ME: I feel a bit guilty about taking the day off and delaying my marking.
NICK: Why?
ME: Well, it’s only a blow on the head. Maybe I’m making a big deal out of it.
NICK: Okay, rewind that a bit. It’s a blow on the head. You should be making a big deal out of it.
ME: Yeah, but—
NICK: It’s a blow on the head. Stop fretting about it.
ME: You stop making me frown. It makes my lump hurt.

Since it’s been nearly twenty-four hours since yesterday’s blow to the head, we’re assuming my chances of bleeding into my brain are greatly reduced. (The chances were never high, before anyone panics. I know you were going to panic.) But Nick likes to make contingency plans.

NICK: But with the less serious head injuries, sometimes it can be weeks before something happens.
ME: I know! And you’re walking and talking, and then you fall down dead.
NICK: But if we’re vigilant, we can catch it.
ME: I thought the whole point was that you just fell down dead with no warning?
NICK: If you start slurring your speech, I’ll know. BAM!
ME: I might just be drunk.
NICK: Then from now on, there’s no more alcohol. BAM!
ME: That would really ratchet up the irritability, which is another symptom.
NICK: True.
ME: You’d just be masking all the symptoms.
NICK: It’s not easy, is it?

If you imagine that I’m listening to Poison as I post this, then these photographs pretty much sum up the last fortnight:

(Well, Nick is pretty much a constant, of course—thank goodness for that.)

You know what’s noticeable by its absence above?

Books.

I haven’t read a new book in weeks—though I have a brand-new Diana Wynne Jones that I had to shove on a shelf out of my sight because it was staring at me accusingly. And the new Jasper Fforde. And the first book in a boarding-school series that I’m fairly sure doesn’t include vampires but is bound to include some other kind of sexy supernatural creature who makes a surprisingly good boyfriend.

But I can’t risk getting caught up in a book I can’t put down. Frankly, I’m surprised at myself: I’m not normally good at delayed gratification.

I’ve been writing, though. Writing, and writing, and writing.

I’ve teased out issues of law and social custom in the U.S. Deep South in the 1930s, something that involved some fairly unpleasant Googling.

I’ve raised a dark menace from the sea, deleted a king, and nearly drowned two fictional children in a chameleonic city with no name.

I’ve tried desperately to keep up with Steven Moffat’s whipcrack dialogue.

I’m loving the writing.

But this, after all, is The Circulating Library. It would be fairly egotistical even for me to only read what I’ve actually written myself.

Still, I’ll have time to read Enchanted Glass soon. Surely?

This sums up my life, especially at 7:30 on a Monday night:

ME: Sweetheart, I love you, but you have to stop performing a mouth-orchestra counterpoint to ‘Every Rose Has its Thorn’ while I am trying to write.
NICK: Sorry.

I’m prepared for this one at least fifteen minutes in advance, and I’m also relatively sober. I’m therefore going to be terribly disappointed when I mess up this live-blogging the way I messed up the last one.

[Note to self: “jets” is not a neutral term for “aeroplanes.”]

In other words, this conversation basically sums up today:

ME: My dad killed one of my sister-in-law’s chickens.
NICK: On purpose?
ME: Of course!
NICK: Oh, well, that’s all right.
ME: Is it better that he killed it on purpose than if he’d killed it accidentally?

Basically, it’s been an odd day.

We’re now watching a Mother’s Day news report on the telly (I blame my mother for my belief that Mother’s Day is not, broadly speaking, actually a news topic). But, then, the actual news stops about thirteen minutes past the hour these days, so I don’t know why I bother complaining any more.

I am sending up my annual prayer of thanksgiving that I’m not working as a waitress this Mother’s Day—worst nightmare of every waitress, is Mother’s Day.

Oh no! Oh no! the TiVo’s going wabby, just like it did last week! Why do you hate me so, TiVo? Why? At least the episode hasn’t actually started yet.

We open in a sunny paddock, with a man in the centre: he circles and the camera circles around him, focusing on the lipstick mark on his lip. A man in a tuxedo and two heavily armed men come up to him and, as he says, “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”, note that it’s hallucinogenic lipstick.

“She’s here,” says Tuxedo Man.

And so she is, striding down a corridor in crippling heels and a stunning ’30s-style dress, and cutting through thick metal with her tiny blowtorch.

Meanwhile, twelve-thousand years later, Amy and the Doctor are in a museum, with the Doctor saying, “Wrong, wrong, one of mine” and Amy begging to go to a planet. (“Oh, I see,” says Amy, “it’s how you keep score.”)

