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"So what's wrong with that?" Candy demanded aggressively into the ominous silence. "A bit of introductory spiel to establish the main characters, no harm in that!" "*Subliminal* work," the Doctor pointed out meaningfully. "Infodump avoidance," she declared, with a defiant toss of her platinum-peroxide curls. "Standard technique, in the *higher* forms of literature. Not quite up to the speed, me old tie-in tyke?" "Yyyyeah." The Doctor looked profoundly unmoved. "Let's have a decko at those *other* tapes of his, shall we?" "What other tapes?/There *are* no other tapes!" nymph and nosferatu chorused, in tones whose conviction was greatly outweighed by their optimism. "Funny, that!" Other Tape #1 hit the deck. "It looks to me a lot like..." --- <CCTV footage> It was well after chucking-out time in some darkling city of the nameless North. Out of a late-night chippy stumbled another late-night chippy of a Candyish persuasion, clad from upper thigh to nearly collarbone in the time-hallowed tartan of the Bay City Rollers. Close behind her came a shadowy, though more than sufficiently substantial, figure whose silhouette more than somewhat recalled a Trader Grey who had been doing himself rather too well on the call-out pizzas. Or possibly even -- The shadowy one produced a deep-fried Mars bar ice cream dripping with curry sauce, which he and Candy proceeded to share. KIDS! Don't try visualising this at home!!!! Of a sudden they were interrupted by a drunk large and loud. "Hey you Jimmie!" A tuppence whizzed with lethal force past the loving couple's caramel-joined heads. "Ah'm taukin' tae YE!" "Mum mumph splutter!" gibbered man and Muse, pulling taffily apart and working their jaws frantically to get them free to give the interloper what would no doubt be a jolly good telling off. Alas, the tuppence- skimmer already had one hell of a start on them. "That's a &$^@ing half-groot, that is!" A sequel bounced off Candy's steel-toecapped roller-blades. "An' there's anither for ye, ye #£<!ing pair o' \`$%s! An' that *@$+ing makes fourpence, M$ties! Here's anither, ____bags! Wha' hae ye ^^^^ers tae blaither aboon *this* &&&&er, noo it's the %%%%ing sixpence?!? -- Och, wad ye?" "Ever ready to oblige," sneered Candy's companion, punching his enemy a good one on the sporran with a spring-loaded boxing glove. Strange high meeping ensued. "Cock aye the newt, well may you bow down before me, who am Dr Jekyll to the only true and authentic heir of the royal Stuarts, and give me all your cash -- " Candy motioned him floridly to silence, and placed her roller-blade where it was best positioned to elicit information in a hurry. "Messire," said she, chipmunk-cheeked, "for the sake of auld lang John and your petits enfants yet unborn, tell me: which bugger sent you to bug us?" "Ah dinna ken!" the drunk whined, watery-eyed. "Ah were juist tollit tae chuck the wee blairworthies at ye, reckoning them off wi' foul words and randie names, till ye had o' the bricht pennies e'en as mony as ane score -- and keepit them besides, an ye bushwhackit these ballots sae the honour o' Bonnie Scotland and Rabbie Burns be upholden!" "You think," said Candy's companion in a murderous voice, brandishing his half Mars bar in a manner suggestive of no intent we care here to discuss, "our sacred integrity for sale for *20p*????" "Wheesht! mon, ye'd think naebodie'd e'er peddlit his virtue on telly for 'obscene sums o' money'! Be that as may, ah'm authorised to gae sae high as }{}{ing 25p, sae it be emergency; and it's sicker that -- " The drunk found himself accordingly assisted to get sicker. "Waste of half a Mars bar," Candy opined professionally (but her electric eyes shone with quiet pride). "I guess that's one payment-by-results we'll just have to do without, mon cheery abhor. Hey, though. *Did* you just give me the notion what to do with the *other* half...!" The CCTV cut abruptly to a scene of a train going through a tunnel. The train was Eurostar, so the scene was not precisely pacy. Shortly the Doctor geed it up with his plot-propellor pencil to </CCTV footage> and found himself facing a gloating, scorn-spraying Deplorable Duo. --- "Corruptible, are we?" spat the Count, with such venom that his GothULike hypodermic fangs went flying across the stage like a brolly in a truly unsavoury storm. "Invalid, this election is? Like this, the only one who can talk he is, Yoda thinks? Ha! HA!" "Wrong persona, loverboy," Candy stageslobbered. "Crikey!" A shocking revelation smote Harry Sullivan at this point, which he hastened to convey to the nearest Doctor ere it were too late. "No," the Doctor admitted impatiently. "For the first time in your lives, you got offered such a completely misconceived bribe that even you weren't idiotic