You're a beautiful woman probably...

Another photo to accompany my bit from yesterday. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of these occasions where it doesn't look as if I'm about to vomit. Maybe it's not a bad thing, then, that the image quality is so poor...

The name at the top of the bookmakers' lists this summer for the next Doctor Who was Peter Capaldi. I was interested to see the list but pooh-poohed this, as it seemed the production team were set on casting only young actors - I think it was even said at one point that only someone in their 20s could keep up with the pace of production. I was delighted to hear back in August that the rumours were, in fact, true. The choice pleased me for two reasons - firstly, as a long-term fan of the programme (except for the awful period in the 1980s when the production went badly astray) I wanted to see a Doctor with the authority that only an older man could have; secondly, I knew Peter back in the 1970s as a fellow fan - we're the same age and I've followed his career since the 1980s. I had met Jon Pertwee a couple of times, during the making of Death to the Daleks and Planet of the spiders , and got to know Peter through the Jon Pertwee fan club (started by an old school friend, ...

Here in the UK at least, we're always being told not to put used batteries into the bin, because then they will be sent to landfill and pollute the environment. Because of this, I've been collecting mine. I used to take them to our local Asda supermarket - just down the road - where the recycling bin was conveniently in the entrance, until it disappeared about a year ago. I've asked about it there a couple of times: the first time I was told it had gone off to be emptied and not come back; the second time I was told it might have been stolen. This week I tried Tesco, where no bin was visible and the Customer Service desk could not tell me whether there was one, asking me to ring back in a few days' time. I also tried Home Bargains, Superdrug, Argos and Poundland. None of them had any visible recycling bin. Poundland even had a sign saying "Recycle your batteries here" - but no bin and no-one to ask about it. Finally I went into Boots. Again, no bin, but a mem...