That was fun. Yes we did go to the 'fucking duck', I did indeed get cake (small caterpiller ones complete with parasitic snails) and presents: 1. A small bear with appropriate bandaging to represent my own injury - Thankyou Evie (and for the self portrait) 2. An odd but endearing 'pop up' card made by Alice who also gave me the best hug of the evening 3. A small carefully crafted 'coffin' representing my career as a bookseller complete with bearded face and my 'secret' middle name - thankyou Mark! 4. A TIE fighter model kit. Exactly the same one as I had as a kid - from the same year probably, judging from the sun bleached packaging. Stunning! 5. A small rubber brain in its own protective rubber sphere filled with 'blood' that has to be seen to be believed. Duncan thoughtfully repackaged it as a 'goat's testicle'. This became my fun thing to play with all evening. 6. A Ramsey customised card which I will scan and put up asap filled with the kind of sentiment that threatend to break even my bitter heart. I picked up some of my debris from the store - a copy of 'Tokyo Drifter' that I'd lent to a customer, three new books from the states that I'll mention when I get round to reading them and my 'Straight Story' CD. My locker is still full of books but I'll get that sorted next week when I pop in to talk comic books with Duncan and movie books with Mark. I told old fighting stories (me getting the piss beaten out of me by an ex-para for my stance on violence in art & the old chestnut about me and David doing the John Wayne saloon style brawl in Preston) and drank a large quantity of orange juice. We moved on for tapas and ate a great deal and paid even more. Fun fun fun. I caught up with Duncan, Richard, Ramsey and Mark. Spoke to Phil about comics and writing & met his girlfriend. Mandy was a star as ever. Nice to chat with Sarah. Chris and Paola rock despite his 'Canadian' ways. In fact I may be working with Paola very soon but I'll save any work/job news for a later blog. Jess drank a little too much and asked the wrong guys about masculinity. The waiters hated us which rounded the evening off very nicely. Richard asked if the "The end is nigh!" posters in the store window had anything to do with me leaving. Ha. My ego isn't that big yet - I wish all at Ottakar's all the best and hope that things get better for everyone there - you really couldn't work with a better gang. Very odd feeling knowing that I've actually left... but I have and I have the tie fighter and bloody testicle to prove it. On the robots front Ramsey hit me with Bender from 'Futurama' and I got into the whole 'Daleks argument' again - its just a shell - its just a tank... ok ok bloody hell. Alice hit me with 'Flight of the Navigator' and 'Batteries Not Included' which led to '...And you thought your parents were weird'. Duncan remembered the killer robotic spiders used in 'Runaway' by evil Gene Simmons against Magnum. Jess pitched in the Angels from 'Earthsearch' which is as obscure as you can get and the robotic band from 'The Abominable Dr Phibes'... Duncan kindly printed out a draft of the list for people to pull apart on company time. I can see that everywhere I go now I'll be the 'robot guy'... Chris sent me an email noting the lack of Bender again along with Maximillian from 'The Black Hole' (and the STAR robots too of course - and I guess the 'dead' crew), KITT from 'Knight Rider' which is becoming a firm fave. Megaweapon a Robot truck from 'ST - The Motion Picture' which I have no memory of whatsoever - Vicki from 'Small Wonder' an "absolute rubbish US sitcom that oddly didn't feature Steve Guttenberg" - this does ring a small bell and the most inspired one of all... the owl from 'Clash of the Titans' "not really a 'robot' per se but then again perhaps so" well I think so - didn't he get named booboo or baboo or bubba or some such shit? At least no one has sent me any porn robots yet... As you can see the list is growing bigger than I can work on it so PLEASE help me out and write some stuff on these metal bastards for me - I'll give full credit of course and when I'm rich and famous you'll have the warm inner knowledge that I stabbed you in the back and made it big standing on your shoulders. Keep the ideas coming and I'll keep moaning about it all on here... Mike is blogging to the hum of the computer.