone with less fuss, police forces routinely use facial recognition in western democracies and Ring have announced it as a new feature for their doorbell cameras. The latter is significant. The ubiquitous doorbells have enrolled large swathes of society into surveillance culture, to the point at which facial recognition has become an acceptable convenience.

So who cares if they're being recorded and maybe even recognised as they walk past someone's house? Aren't we all being recorded everywhere already? Absolutely, yes, we are. In most urban environments the major modes of video surveillance are traffic cameras, street-facing security cameras and internal security cameras in businesses and homes. Some of these are more secure than others, either by accident or design. It is theoretically possible to track your movement all day long by using these. What generally stops this being a real concern unless you have _really_ pissed off the authorities, is that all these systems are separate. It would take a team of skilled people to track you across such a network. Government agencies, with access to more private data such as interactions with contactless payment devices and so on stand a better chance of success. So why worry if you haven't done anything the government would be interested in?

Well, step in our old chum AI. The bottleneck that has been preventing the real-time surveillance of individuals is the greater than real-time required to process the colossal amount of data available at any one time. Chomping though this sort of data is something that AI is very good at however. It can easily (for some values of easy) compile details of a person's activities by collating video data matched by facial recognition and non-video data matched by location.

Again, you may think this is nothing to worry about. Why would people with such technology be interested in you? 

The problem at this point is that it will no longer be just the authorities that can do this. Other actors with different ambitions will seize the opportunity. We already see this in action through older technology. Cold callers talk pensioners into investing into a scam. Phishers trick you into clicking on the wrong link. Some of the latter can be hard to spot if you're not paying attention, especially on a phone, which is where most of our online interactions are right now. Can you trust that the person who sent you the link hasn't been hacked or spoofed? You're internet savvy, you can figure this out. But then, while you're trying to work out whether to click on said link, you get a facetime from your sister. Her car has broken down again and she can't pay for the repair. Your phone doesn't recognise the contact but that is barely noticeable. You recognise your own sister. So does your phone - it helpfully tags her onscreen. Besides, the last few Facebook posts you'd seen from her had been griping about how her car was on its last legs. And you can afford to lend her the money after that #cheltenham win. Just click the convenient link she's provided and give it no further thought.

It's an audacious scam, but one which will be automated. It will be automated at some point in the near future, but it will mostly operate in the past. This isn't a time-travel conundrum. It's the other part of the AI surveillance puzzle, which is our collective internet history.

Interacting with the internet is rarely completely anonymous, especially if you spend any time in some form of public space, be that a publicly available website or social media platform. You have a history, and unlike your browser history, flushing it is not a one-click operation. It's all out there for anyone to find. Again, in the recent past this was not necessarily a problem unless you attracted a determined stalker. But here comes AI again, with its tireless ability to search and collate information. It can work through social networks and the wider internet, discovering trusted connections between people, be they family or friends. Furthermore it can use their conversations to work out which connections are most easily exploited - it can see your sister complaining about her car. It has seen you boast about your winning bet on the horses. That is the tricky part, and will be played like traditional email spam, as an overwhelming numbers game where they just need a few bites to make it worthwhile. The easy part is the part that used to be hard. With a trail of photos and videos behind you both, it will be trivial for the same AI agent that targeted you to create a live simulation of your sister. It will look and sound like her. It will know her history from her online history and use that to engage with you and keep you on the parameters it has been tasked with keeping you on until you transfer the money. It can even use the previously mentioned public and unsecured cameras with facial recognition to track you both so it can work out the most opportune moment to initiate the scam.

I don't know the answer to this. I have a nagging urge to erase my internet presence completely, but (a) the internet is kind of home at this point and (b) I'm not convinced it's possible. So maybe I can solve the burger problem instead. Is it fundamentally about keeping a low profile? I'm not sure, but in the interests of fending off attention from future malignant AI agents, I find them all too expensive for what they are.

I'm Going to Write a Bestseller

To date I have self-published one novel (Dead Penguins, still available via Amazon), written a second and third that I haven't published yet, and am in the final stages of editing a fourth. The first would stretch the definition of the word seller, leaving bestseller a distant fantasy. Of the others, who knows? However I wrote them before I stumbled upon the formula for writing a guaranteed bestseller. You can write one too by following my meticulously researched guide, available as a PDF upon payment of, let's not be greedy, £20. 

I kid of course. Social media is littered with such schemes, mostly spearheaded by unscrupulous people whose real skill is getting suckers to part with their money. On the modern internet, it seems everyone's in it for a quick buck, and the corner frequented by writers is no exception. DMs purporting to be friendly exchanges rapidly turn into an attempt to sell you a service or product. More often than not these days it isn't even a person contacting you, but a sketchy AI bot operating on a sketchy person's behalf. It can be quite demoralising. 

