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Nothing much to report today, since I haven't been able to get up to too much. Two things achieved: I washed the breakfast dishes, then, with the help of my downstairs neighbour, I managed to get some of the washing hung out to dry. Apart from that I have spent the day lying on my back, doped to the eyes on the pills that the doctor has given me, trying to concentrate on reading and, having given that up as a non-starter, watching a couple of episodes of Band of Brothers. Many of you will be pleased to know that I ran into a couple of blutakbeasts this afternoon. They had recently been watching the film Apollo 13, and it reminded them of their own space programme back in the 1960s. Apparently their first successful Moon landing took place on 1 July 1969, which means that they just beat the Americans to it by a couple of weeks. Their own space missions were apparently so hush-hush that they were willing to allow NASA to take all the plaudits. They explained that they were in a bit of a sticky situation at the time, and that they were desperate to obtain new poster material since they were sick and tired of holding up the millions of Che, Jimi Hendrix, CND, Richard Nixon, and French existentialist slogan posters. Their leader at the time, President Stig E. Bakplastique, decided that what was needed was an image of the planet Earth from about 250,000 miles away. Tireless and indefatigable efforts (excuse the tautology - I did it for effect) were made in a no-expense spared push to glue old Fairy Liquid bottles and pipecleaners together to make a spacecraft capable of taking the brave Stickonauts on their historic journey. At first I thought that they were pulling my leg, but then they showed me the photograph of Nieds Stuckon, the first blutakbeast on the Moon, actually on the Moon. And as we all know, the camera doesn't lie. Does it.