It's almost impossible to overstate Shakespeare's influence on modern culture (whether one claims, with Harold Bloom, that he 'invented the human' or merely defined dramaturgy for future centuries) but I didn't realise until last week at The Roundhouse that he wrote the first episode of CSI (Crime Scene Investigation).

TV schedules are now rather cluttered with crime dramas that recreate and solve murders through forensic observation and analysis. Think of the viral 'CSI' franchise: Regular, Miami, New York, Bracknell; don't forget 'Bones'; 'Waking the Dead'; 'Cold Case'; 'Law and Order'; 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' (the programme itself is the crime) and 'Time Team'.

But I think I can trace them all back to Henry VI Part II, Act 3 Scene 2, in which the body of the king's virtuous uncle the Duke of Gloucester is discovered in his bed.

Of course he has been murdered by hired thugs at the behest of Queen Margaret, the Duke of Suffolk, Cardinal Beaufort, The Duke of York and various other conspirators but they rather hope the king will think he passed away in his sleep (death from natural causes being pretty much an impossibility in these wonderfully turbulent Histories). 

So Warwick ('the Kingmaker') inspects the crime scene with forensic rigour and concludes, in a style not dissimilar to David Caruso in 'CSI: Miami', that he was the victim of foul play:

WARWICK:
Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.

KING:
That is to see how deep my grave is made;
For with his soul fled all my worldly solace,
For seeing him I see my life in death.

WARWICK [takes off sunglasses]:
As surely as my soul intends to live
With that dread King that took our state upon him
To free us from his father's wrathful curse,
I do believe that violent hands were laid
Upon the life of this thrice-famed duke.

SUFFOLK:
A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue!
What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow?

WARWICK:
See how the blood is settled in his face.
Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,
Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,
Being all descended to the labouring heart,
Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,
Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy,
Which with the heart there cools and ne'er returneth
To blush and beautify the cheek again.
But see, his face is black and full of blood,
His eyeballs further out than when he liv'd,
Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;
His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch'd with struggling,
His hands abroad display'd, as one that grasp'd
And tugg'd for life and was by strength subdu'd.
Look, on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking;
His well-proportion'd beard made rough and rugged,
Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodged.
It cannot be but he was murther'd here;
The least of all these signs were probable.

SUFFOLK:
Why, Warwick, who should do the duke to death?
Myself and Beaufort had him in protection;
And we, I hope, sir, are no murtherers.

WARWICK:
But both of you were vow'd Duke Humphrey's foes,
And you, forsooth, had the good duke to keep;
'T is like you would not feast him like a friend,
And 't is well seen he found an enemy.

QUEEN:
Then you, belike, suspect these noblemen
As guilty of Duke Humphrey's timeless death.

WARWICK [puts sunglasses back on, gazes at the horizon]:
Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh
And sees fast by a butcher with an axe
But will suspect 't was he that made the slaughter?
Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest
But may imagine how the bird was dead,
Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?
Even so suspicious is this tragedy.

[Off: Roger Daltrey screams and The Who's 'Won't Get Fooled Again' plays. Loud.]  

Just when I was thinking, 'what on earth can I write next, and quickly because there's too much to say about Trieste?', I get tagged by Katy Evans-Bush, which I'm told means that I must reveal six random facts about myself and then 'tag' six other poor bloggers. To be honest, I don't think I know six bloggers but I'll see what I can do.

One I have a very talented sister called Lorraine Adams who keeps a daily record of her drawings here. Many of them are for sale on eBay and many have I bought. I think the recent sketches of lambing season are particularly fine and make me want to go and read Ted Hughes's Season Songs. She's always been an excellent artist but I also think the daily grind of producing something fresh each day is forming some lovely new pearls. What do you reckon, Lorraine? Please comment away. 

Two  I lived happily for five years with a life-sized cardboard cut out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer until the time came when we had to part company. That painful split is 'immortalised' in Los Alamos Mon Amour. I won't tell you any more: you really should buy it.

Three  My father, Clive Barraclough, was a brass band musician and composer and his most famous piece was a brilliant rousing march named after myself and my sister: 'Simoraine'. Possibly the best version of it is performed by the legendary Black Dyke Mills Band and you can hear a sample of it here where it is track number one. I'm delighted to say that it is still performed around the world in competitions and has entered the repertoire of many a professional and amateur band. It can be relied upon to bring tears to my eyes.