But take heart! It isn't all bad. I really do have a guide to writing a bestseller, and furthermore I am presenting it right here, for free. You're welcome. There is one small catch however, which some of you may have already spotted. That's right, I have not actually published a bestselling book yet. This is a minor detail, especially since you are getting this low-down for exactly zero of your hard-won pounds / dollars / groats. 

THE FIRST CHAPTER IS THE MOST IMPORTANT 

Readers don't have time to waste working out whether your novel is worth reading. You have to sock them in the chops with a massive metaphorical fish in not just the first chapter, but the first page. Specifically, slush pile readers and agents don't have time to read much beyond the start so it's essential that your book should be what is known in the trade as 'unputdownable'. Don't attempt to achieve this by putting superglue on the cover, I tried it and subsequently couldn't get the book out of its envelope. 

You should hit the ground running in the first chapter. Consider how much introduction the characters and plot really need. If it takes time to get a scene in motion, start halfway through it. Maybe start with chapter two instead. Why is your book so long anyway? Who really needs the first half? Start the story halfway through. Better yet, start at the end and work your way backwards. Non-linear storytelling is hot and you can edit by constantly rearranging the order of the chapters until it makes sense. 

THE FOURTH CHAPTER IS ALSO IMPORTANT 

This depends on how long your chapters are, but you will expend so much time and effort getting the first three positively crackling with energy that you will inevitably take your foot off the accelerator and let the whole thing kind of coast for a while. This is bad. This is where you have not just given yourself a break - you have given your reader a break too. There is a very real chance that they will not resume reading after they have been to the loo or gone to the pub or done whatever it is you imagine your imaginary readers do. 

The accelerator analogy is apt. Your book should be like the film Speed (but not Speed 2. See later point about boats) in that you want your reader to think they might die if they stop reading it. Do not take this literary advice literally by writing the fourth chapter in the second person and telling your readers that the cover is coated in a highly toxic substance. This would most likely send them first to the hospital and then, in my experience, the police. Instead, write something exciting, or at the very least make it interesting. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but you'd be amazed how many books have seemingly been written without bearing it in mind. 

YOUR BOOK IS NOT A BOAT 

This section exists mainly as a callback to an earlier cheap gag. That said, your book is not a boat, it's a book. Hang on though - a book that is also a boat could be a popular novelty for people who like to read in the bath. Right, I'm claiming dibs on this idea, so don't get any notions about making a book with an inflatable cover or shaped like a fish. Although on second thoughts you can have the fish idea. That's a whole other thing that I don't want to get into. 

THE PLOT SHOULD BE WATERTIGHT 

I know I've just said your book is not a boat, but it should go without saying that the plot needs to be watertight. While some of your readers may not notice the more subtle plot holes, they still run the risk of sinking the whole business. Look, okay - maybe your book is a bit like a boat after all. 

Test readers are good for spotting flaws in the plot, but ideally you want to deal with them at the planning stage. If you make up the plot as you write, then well done, but you will need to keep your eye on the plot as you go. In either case, you will also want to be careful when editing, because a change of order here, an embellishment there and deletions everywhere can leave the reader without crucial context to make sense of your story. Writing an outline helps, but ultimately the only defence is careful reading of your manuscript, considering what the reader and the characters know at every turn. If you do miss something that is later picked up by readers, there is a potential way out. Simply bluff that you wrote it that way because the ambiguity makes it interesting. In the film world this technique has worked well for Ridley Scott in his recuts of Blade Runner which everyone agrees added ambiguity despite the suggested reading making absolute nonsense of much of the plot. 

MAKE A SACRIFICE TO THE ELDER GODS 

The UK bookselling world is dominated by Amazon and Waterstones. You could try appealing to them but you are less than an insect on an elephant's back to them. Instead you should appeal to the elder gods. Now almost forgotten, they will hear you much more clearly. Before anyone contacts the police or the RSPCA, I'm not advocating the sacrifice of anything living. Instead it should be something totemic, such as a library card or book token. Place them upon a makeshift altar, douse them in petrol and set fire to them while incanting a prayer to WH Smith. 

WRITE ENGAGING CHARACTERS 

This may sound a bit similar to the advice about writing something exciting, but there is something more specific about characters. Market research shows that people enjoy characters that they can see themselves in, so try to think about what sort of character your readers would see themselves in. Resist the urge to make the protagonist a wealthy person who spends all their money buying your books because that could get weird and recursive. 

There's an old canard about authors basing their characters on people they know. This is of course a terribly embarrassing thing to do, and you should avoid it by basing your characters on people you don't know instead. These tend to be famous people, and as such, the mettle of the personalities has already been tested in the public arena. Alternatively you could devise a character from scratch, but unless you name the derivative one Captain Lames T Berk, I doubt anyone would notice. 

