Entry Twenty-nine- Ringgoolu

I told Heather Little recently the story about when the Doctor and I landed on this planet where they were having some serious issues with veg poachers in their growing fields and decided to fix the problem by building cyborg cows that shot lasers from their eyes when they sensed movement. Obviously the citizens of that planet could turn them off when they went picking, so they were figuring it worked out fairly well. Of course they hadn't really been planning on the TARDIS materialising in the middle of the field. Since, the Doctor has, understandably, not fond of cows.

And in case you're interested that story ended with us running for our lives with the Doctor turning every few moment in attempt to shut them off with the sonic screwdriver. My top got a bit singed. Such is life, with the Doctor. And here we are just for gratuitous outreaching to my... probably very small... audience. Hello!

And there was a point to that, cause we landed in the middle of a field on another planet (we know cause we checked) with grazing cows and a product that looked something like cotton, only it was magenta and much more flaxy. I wasn't sure if it was to make clothes or to eat. Maybe both.

Of course, and I may be telling this story a bit backwards, we weren't planning on landing on a field in on a planet with cows and flaxy cotton plants. We were trying to go to a planet call Crepsculo in Earths fifty-first century where a band was playing that the Doctor said was brilliant and perfect for a nice relaxing non-dream inducing fun time out. His words not mine.

"What are they called again?" I asked, zipping up my knee high boots, cause let's face it, I look foxy in my little denim skirt. I was trying to look cool, obviously, concerts on lounge planets and all. Cause apparently Crepsculo is like one big slinky jazz bar. Not that I've ever been to a jazz bar really, mostly pubs for me and mine, but that's what the Doctor said. Apparently he's been to many jazz bars, I get a very funny mental picture of him playing the saxophone with Miles Davis whenever I try to picture this. Though, this particular band was not jazz. They were just playing in a 21st Century Earth like jazz lounge type venue. I might be able to describe it better if I ever made it there. Which I didn't.

The Doctor, of course, was dancing around the console, flicking switches and and pulling levers no doubt already playing the songs of said band in his head. "Flodder's Gain," he answered.

I shook my head, "Flodder's Gain, what does that mean?"

He paused and pull that face he does when he's thinking... usually over something important but it's the same face. "You know, I have no idea."

I laughed and then he laughed and then he adjusted a few more dials and the TARDIS jerked it's way to what was supposed to Crepsculo and turned out to be the farming colony of Ringgoolu.

I laughed even harder.

But it was pretty clear that these cows were not bionic. In fact they looked a lot like this:

They sort of blinked at us, materialising out of nowhere was bound to confuse them… they saw cows are rather smart you know. Then they just went back to eating their magenta flaxy stuff. You could tell that it still gave the Doctor the hebegebes though, which was WELL hilarious. Same look of disgust he has for cats, really, after New Earth and all. But he didn’t have long to look upset because it was at this moment that a blue fellow appeared riding some sort of golf cartish hovercraft thing and started yelling at us.

“Why are you landing in the Websing fields?!” he shouted, “We have very specific landing regulations on Ringgoolu, you’ll find if you’ve read the brochure! You can’t just land willy nilly!”

The Doctor’s eyes sort of lit up and he did that grinny thing he does when he’s very excited and he said; “Ringgoolu. You don’t mean the Ringgoolu which is home to Zebdinger’s Zumulous Zweets?!”

“Of course I do!” said Mr Blue, “What other Ringgoolu is there?”

The Doctor looked like he was about to correct him but refrained cause I leaned my head towards him and said; “Zebdinger’s Zumulous Zweets?”

“Remember those chocolate bubbles we got at that bazaar?”

I did, they were amazing. They were like bubbles you blow but made of chocolate and we spent hours trying to catch them on our tongues. Which got the TARDIS, and ourselves, rather messy, but was soooo worth it. I nodded.

“Zebdinger’s Zumulous Zweets!” he said and I squeed. “And that’s not all they’ve got, they make hundreds-”

“Thousands,” corrected Mr Blue.

“Thousands of sweets, mostly chocolate. Guess she knew just what we needed,” he said and pat the blue doors of the TARDIS. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a tour, you know, maybe… free samples?” He did that ear tugging thing here.

“Of course we have, hence visitors. Now would you mind moving your vehicle? We’ve lost far too much of the Gurgle plant (magenta flaxy stuff) to spare any by people landing in the middle of our fields!”

I half expected him to agrue that the TARDIS was no mere vehicle but I suppose it was down to the power of chocolate that prevented him. We moved the TARDIS to the visitor’s parking and then started our tour.

