Collapse at the coalface

Arg.

This is something of an understatement, but will have to suffice for this family blog.

On Saturday my already packed schedule got a little bit busier, later than "the last minute" by one month and one day. Though the extra straw has not (yet) broken this camel's well-exercised back, I did hurry home after tea and Dr Who with Nimbos, and was still typing away desperately at 3 in the morning.

The end is now thankfully in sight (well, in one of four current big projects), but being pre-booked with work today and tomorrow has not exactly eased the blood-pressure.

Also, yesterday my long-lost friend Daniel popped round, who I'd not seen in sevenish years. We took him (and Nimbos) to Crystal Palace's Victorian Fair, where we had a picnic and watched the Dr cavort on the not-too-scary carousel. Some very splendid pictures to follow, when Daniel's back in Sweden and can send me them.

The day seemed to be in part a celebration of IKB's 200th birthday, and 70 years since the Joe Paxton's enormous great greenhouse burnt down. There was wrestling and a ferris wheel and various stalls of knick-knacks, and the Dr got drawn in by the glossy pictures a chap from the Crystal Palace Foundation showed off. She was very good and ladylike, and didn't dispute his using the word "Italianate" when describing the Greek stuff.

We wended round by the monsters again, feeding ducks with our rich, new-fangled bread, and ended up in the pub for a pint or four. Then we headed back through the park, showing Daniel how the ruins look like Greek stuff.

Being of an archaeolgical bent, he was delighted to see "modern" ruins - and we discussed how apocalyptically sci-fi a Victorian would find the state of such an icon. Like the overgrown Washington DC in Logan's Run, said Nimbos - though we don't talk about 30 being past it just now. I was also minded of Shelley's Ozymandias, king of kings, the ruin of whose works should make the mighty despair.

Yes, I have read another poem.

Anyway, hot and slightly tipsy we headed home for tea, and I got the washing up done just in time for Dr Who. Daniel coped with not having seen any of the rest of New Show, though he did pick up on the Egyptian Mummy, which shows he paid attention when I educated him in our cultural heritage all those years ago.

We discussed the apolyptically sci-fi icons New Show has bumped off in the captial: they've broken the clocktower at the Palace of Westminster and shattered the glass in the Gherkin. And now the big tower at Canary Wharf turns out to house scientists making jumps to alternate universes, and all because of things left by the Daleks.

That's a neat idea, isn't it? But if they're going to blow it up, they'll be late by two weeks.