INCLUDE THESE ELEMENTS IN YOUR BOOK 

Finally, a paper cut from the bleeding edge of modern fiction. I have had a large language model analyse the synopses of the last five years of bestsellers, and had it use that to predict what's going to be hot in the next couple of years. So here, in no particular order (it didn't want to order them no matter how much I begged) is a list of themes, subjects, settings, etc. that will boost your chances of success: 

• The seasonal change from autumn into winter

• Foxes

• The number 23

• Exactly five bananas

• The internet as an allegory for religious doubt

• Seismometers

• The dollar price of a barrel of oil in 1972

• Wealth in a post-capitalist society

• Cat videos as blank verse

• The last TV programme

• Fridge magnets in a world with no fridges

• Frank Muir: Lust for Glory

• Geiger counters

• Gerhard Richter keeps getting the same number

• Tech billionaire is sad

• Kidderminster

• People who work from home and never see anyone

• International espionage via internet-enabled fridges

• The price of a Tesco meal deal vs the number of people dating via apps

• Talking dogs

• Sweatshops in the UK

• Your dustbin has reported you to the council

• What would Garfield do?

• Nailing the front door shut from the inside

• Telepathic fish

Page Turner

(Excerpt from How to Publish a Book by Timothy L. Marx, 1928)

My so-called chums at the club have been getting rather snippy about our friend Cuthers lately. Asking how his latest novel is coming along, and whether it's been translated into English yet, that sort of barbed cajolation. It's water off a slow duck's back to Cuthers of course. The man could withstand a full verbal assault of his mental faculties and remain cheerfully aloof. If only I were the same. Since I have effectively become his literary agent, I take these slights against his admittedly also slight talents deeply personally. Something would have to be done about the situation before I responded in a way that would get me censured by the club.

On leaving one evening under a considerably pregnant cloud, I strode down Wardour Street at a pace that only a man propelled by his own furious disappointment can fully maintain. This was certainly true in my case, as I ran out of steam turning the corner into Brewer Street, whereupon I paused to collect myself. On a nearby wall a poster was picked out by the streetlight. It was advertising a public reading of Conan-Doyle's Sherlock stories. I groaned with such gravity that a passing lady, who I recognised as a regular around those parts, cackled at my misfortune in a way that unsettled the gentleman who was escorting her. It was then my turn to be amused as she turned up her feminine charm before he made his escape, leaving their transaction incomplete.

Conan-Doyle had caused me some recent headaches, but returning to the fly poster, I saw that it wasn't the great writer himself doing the reading. It was someone I'd never heard of before. I don't recall the name exactly, but the fact I didn't recognise it got the old brainbox beating a happier drum. What if I got Cuthers to do a public reading? Not of his own work of course, that doggerel won't stand up to the public scrutiny of an auditorium. However it seemed that Sherlock Holmes was fair game. I could coach him into reading some Sherlock Holmes tales, then flog his knock-offs to the audience afterwards. I was so delighted with this revelation that I winked at the poster before wending my way home.

Persuading Cuthers was surprisingly easy. In retrospect I had vastly under-estimated his ego, and there was no question that he would want to undertake a public reading, even if it were somebody else's text. At the time of course I was merely delighted that he was so agreeable to the idea, and quickly arranged the use of a room upstairs in a pub in Fitzrovia. This may seem small given my prior mention of auditoria, but I thought it best to start small, given how badly wrong schemes involving Cuthers had gone before.

I should not have worried. The reading went well. Cuthers proved to be an engaging reader, and perhaps this is his best role, acting as a conduit between a genuinely talented author and a willing audience. In a way he was pipe in a plumber’s scheme, and to my delight I managed to route some money through that pipe. The audience was modest, but I sold a few copies of Cuthers' books. With each one, I was anticipating larger future audiences and greater profits.

My plan went swimmingly at first. The bookings increased, as did the books sold. The possibility of breaking even on this whole ridiculous enterprise was tantalisingly close. Then, alas, I booked him in at a small theatre in Islington that I am forbidden to name by legal agreement.

The crux of the problem was one of projection. According to Cuthers, reading from a book in front of a small audience in a relatively small room was fine because everyone could hear him clearly enough, even when he was also occupied with the whole business of turning the pages of said book. He further explained that he had been to see a classical pianist perform recently, and he had someone sitting behind him who turned over the sheets of music for him. That, he said, would be appreciated in an oratory scenario such as that we were about to enter.

I was in two minds about this. My most immediate thought was that I wasn't going to pay someone to turn the pages of a book for him. The second was that the premise was ridiculous. For pianists, changing pages of the score takes a hand away from the keyboard, whereas when reading aloud, no hands are required. I put this to him and after a worrisome period of mental digestion Cuthers agreed that he could in fact read and turn pages at the same time in a larger venue.

The argument settled, I introduced him on stage then left to set up my bookstall at the rear of the theatre. I was only as far as spreading an attractive silk sheet over a trestle table when it became apparent that my star had become frozen in the limelight. I hurried along stage left to reach a position where I could anonymously hiss at him from the wing.

