I didn’t use to shave - also seeing it as a chore - but as I aged, I found that the upper edge of my beard was creeping up my cheeks to the point where I was beginning to see the upper edge at the bottom of my vision, which I found weird and disconcerting, so ended up trimming the top edge. That looked weird, and so I progressed and eventually settled on a goatee kinda thing, which I have been told by several people suits me - so I stick with it.

I use a wet shave: soapy water, then a shave gel and then shave with the grain. I have never timed it but it takes around the same length of time overall as cleaning my teeth, I suppose. It is reasonably smooth - but not mega-smooth by any means. I do it each morning.

I’m on holiday for a fortnight now. Away with a group of friends at a chalet that one of them owns. Im overlooking the bay, the sea is beautiful and the weather is fine.

Im quite a bit over 30 - late 50s - and we have been doing this for just over half my life now.

This time, however, one of the friends isn’t here, since he is getting more and more reluctant to leave his house at all and has been since covid. Another isn’t here because he has just been in for an operation to remove a melanoma.

The effects of aging are definitely being quite prominent at the moment.

Since the age of 30? Only when on demos/direct actions - or when patrolling the nature reserves where I have worked. In those cases, since I have had NVDA and de-escalation training etc, I have pretty much relied on that: so remain passive, smile, speak, find common ground, use the drama triangle and all the rest.

To be honest, even before the age of 30 (as an adult), as far as I can remember my only real confrontations as such have been in the same or similar situations.

Obviously, I have ended up being dragged off and arrested a few times at the direct actions, and have been hit a couple of times and also deliberately run down by an offroad motorbike on a reserve. On that occasion, I didn’t get much opportunity to ‘confront’ the guy, really though, beyond diverting his attention from my volunteers.

Back in my 30s I would typically see some combination them - all of us were single - 2 or 3 times a week: in the pub, dropping round, out to see a film, out for a meal, poetry society, wildlife volunteering etc etc.

A couple of decades on I am married but they are all still single. They don’t see each other nearly as often, it seems, but I’ll meet them as a group only once every couple of months. I may meet one or another for some reason every few weeks though.

Yes, but I’m quite a bit over 30. Mid 50s in fact.

It doesn’t have to be about conspicuous consumption though. Ours was deliberately a small scale thing: registry office and then a handfasting with a couple of dozen close friends and family in our back garden. The whole thing cost around £1000 and the biggest single expense was hiring the gazebo. My sister catered.

Your family situation sounds very different, but I only invited mine because they were close (my SO went no-contact with hers a long time before).

I was rather surprised to find that I wanted to (get married, that is) - it had not really crossed my mind in my previous long-term relationship - but I found myself wanting to make a bigger commitment this time, and it was all about that commitment to my SO rather than wider family or anyone else. I would still have wanted that regardless of my family situation, I think.

Ahh, they feature later Doctors anyway, so I wouldn’t have hit them so far.

However, as it happens I have seen a run through of one of them - The Gunpowder Plot - which features some of the best material for the Rutans that I have encountered so far.

I am not including most of the games, but have watched a play through of Destiny of the Doctors.

There are stories in all the media - comics, short stories, novels and audio that as up there with the best of the TV tales. Of course there are a good many that are mediocre and just plain bad too.

With Big Finish, the best stories tend to be among the earlier ones in any given range. They have given Eight a great run altogether though. And they allowed Six to complete his intended arc well too.

Back at the 50th anniversary, I started working my way through ALL the DW fiction - TV, audio, novels, comics, short stories that I was aware of in chronological order - using the eyespider lists as a guide. I knew another Whovian with a huge collection, and then started filling in the gaps however I could. You can find just about everything online one way or another.

As a result, broadcast TV episodes were almost secondary. I was reading/listening to/watching the Doctor basically every day anyway. Around 4 years back, I changed jobs to a significantly more demanding one - and had a lot less time available. I was around halfway through the VNAs by then, and have taken the time from then until now to crawl through the remaining ones. Still working on the last ones now.

I have cheated and have read Eight’s comics and heard his audios - and am up to date with the War Doctor and Torchwood and most of the other spinoffs - including Señor 105 etc, and the all the ‘other media’ tales for Twelve and Thirteen too.

I do have a bit more time again now, but I think that realistically, I am going to finish the VNAs - but probably not the Benny ones - and maybe the novels and shorts for Eight and draw a line under it there. There are a LOAD of novels for Eight, though, so that is still going to keep me in touch with the Doctor daily for some considerable time yet.

Neither Fringe nor The Lazarus Project really grabbed me, I have to say. I have not tried the Ministry of Time so far though.

Mixed feelings overall.

Fifteen minutes in I was resenting the typical RTD family ‘stuff’ and still waiting for the story to actually start. I was definitely into the ‘I don’t care about these people’ zone - often said to be the 6 words that kill any story.

Then it did get going and was fun as long as you went with the flow. I did feel that we were as close to Gaiman’s Neverwhere and the Marquis de Carabas as we were to the Doctor in this though.

According to TVDB (which I use for my Plex setup), they are S00E167 and S00E162 respectively.

No. Perhaps because when I get paid to write about science, I don’t use grammar like that.

If they do, it is probably to avoid grammar like ‘off of’.

Been using QBittorrent for longer than I can remember now. It certainly does everything I have ever wanted from it.

even more advanced than our own.

I don’t know what to say about that.

It is the Federation’s we do not discuss it with outsiders thing. It confuses time travelling Klingons.

I watched three films last week:

• Barbie (2023) - pleasingly intelligent satire.

• Colette (2018) - lavish fin de siecle biopic.

• Alice in the Cities (1974) - existentialist road movie prefiguring Wenders’ later Paris, Texas.

Which was best? Well, the first, US, section of AitC had more intensity to offer than the European conclusion. Wenders was still developing here. Colette looked beautiful and had a story to tell, but did not seem to get to the root of what kept the protagonist with Willy so long. Barbie also looked good, Gerwig knew what she wanted to say and articulated it pretty well and entertainingly, if a little schmaltzy - inevitably - towards the end.

Overall, I would say that Barbie wins.

It’s been a while since I read anything - in terms of comics - at all really. As it happens Giant Days was about the last that I binged through. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I have just jumped back on to 2000AD this week and have been taken by Feral & Foe enough to go back and binge through the two earlier runs. It scratched a fantasty itch that I hadn’t really been aware of and I am looking forward to more.

I am working through the Muderbot diaries - just finishing Exit Strategy at the moment. They are easy and enjoyable reading, but i might take a break before Network Effect though, since they are a little same-y, and maybe dive into the Hyperion Cantos, or perhaps back to Adrian Tchaikovsky’ and Children of Ruin. I have a week of holiday coming up, so hope to have a fair bit of reading time.

Catching up on S3 of For All Mankind in preparation for S4. I am enjoying it as much as the first two.

Up to date with Ahsoka too, which is delivering the goods in style, and taking things in a pleasingly different direction from time to time.

And also Lower Decks which has now reached the heights where my SO chooses it in preference to any other comedy options. Largely due to T’lyn, I think.