Spoilers!

Resisting the urge to talk
about nibbling Amy.

It was my birthday a mere eight months ago, but I haven't seen Emma since before then, so I got my present(s) when we met up yesterday to go and see Iron Man 3*****.

One of my presents was a box of cupcakes with a Whoish theme, but it's not those that I want to talk about here (even though they look awesome and taste delicious).

Another one of my presents was a set of limited edition 3D cinema glasses in the style of Anakin Skywalker's podracing goggles, presented in a TARDIS pencil case. Whilst simultaneously cool, surreal, and multu-fandom, I haven't posted in order to talk about those, either.

Here's what I have posted for:

Hello, sweetie.

I've seen various versions of River Song's time-diary****, first encountered (by us) in Tennant-Era Who two-parter Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead, available for purchase. Some are mass-produced clean-paged notebooks on the inside (I bought one as a Christmas present for someone who really didn't deserve it); some are one-off fan-made affairs available through sites such as Etsy.

This particular one is a bespoke offering made by Emma in conjunction with somebody really quite famous indeed. I carefully slid the "Warning; Spoilers" label off (it's sealed with a wax stamp on the reverse*) and opened the book, expecting to see blank notebook pages, but instead saw this:

That's space stuff, that is.

Yes. Information about space. Not the scrawlings of a time traveller, but properly published space info. Or spacefo, if you prefer. Freeing the book of its custom dust jacket, I saw this and, if I was capable of doing such a thing, I would have squeed:

This, as anybody who has precisely the same set of interests as me** will know is a beautifully pocket-sized book published in 1962 for the discerning and budding astronomer by one Patrick Moore***. I knew this just by looking at the cover because - and this is weird for a book that was released twenty years before I was born - I already have one. Or, rather, my dad has one and it lives on one of the bookshelves in my house because I... liberated it. It's one of those books that you expect to find notes written in. My dad's copy has the cryptic "Library No. 1" and a circled "2" in the front, with a "1" and "May 21st 1966" written at the back. My new River Song-ed copy has "Care of K. Lewis" handwritten on the contents page.

Even without the very cool custom dust jacket, it is a very good little book, and scores over older, more pedestrian works in two important respects: First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words "THE OBSERVER'S BOOK OF ASTRONOMY" inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover.





* The stamp itself is from the Harry Potter franchise - Emma has no qualms about mixing universes. If we all end in a big, swirly paradox, you know who to blame.
** At present, the total count is five, with two currently incarcerated for the protection of themselves and others, one recently escaped, and a toy badger.
*** If you don't know who Patrick Moore is, then... how did you get here? I mean, how did you arrive at this page? I'm not casting aspersions on your ability to accurately click links, but... I bet you watch Eastenders, don't you?
**** Whilst checking this post for glaring errors it occurs to me that all diaries are time-diaries, really.
***** And this bit sounds a bit like a primary school child's "what I did on my holidays" work on the first day back in the classroom.