He held the book against his face to hide the words he mouthed at me. Apparently he didn't think he could project his voice far enough with a book held in front of him. Ideally, he explained, the words would be projected nearby, somewhere in front of him so that he could read them without the distraction of the physical book. I told him he was talking absolute kedgeree and fiddle-poke. There was no way I could devise such a contraption in time for the reading, which I reminded him was supposed to be happening at that very instant. He should just get on with it. We could discuss improvements afterwards.

He was adamant, and the crowd was becoming restless. I weighed the important considerations, such as how many books I needed to pay for the hire of the theatre, and relented. I magnanimously emerged from the wings to take up the offer of page turner. I make no bones about it being beneath me, as my main thoughts were with getting out of there financially ahead. Had Cuthers played me? I cannot say, as matters become even murkier when he accidentally chinned me while handing me the book.

What happened next is unclear. Cuthers excuse is that I had snatched the book from him in a very agitated manner, and caught off-guard, he hadn't immediately released his grip. The consequence of this was that I punched myself in the face with the hand clutching said book. The less clear turn of events is what followed the punch. I regard myself a gentleman, so the reports of my stripping down to my waist and demanding settlement by the Queensbury rules is both unthinkable and also likely, in that order.

How I Used AI to Rob my Neighbours

I know I bang on about large language models and AI a lot, but it does seem inescapable at the moment. While I gladly use it in my day job as a software engineer, I am wary of using it for artistic purposes. Aside from issues with its quality, the ethics of it bother me. It is taking the livelihoods of people whose aggregated work it has effectively stolen while being trained. Another more pragmatic part of me however wonders whether I couldn't find some use for it despite these objections. Could I use it to create promotional videos for a book, perhaps? I don't have the budget to actually pay a professional, so nobody's missing out on any work.

I am aware that I made the same arguments when file-sharing first took off. It wasn't like I could have afforded all those Metallica albums. It's a morally slippery slope and one which at the time I had merrily slalomed my way down with considerable enthusiasm. My ethics can be sent packing by the flimsiest of temptations, it seems.

So, with that objection cheerfully waived, it didn't take long to get from using AI to create cheesy videos to using it to steal my neighbours' post.

I should give some background information. I live in a block of flats, and there are frequent deliveries of parcels to the building from Amazon et al. There is no concierge, so parcels are often left in the lobby. They are sometimes left outside our flats' doors, which may seem more secure. However parcels delivered to either location are frequently stolen. We don't know who is stealing them. It could be someone tailgating the delivery people. It could be people getting in via the car park, the door to which is often broken. It may not even be one person. This is where my opportunity lay. The best place to hide a needle isn't in a haystack, it's in a needlestack. With parcels already regularly disappearing, a few more would raise no further suspicions.

You may be wondering why I wanted to steal my neighbours' parcels. Firstly, as I already suggested, if I didn't steal them someone else probably would. Secondly, this is a really cool use of AI tech, and having conceived the idea, it would be stupid not to execute it. Sure, some people would have their stuff stolen, but that's the price of progress.

I did have an ethical debate with myself about whether I should reveal how my scheme works, but you can take a guess at how long that lasted. Besides, information wants to be free. It's like the argument over whether 3D-printed guns are a bad idea or not. The conclusion is that other people will eventually work it out anyway, so why not be the first to give it to the public domain?

With the hand-wringing dispensed with, here's what I did:

There's an email group chat for the building. When residents see they have a delivery coming and they're at work or wherever, they often ask the group whether someone can collect their parcel before it's stolen. There follows a narrow window of opportunity, during which agentic AI steps in.

I have an agent set up to monitor the email group and identify collection requests. This agent then makes its best guess as to the time of delivery and passes it, plus the flat's address, to another agent. This agent contacts a preferential list of organisations I won't name, but they specialise in supplying people for odd jobs. Think assembling IKEA furniture or mowing the lawn. They can also make collections.

To cover my tracks, the same agent also arranges another person to whom the collected parcel is handed in a random local area. The agent passes that person's details on to a third agent, which looks up the nearest post office using Google Maps and directs them there. Once at the post office, they post the parcel to a package consolidation company in Oregon.

I have a fourth agent which monitors the package consolidation company. When it reaches the sweet spot for shipping costs by weight and volume, it arranges for it to be delivered to Artie Fisher.

Artie Fisher is of course another agent, but one which I have hidden behind a legal identity and who rents a dilapidated cottage in North Wales. Of course there isn't actually anybody there to receive the parcel, so my second agent returns into play to arrange collection. The collected parcel is taken to a small village post office and finally posted to me.

It's the perfect crime, apart from the running costs. Keeping the AI agents online is expensive enough, but the services it procures are even more expensive. At the time of writing it costs 100x more than the value of stolen goods I receive, and half of those are Graze boxes. Still, such is life at the bleeding edge of technology. Without pioneers like myself, this may never make it to the next level, which I envisage will bring vastly reduced costs by assembling everything into a turnkey platform. Theft as a Service, or TaaS.