Cut to the woman with the blowtorch.

Then the Doctor finds a home box (like a black box, only it homes), marked in Old Gallifreyan.

DOCTOR: There were days, many days, when these words could burns stars, and raise up empires, and topple gods.
AMY: What does this say?
DOCTOR: “Hello, sweetie.”

We cut back to the woman with the blowtorch, who we now see is River Song. She tells the Tuxedo Man that, given what’s in their vault, this ship won’t reach its destination.

Then she repeats some coordinates and, as the Doctor programmes them into the console, blows the airlock.

RIVER: As I said on the dance floor: you might want to find something to hang onto.

She hurtles through an air corridor into the TARDIS, knocking the Doctor flat.

Credits.

The TARDIS follows the ship, with River and the Doctor both piloting the TARDIS. She tells the Doctor to use the stabilisers. He says they don’t have any stabilisers, but she points out the blue buttons. Sure enough, they settle the TARDIS down, but the Doctor calls them “blue boringers.” I guess we know why he never fixes the fuses.

DOCTOR: Parked us? We haven’t landed!
RIVER: Of course we’ve landed! I just landed her.
DOCTOR: But it didn’t make the noise!
RIVER: What noise?
DOCTOR: Imitates the landing noise
RIVER: It’s not supposed to make that noise. You leave the brakes on.

Outside, the spaceship has crashed into an enormous temple outside. River steps out of the TARDIS, but the Doctor plans to flee. Amy won’t have it, though, not since there’s an alien planet out there, which is what she wanted to see.

The Doctor says okay: five minutes.

The building is an Atplan (don’t correct my spelling!) temple, abandoned for centuries.

Amy asks if they can be introduced—the Doctor introduces her as “Professor River Song,” and she says, “Oh, I’m going to be a professor one day? Spoilers!”

The Doctor rants about not being River’s taxi service, but River says he’ll always catch her—and that there’s one survivor.

She signals her back-up.

RIVER: Doctor? Can you sonic me? I need to boost the signal so we can use it as a beacon.
AMY: Ooh, Doctor. You soniced her.

Rover’s back-up is Father Octavian, Bishop second-class, with twenty Clerics at his command. As Nick has always argued, Clerics are the best character class. I hope these ones do Turn Undead.

River asks the Doctor what he knows about “the weeping angels.”

The Doctor’s not thrilled about this, and I don’t blame him.

Amy’s wondering why the Doctor’s letting everyone call him “sir,” assuming that these weeping angels are bad news.

DOCTOR: You’re still here. What part of “Wait in the TARDIS don’t you understand?”
AMY: Oh, are you old Mr Grumpyface today?

Amy wants to know if River’s the Doctor’s wife, and the Doctor says, “Yes. I am definitely Mr Grumpyface today.”

Well, now they’re just messing with the fans.

River calls from inside a transport, and Amy says, “Oops. Her indoors.”

On the way to the transport, the Doctor explains that the Bishop/Cleric issue is because in the 51st century, the church has “moved on.”

In the transport, we see video of the weeping angel, its back turned to the camera, and Amy listens to how they’re “quantum locked.” I won’t repeat that, since we covered it in “Blink.”

Outside the transport, everyone is bustling, but inside, Amy notices that the angel’s image on the video has turned its head slightly.

She asks River if she had more than one clip of the angel, and River says no: just the four seconds.

But when Amy turns back, the angel is facing her. She checks the time stamp, and when she looks up, it’s even closer.

Outside, the Doctor is reading a book about the angels, and wondering why there aren’t any pictures.

Amy tries to pause or turn off the recording, but she can’t. She tries to pull the plug, and she can’t. But when she looks up again, the angel’s face fills the screen. She calls for the Doctor, but the door is locked.

Outside, the Doctor still worries about the lack of pictures in the book, until he remembers the bit where it says that “The image of the angel becomes itself an angel.”

Of course, this might be a little late, because the angel has already manifested outside the telly, but in a transparent, pixellated form.

The Doctor can’t get the door open and Amy can’t turn off the screen. Amy points out how hard it is not to blink, and tries to settle for winking alternate eyes. She still can’t turn the telly off, and the Doctor is now freaking out fairly thoroughly.

Just now, he decides to tell Amy to look at the angel but not at the eyes. Apparently, “the eyes are not the windows to the soul but the doors.”

Amy’s not too worried about that: she’s worried about the images. It gives her the idea to pause the tape on the section where the tape loops back, where the tape’s blank.