And seriously, this place was like how I imagined Willy Wonka’s place to look like until I saw the film. There wasn’t a field of candy mushrooms or anything, but there was a chocolate waterfall. And they had a chocolate castle too, made entirely of bricks of chocolate. It was kept in a room that was temperature controlled so all there was to worry about was bites being taken out of it, which there were hefty fines for. It had a molten chocolate moat and everything. The Doctor looked positively horrified that he couldn’t eat any, but I read in the brochure that they sold replicas at the little shop. Think like this, only, well... life size:

I was starting to think that maybe we’d managed to land somewhere where we weren’t going to have to fix something or save someone or… run from a giant shaggy monster that flew out of a downstairs corridor that might not technically have been on the tour but was far too interesting, what with the Chocolate Experiments: Do Not Enter sign and the locked door which means nothing to a man with a sonic screwdriver. Alas I was wrong.

It sort of looked like a dog, but about the size of a council house and with tonnes of hair in thick ropes over it’s whole body. It didn’t even look mean, but it sure was scary what with the leaping and the growls and stuff.

We obviously took a wrong turn, it wasn’t like everything was labeled, so we might’ve gone right when we should have gone left because we were well lost right quick and the sonic doesn’t have a ‘locate chocolate experiments’ setting. Instead we ended up in some old abandoned underground tunnels that looked like they might’ve carried things in and out of the factory at some point but had been long out of use. Anyway it was at this point, as we were chatting about a chocolate pie eating contest the Doctor had been in a couple hundred years ago and how he’d only lost cause a Poraxian had cheated, that this thing came flying at us. I ducked, and am a little embarrassed to say I screamed, and the Doctor held the sonic in front of us like he could use it as a weapon at all.

“What is that?!” I cried.

He shook his head, “I have no idea.”

“Oh, great.” I said.

“Run!” he said back.

So we ran, and of course the Doctor had a brilliant plan about trapping him in the dungeons of the chocolate castle that involved using me as bait and jumping out of a window and directly into the chocolate moat while the Doctor sealed off the chocolate dungeon doors.

Turns out it was called a Tilden Woo, a pack animal used on a planet called Bumden Minor that has escaped it’s shackles while being transferred to an Earth Colony on Eros II and gotten loose on Ringgoolu, which wouldn’t have been too bad except for the fact that Websing was their favourite food, and also the secret ingredient to Zebdingers Zumulous Zweets… the cows ate it and their milk was sweeter. We were told this in secrecy and swore not to tell, but I figure not of my readers are going to be in that time or galaxy so I am fairly certain it’s okay.

As a reward for catching the Tilden we received a free years supply of Zebinger’s products plus however much we could fit in our vehicle (we both laughed profusely over that but didn’t share the joke, suffice it to say, having seen our vehicle, Mr Blue didn’t think it’d be that much). We took cart loads. Gifts, all that… plus, well they had chocolate bananas, I am sure you can see how that would go down. We waved goodbye to everyone there and the Doctor spun us into the Time Vortex before we exchanged glances and then ran to the new formed chocolate storing room to eat a chocolate castle complete with moat replica.

Until next time.

Entry Twenty - Bellalux 5

I've been so rubbish about posting lately, my apologies. But when travelling with not one but two amazingly entertaining companions it's difficult to tear yourself away. Especially when one of them will have to be going soon. :-(

Anyway, I woke up the other day, not unusually, to "Rooooose, wake up, it's time for Bellalux 5!" I felt like I'd slept for five minutes, and who knows maybe I had only slept for five minutes, but the Doctor was there poking my feet and it was about time to see this gigantic aquarium. Which all sounded well and good to me.

Still, I groaned, "What time is it?"

(And I only put in this conversation because his reaction to that question was hilarious) He wrinkled his nose and said; "I don't know, and I don't often say that. But really -"

I cut him off here cause I knew he was going to launch into how the hour tends to disappear in the TARDIS. No proper morning, no night, sometimes Monday, never Sunday. "I know, I'm sorry. Where's Ariella?"

He grinned like the little boy I am sometimes convinced that he is under those 900+ years. "We get to wake her up next," he said and we practically ran to her room. Then he flung the door open and I launched myself onto her bed while he yelled something along the lines of "Wakey wakey!"

I've never seen anyone jump so high. I almost died laughing. Ariella screamed and we all bounced of her bed laughing once she realised it wasn't the four horsemen of the apocalypse waking her up and rather just... well, her rather immature friends. She clutched her chest and said, "You scared me to death!" The Doctor point out that she was, in fact, still alive, and we both rolled our eyes.

Then finally, "Bellalux 5?" she asked.

We both grinned and said in unison, "Bellalux 5!" but he continued, "They have a glitter fish. It looks like an Earth fish, mostly, but like it's been dipped in glitter. The multicoloured kind, not silver. And it refracts light, they've got these lamps so that when it swims around-" he paused them and waved a hand, "Oh you'll see."