Eventually its capabilities could be so generalised that it could steal from anybody, not just your neighbours. Sure, it's not ethical, but it's inarguably technological progress, and you're either for progress or you're a luddite. More specifically, you're a luddite without a hammer to smash the machine, because you ordered the hammer from Amazon and my AI agents stole it.

Hidden London - Fleet Street Station Tour Review

One of the great joys of living in London is its history, and I am particularly interested in the history of its most idiosyncratic transport system - the tube. It is a chaotic mishmash of railways built by competing enterprises that should by rights be a sprawling mess. However through the perseverence and inspired design of many people over many years, it was gradually tamed into the now-familiar network, with its roundel emblem recognised around the world. There is, in my opinion, no greater subway system. Feel free to shout about the New York City Subway, but running all night doesn't make up for the poor frequency of trains and the persistent smell of piss. At the top of its game, the Victoria Line is almost unfeasibly rapid, with the next train often arriving while you're still leaving the platform from the previous one.

The London Underground has been around for 162 years, so it's fair to say that it has a lot of history. The most interesting parts of that history for me are those of its closed stations. Some of these are quite famous, such as Aldwych, the little spur from the Piccadilly Line at Holborn. The London Transport Museum does tours of some of these, under the banner Hidden London. These are all excellent, and I've been on most of them. They aren't always tours of disused stations. Some are of disused areas of currently operating stations. These are sometimes more exciting, as a door in a familiar and well-travelled corridor is opened into a place you never knew was there.

Fleet Street Station is a bit of both. Originally opened in 1873, it is something of an anomaly, being a small branch from the District Line, going to Mansion House. There are a couple of spurious tales regarding its construction. The first, and most widely known canard, is that poor supervision of the District Line led to an argument over its plans. The construction crew split into rival factions, with one tunnelling to Mansion House from Blackfriars, and the other from Fleet Street. A cursory glance at a map of the line exposes this as nonsense. Construction was clearly from Mansion House as the line was already there. The Fleet Street branch was added afterwards, as is clear from its opening two years after the main line extension.

The other story is that newspaper magnate Sir Arthur Upton-Park wanted a station near his offices and had paid the Metropolitan District Railway Company handsomely for one to be built. There is no paperwork to back this up, but I suppose it could have been handled privately.

The more likely explanation is that, like Aldwych, the company had ambitions to further extend the line that never came to fruition.

The station didn't last as long as Aldwych, closing in 1955 following a disastrous timetabling change. As part of a strike settlement that year, the last train from Fleet Street was brought forwards to before last orders at the surrounding pubs, leaving the station with no commuters.

That the station still exists is thanks to the creation of the Thameslink network. Fleet Street tube station had a connection to Holborn Viaduct, and when that was replaced by City Thameslink Station, it was used for access and storage of construction materials.

The Hidden London tour of Fleet Street started with us gathering outside City Thameslink Station. After a bag and ID check (we were entering security-sensitive infrastructure) we were lead like eager kids on a school trip through the station and to a door that on any other day you might imagine led to a cupboard. Beyond it was a narrow passage, crowded with pipes and densely-slung cables. We were advised to mind our heads, which made a nice change from minding the gap. The gap could mind itself for a while.

At the end of this corridor was a large circular chamber, receding into the darkness above us. This had been a lift shaft when the station was still operating. After it had closed, the lifts were removed and eventually used on the Victoria Line, although nobody is certain which station they were installed in.

The place had the feeling of an abandoned civilisation. I took many atmospheric photographs, documenting something long since gone. After a while I became aware that most of the group had followed the other tour guides to the next location. Only one guide remained, patiently waiting for me to finish. They were obliged to do this, as they can't have anyone wandering off on their own. Aside from security considerations, parts of the station could be unsafe. I apologised and dutifully followed them out of the room and down some stairs. When the guide reached the bottom of the stairs they were met by a colleague, and while they conferred I noticed a narrow opening leading off the stairs. I peered in, curious as to where it led.

As I poked my head through, I could hear a strange squeaking, rattling sound. I glanced down at the tour guides. They were ensconced in their own business. Knowing that it was a bad idea but doing it anyway, I stepped through the narrow gap. That this was a very stupid thing to do was very much on my mind when I immediately tripped over something unseen and went sprawling into the filthy darkness.

I picked myself up. Fortunately, the only part of me that was bruised was my ego. Thinking that I should slip back onto the staircase before anyone noticed I was gone, I turned around to face more darkness. There was no hint of the gap I'd passed through. I felt around the wall for it, but found nothing.

"Hello!" I called, and cringed as I heard the panic rising in my voice. "I'm very sorry, but I appear to be lost!"