DOCTOR: River. Hug Amy.
AMY: Why?
DOCTOR: Because I’m busy.

Then the Clerics blow through the temple wall. The Doctor dashes out, and River follows. She asks if Amy’s coming, and Amy says yes: she just has something in her eye.

Nick tweets that this episode would go easier if Father Octavian could cast Lance of Faith—it does radiant damage.

They’re in a maze of the dead, which we see, when the Doctor—using his mad soccer skillz—kicks a gravity globe up to the roof, is basically a big space full of stone statues.

RIVER: Like looking for a needle in a haystack.
DOCTOR: A needle that looks like hay. A haylike needle of death. A haylike needle of death in a haystack of . . . statues. No. Yours was fine.

The party splits up. Never split the party! Never! And Amy, falling behind, rubs her eye—and fine sand falls between her fingers.

Oh, that’s creepy.

River gives Amy an injection to protect her from radiant damage and dry burn, while Amy probes for information about River’s future relationship with the Doctor.

AMY: You are so his wife.
RIVER: Oh, Amy, Amy, Amy: this is the Doctor we’re talking about. Do you really think it could be that simple?
AMY: Yep.
RIVER: Oh, you’re good. I’m not saying you’re right. But you’re good.

Yep, just messing with the fans’ heads. Especially the Rose ‘shippers and the misogynists.

Elsewhere, the two Clerics who were split from the party—Christian and Angelo—are menaced by strange noises—and the last thing they see is the stone angel’s face.

With the main party, a young Cleric called Bob fires on one of the statues, believing it looked at him. Father Octavian tells him that it would be good if “we could all remain calm in the presence of decor.” They should tell that to our wizard, who once tried to set fire to a temple’s soft furnishings, on the grounds that they were “evil” soft furnishings.

Bob is sent back to stand guard with Christian and Angelo, while the rest head into the maze. The Doctor rabbits on about the Atplan—the former inhabitants of this planet, now colonised by six-billion humans—and how they had two heads. He says they’re lovely people, and he and Amy should visit them.

AMY: I thought they were all dead.
DOCTOR: So is Virginia Woolf. I’m on her bowling team.

River knows there’s something wrong and so does the Doctor, but he can’t put his finger on it—until he casts his torch over the statues again.

RIVER: How could we not notice that?
DOCTOR: Low-level perception filter—or maybe we’re just thick.

What they mean is that the Atplans had two heads—and the statues don’t.

Ooh-er.

The Doctor herds everyone together, has them turn off their torches, and then turns his off for an instant—when he turns it back on, the statues have moved.

They’re angels. Every single statue in the maze is a weeping angel, and they’re coming after the party.

But what about Bob? What’s going on with Cleric Bob?

He’s hearing Angelo’s voice, just as Angelo heard Christian’s voice after Christian’s death. And just as before, Angelo tells Bob to move forward and come and see what they found. Bob does, because he’s only about twelve, and he’s confronted by the angel.

Up in the maze of the dead, River says there’s only one angel on the ship. But the Doctor says that they’ve been here for centuries, losing their forms. The crash wasn’t an accident: the angel crashed it, to bring radiation to the other angels.

The Cleric Bob rings on the communicator, telling the Doctor that Christian and Angelo are dead.

DOCTOR: Bob, keep running. But tell me: how did you escape?
BOB: I didn’t escape, sir. The angel killed me too.

Poor Bob. The angels have no voice, so they stripped his cerebral cortex as a means of communicating with the others.

Cleric Bob is the spiritual successor to Lovely Ross from the Sontaran two-parter.

The Doctor determines that Angel Bob is the angel from the ship’s wreckage, so the ship itself is clear, and he legs it after the rest of the party.

Except Amy—who says her hand has turned to stone, and she can’t let go of the balustrade. The Doctor says that her hand isn’t stone, but she sees it as stone, and she can’t move it.

She tells the Doctor to run, but he won’t.

AMY: I don’t need you to die for me, Doctor. Do I look that clingy?

Definitely messing with the fans’ heads.

The Doctor stabs Amy’s hand while she’s distracted, and the pain brings her to her senses.

At the top of the maze, the ship’s wreckage is at least 30 feet above them, and there are angels advancing on all sides. There’s no way up, no way back, no way out, River says.

The Doctor says there’s always a way out.

