A few more theories on Authors, my tattoo could mean trouble, and an unrepeatable Fan Club title...

I watched Doctor Who last night, and it gave me a revelation - although that could, of course, have been the half a pound of fudge I was eating at the time. I am usually kept away from all foods with a high sugar, fat, colouring and e-number content, which means that I generally just eat organic grass and am occasionally allowed to suck a HobNob, if I promise not to swallow, but yesterday was Fudge Day.  I'd also eaten three fresh doughnuts and half a pack of cinder toffee, so that probably explains most of the content of this blog - and also why it's being typed from the ceiling, at four hundred miles an hour with ninety fingers I don't have.

I didn't eat quite this much, but only because I'd passed out somewhere round the fourteenth lump.

Oh, you want to hear about my revelation?  Well it comes with something of a background story. Are you sitting comfortably?  No, neither am I, I think it's all the fudge, but we'll be all right if we keep to the cushioned areas...

When I was small...I mean very small, before I'd learned to read much, my aunt gave me a doll.  She asked me what I was going to call her (by 'she' I mean my aunt of course, my family may be bordering on 'horror film' but they haven't indulged in talking dolls yet). I said 'Amelia'.  This puzzled both mother and aunt, and I remember my mother asking me where I'd heard that name, because as far as she was concerned I'd never known anyone called 'Amelia'.  And do you know what my explanation was? 'The inside of her head smells 'Amelia'.

Yep.  Well, you know, the Horror Film thing starts early with us.


Now of course I know that this was synaesthesia (which is where things get mixed up in the brain, colours appear as numbers, smells are sounds, that sort of thing). I largely grew out of it, but I was reminded of it during the Doctor Who episode, because of the augmented human character, who's name was Si. At least, as soon as people started calling him Si it was almost as if his name popped up in big letters whenever it was said.  Which may be because I have a friend called Si.

Imagine, then, my shock and horror when the titles rolled and the character's name was revealed to be spelled as Psi!

Augmented human. In case you were wondering.  And this made me wonder, briefly, in the dark, stilly watches of the night - is being a writer somehow linked to an ability, maybe even a lost one, to see images as words? Or images in words? Or to create words to fit sensory input?

Answers on a postcard...

And now I have another problem, of course, if, as I suspect, Psi becomes a companion to the Doctor.  On my left wrist I have a tattoo of the Greek letter Psi, and the letters psi underneath.

Okay, break it to me gently. I am going to look like the stalkiest stalker ever to walk the earth, aren't I?  It could only be worse if I'd had ADRIC tattooed across my forehead... (true horror, for all those Old Who fans out there...)

Talking of fan clubs, last night I was outside with my SO, gazing at the stars (not in a romantic way at all, you understand, more because we were watching the lasers from the fairground across the fields).  He decided (in his infinite wisdom, probably laser-invoked), that we should form a Brian Cox Fan Club, and came up with the title for it.  I absolutely refuse to have it printed on a t shirt, or indeed anything which might be worn in the vicinity of the 'Loveleh' Mr Cox.

The title?  Wait for it...

The Cox Massive.

I know.  I'm going now...

And, Brian, I'm very sorry.