Timewasters

Much kudos to Russell T for resolving his cliffhanger in the first twenty seconds of the next episode. That man has style. The conclusion was a real stonker - A and I were both in tears as the doctor left an uncomprehending Donna behind. It all reminded me of a recent mailing list discussion -- probably on the Diana Wynne Jones list, which is by far the nicest list I've ever been on, consisting soley of intelligent, witty, people writing beautifully about relevant subjects and being nice to each other - on the nastiness of the device whereby everyone's memory is wiped at the end of the adventure. The consensus was that it renders the whole story pointless if the characters remember nothing, and it thereby insults the emotional investment you've made as a reader. We didn't agree with that chap in Susan Cooper's The Silver Tree who (SPOILER SPACE) has his memory wiped for him as an act of kindness, either. Anyway, I thought Russell T very adequately demonstrated why it's such a bad thing: the death of the character, in fact.

I've been wasting time online. I can't remember how, but I've stumbled on a lovely blog that dissects some of the very silly comic strips in US papers. Partly I just love his writing style; but the fascination is also in the sheer weirdness of the strips themselves. The blog is Comics Curmudgeon; to see the strips, you can build your own page at the Houston Chronicle's site. From Comics Curmudgeon, I found myself at Judge a book by its cover, a collection of truly dreadful cover art including my all-time favourite cock-up. From there I ended up wasting most of a day at Photoshop disasters: hynotically awful.

The stolen earth - and Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen

Oh no! Please don't let David Tennant regenerate... Russell, you bastard... I thought he'd signed up for three specials, anyway - and he's taking a year off to play Hamlet, so he doesn't need to regenerate. Aaargh.

We've been glued to iPlayer again. So cool. Thank you, kindly BBC.

Still recuperating from the music festival. It all went pretty well. Bit of a thin audience for our young artists on the Friday, and Saturday, which was meant to be our jazz picnic, was the one gloomy day this month so we had to picnic inside, but Sunday was all we could have wanted, apart from my mother tripping over the pushchair halfway through my big solo, which made Sasha shriek in sympathy - which made me wonder if I was an unnatural mother, trilling away on my semiquavers while my poor child was carried out screaming "Mummmeee! Mummmmeee!" But then lots of people were around to comfort the poor lamb, whereas only I could sing the cantata. In the event, it was my mum who needed the most care, having taken all the skin off her elbow and gathered some impressive bruises, stone floors being essentially unforgiving.

Gosh, I am tired. I'm going to bid you all goodnight and toddle off to bed. Remind me to tell you about New York some time.