I don't know nuffin' about no skellingtons...

After some fifteen months of fluffed parrallel parks and dodgy roundabouts the DVLA finally saw fit to grant me a full driving licence on May 29th, two days before my thirty second birthday. The fact that this occurred just two weeks after my wife defeated her own demons and gained a full licence added fuel to the celebrations.

Strange to think that a month ago I was wondering if I would ever pass my test or if I was rather doomed to only ever know driving as something you did on your day off while paying a man to watch you and chat about rock music. Now I bomb up and down the M4 everyday like Adam West zipping out of the Batcave in his Lincoln. That said I do miss my instructor.

No disasters so far though I've had a couple of scares. I worry that I'll become complacent and make mistakes but I guess everyone does, except them as don't.

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I haven't produced a lot of work in the two weeks since my last entry. I sent my SFX Pulp Idol entry in (called 'Human Experience' and featuring the words 'napalm', 'handkerchief' and 'Shakespeare'). Emma was a stringent editor who questioned every unnecessary sentence. I'm not sure I could have shaved 900 words off it without her help.

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The last three episodes of Doctor Who have probably been the best three episode run in the history of the series. I will cover them in more detail but I find it incredible (and a bit scary) that Steven Moffat is able to produce work of this class and invention with such consistency.

The television version of Human Nature, as expected, is one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time.

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My spare moments in the last two weeks have seen me catching up on Heroes, the excellent NBC show to be screened on BBC2 later this year. With one episode to go I heartily recommend that anyone who reads this makes a point of watching this exciting and ingenious slice of telly at the earliest opportunity. It is excellent.

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Watched Hot Fuzz again last night. It is a very funny film. I still prefer Shaun of the Dead but it's probably because it's a zombie film. I also have the feeling that the internal logic of Shaun makes more sense but surely that's just silly?

too many faces...

I think I scared a colleague the other day. I asked how busy the shopping centre was and he told me it was quite busy. So I said I probably wouldn't go out for my usual breath of fresh air because there would be 'too many faces'. I don't know what possessed me to say that out loud. I suppose sometimes we think things to ourselves so often that it's easy to accidentally say it out loud like anyone would understand.

I should explain. For a few years now I've felt that most people's faces look familiar. When I see a new person, someone I haven't met before, they already look familiar. I theorise that there are two possible explanations for this.

Firstly, perhaps my memory only has room enough for a limited number of faces. So after that number has been reached the older faces are wiped from my face-archive and new, more recent faces are assigned to those individuals instead (this explains why I never think people look the same when I see them after a period of time).

The second possible explanation is that I have discovered a glitch in the universe. That glitch being that there are only a limited number of faces available in creation and I actually have seen them all.

In any case the phrase 'too many faces' is now being hurled back at me on a daily basis as it amuses my colleagues so much.

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As real life caught up with me last week I found myself less able to spend time writing. This is the classic excuse of course and I must do better. It was all going pretty well until Thursday and then some workplace politics put me off my stroke.

As a result it's a whole week since my last entry - rubbish. I have not been completely idle however. I'm ready to script my Future Shock and anticipate submitting it within a few weeks. I may crack out a few more over the next couple of months as I've been reminding myself why and how much I love comics this week.

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News of a reputable sounding Doctor Who fan fiction ezine has excited me today. An introduction by Paul Cornell and the involvement of Mags L Halliday must be a seal of quality? I've looked at some fan fiction sites on the internet and literally been terrified by what I've seen (I never really thought of K-9 as a sexual presence).

I've a rather fun second Doctor story in need of a home, I wonder if they are looking for material...

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In other news Emma passed her driving test last week. Whilst this is fantastic news and a great achievement it does mean that we now have to buy a car. We have actually just returned from nonchalantly drifting around a used car lot with our hands in our pockets trying to look at cars like we know what we're doing. A bit like cows skipping into an abattoir.

A man approached us and asked if we needed help so of course we told him no. We may have to get Emma's Dad to help us. I am thirty-one.

We were going to go for a walk into town then but because it's so sunny there were a lot of faces out. Too many really. We came back home instead.

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It's very nearly time for us to watch the two part season finale to 24 series six. Will it all turn out OK? Is Chloe going to contribute anything at all to this series? Is Wayne going to wake up? Will we find out what happened to Logan?

Do I really care when Heroes is so very much better?