Angel Bob pops up on the communicator

ANGEL BOB: There’s something the angels are very keen for you to know before the end.
DOCTOR: What’s that?
ANGEL BOB: I died in fear.
DOCTOR: I’m sorry?
ANGEL BOB: You told me my fear would keep my alive. But I died afraid, in the dark, and alone.
AMY: What are they doing?
RIVER: They’re trying to make him angry.

And they do.

The Doctor, deciding he has a plan, grabs a Cleric’s gun, and asks everyone to trust him. Amy and River do, but Father Octavian is less certain: the Doctor tells him to make a leap of faith.

DOCTOR: There’s one thing you never, ever put in a trap.
ANGEL BOB: And what would that be, sir?
DOCTOR: Me.

He fires at the gravity globe, and we fade to credits.

[In retrospect, I’m annoyed I didn’t make a joke about the director Adam Smith really extending his interests past eighteenth-century economies.]

It’s all summed up in this slightly embellished conversation:

ME: Now, your next piece of assessment is released tomorrow. No, it’s not. That was a total lie. It’s released next Tuesday.
STUDENTS: Yeah.
ME: I was getting my T-days missed up.
STUDENTS: Tomorrow is an F-day.
ME: Is it? Is today Thursday?
STUDENTS: Yes.
ME: Did we have a public holiday this week?
STUDENTS: Yep.
ME: Well, it’s still being released next Tuesday.

Still, at least I was in the correct class and teaching the correct material.

Full live-blogging disclosure: I’ve been working all through this long weekend, and am crazy tired (and a bit tipsy). Also, when I’m finished here, I have to raise a dark menace from the depths of the ocean and frighten some children with it.

So though this live-blogging has been described as a love-fest, and I like to make that true, this one might be a bit cranky.

We open in a bunker that is shaking. People babble incomprehensible war jargon to one another—I catch the word “Messerschmitts,” though I can’t spell it.

Winston Churchill—yes, really—asks if the German planes are out of range.

“Normally, sir, yes,” says one of the women operatives.

“Well, then,” says Churchill. “Time to roll out the secret weapon.”

Credits.

The TARDIS materialises, and the Doctor pops out to be confronted by armed soldiers and Winston Churchill, who asks the Doctor for a TARDIS key.

Churchill recognises the Doctor, even though he’s regenerated. And he tells the Doctor that he rang (at the end of “The Beast Below”) a month ago. A month is much less than twelve years. Imagine if Churchill had to wait twelve years!

An operative tells Churchill that there’s another formation coming in, and he invites the Doctor to come up to the roof and see something.

On the roof is Professor Bracewell, head of the Ironside Project. He’s watching the sky through binoculars as Amy is stunned by the barrage balloons. But the Doctor is distracted by the destruction of the entire squadron by something that is not human technology.

Indeed, it’s not human technology.

It’s a Dalek. A Dalek in camoflague paint.

The Doctor demands to know what the Dalek is doing here, but it only says, “I am one of your soldiers.”

Bracewell says that this is one of his Ironsides. But the Doctor, in the Cabinet war bunker, tells Churchill that despite the plans, the photographs, and the field tests, these are not Bracewell’s inventions. They’re alien and totally hostile, he says.

Exactly, says Churchill, and they’ll win him the war. He slaps a rather gorgeous propaganda poster on the table—and I’ll provide a link to that later, if you fancy.

Churchill tells the Doctor that he might have been a bit freaked out a month ago, but now he thinks the Ironsides can win him the war.

The Doctor demands that Amy tells Churchill about the Daleks.

What do I know about the Daleks, she says?

They invaded your world, he says.

No, they didn’t, Amy says.

The Doctor looks at her in astonishment, but she insists that she has no memory of the Dalek invasion of Earth. Or the more recent Dalek invasion of Earth.

Then the TiVo goes wabby, and Nick takes five minutes to fix it. But it’s five minutes that, I’m pretty sure, was only the Doctor insisting that the Daleks are aliens and Churchill insisting they’re not.

The all-clear sounds.

In Bracewell’s lab, a Dalek offers him a cup of tea, and he says that would be lovely.

The Doctor swans in with Amy, and challenges Bracewell to provide him with some details about the Dalek construction. Bracewell shows the Doctor some other plans he’s come up with, for gravity bubbles and the like, as the Dalek slides up with a cup of tea on a tray balanced on his sucker.

The Doctor tells Bracewell that whatever the Daleks have offered him, they won’t keep their promise.

The Dalek offers the Doctor a cup of tea, but the Doctor knocks the tray off his sucker, and demands the Dalek tell him what they’re here for. Which war are they trying to win, World War II or the war against everything that’s not Dalek?