enough to take it. Well, congratulations, you're officially upgraded to morons. Happy now?" He tossed the snarling nobleman a sudden clove of garlic, which Bathory automatically caught and absent-mindedly ate. "Let's just look at *this* one, shall we?" --- The scene: a luxurious hotel bedroom in Strasbourg. (We *hope* it was Strasbourg. If luxury hotels anywhere else think that blue wallpapers with a golden motif of interlocking EU starbursts is stylish, we're in bigger trouble than we knew.) Candy was dressed as a French maid; her companion's identity was somewhat obscured by the fact that he was currently dressed as a giant sausage; and in the very act of advancing upon him with feather-duster in one hand and mustard-pot in the other, she was arrested by the click of a key in the lock, and the slam of a door too exuberantly opened. "Cor," commented Ace, dressed as a waitress and bearing a tray of mysterious abominations. "You two don't stint yourself, do you?" "My love deals ever with a lavish hand," slavered the sausage, "of which you, wench, are but the latest and lushest evidence! Over my knee at AAAAARGH!" "Dirty sod!" The sausage was now doing its best impersonation of a Cumberland ring on the floor. "Oi, Blondie -- are you going to take this order, or what?" "It's... interesting," Candy observed, "but, and I never thought I'd hear myself say this, I never asked for it..." Ace rolled her eyes. "It's a gift from a mysterious perfessor. How'd a pair of losers like you afford a love-nest like this anyway?" "The ways of Aphrodite are mysterious too..." Candy suggested, leaning meaningfully forward. Ace placed the tray on the floor between them and stepped back hastily. "Not as mysterious as that, they're not!" "...but the difference between Boyzone's fee and a troop of singing lampreys is pretty faughing clear!" Ace paled slightly. "Yeah. Spend away, then. *Really* spend away. Oh, and Mystery Perfessor says, he hopes you'll remember the café when you're tucking in." Seeing the unholy fire kindle in Candy's eyes at her last two words, Ace shook her head in homicidal don't-go-there discouragement, and quit the scene in such haste that she forgot even to demand a tip. The sausage, now re-straightening tentatively, let out a gurgling chuckle. "Never fails, eh?" "One way or the other," Candy agreed smugly. "Let's see what the boy Merlin's bidding for his result... *Oh, no!*" "Do-wop-de-evil-do-wop?" "It's a steaming hot buttery pastry," Candy explained, "which, with some selective use of fruit-chunky goodness, is crafted into a passable likeness of milord Dan Eros." "Be-do-be-do... *whaa?*" Horrid truth dawned upon one of its less ardent admirers. "Hot. Bunny. Love. *And* a jar of la, words fail me, word-failing limeflower honey!" "I thought you wanted that one?" The sausage sneered as contemptuously as only a man in a custom-tailored hot-dog suit can. "Couldn't think why..." "Well, with no lions and no Bacall to apply it to, neither can adjective-rejective I!" "Oh, I don't know," Sausage Guy oozed. "Waste not, want not..." <The recording dissolved into static as the CCTV camera died of shame.> --- "Bl--- my goodness," Ninth corrected himself, deploying the subtle shadings of his universal grin that translated to 'long-suffering grimace'. "I've never seen the like, which in my case is saying quite a lot. Are you two *sure* the Universe isn't trying to tell you something?" "Honey mustard dressing is nice?" Candy suggested, shaking her peroxifluorescent mane in puzzlement. "Knew that already..." "That it hates us?" Bathory proposed. "Ditto. Yet one day, grovellers, I shall bestride its prostrate body like a colossus, and *then* the very gods shall learn to their cost...!" "...that we're not sharing any of the honey mustard dressing?" "That, too obviously." "Though, je ne sais pas pourqu'ailie, if that register-tease Artemis were to ask *real nicely*..." Ninth mugged aggrievedly. "Hello? The copper armour shop is round the corner. Back at the awards, it seems any corruption you got up to in Strasbourg is none of our business, so shut up about it, all right? Now, this tape here's a bit different." He picked up a book from the evidence pile. "Fictional, actually, but I think we're going to find it's accurate. Sit down, children, and I'll read you a nice little bedtime story. It seems that once upon a time..." --- "...'When Mr Thomas Jones and his charming bride acquired their London townhouse, it was the natural course of his generous character to invite the trusted friends of his bachelor days, during the seasons of his absence, to avail themselves freely of its lavish facilities. The virtuous Sophy, whilst wholly approving of this liberality from the ameliorating distance of her domestic bower, could however scarcely have been expected