Jamie123

I wouldn't say they were particularly good or bad. They just grew very fast - every time I looked at them they had got bigger. The funny thing is, none of this seemed at all strange to me in the dream.

Last night I dreamed I was planting eggs. In the soil. Like they were seeds. And before you ask, no - they didn't grow into chickens. They grew rapidly into big plants with very stiff brush-like leaves: something in between fir trees and cactuses (cacti?). The dream dictionaries have a lot to say about eggs, but nothing about planting them. Very strange.

Not wishing to wear out the BMW theme: "A BMW with a particularly obnoxious, impatient (and ugly) driver, stuck behind a tractor towing a specially bulky piece of farm equipment at 2mph along a very narrow country road, with no chance of overtaking for at least another mile!" (Oh, and if the BMW's a.c. has broken, that would be the cherry on the cake!)

The successful cutting up of a BMW! Hah!! :)

Are you going to?

MY FIRST CONFESSION I once stole my brother's James Bond model Aston Martin car with working ejector seat and swivelling number plates and kept it hidden in my room for several weeks before giving it him back. He thought he'd just lost it. MY SECOND CONFESSION One day I was kicking hymn books around the school hall (you know the way you do, when you think there are no teachers about) and I didn't see the deputy headmistress come up behind me. She grabbed me by the back of my collar and shook me quite hard - and this took me so much by surprise that for a second I lost bladder control. No one ever found out though. I just had to go around with soggy underpants for the rest of that day.

*Sigh* Oh well I thought it was funny. Bad taste I grant you, but the funniest things often are I remember vividly the first time I read the story of Gregor Samsa. It was about 30 years ago, when I was sharing a house in Preston with a bunch of other students, someone left the book lying around the sitting room. I was so intrigued by the picture on the cover that I had to read it. I was not so far from childhood as not to have a faint dread that it might happen to me too - though I obviously knew it was impossible. (I was still - the truth be told - still in the habit of looking under the bed before I went to sleep in case there were any monsters hiding under there. I would doubtless have checked the closet too if my room had had one!) People always seemed to be leaving books and leaflets lying around in those days. Perhaps I'm being paranoid but I suspect some of them were meant for me: I remember once - shortly after revealing myself to be a "dangerous liberal" willing to give Darwin a fair hearing - a copy of Jack Chick's "Big Daddy" appeared mysteriously on the mantelpiece. If it was intended to "convert" me it backfired: even at the tender age of 21 I thought it was a disgraceful muck-raking pamphlet whose best place was in the trash. Incidentally, it was during that same period that I first saw a copy of the Book of Mormon. An associate of mine had it on her desk (I think she must recently have had a visit from the missionaries) and though I flipped through it, neither she nor anyone else was willing to talk about it much. In fact quite a number of people I knew in Preston made muttered references to "The Mormons" but would refuse to elaborate. It was another four years before I spoke to the missionaries myself and got a clue what it was about.

"They screw you up, your mom and dad. They may not mean to but they do. They fill you with the faults they had, And add some extra just for you." Philip Larkin (with the language toned-down)

... vs. Gregor Samsa! (My money's on Gregor)

A new anatess? What sorcery indeed!

Thank you so much Vort!!! Thank you thank you thank you!!! I hereby declare Mary Tamm the Winner of the "2016 Best Romana Award" (sticks tongue out at Carborendum) (But who will next year's title-holder be?)

And if you're going to say "That's just because you fancy her", what if it is? The Mary Tamm Romana was a dark and mysterious beauty with enigmatic eyes. The Lalla Ward Romana was just a soppy-old, silly-old sop-headed sop head, who'd probably faint if she saw a spider. (I can't remember if she ever did, so I can't be sure. I don't believe she ever went to Metebelis III.) (A spider on Metebelis III, inserted for reference.)

If somebody else doesn't vote for Mary Tamm soon, I'm going to cry! (boo hoo)

MA-RY!! MA-RY!! MA-RY!! Shall I tell you what gets my goat? I get it that Romana is (was) a Time Lord (Lady?) like the Doctor, and as such she could regenerate (in order to be played by different actresses). But what would have been wrong with the hiring Mary Tamm for a hew hours to make the scene where Romana changes from one to the other? After all they had Silvester McCoy to play the Doctor for the start of the one-off 1990s movie so he could change into Paul McGann. But oh no. The BBC were too miserly for that. They had Lalla Ward pop up as the new Romana from the very first minute of the new season, and had the Doctor say something like "I really like the new body, Romana" so the audience wouldn't be confused. Then it's on with the story as if the Mary Tamm Romana had never existed. She was gone....forever....unmourned. So sad, so sad...

The average density of Saturn is supposed to be 0.687g/cm3 so it would float in water, right? Not according to these guys: http://www.wired.com/2013/07/no-saturn-wouldnt-float-in-water/ (Come on!! Somebody pleeeeeeeeze vote for Mary!!)

Well...my last exam script in THIS batch is marked! It's funny what 200 poorly-worded explanations of "collision domain", STP and "broadcast storm" will do to your head. Next it will be firewalls, DES and public-key ciphers. Fun, fun, fun. Mary and Lalla still even in the polls ... all bets are off!

Or the Masons, or the Women's Institute....

Hmmm....It's still anyone's race... Just in case anyone's forgotten how awesome the original Romana was, here's a picture of her with Tom Baker... (Not that I'd ever be so low as to try to influence the voting!)

Seriously I got one of his books for Christmas... theology aside, I found it quite inspirational!

Oh, and just so we don't leave him out, here's a picture of Lalla's husband, the Not Very Rev'd Richard Dawkins...

So...after 4 hours Mary and Lalla are neck-and-neck, with one vote each!! This is truly nail-biting! Just to remind you, this is Mary Tamm (with the annoying robotic dog K9)... And here is Lalla Ward (in a boat (with a book))...

Mary Ward, who was the great grandmother of English actress Lalla Ward (who played the second Romana alongside Tom Baker in Doctor Who though in my opinion she wasn't a patch on the original Romana, played by Mary Tamm - no longer with us sadly - though she was OK I suppose, and is currently married to everyone's favourite man Richard Dawkins....though she was married to Tom Baker himself for a while) was the first person in history ever to have died in a car crash. Aren't you glad I told you?

It's pretty scary though all the same. As a young man (before I grew old and flippant) I used to be terrified by this story. I I used to think "what hope is there for me?" It also made me very angry when people made cheap jokes about it. Maybe I need to get to get the fear of God back into me... .

Well exactly - that was pretty much the the point I was trying to make (though not very clearly as it seems)