He starts whaling on the Dalek with a crowbar (or perhaps a tyre iron, or some other sort of metal bar), while the Dalek bleats, “Do you not want a cup of tea?”

DOCTOR: I am the Doctor. And you are the Daleks.
(Pause)
DALEK: Correct. Review testimony.

They transmit the testimony to the Dalek ship, where it activates something called a “progenitor cube,” which looks like a Dalek-shaped pepperpot. I’d like a Dalek-shaped pepperpot.

Bracewell insists that the Daleks stop, because they’re his Ironsides. He created them, he says.

No, say the Daleks: they created him. And they shoot off his lower arm, showing us that he’s a robot.

The Doctor heads straight back to the TARDIS but leaves Amy behind to stay safe. “In the middle of the London Blitz?” she asks. “Safe as it gets around me,” he says.

AMY: What does he expect us to do now?
CHURCHILL: KBO, of course.
AMY: What?
CHURCHILL: Keep buggering on.

On the Dalek ship, the Doctor pops up. The Daleks aim their weapons at him, but he’s says no, he has a self-destruct button for the TARDIS, and he’ll detonate the ship if he has to.

I’m pretty sure that’s a biscuit.

The Doctor asks what the Daleks are doing, and they say, as usual, that one ship survived. They fell through time, tracing one of the progenitor cubes, which contains pure Dalek DNA.

But, as the Doctor points out, the cube wouldn’t recognise them as Dalek—their DNA is too corrupted. They needed the Doctor’s testimony to prove that they were Daleks, though they don’t make it clear how the progenitor cube can recognise testimony.

The Daleks tells the Doctor to withdraw before they destroy the city, but he says the ship is a wreck. They don’t have the power.

They don’t need the power, they say. They just need to turn on London’s lights and let the Germans do the exterminating.

The Daleks say they’ll return to their own time and begin again, but the Doctor says he won’t let them get away this time.

But the Daleks are distracted by the appearance of the new Daleks from the progenitor cube.

DALEK: Behold, Doctor. A new Dalek paradigm.
NICK (in Dalek voice): More comfortable chairs inside!

They are much bigger. I don’t care for them, though. That bright yellow one is particularly festive.

Back in the Cabinet war bunker, Bracewell is preparing to kill himself, but Amy and Churchill talk him back from the edge. Amy tells him that he’s alien tech, so he should be as clever as the Daleks themselves.

And he is: because with his gravity bubble, it is technically possible to send something up into space. Churchill tells him it’s time to think big.

Back on the Dalek ship, the old Daleks praise the new Daleks and the new Daleks disintegrate the old Daleks, on the grounds that they’re inferior.

DOCTOR: Blimey, what do you do with the ones that mess up?
DALEK: You are the Doctor. You must be exterminated.
DOCTOR: Don’t mess with me, sweetheart.

In the Cabinet war bunker, they watch video of the Doctor facing off against the new, shiny, white Dalek Supreme.

Oh.My.God. The new Dalek Supreme is an Apple product! That explains everything!

The Doctor threatens to blow up the TARDIS again, but the Daleks say there is no detonation device.

DOCTOR: All right, it’s a Jammy Dodger. But I was promised tea!

At this point, three fighter jets show up.

No, honestly.

Fighter jets in gravity bubbles. In space.

At least a nice RAF-on-Dalek dog fight in space gives me a chance to catch up on my typing.

[Author’s belated note: I need to acknowledge my wonderfully clever readers here, who have pointed out en masse that these were Spitfires, and therefore don’t qualify as “fighter jets.” But I’m too lazy to change all my references at this stage.]

The jets have calls signs like “Danny Boy” and “Jubilee.” And keep saying, “Good show!” This is like a boys’ own adventure story from the future via the past.

The jets aren’t having much luck until the Doctor, in the TARDIS, manages to block the shield on the dish. Then Danny Boy is able to blow up the dish, and London sinks back into darkness.

Danny Boy wheels round to make another run at the ship, and the Doctor tells him to blow the ship out of the sky.

But the Daleks threaten that if they don’t call off the attack, they’ll blow up the planet. He thinks they’re bluffing, but they say that Bracewell’s design is based on an oblivion continuum, and they’ll detonate him if Danny Boy doesn’t withdraw.

The Doctor has to make the decision, and it’s a hard one for him. He knows this is the best chance he’s has since, ooh, season four to destroy the Daleks, but he can’t see the planet blow up, either.