to view with pleasure or edification the round of vice and riot inseparable from her mansion's frequenting by such companions as are most agreeable to a young gentleman of high animal spirits more distinguished for good nature than prudence or continency; notwithstanding that her hypothetical response to its discovery, being so lenient and affectionate as to be almost blameworthy, featured often and pre-eminently in these guests' joint and several phantasies. "'One one such evening, a jolly and agreeable company were so assembled, representing in one gathering all the library's four quarters. Mr TRISTRAM SHANDY sat upon a large barrel of Bass, regaling Master NATHANIEL CHANTICLEER and Her Majesty Queen PASIPHAË with some tale of cock and bull. CAPTAIN LEADER, a rakehelly officer bursting with boasts from his long service in the wars of Spamstadt-Boschkonia, was engaged in teaching Misses KITTY and LYDIA BENNET the very fine social accomplishment of _Strip Ombre_, a scene upon which a discerning taste will hardly wish me to elaborate, with a special eye to the consideration that the captain was losing heavily. On a soft and luxurious couch, a pleasant distance from the roaring fireplace, the noted actress Mrs CANDIA HARCOURT was fully occupied by DON JUAN DE TENORIO and THE TENTH DOCTOR -- ' Hey!!" Ninth recoiled, and gave the book a look fit spontaneously to combust it. "Well, *that's* a load of rubbish, for a start!" Pretty much everyone exploded in fits of schadenfreudian giggles, with the exceptions of Rose Tyler and of Mickey the Idiot, who was hissing with furious vindication, "Didn't I tell you? Didn't I tell you you were going to get -- ?" "It's not him any more," said Rose bleakly. "It's not him." "Might as well chuck it," Count Bathory sneered. "Since it's so obviously unreliable." Ninth paused in the very act of doing so, his suspicions aroused. Finding his place again, he read aloud, "'...and the Tenth Doctor, *whose previous incarnation now reached through metafictional space and thumped Mr Henry Fielding on the nose, shouting, "PAY ATTENTION, MONKEY-NUT!" right into his powdered wig!*'" The evil Ninthian grin went into full-wattage mode. "'Whoops, I must crave my readers' indulgence for a careless error, I protest I was too busy thinking up my next pontification to notice the fact of the case, viz. that whilst superficially resembling the said Tenth Doctor, the reveller was in fact none other than the notorious libertine CASANOVA!' "Yes! Result!!" Ninth punched the air exuberantly, and continued, "'Mrs Candia Harcourt, then I say, was wholly occupied by Don Juan and Casanova, in a professional discussion of the best techniques for leading impressionable young ladies down that primrose path which, though delectable in its early steps, leads predestinately to sin, disgrace, ruin, and the receipt of outrageous fortunes for collaborating in the inevitable tabloid exposé.' "Get on with it! "'The virtue of patience, whilst -- very well! very well! At this stage, an unprecedented interruption occurred.' "I know! I made it! Now get *on* with it!!! "'An unprecedented interruption occurred. A lackey of the mighty Goliath Corporation burst unceremoniously into the ficton, followed by Mrs LAUREN BACALL in her breakthrough rôle from _To Have and Have Not_, and a version of a turn-of-the-millenium British rugby team fresh (albeit in no olfactory sense) from the pages of a Grub Street celebrity magazine of the period. He hailed Mrs Harcourt in a cryptic, familiar, indeed almost *low* manner, thus: "Okay, HarDDD, that's a retainer and a special incentive payment just because we like your... face. By the way, we also like _Next's Time Round_'s chances in the Adrics this year, don't you?" "'"Not really," Mrs Harcourt denied, affecting an indifference that we may assume our virago was some considerable distance from actually experiencing. "By the other way again: two-thirds minus of my minimum... gift level, you know, to make a girl feel she isn't being called cheap or something." She commenced flicking rhinestones at him, as a lesser lady might have flicked peanuts. "No limeflower honey, and whilst I guess your Lions will do just as well as the literals in their... way..." "'"No they won't!!!" screamed Captain Leader, with many other expressions superadded that were not so much *low* as grovelling along the bottom of the abyssal plain. "Peon, prepare to be bullwhipped for an insult to my manhood on so many levels that I must trouble you to wait whilst I count them in binary on my various machissimo members!" And a three-way shouting match, highly reminiscent of a hot and tedious morning at Billingsgate market, immediately ensued. "'In the upshot, the agreement as to how Mrs Harcourt and her military associate might best fail to be insulted