My words reverberated in the hidden shape of the room, but that was the only reply. I listened keenly, but all I could hear was the same rattling, squeaking noise. I called out again. Where was that opening and why couldn't I find it?

All I could hear was the rattling sound. With no other plan at the ready, I began shuffling in its direction. I couldn't see anything at first, with each step being a small leap into the unknown. I didn't know exactly how, but something about the acoustics of the place suggested I was not about to plunge off a precipice. Eventually the rattling resolved into a more defined clanking, and the squeaking became almost a babble. As worrying as this was, I could also make out some light ahead. Which was encouraging.

I walked towards it and was suddenly blinded by a bright light shining in my eyes.

"Who's that?" a voice called. "You from the office?" He sounded remarkably like Blakey from the ancient TV comedy series On the Buses.

"No," I replied, shielding my eyes with one arm. "I'm lost. Would you mind not shining that torch in my eyes?"

"Oh, right," he replied. "Sorry. Don't get many visitors." He switched the torch off.

I explained that I had become separated from my Hidden London tour, and asked for directions back to the station proper.

"Hidden London?" he replied incredulously. "How do you hide London? It's bleedin' massive."

My sight began to return after being dazzled by his torch beam, and I could make out his silhouette against a doorway. The clanking, rattling and squeaking was coming from behind him.

"What's that noise?" I asked.

"That's the generator," he said as though I was asking an obvious question. A small, dark shape shot past his feet and into the shadows. It was followed by a second, then a third.

"Bugger," he said. "Not again."

He disappeared back through the doorway. With nowhere else to go, I followed him. As I approached the threshold another small dark shape flitted past my shoes. From that distance it was obviously a mouse. There was nothing especially unusual about that. London, and the tube in particular, is infested with mice. What was unusual however, was what I witnessed upon stepping through the doorway.

Beyond was a huge room, like a warehouse but instead of shelves it had row upon row of cages. This was where the noise was coming from. Inside each cage were wheels, and inside each wheel was a mouse, furiously running and turning it. Each wheel fed into a complex system of shafts and cogs, all contributing to the cacophony that filled the vast chamber.

Next to one of the cages was the man who sounded like Blakey from On the Buses, and now I could see him more clearly, he also looked strikingly like him.

He glanced at me warily over his shoulder. "Little buggers chew their way through the bars. God knows how. It must take them generations of gnawing."

"What is this place?" I asked.

"You're really not from the office, are you?" He peered at me, clearly forming some sort of judgement. "If I tell you, you promise not to tell another soul, right?"

I agreed, being fairly certain that whatever the explanation, nobody would believe me.

"Just a minute." He finished his business with the cage and strode to an electrical panel on the wall. He threw a large switch and the full extent of the room was revealed. It was more enormous than I'd imagined, the rows of cages stretching towards an unseeable vanishing point.

"This," he announced grandly, "is the Mega Mouse Matrix."

I was speechless. Now I could see the full scale of the room, the sound of mice running in their wheels and turning cogs in the grand machine was deafening. It was all I could think about.

Blakey, being perhaps used to this reaction, elaborated. "Mega Mouse, meaning a million mice. Of course, the actual number of mice isn't exactly a million, but it's of that order."

I boggled. "But why? What's it for?"

He looked at me as though I were stupid. "It's a generator. It powers the tube."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "What, all of it?"

"Yes, all of it. How did you think it’s powered?" He laughed. "It's not like you can just plug it into a three-pin socket!"

"All of it?" I repeated. I was having trouble taking it in. "Even the District Line?"

"Especially the District Line. That was one of the first all-mouse powered lines in the network," he said proudly.

I realised my mouth was hanging open. "That's amazing," I said, unsure what else I could say. "Do they often escape?" I heard myself ask.

"Every so often. They always seem to go in groups. Funny that. They can't really be organised, can they?" He fussed with his moustache nervously.

"No, that's ridiculous." No more ridiculous than his Mega Mouse Matrix, I thought. "They're just mice."

As though on cue, another mouse went whizzing past us. Blakey lunged at it but it was far too fast for human reflexes. It occurred to me that making them run in wheels all day was probably making them even faster. I decided to keep the observation to myself.

"Help me out here," he said, moving into the doorway and spreading himself like a goalkeeper.

I adopted a similar stance next to him. I felt foolish, but I still didn't know the way out.

"Here they come!"

To my astonishment a dozen or so mice dashed towards us, their tiny black eyes catching pinpricks of light.

"When they get close enough, stamp on the buggers." He lifted up one foot and sure enough brought it down hard. The mice easily swerved to avoid it.

I recoiled from him in horror. "What they hell are you doing?" I demanded.

"Teaching them a lesson," he replied, and stamped again. I turned away from him, not wanting to know whether his attempts were yielding disgusting results. "They have to learn they're better off in their cages," he said, punctuating his words with another vicious stomp.