Four I watch very little television these days but when I do it has to be either 'Harry Hill's TV Burp' (which I'm delighted to say won two BAFTAs this week) or 'Masterchef' (which is irresistibly insane and accidentally pierces to the root of our general psychopathology about food).

Five I only ever go to the theatre to see Shakespeare or Beckett, but Shakespeare and Beckett are so unimaginably brilliant that I don't really feel the need to see anything else and so am content. By the way, the RSC are doing a sublime job with The Histories at The Roundhouse in Camden at the moment.

Six I lately am obsessed with boars: the creatures themselves and representations thereof. Here's a particularly handsome Florentine fellow whose nose shines like gold because rubbing it is supposed to bring good luck. My next book will have a poem about him and his less fortunate imaginary brother.

And so I tag the following six:

This Is Yogic

Charles Lambert

The Director

Chris McCabe

Roisin Tierney

Mollie Monsta

If I can afford it, I tend to run away to Trieste for a few days when I'm tired or need to hide from the world. I did that last weekend following the launch of 'Los Alamos Mon Amour'. I'm going to write a longer piece about my time there very soon but until then, here's a picture of Joyce's great novel (begun and I think largely written in Trieste) come back to haunt the harbour in the form of a yacht.

And here's a picture of the man himself, gazing towards the bright lights of La Piazza Dell'Unità, tragically unable to uproot his bronze feet from the pavement and come seek me out for several nightcaps.

Back in the summer of 2003, I was hired to walk up and down the length of The Regent's Canal in London, composing around 30 information panels (5 large and 25 small) to punctuate its eight-and-a-half mile course with historical info, juicy factoids and audio snippets from real and invented characters.

On Good Friday, partly inspired by the wonderful walking website Walkit.com, I traipsed from Victoria Park to Lisson Grove along the towpath and came across a few of my panels. Here's one of them near the Snowdon Aviary at London Zoo.

The trickiest part of this job (apart from getting paid) was working with the designers on which type of pre-emptive graffiti we would use on the panels to obscure the text. As you can see here, we went for a jagged design in a blue that matched the hue used for the penguins, butterflies and humming bird.

We overlaid this with a more traditional 'tag' using a standard black marker pen colour and typeface. I'm delighted to say that the jagged design here was very influential on the eventual design of the London 2012 Olympics logo.

A little further up the canal, I discovered my panel dealing with John Nash's decision to divert the canal around Regent's Park rather than through it as originally planned.

The panel states: "Nash said 'The privacy of the park will not be invaded by the commerce of the canal.' This was mainly to keep 'unsightly' working navvies and boaters separate from the genteel private residents of the park. Social snobbery perhaps, but it did limit the damage done when a boat exploded under Macclesfield Bridge in 1874."

For this panel, we decided to go with a bronze-hued smiley representing the carnivalesque spirit of the excluded labourers and also hinting at the forces of misrule embodied in the explosion beneath the bridge. 

I know I'm having a bit of a whinge about our treatment of the local environment here, as I did about the painted feet at cash machines on Bethnal Green Road but these panels have also brought pleasure as well as disappointment.

About a year ago, I was jogging down the towpath towards Limehouse when I came across four or five young kids on their bikes, milling around one of the larger panels that feature more text, more pictures and a clockwork 'audioguide' feature that plays back an actor's voice when the handle is turned. 

I stopped for breath and thought I'd check out the graffiti on the panel and turn the wee handle to see if the voice recording still worked. The voice of governess and teacher Maud Winnington-Ingram, who lived in the area around 1880, began to seep from the tiny speaker as I cranked away.

This intrigued the kids, who came nearer and started asking me who the voice was and how the audio-doohickey worked. When I told them I'd actually written the text and the script they seemed amazed that anybody could have such a job or be given such a task. As indeed I would have been at the age of ten or thereabouts.

It was a nice moment: a temporary thawing of the suspicion and tension that seems to characterise how the generations interact, at least around here.

Then I took out my 'Pocket Mosquito', which emitted a high-pitched electronic scream to disperse them.