fell at the last hurdle, after the parties to the quarrel belatedly discovered that the Misses Bennet had long since been escorted away through the dangers of the city night by those noble _British Lions_ ; whilst Mrs Bacall's only rejoinder to the suit now urgently pressed on her by all three parties was to observe that they "Knew how to whistle, didn't they?" and to depart chatting animatedly with the two captivated Latins. Recriminations, and subsequently reconciliations of a very singular character which however can scarcely at this time be rehearsed -- ' "Thank *you*, Flash Harry!" The Doctor drop-kicked the book exasperatedly to Rose. "There's *definitely* something funny about the probability-field around you two! Though I suppose it could just be contagious stupidity... All right, let's do a quick search for your sins through the next video, shall we?" And with hearts sinking and heads banging benches, the benumbed bemused and befuddled Audience were treated to... --- The two ochre-robed figures sat in stark stillness atop a snowy mountain-peak. One of the figures broke the eternal silence of the Roof of the World, demanding in harsh stern accents, "Why did Bodhidharma come to China from India?" And the other spake, in tones throaty and surly, replying: "Erato knows, maybe, 'cause I soughing don't! Tell me again why I ever followed you up here on your dumb-ass, and may I just mention *numb*-ass while we're at it, mystical superman kick, when we could have been mastering hot sweaty Tantric wisdoms down in the lush valleys?" "Zen Master Nansen said, 'When Colonel Mustard, Shere Khan, and a whole village of cuckolded goatherds hunt me with murder on their mind, where is the path of wisdom?'" The second seeker of enlightenment produced an active chainsaw from, apparently, thin mountain air. "Good answer." "The Tibetan hell with that! What *I* want enlightenment on right now is, where's our ever-loving callout?" The first mank looked up assessingly at the heavens. "Should be somewhere around Dubrovnik by now..." "You sent for *pizza*???" "The superior man's action sets at naught the illusions of time and space -- " And the world's first Zen koan involving a chainsaw might really have entered the repertoire at this point, had a passing airship not suddenly decided to land nearby, deposit a mysterious figure whose identity could not possibly be ascertained since she had a bag over her head, and float off again into the wild blue yonder. Sounds of revelry and "Ha! Dashing Air Pirates now once again carry all away before them!" accompanied the mysterious ship's departure. Ms Bag On Her Head approached the sages of the mountaintop with moderate reverence. The Superior Master clapped his hands briskly. "Now, that's what I call service! Mine're the two with extra mystery meat and scampi alla Sellafield!" "Oh great one," stated Ms Bag On Her Head (to whom, for the sake of brevity, we will allude henceforth simply as 'the Guide'), "the wisdom of the ages is wasted upon the ignorant ears of this humble messenger. I am sent merely to honour your achievement of Transcendent Understanding by leading you to the fabled Valley of Shangri-D'oh, where the truly enlightened shall find their virtue's just reward!" And with a courteous bow, she dashed off light-footed down the weary tourist trail below the high pass. The Superior and Chainsaw Masters followed hot on, and in the latter's case too audibly for, their mystical guide's tail. After a while they passed onto a side-trail where no anti-littering cameras were, and so out of all human ken... ...to re-emerge under the shadow of a nameless and unknown peak, on a platform of rock which looked down upon a delectable plain. Surely that land was held sacred from all eyes save the beloved of the eternal gods. Richly wrought was the guard-rail thereof, and of goldy looking metal inlaid with many shiny stones were the NO SPITTING signs in that high place. "Behold," the Guide whispered. "The land of your desire!" "It's green," said the Superior Master suspiciously. "And isn't this a bit out of the Celts' usual playpen?" He gestured at the giant double henge below. "Wait a minute..." the Chainsaw Master husked. "They're..." "Yes," the Guide assured her soberly. "They cannot be hidden from those who have passed the Three Gates of Unreason, seen through the Seven Veils of Illusion, and foreknown the *surprising* fall of the Several Votes of the Best Crossover Award in the 2005 Adrics; for no *surprises* can be *sprung* upon them. Behold the Crown of Shangri-D'oh, Himalayahenge -- " "BIG ROCKS IN RINGS!!!" screamed the Chainsaw Master, shucking her ochre robe and diving in stark (yea, even starkers) despair over the rail. Somehow the Superior Master was with her in the instant, and hand-in-hand they fell into -- -- the force-field of an inherently undetectable black speedster, which whooshed down from the sky and screeched up again into the even upperer atmosphere in a single very loud and gaudy instant. But it was inherently undetectable, with stealth-fields and bucky-lamp-blacking and everything, so puny Earth science must have failed to notice it. Therefore the security camera here must not have been a thing of puny Earth science at all. Which is certainly one interesting way of looking at it! The Guide shook her head. "I *told* her everyone took this too seriously," said she, and trotted calmly back the way she'd come. And the shrouds of silence fell back once more over Shangri-D'oh, Valley of the Enlightenment That Makes You Smack Your Head; and the wind blew lonely once more in the high passes. --- Ninth was giving his own head a bit of a smack, too; but it appeared not to be making anything go away. "All right. Someone's definitely interfering. I might even say *Someone*'s definitely interfering. But... since it'd take far too long to go through all the gods and Powers you two must offend every day before breakfast, I can't really be arsed to find out." Across the room, at the table of many apparent Willows and Taras, much mirth seemed to be being had for some reason. The Magical Mechanical Musical Box played the theme from _Forever Amber_, not that there was much point since no bugger recognised it. "So, just because I'm really curious to know how anyone can misconstrue 'eight-alarm chilli', and because *anything* with you two in it is going to end up bent somehow, let's put on the final -- " "No!" the Deplorable Duo yipped in unison. "It's a fair cop!" yelled a panicky Bathory. "I confess it! We took bribes! We fixed the result! We throw ourselves upon the mercy of Mistress Mel!" "And it was such a bore," Candy assured him, fluttering her silver-shadowed eyes at the Doctor and performing a refined little bump-and-grind in his general direction. "La, dearest Doctor, I believe I should do absolutely *a*n*y*t*h*i*n*g* to avoid sitting through it all over again; pray, my master, let's launch upon our little divertissement right here on the stage, and I... will... o-bey...!" "Sorry, love," Ninth smirked, "not my type." And whilst Mrs Harcourt wrestled with the translation of these wholly alien and _outré_ sounds into some shape her merely fleshly mind was able to understand and eff, he put on the final tape. Count Bathory emitted a last despairing wail that made John Q Nazgûl sound like Johnny B Goode the night he got his big break; the kindly veil of ignorance that separated us from the *soul-searing reality of the final horrors was withdrawn, and !!alas!! we saw THIS...!!!!!!!!!* --- In the infinite vastness of interstellar space, it was a mathematical, statistical, and logistical impossibility for any merely matter-bound intelligence to pinpoint the location of a single non-communicating, non-ferrous, inertialess, inherently undetectable speedster. Such was the current status of _Le Cul Cuivre_[1], the legendary space-pirate scoutboat and occasional runner of high-value moral-fibre-rotting contraband in despite of the tireless efforts of the Galactic Patrol, the YMCA, and the fabled Customs House on the Borderland. The _Brass Ass_ -- as it was known with universal disaffection -- had bucked the best efforts of Capt. Rogers; successfully dared Dan to do his worst; and as to what it had done to Galactic Co-ordinator Kinnison, let's not even *go* there, girlfriend! To catch a single photon's worth of information off the _Ass_ in stealth mode was impossible -- it was unthinkable -- it was, like, no way, man, not in a googleplex years of Sundays, not if the massed minds of Civilisation were to spend them all concentrating on the project! [1] According to Mrs Candia Harcourt, "an untranslatable French expression signifying legendary reliability". On the other hand, planting hidden cameras in its cabin seemed to work a treat. Candy Harcourt, zwilnik houri extraordinaire, and Panto Stage Black Lensman 'Battery' Bray of Counter-Tellus of Sol, were enjoying a rare hour of domesticity in the speedster's cramped cabin. His mighty frame clad only in boxer shorts, safety gloves and goggles, and a lead-lined leather apron, His Proximate Supremacy whistled cheerfully over the saucepan of mincemeat, Mexican jumping beans, and tincture of capsicain, which he was now carefully seasoning with just a soupçon of powdered duodecaplyatomate. His main squeeze, meanwhile, was equally happily engaged with an espresso bongo machine of their own Heath Robinsonesque devising, wherein the finest big value instant coffee powder was hubble-bubbled up with bentlam mash in uraniumhexafluoridated water to produce a corrosively strong and bragworthily bad brew that