Being a moderately signed up geek, I am quite keen on Dr Who. Unlike some people I know (glares!), for me, it is just a bit of light entertainment, not The Meaning of Life™ as some seem to treat it.

Also, slightly heretical, but I prefer the pre-2005 episodes as they had a lot less special effects and generally more interesting plots!

However, I was still rather excited to see that Bonhams are going to sell off some of the BBC’s Dr Who memorabilia – which usually means public viewing days to have a look at the goodies. As usual, I can’t afford to buy anything, but I can go for a look.

Although public viewing days for auctions are normally free, this time they are being charged for – I guess Bonhams guessed it would be rather popular and spotted the opportunity to cash in on it – damn!

Entrance to the view and to the sale will be by catalogue only. Catalogues cost £15 and each catalogue admits two people. Children go free if accompanied by an adult, and a minimum of £5 from each catalogue sale will be donated to ‘Children in Need’.

Still, you do get the catalogue to keep, and sales catalogues do tend to be rather good quality – expect a lot of glossy photos and history about each prop.

PS: Yes, they are selling a DALEK – if you have a spare £5-£7,000 lying around.

The viewing days are:

Sun 21 February 11am – 3pm
Mon 22 February 9am – 4.30pm
Tue 23 February 9am – 4.30pm
Wed 24 February 9am – 12noon

More details on the Bonham’s website – the auction house is on Montpelier Street, just across from Harrods.

I think I might try to go on the Monday – as I suspect the place will be PACKED on the Sunday with lots of adult sized children ohhing and ahhing over the props.

A gushing press release from Network Rail has boasted that overland rail reliability is now at its highest ever level.

A grand total of 90.6% of trains are claimed to arrive “on time” now – although their definition of “on time” is not what I would call “on time”, being an allowance of up to 5 minutes late for local services and up to 10 minutes late for long distance trips.

Another way to look at the figures though is to say that a staggering 10% of all train journeys are still arriving over 10 minutes later than timetabled.

Which is a bit pathetic really.

Oh, the claim in the press release said “This is the first time in the history of Britain’s railways that the benchmark of 90% of trains on time has been reached over the course of a year.”

Considering how long Britain has had railway networks that does, to be fair, sound quite impressive.

However, it transpires that “the history of Britains railways” only goes back as far as 1992.

Just like BBC 3, which constantly reruns episodes of Dr Who, but also seems to think that Dr Who didn’t exist before 2005 – it seems that Britains railway history has been equally truncated and now began as recently as 1992.

The Orwellian posters, adverts and their ilk that are going up to warn us to snoop on our neighbours report legitimately suspicious behaviour, such as not recycling the glass bottles have invevitably lead to a website to make you your own fake versions.

Make your own at http://jamesholden.net/billboard/

Via: RailwayEye

Tip to people who make these mock image websites – allow direct linking to the website with the created image. I had to save the image, resize it and upload it to the blog, which also means I can’t just send a link of a joke billboard I made to friends. Yes, it pushes your bandwidth though the roof, but is very good for viral distribution and long term link building/search rankings.