He doesn’t hesitate for long, but calls off Danny Boy, dashes back to Earth while the Daleks gloat, and punches Bracewell in the face.

While Bracewell is stuttering—and no small blame to him, frankly—the Daleks detonate the bomb anyway.

Bracewell starts ticking down, as Churchill says that he can’t work it out, since Bracewell has all these memories of his past life, including the Great War. Why Churchill is freaking out about this now, and not when he first found out that Bracewell as an alien android, I don’t know.

The Doctor talks Bracewell through past memories, especially his painful ones about his parents’ death. He says Bracewell needs to feel that pain, concentrate on it, because that pain is what makes him human. And, he adds, the Daleks can’t detonate that bomb, because he’s a human being.

That doesn’t seem like very sound science to me. Does the bomb know what Bracewell is thinking? Isn’t he going to blow up anyway, and just be really, really sad in his last moments?

Apparently not. It looks as though he’ll explode, but then Amy coaxes him to talk about his lost love, Dorabella, and the bomb ticks back down.

So that’s good news. But, in the interim, the festive Daleks have initiated a time jump, and they’ve got away from the Doctor again.

Oh, well, that’s that, then. This seems an unusually short episode.

The Doctor is staggered by this news, and not immediately consoled by Amy pointing out that at least he saved the Earth.

Then we have a flag-raising scene ripped from a thousand war memorials. As Nick points out, there’s something particularly Iwo Jima about the scene.

Back in the Cabinet war bunker, the Doctor is removing alien tech from Churchill’s Spitfires, as one of the operative weeps at the news that her young man was shot down over the English Channel.

The Doctor and Churchill embrace, and Amy tells Winston that it’s been amazing meeting him, but that he needs to give the Doctor back the TARDIS key he just lifted from the Doctor’s pocket.

The Doctor chokes on the tea he finally managed to get.

Churchill wanders off, repeating “KBO,” while the Doctor insists that Amy hand back his key. Why doesn’t Amy get a key? Is it just too early in the season for that particular moment?

The Doctor and Amy wander back to Bracewell’s lab. Bracewell is prepared to be deactivated, and the Doctor says that he’s going to be so deactivated—in about twenty minutes or so, when he and Amy have finished doing what they need to do.

BRACEWELL: Very well, Doctor. I shall wait here and prepare myself.
AMY: Blimey, alien tech but a bit slow on the uptake.

Eventually, he catches on, and as Amy and the Doctor leave, he starts packing.

AMY: You’ve got enemies.
DOCTOR: Everyone’s got enemies.
AMY: Yeah, but mine’s the woman outside Budgens with the mental Jack Russell. You’ve got, like, arch enemies.

The Doctor, though, is more worried about the fact that Amy didn’t know who the Daleks were.

And, as the TARDIS dematerialises, we see the same crack on the wall behind them.

Next week: River Song and the weeping angels.

My mother informs me that she’s planning on becoming a Jewish mother as a hobby. I suggested that, since she’s already a Catholic mother, she didn’t really need to pile on any more guilt.

Then she sent me this e-mail:

Was going to ring last evening to see if you were okay as I didn’t get
a response to my e-mail which is very unusual.
Love,
Mum
P.S. If I don’t get a response to this one I will contact emergency
services.

(The original e-mail, I might add, was a request for help with the crossword, and I didn’t know the answer.)

I didn’t learn my lesson, clearly, because yesterday brought this e-mail:

Are you alive and well? I’m concerned as I did not receive a response
to the e-mail I sent yesterday. Correction, I did receive a response
from your sister.
Love,
Mum

And then she suggested that I post them on the blog. She’s hungry for a wider audience, I think.

Nick does the laundry, after some prodding:

ME: Honey . . .
NICK: You are quite right. I leap into action, like the action man I am.
ME: You’re not an action man.
NICK: I am too an action man!
ME: For a start, action men don’t whinge like that.
NICK: There are lots of action men in Aliens, and they whinge all the god-damn time.
(Pause)
ME: All right, that is a fair point.
NICK: Woo hoo!

Trying to decipher Australian Crawl lyrics—always a pointless task:

ME: Knocking on rum balls?
NICK: Maybe.
ME: Oh! Knocking on wrong doors.
NICK: Rundor.
ME: Who?
NICK: Rundor the Repulsive.
ME: Is that a real person?
NICK: I don’t know.
ME: Well, did you make him up just then?
NICK: Oh. Yes.
ME: Then why didn’t you say he wasn’t real?
NICK: I didn’t like to draw conclusions.