killed ninety percent of all known germs and ninety-nine percent of all known drinkers DEAD! (They wished.) On a side-table, For Later, were neatly arrayed a syringe, a jar of radium sulphate paste, and a multidisc of the classic Oil Age costume drama _Lady Di and the Bondage Budgie_. Until that opus should be required, the flatscreen above the Wile E Coyote heavy-waterbed was playing an infinite videotape loop of Bray's ongoing leisure project, _Egregious Chough-Ups of Bogus Bastard Apes Who Have Presumed Temporarily to Thwart MY Ineluctable Will! (Working title)_. Suddenly Candy gave a yelp of surprise. On the main viewscreen, the stars were going out... ...no, they were *moving*, reconfiguring themselves into new shapes even as she watched. Turning, with an absent-minded pancake-style toss of the frazzled and fluorescent mass in the bottom of the saucepan, Bray's jaw dropped open in a rare moment of uncynical cosmic awe. Slowly, the stars in their courses revealed the universal mystery, as the wise in astrology have ever advised us should be the case, although they have seldom specified that this should occur in low-resolution text and with a regrettably cheesy blink effect. And thus was the word of the heavens made known: CT BATHORY. MRS HARCOURT. MGHT BE RATHER AMUSING IF _STYLIST_ WON. BY VIRTUE OF PWRS INVESTED IN ME BY MR MAGRS, WILL CUT V FABRIC OF REALITY TO FASHION OF YR DREAMS IN CNSDRATN. HURRY WHILE INTEREST LASTS, WAITING SUCH BORE! RSVP, N COWARD, ARCH NEBULA. "Cut the Very Fabric of Reality?" drooled Candy. "To the fashion of our dreams!" noted Bray. They looked long at each other, a look carnal and cupiditous and many other things beginning with clicking sounds. "Sod this," said Bray then, upending the saucepan over the table. "Chow's up!" "Yeah," endorsed Candy, diving into the charred, corrosive mass split- seconds after him. "Pfftp! ...With Matt Corvinus just defrosted, too!" "In this, our little scoutship made for two.." Bray spluttered, with loving and fresh-blistered ferocity.. "And thou beside me, porky sweat and dragon's breath..." Candy uttered through a mouthful of chilli, sending beans and less wholesome matter jumping in all directions -- "'Tis Paradise enow! Hey, babe, let's -- !" But a stray gobbet of hot venomous chilli death struck the indestructibilite camera at this point, and lo! it was no more. --- Candy and Bathory -- Bathory *Bray*!!!! -- stood rooted on the stage, their shame unmasked, unable to look into any eyes but each other's. Ninth took full if not wholly gentlemanly advantage of this to whip the envelope from the lady's hand, and read out the accusing text of this so-called 'fair election result'. "And the winner just happens to be, what a surprise, _The St-t-t-_ -- hang on a mo, *that's* not right...!" The Doctor turned the paper upside down, around and about, inside out, and examined it for joke ink. "Oh. No, actually, it's -- "_A Burns Night Poem/To the Doctor:_ by Daibhid Ceannaideach -- " -- whose partisans' pathetic attempt at bribery was met with rejection and contumely!" He spread his hands helplessly, and appealed to the Fourth Wall with real urgency. "Am I missing something, or what?" "The -- the -- the Lightside!" Candy babbled shockily. "I never meant.. it's contaminating me... I dunno how it happened..." "My lady," said Bray, with a deep and sinister gallantry, and a pink DeSpameter in his hand that had not been there a moment earlier, "is tired and emotional after her great labours. We will be leaving now." He linked her arm, and escorted her offstage with much ceremony. Her cryptic and purely formal protest, "La, sir, not as fie-on-me tired as all *that*!" and his equally Delphic response, "Oh good," evidently referred to matters of what we wot not, for no-one seems prepared to explain them to us. And as for the round of scattered applause which broke out around about then: what was *that* all about, me old fruits, what? --- Neimi stepped back out onto the stage, and coughed politely. "And now, to present the final award of the night, the Best Author Award, Dave Yadallee." --- Thank you, and welcome. <The old ratbag is back> We have here a collection donated by groups.google.com of every alt.drwho.creative writing bound and posted. Tonight we honour the best author. In the running Imran Inayat Classic reading lad. Helen Fayle Very exciting stuff to read. Clive May Great to earn you a place in the repository. BKWillis I see you autograph your books nicely and finally Graham Woodland. Very creative. Just remember the 9th Doctor is around, so please write about him And the winner is Laser envolope BKWILLIS!!! Come on up and receive your prize. Prelude - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Epilogue - Summary
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