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Right now I'm sozzled on the universal prophylactic of cheap plonk while celebrating finding a 17th C well, so all is good.

As in a well for drawing water?  I have a friend who is interested in historic wells.  May be misremembering, but I think he's written a book on the subject.

(edit) yep - quick google reveals he's written one book on holy wells and a number of pamphlets on wells by county.

Edited to ask: Any recommendations for which app to go for to subscribe to the Podcast? There's loads and I don't Pod me Cast these days except for Thrillcast and doesn't seem Soundcloud is an option?

I don't know what it's like in Windows and Mac land (well, presumably iTunes in the latter) but over here in the Linux wilds I use Rhythmbox and Banshee (general audio players which also play audio files and radio).

Mills should spend time with actual robots, so he can write more realistic dialogue for them. Either that or work with a robot co-writer, like he did with Alan Mitchell on Third World War.

Didn't realise Alan was a robot!

Tonight (well, Monday night) we played The Battle at Kemble's Cascade - a boardgame which emulated side-scrolling space shoot-em-up computer games from the 16-bit era (or was it 8-bit - I never had enough money to have whatever kind of computer those things were played on).  We had to cut it short as the bar closed and at least some of us have work in the morning, but it was good while it lasted (I ended up in second place, though may have lost that position if we'd continued playing).

We took your advice radiator, played Carcassonne without the farmers or the rivers rules. Meant we could get up and running and get to grips with it fast which was great. Was a lot of fun, particularly liked how quick it is to set-up and get through a game as it means it'll see a lot more use than some of the (still great but) more long-winded games we have.

Next time I play I'll have to try it without the river tiles or the farmers.  Wondering what it'll be like.  In further games, I imagine things like the princess and dragon would lose a lot of their point without farmers.

3 pages in and not one review yet. Is this a record, Norris?

Oh well, I'll weigh in as well then - no prog here (I pick it up at a comic shop, so won't be getting anything until Wednesday anyway, but wanted to join in this record-breaking attempt).

Sheridan, I love that your missus names her bikes.

I also name mine - current one is Rhaegal, previous one was Ruby, through a convoluted naming process involving the previous owner having taken a red bike and painting it black.

This weekend, I didn't do much in the morning apart from line up/relocate some model ships in my Star Trek Eaglemoss collection to accommodate the Enterprise B that recently arrived, along with a klingon raptor*

*STAR TREK SHIP MODEL COLLECTION WAFFLE ALERT SO SKIP IF YOU'RE UNINTERESTED:

Cool thing is, the Enterprise B model is not just a replica of the Exelsior with the name and  NCC number changed. It is of course very similar being the same class ship but the saucer section is slightly larger and there are other subtle differences. There is some bleeding of the paint on the text on the saucer section, but it's a really nice model.

I am not collecting all the ships by the way. I've decided to confine myself to the main series ships, all the Enterprises (with the possible exception of the future one, (was it NCC-1701-J?) that appeared in an episode of Enterprise where archer has a quick jaunt into the future. That's if it comes out. I probably won't get the ISS Enterprise from the dark parallel universe either, but I might change my mind about that.) and the Klingon and Romulan vessels. So I'm nearly complete. I just need the Enterpise C and E (on order, but currently out of stock) the Defiant and that Romulan warbird that featured in Nemesis. And possibly the larger Abrams film enterprise model. I might skip the small klingon D4 ship. (I wonder why they supervised that one?) It's a lovely model but it doesnt look klingon to me.

No idea whether it's Eaglemoss or not, but a friend of mine was selling Star Trek models recently.  He's due to be at a local BnB that I'll be attending tomorrow, so I'll investigate (there's no way on earth I'm going to remember exactly what it is you're on the lookout for, but if I'm lucky I'll think to remember the name Eaglemoss).  Both friend and BnB are in North London.

[ABC Warriors]

ABC Warriors finally addresses a 30-year old oversight and gives Quartz the comeuppance that he never got, but so richly deserved, at the end of the original Ro-Busters run. Very satisfying, not to mention hilarious (I laughed out loud when Howard dropped to his knees shouting 'Hello Sailor!') - and gives Quartz a proper grudge to hold against Hammerstein and Ro-Jaws going forward.

I did like the Finn tie-in, though where does that leave Nemesis in the Third World War / Finn pantheon?

I disagree! Urk was a nice slow witted Klegg who wasn't evil but that's no defense against breaking the law.

I'd never thought about it before, but it does mean that Urk is a kind of precursor to Sensitive, in that he's not just a one-dimensional meat-hungry alien mercenary.

Shame there's no sign of the appearance of Kleggs in Ace Trucking Co :-)

I find it interesting that two thirds of the current prog is the same lineup as Starlord in 1978!

...and that three fifths is the same as 2000AD and Starlord immediately after the merger!

I hope they checked the floor polish!

Nemesis and Dante have their own articles already.

Which would reinforce that they're not minor series!

[HATE]

I've been living in North London for the best part of seventeen years now and the people here are no less friendly than any small town I've lived in. Especially those in the small-minded small town where I grew up. If anything, living here has made me realize just how much I fucking HATE the kinds of people where I grew up, where being 'different' in any kind of way meant being singled out more easily.

Same here (mostly living in North London for over ten years with a background of small-town England where you can rely on getting physically assaulted for not being 'like them').

I've had a coupla close encounters with foxes. One came into our bedroom one night (our previous residence, a ground-floor flat with French windows, open) which then fled when I woke up realizing it was there.

We got a fox come in last year - it got cornered by the cat who wanted it out of the flat, but couldn't quite process that standing in front of the french windows stops the fox getting out, which it dearly wanted to do by that point!

Accompanied the missus (well, we're not married, but we live together) to a cycle shop where a bike she'd ordered was customised while we waited.  This is the first proper, full-featured bike she's ever ridden (previous one (Gnipper) was an old one on loan from a friend, bit rusty, only had ten gears - one before that (Little Whippet) was a folding bike which made her knees hurt and only had seven gears).  This one has 21 gears and she's found that she can actually ride up hills on it.  This one is called Hasufel, after the horse from Lord of the Rings which Judge Dredd loans to Aragorn.

[Robusters]

LED Belly in Robusters is supposed to be read L.E.D, right?

Um. No? Isn't it a play on words on leadbelly and should be read as such? What with him being a blues musician and all?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly

I get the reference, Doc, but he's a robot in a strip where the main robots have names which reflect the defining, roboty feature of their anatomy. Like a hand that is a hammer, or their jaws, which are roboty.

I can't say for certain that LED BELLY has light emitting diodes on his belly, but he does have what looks like a semispherical version of the old Simon game just above where his Little Red (robot) Rooster would be. Sorry, wrong blues man.

My first thought was that LEDs weren't well-known in the popular imagination at the point of the original Ro-Busters story, but a brief websearch revealed that the classic LED calculator was released in 1978, so the technology had just hit the mass market.  Ultimately only Uncle Pat could reveal if that particular pun was on his mind when he wrote it.

Can't see it happening but I'd quite like to get a visit to the planet (moon?) which had been taken over by gold-plated robots in one of these flashback strips.  Plus lots of travel tube chases.