"This is insane!" I cried. As I searched the room for another exit, I noticed more and more mice pouring across the floor towards the doorway and the murderous Blakey. "Just tell me how to get the hell out of here, please!"

The floor was by then covered with a grey-brown carpet of mice that flowed like a river towards Blakey. I leapt out of its path and made my way along the wall, away from their focus. I could not look back there. I could still hear his feet stamping, but the sound was being lost under a rising tide of squeaking and scrabbling.

Ahead of me I saw an exit sign, its bulb long since dead and thick with dust. My thumping heart rose above the stamping of Blakey's feet, which were disappearing under the towering wave of mice behind me as I raced towards the exit. When I got there I risked a look back. In the doorway I could see only a writhing shape ahead of a million mice. The cages were all empty. The revolution was underway and I wanted no part of it. To my relief the exit was unlocked and led into a tunnel that rose upwards, and from there I took whichever turning took me further away from whatever the hell I had just witnessed.

Finally, I realised I was inside City Thameslink Station. It was peculiarly gloomy, and it took me a short while to realise why.

A member of the station staff approached me, indicating the station's gate line. "Sorry!" she said breezily. "We're closed."

I looked at the gates. Usually green for open or red for closed, they were all nothing for don't know. They were however open.

"Power failure," she said. "Thought we had a backup somewhere, but I guess someone's having a bad day." She shrugged.

I thanked her and made my way outside.

Overall verdict: 1,000,000 mice out of 10.

Who Wants to Join a Writing Group

Writing, for me, is a solitary affair. I like it that way. I like that all the decisions are mine, and until I actually show it to anyone, the entire process is mine. There have, however, been times when I've wondered whether it would speed things up a bit to get some early and earnest feedback from relative strangers. Then I remember the time I actually did so and breathe a sigh of relief. I do not need to go through that again. I can make my mistakes away from the judgement of others. This is the story of the time I joined a writing group. 

This was ten years or so ago. At this point I was going through a fairly productive period of writing short stories. I'd get back from work and hammer out a thousand words or so, then the next evening review what I'd written and hammer out another thousand. Three thousand seemed to be the magic number for me. Anything less was a tough exercise in terseness. Anything more and I could feel the plot getting away from me. I submitted some of them to various publications accepting submissions with some success, but choosing the right places to submit to became increasingly difficult. At the time I'd been using meetup.com to find like-minded people for my other hobbies, and so I thought, why not join a writers group? 

There are many reasons why not, chief amongst them being that the idea of reading my writing aloud in front of people feels like an anxiety dream. But then my rational side told me that this is a fear I should overcome. I should feel confident about reading my words. Didn't I want other people to hear them? 

Not wanting to overthink matters, I found a group meeting upstairs in a pub in Hackney and put it in my calendar. I thought nothing more of it until a week later, when I found myself upstairs in said pub, wondering what on earth I'd been thinking. 

The pub itself was nice enough and typical for the area. High ceilings, wooden floors, and consequent hubbub that can be challenging for ageing ears. Upstairs was thankfully quieter. The general idea was that everyone wrote whatever they wanted, whether it was something they were already working on or something just for the night, then they would read some of it to the group. I chose to write some more of a short story I was already working on, which was about an electric pig moving to London. It was very much in the mould of write what you know. 

I realised I had made a massive mistake about halfway through one of the other writer's reading of their stuff. The first reading had been a little confusing, with the writer not so much introducing their protagonist as assuming everyone already knew who they were. The second reader did the same, and their story was also apparently about a doctor. For the duration of this story I wondered whether I'd bumbled my way into some sort of medical practitioners' confessional group, but shortly afterwards the truth was plain. I had accidentally joined a Doctor Who fanfiction writers' group. 

You may be wondering exactly what is wrong with this. The answer is nothing. It just wasn't what I had in mind when I had joined. Embarrassed by the mistake, and by how long it had taken me to realise it, I didn't feel I could just make my apologies and leave. So while I waited my turn, I frantically rewrote my story in my head. As far as editing techniques go, I found it far too stressful to recommend. 

Time ran out, and I cautiously announced I would be reading from my work-in-progress, Doctor Who and the Electric Pig. This was met with some wry smiles, but my audience's faces soon turned sour as it became obvious that I was making it up as I went along. 

A million years later, I realised I had run out of words, and the group was looking at me with a strange sort of kind curiosity. 

"And that," I said, "is all I have so far." 

One of the group, a tall man wearing an ill-judged fedora, cleared his throat. He had read a story I had initially thought was an allegory for the state of the NHS, but as it turned out, someone or something really was flinging patients out of hospital windows. "I'm a little lost," he asked, "what did the Doctor have to do with your story? Had he made the electric pig, like K9?" 

I didn't see what mountains had to do with it, but I nodded anyway. 

"You do realise," he continued gently, "that this is a Doctor Who fan fiction writing club?" 

There wasn't much point in continuing the pretence. "I do now. But I don't recall the advert saying so." 

