This is very much me today. Despite we only have one actual baby. She's not letting lack of numbers hinder her.

I think 'No. What. A. Stupid. Fool. YOU. Are!' might be the worst line with the worst delivery in all Doctor Who. I would also mention 'Clever, clever, clever,' from the sarcastic Cyberman in the Moonbase. So out of character I rewound the audio to make sure I hadn't imagined it.

I'm a sucker for a teak coach and these look gorgeous.

Dreamt the other night that the Earth was invaded by high-technology imperialistic aliens, but the illustrious US president had a plan. Unfortunately the plan was abject surrender and collaboration.

The baby's got a cold an an ear infection, and trying to administer ear drops to the wriggle-queen of Cambridgeshire is not a fun job. Still easier than getting the saline nasal spray up a nostril though.

Blake's 7: Pressure Point is just the Five Doctors, isn't it? Even down to the number in the title being misleading and it ending with the big plummy-voiced one stuck under a gate. Still, I enjoyed Avon's very silly run through the minefield.

Got myself some Chinese unauthorised Gondor minifigures. They're really nice, actually, for all their dubious attitude to intellectual property rights. That bow piece is giving me the strangest urge to try and make Lego Silver Nemesis.

If ever you feel like you're not good enough to be a professional writer...

The baby has remembered how to say 'Daddy' and spent the last hour before bed gabbling excitedly about Daddy and yelling it whenever I left the room. I feel a bit guilty: we couldn't get her to say 'Mummy'. In fact, I'm not sure if she thinks 'Daddy' is a generic term for either parent.

It's taken me ages to finish around looking after the 7-month old, but I finally finished @aptshadow.bsky.social's Alien Clay, which is one of the best books I've read in ages. Icky, squirmy, unsettling and compelling on the themes of alien biology, fascism and collective action.

I've just seen the leaked images of Lego Minas Tirith and yikes. I really *really* don't have space for it and could definitely use the money more responsibly. But I would regret it for ever if I didn't get it. Includes Denethor's palantir, which is more than the film did.

Had our tiny 3-bed house valued today, looking to move somewhere bigger. I think we're going to struggle in the Cambridge area. Out of interest I looked to see what we'd be able to get up north. 9 or 10-bedroom house or entire apartment block in Scarborough well within reach...

We've been watching the first couple of episodes of the new Night Manager and my main takeaway is that Hiddleston seems to be ageing into Peter Cushing.

The baby got away with just a bit of a sniffle and a very slight runny nose. Wondering for the third time this winter why I have a worse immune system than my baby.

Can I just say something...? 🧣

After all the tedious online discussion about the correct use of commas, at last the @financialtimes.com provides evidence for the importance of hyphenation.

Finished Building Phase 2 on the Massive Castle. Looking much more castley now. Though I am slightly taken aback at just how big it is already at this early stage. We have a lot of expansions left to go!

Got another cold. Literally every time I go to a museum baby sensory event I come away with a cold.

It's apparently 11 years since I made this, and I still haven't made a dancing animated gif out of it.

This looks like those cloying drawings of Paddington leading someone to Heaven. Is the penguin the equivalent psychopomp who leads souls to the frozen ninth circle of hell, for traitors?

'The other members of the White Council. I don't need them. They'll say they came with me to defeat the Necromancer at Dol Guldur... and they did. But they stayed a little back from the front lines.'

I'm not saying I'm tired, but I just tried to use a roll of solder as a mouse for my laptop.

'The other members of the White Council. I don't need them. They'll say they came with me to defeat the Necromancer at Dol Guldur... and they did. But they stayed a little back from the front lines.'

OP is not joking which is sad because this is a really fucking funny joke.

Hat tip to whoever wrote this label heading for the Whipple Museum. At the Whipple, every day is Treat Day.*

My wife's been playing YouTube videos of Mozart music to the baby. The baby loves them. Not for the music, but for the portraits of Mozart that appear on the screen, all of which she finds hilarious. She just sits there hooting hysterically at them and bouncing up and down with delight.

Bag 2! Tower lights not connected up at the moment. Photos really don't do justice to the presence of this thing. It's big, but it's also dense. The thick walls aren't strictly necessary but they give it a sense of solidity you don't generally get in Lego builds.

This is so amazing!

Just spent half an hour trying to work out why an LED wasn't working on my Lego castle, only to solve it by reversing the polarity. I have no idea why this was necessary as I thought I'd been clearly colour-coding + and -, but the Doctor Who dork in me nevertheless gets a measure of satisfaction.

Might rewatch The Enemy of the World soon: a far-fetched Doctor Who story in which global politics in 2017 are dominated by an absurd caricature of a politician who is creating chaos for his own ends and has convinced his followers of insane and stupid things.

'I no longer feel an obligation to think.'

Three little ducks went swimming one day, over the hills and far away. How, exactly? You can't swim over a hill. That's not how water works.

Nice to see James Doohan doohing another of his unidentifiable accents on this week's Man from UNCLE.

That’s the figure I most relate to in all this

Bag 1 done!

We take the baby to a songs and baby signing class. They have a cuddly cat they bring out of a box each week for the babies to cuddle. Seems a bit risky - how do they know whether it's alive or dead in there until they pull it out?

I can’t stop laughing at this

Started Building Phase 2 today: the Bergfried. Now, being English I didn't know what a Bergfried was before this castle appeared on my radar, but now I do. So purchase justified: it's educational. Like all good building expansions, we begin with Step 0: demolition and groundworks.

The programme for World Endangered Writing Day next Friday (23rd Jan). Explore and celebrate global writing diversity, and find out what is being done to support minority script communities, with this day of presentations and discussions. #wewd2026 Register here: tinyurl.com/wewd2026

The baby first rolled from her back on to her tummy a couple of months ago but had no interest in doing it. She's just realised she can string it together with front-to-back rolls to side-roll all over the room. All she wants to do now is roll. Which is a bit disconcerting when she's asleep.

Got a Faction Paradox novel and one of the last 2 remaining Missing Adventures I didn't have for my birthday, so we're going to party here like it's 2005.

So much for birthday lie-in. She did this again today, then said 'Daddy, Dada, I leurrrrr yeurrr', yanked my head towards her by the beard, latched on to my nose and - and this is new - stuck her tongue up my nostril. I've told her that Mummy and Daddy kisses are no tongues. My nose feels weird.

Baby's been teasing me again: taking her dummy out and offering it to my mouth, then whipping it away at the last moment. Repeat. She found this hilarious. I love her so much.

Woke up today to the sound of the baby clattering her dummy across the bars of her cot like a prisoner with a tin cup, which is apparently her latest way of signalling that she wants to get up.

I've been recording the repeats of Man from UNCLE and have managed to watch all of them so far. Very glad that I have, and that the series still holds up. I enjoyed it so much on BBC 2 when I was about 7 and it's still a charming bit of adventure fun 35 years later.

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