Then Ariella and I dressed while he set course of Bellalux 5.

The first thing that is notable about Bellalux 5 is that it's obviously a tourist planet. It seems that in the future, which we were currently standing in, they have entire planets dedicated to different things. Whole zoo planets and museum planets, and the lot. In fact, the entire Bellalux System was museums of sort. Bellalux 1 was an Art Gallery, Bellalux 2 was the history of the Human Empire, Bellalux 3 was a Botanical Garden (like Kew he said, only bigger, much bigger and with plants from planets I'd never seen), Bellalux 4 was a zoo, and Bellalux 5 an aquarium. There are other Bellaluxes, but I don't remember them all. Most of them are histories to other races.

But anyway, today was Bellalux 5. The Aquarium Planet with the glitter fish.




There were fish from every planet with symmetric aquatic life , even Jacowitz (Ari was very excited and told us the entire history of the Sarinya fish, which we both listened to with our faces pressed against the glass). It was snow white with a red pattern that looked vaguely like Chinese writing. And it was the size of my leg. I was about to say how pretty it was when it suddenly just changed colour. I gaped, it was now purple and black and then it turned gold and green and then orange. Ariella seemed very pleased by my gobsmacked reaction

I can't really list every single fish we saw (and its not like we covered the whole planet or anything), so I'll only say about the ones that were especially impressive.

Expressly, the glitter fish, which is really called a Istamsislutinrev, which I could not pronounce despite many attempted pronunciation lessons (much harder than Raxacoricophallatatorius).


We just called it the glitter fish.

But, first off, it was HUGE. It was like someone took two of the Doctor and stood him on end then gave it the body of a blowfish, puffed out. Then, literally, just as the Doctor'd said, it was like it was dipped into a giant vat of glitter. It was covered (even though, obviously, it wasn't glitter it was it's skin, it just looked like glitter), and beautiful; refracting light the way he'd explained. They had multicoloured lights shining on it so that the whole room lit up and it threw rainbows all over the place. The Doctor grinned like he'd just discovered the first glitter fish ever.

"It's," I laughed, "it's amazing!"

Ariella held out a hand to watch the colours bouncing off it, I watched them off the Doctor's face, and he just grinned.

We spent a long time with the glitter fish. I was long past being surprised that when the Doctor said something was incredible, it was. But I hadn't been prepared for the incredible light. Eventually, though, we had to move on and we went to the shark tank, which had some truly amazing specimens. The Doctor pointed one of them out as being an Earth Great White. It didn't look very much like one and I said so.

"Oh, well, you know. The Earth moves on, so does evolution."

It had a lot more rows of teeth, and I couldn't see any eyes and there wasn't a fin. Nothing like Jaws. Here's a postcard:


Ariella sat down on a bench and stretched out her legs, "It's amazing, there's just so much out there," she said, "I've travelled with you. Seen a lot, but I'll never see it all. I could never travel long enough."

"I could never live long enough," I added.

The Doctor was silent for awhile then looked away a moment before looking back and smiling. "No point in griping. We can see it now, Bellalux 5. Here we are. Glitter fish. Sharks. Anything else?"

My mobile rang then, and Ariella looked a bit surprised as I jumped up and chatted with mum for awhile. Told her all about Bellalux, promised to buy her a present. Then I rejoined them on the bench.

"How's good old Jackie?" the Doctor asked.

"Fine. She inquired after you, I said you were fine." The Doctor seemed a bit pleased that she'd wanted to know, but I'd never say anything cause he'd just deny it.

Ariella shook her head, "I can't believe that thing," she nodded towards his breast pocket where we both knew the sonic screwdriver was resting, "can make your mobile call through time and space."



"Oh, it can do anything," the Doctor said, "well, it doesn't blend drinks or hoover. And it jams a bit when it's around hairdryers. But, it's very good at resonating things."

"Like concrete?" I laughed. He laughed. In joke.

"Like anything! Watch this!" he went over to the tank, aimed the sonic at the grouting in between the glass, and switched it on.

"Uh, Doctor?" Ariella said, her eyebrows togther.

He didn't pay much attention, but Ari and I were on our feet. Then suddenly the glass plate came off. The Doctor frowned for about .3 seconds and then the whole room filled with water. We ran. "I guess I didn't think that through," he said.

"Never doubt his technology," I said. We reached the TARDIS laughing, and I was rather glad we saved the shark tank for last. We dematerialised before the guards even reached the tank. We spun back about a week though, cause I wanted souvenirs and the Doctor said we couldn't miss the little shop. I got mum a tiny snowglobe and a mug for the TARDIS.