"It's clearly called the Rassilon Writer's Society," said a squat man wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt indignantly. 

"I told you that would be misleading," said the tall man. 

"It wasn't my fault!" the squat man objected. He pointed at a woman who had her arms folded and was scowling at him. "It was her idea." 

"Bollocks mate," the woman said, and laughed. She pointed at another of the group, the arms of her huge baggy purple jumper hanging like a bird's wings. "It was her idea." She was pointing to an older woman who was nervously sitting on her own hands. 

"You see?" the squat man asked his tall friend. "I told you this would happen if we let in people from the Blake's 7 group!" 

I mumbled something about needing the loo and sped off down the stairs, buoyed by the squabbling behind me. As I left the building, with the pub door swinging forcefully shut, I breathed in the fresh night air and considered that there were worse things than solitary hobbies.

Quantum Embarrassment

Recently my latest book reached the exciting stage of being ready to be read by a select group of test readers. This is a huge milestone as up until that point the book may have seemed like a figment of my imagination to my friends. The writer, director, actress and all-round super-talent Alice Lowe asked on Twitter last year whether anyone experienced a terrible sense of embarrassment at having created something. Many sympathised with her. I felt it in my bones. I don't like to bring the subject of my writing up, and whenever I do it's invariably apologetically. I stumble over my words and undermine any possibility of sounding like the sort of person capable of writing a book. Or more to the point, capable of writing a good book.

Every writer likes to think their books are good, or they wouldn't bother writing them. Up until the point that someone else reads them, they remain as good as you believe them to be. After that, however, whatever potential you believe they have will be tested in the real world. It will become apparent how well you have assessed your own work, for better or worse. It's a bit like quantum mechanics, where particles can exist in a state of superposition until observed, at which point the superposition collapses to a single readable position. Also, much like quantum mechanics, the more you learn about how your book does or doesn't work, the more your sense of unease increases. Surely, you think, this cannot possibly be how the world works? Can my readers really not understand how my protagonist made the rocket launcher work, and that's how the penguin got stuck up Elon Musk's bumhole? It is a reckoning, but sharing a book with others is usually the goal of writing one and test readers are a vital first step to getting it ready for that.

I only use a handful of test readers. They are all people whose opinions I trust and whose tastes in fiction vary. They also give feedback in different ways. Some with detailed notes, others mostly verbally. I appreciate all of their input and know that I am lucky to be able to count on them to involve themselves in this sordid and embarrassing business of writing a novel. I have to remind myself of this whenever I actually get their feedback because until they do, as mentioned earlier, my book is perfect. I wouldn't have let anyone read it if it weren't, so to have that superpositional perfection collapsed into something that still needs some work is quite disappointing while it is happening to me. It's a peculiar kind of disappointment though. I'm not so conceited that I really think my book is perfect. I've read a lot of books, and there are very few of those I would call perfect. It's more that I hope it's perfect. It's the same kind of hope you have when buying a lottery ticket. You know that the odds of winning the jackpot are astronomical, but nonetheless you hope you'll win. You wouldn't have bought the ticket otherwise.

The prospects for a book are much better than those of a lottery ticket however. When you lose the lottery, to play again you will face exactly the same odds as you did before. There's no way to improve them. With a book your test readers have hopefully given you some insight into what needs changing to make improvements. Before that can happen, there comes that most agonising of literary purgatories – waiting to accept that yes, you are going to have to do some editing.

There are lots of very convincing reasons for resisting the editing process:

• Your writing isn't unclear, it's just these particular readers that couldn't understand it.
• You like the plot just the way it is.
• It's a Monday. What sort of madman edits on a Monday?
• Actually you can't possibly edit this week.
• The flat really needs a thorough hoovering.
• You don't want to.
• Fine. Okay. Maybe the week after next?

The truth is that once I've had all my readers' feedback I definitely will have to do some editing. I know this so keenly that I'm writing it here, and yet I will work my way all the way through the above bullet points like the stages of grief until I finally sit down with my manuscript and get to work. This time isn't completely wasted. In truth I tend to work out what needs to change in my head before I actually physically edit the thing. In broad strokes of course. I'm not walking around with my manuscript memorised like some sort of idiot savant. You can take the idiot part for granted.

As to the embarrassment of having written a book? Maybe embarrassment is a natural response. Writing a book is a ridiculous thing to do. It takes a lot of time and effort and for that reason not many people attempt it. Add to that the chances of writing a good book, one that people actually want to read? I've already said I've read very few perfect books, but as much as I might wish to write a perfect book, I would be very happy with one that is an entertaining read. That's all. I'm not trying to make high art, but then again I suspect the sort of people who do try to make high art feel no embarrassment at telling people so. And if you are aiming for such lofty literary heights, what on earth are you doing reading this? You've probably slipped one place down the Booker longlist with every paragraph of my drivel that you've read!