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While I'm at it, the 'wood panel' effect on the new TARDIS, lovely as it is, worries me unduly every time I see it. Most police boxes were wooden, but my understanding was that the specific model of London police box on which the TARIDS is based (Metropolitan Mark II or something?)* was one of the notable exceptions. It was one of the first to be mass-produced to a standard design, one which used pre-cast concrete for the base - only the doors, and nothing else, would have been wooden.

I concur. When I lived in Brighton there was a police box in my neighbourhood that I would pass once a week, every single week. It was made of concrete. I presume the ostentatious use of woodgrain in the current Tardis prop was inspired by the wooden construction of the original Tardis prop, which was itself supposed to resemble a concrete police box.

What they have done is mistake the copy for the thing itself. Now I'm sure I've seen that used as the basic plot idea in numerous science fiction stories where future beings, either alien or post-apocalyptic human survivors, have been mistaken in their interpretation of ancient earth artefacts.

By the time I got into Dungeons & Dragons it was into its third edition - red box for Basic, navy for Expert, teal for Companion and black for Masters - I remember a time before the Companion and Masters rules came out. They just had bigger and badder monsters, and my friends and I had been managing quite happily with Basic and Expert up to that point. We could have managed without.

Warhammer (second edition) was really good fun when I was a teenager. Meagre funds were spread very thinly across just about every race in the Warhammer bestiary, so there were lots of units of two or three or six models; the only sizeable units were composed of models owned by up to four different people. Many hours were spent painting models while watching a black and white portable TV that was a wedding gift for my mother's second wedding or listening to Kate Bush, Eurythmics or Propaganda on a twin deck radio cassette player.

It took three years of practice and painting models naturalistically before I cracked it and started turning them out painted in a proper eye-catching style. I did some of my best work in the summer holidays after the 'O' level exams and before 'A' levels started and there was homework, girls and going out to compete for my time. When university came along, and then moving house ten times in 10 years, there were few windows of opportunity for painting models, but I took them and so did my partner who quite enjoys painting skaven and goblins herself. I still haven't had a proper game of Warhammer in about 20 years though. Maybe when/if I retire!

My first exposure to fantasy gaming was the computer game 'Adventure' on a neighbour's Radioshack computer. You know, the one where you type 'i' or 'inventory' to get a list of the items you are carrying, and one of the puzzles involves 'get cage' in order to catch a bird, which you then have to release to kill a snake, etc.

In my first year at seconday school, the FF gamebooks were doing the rounds. I went for Forest of Doom before picking up the other two that were out at the time. I devised my own Fighting Fantasy dungeon during the school holidays when the book Fighting Fantasy came out in 1984, and then a school friend called Frank introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer. From September 1984, for three years, four of us would meet up every Saturday to play Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, Traveller, Judge Dredd, Golden Heroes, Paranoia and Battlecars, which I liked, or Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which I didn't.

We never got round to playing Runequest, which didn't look like fun to me anyway, or Call of Cthulhu, which did. Warhammer 40,000 barely existed at all back then, and Space Marine chapters certainly didn't.

[THOR]

The last film I saw was THOR tonight!!!! That was great. It had loads of great elements from the comics, in a story that made sense, with some really spectacular action scenes, in which the Destroyer was a stand-out special effect. And isn't Chris Hemsworth a handsome fellow? My goodness.

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were quite a cult at my school. It peaked with House of Hell in 1984. I had dreams about that one after staying up very, very late watching The Tube. The next in the series, Talisman of Death, was regarded as a bit of a clunker, but redemption came in the form of Freeway Fighter. No. 17, Appointment with F.E.A.R. was the last one my friends and I talked about before we all grew out of it or it became a solo occupation, if you pardon the expression.

Decided to continue my dabbling with super hero comics by grabbing the entire collection of Ms Marvel trades.

My childhood favourite (the only Ms Marvel comic I had!) was the one that featured Modok, the Agents of A.I.M. and Deathbird!!! Yaaaay!

[7 lb]

I've lost 7 lb since the end of January, on a good day. On a bad day it's only 4 lb. It fluctuates a lot but corresponds to my work pattern. I tend to lose weight Wednesday to Friday when I'm getting up too early, wheeling cages of merchandise about all morning and then sleeping half the day, and put some back on over the weekend when I'm largely sedentary.

My Wii Fit graph looks like the path of a stone being skipped across the surface of a pond.

If Chris wants the Ninja ones, Trout, I don't want those ones.

If anybody wants them, I'd be happy to swap them for some comic bags.

- Trout

You've got mail!

There isn't much more information than that apart from grouping together the titles by the two publishers the author worked for, thus omitting Gold Star Publications which he didn't. Fiesta was started in 1968. The bulk of the book is divided between autobiography and portraying the unsurprising shabbiness of the magazine premises and what went on behind the scenes.

"Like rag to a bull."

[Blue Period: Notes from a Life in the Titillation Trade]

Whereas 'romantic love' is all some of us can afford. Heh. But given the choice it's still what I'd prefer. I've heard of this book; I may read it one day. I've just finished reading a trashy memoir, Blue Period: Notes from a Life in the Titillation Trade by Nicholas Whittaker. Someone had pressed a peeled-off £1.99 price sticker from The Works onto the inside back cover, giving some idea of its pre-charity shop retail destination.

The book's main payoff for me was partial delineation of the origins and genealogy of British top shelf publications in the 1980s (e.g. Razzle was started as a direct competitor to the downmarket Fiesta, and founded by an ex-Fiesta editorial team for a rival publisher). The secondary payoff was the author's rumination on the aspirational qualities of the magazine Club. The publisher intended it to conjure up associations with gentlemen's clubs, flying Club Class and Canadian Club whisky, but all it made the council-estate raised freelancer who wrote for it think of was the advertising jingle "if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club." Best gag in the book.

[To Kill a Mockingbird]

To Kill a Mockingbird

I'm five chapters in, but I was hooked from page one. Harper Lee is a startlingly talented writer. The most wonderful thing about the book is the faux naive, tongue-in-cheek narrator's voice: it's the adult Scout (Jean Louise Finch) faithfully recalling the experiences and thought processes of the eight-year-old Scout in her childhood in 1930s smalltown Alabama. Incidentally, the film starring Gregory Peck was a superb cinematic adaptation of the novel.

[the gore]

Christ.

Law... Gore. Say it. It rhymes!

Not if you're Scottish or Irish or from some provincial parts of England it doesn't.

It also works in the context of the cover - I am the gore. He's a bloody zombie!

What's a gore? I know what "I am gory" and "I am covered in gore" mean. "I am the gore"? No-one would say that unless they were trying to come up with a zombie-related rhyme for law and not really worrying very much about what it actually means. It may well mean "I am a pile of stinking offal," but that doesn't ring true about the image on the cover, which has teeth and actually looks a lot more threatening and dangerous than a pile of stinking offal would.

It's past my bedtime. "Nurse, the screens!"  

Well, it's all down to pyrite oxidation.

Obviously.

But wouldn't it be less hazardous to mine pyrite instead and oxidize it yourself in a refinery? I'm not sure what they even need a crew with disposable duplicates for. Seems to me all they need is an automated drilling platform and pumping station. That would nicely dispose of the need for the storyline.


Far too much science fiction seems to revolve around doing things the hard way.