I do the same on-line, Angus.

How are you feeling?

Still a bit fragile Trudy, but much better thanks.

Well, I'm off to sleep. Hang in there. Take very good care of yourself.

Angus! Do you need anything? Can anything be sent?

Just good thoughts, Deb!

Easy-peasy, bro. Consider them being beamed, as hard as I can beam them.

I'm tired of all the good guys (including me) not being well. Enough of this.

(Only because I tend to assume most people are about the same age as me!)

Oh christ, we're not all that old!

However, the ep was redeemed by Xander's speech to her at the end.

Yeah, I think I was too far gone by the end of it. The pain of excessive eye rolling was quite distracting. Mainly, I think it's that I hate (like hatey hate hate) the way RRK writes Dawn. If I wanted to hear that much whining I'd just tape myself and play it on a loop.

Huh...I would have had you pegged as older than that.

I'm 18, but I look older apparently. A woman came into my bookstore the other day, and asked whether I was over 30. It wasn't just a random question, she was organising an over-30 marathon thing, and I think she knew she was being overly hopeful. Either way I refuse to have a mid-life crisis until I'm at least 24.

Edited to add that I'm glad you're feeling better, Angus. If things go hay-wire again I suggest bribing the health pixies with sugar.

Leigh ... I feel your pain. I have a pic taken when I was 15 -- complete with full head of hair and god-awful shirt -- and I look at least twice my age. Great for getting pissed at the pub but it sucked worse than a vacuum on crack when a girlfriend's friend thought I was in my 40s. Fucking bitca!

In the Buffy thread there was a discussion of Joseph and Mary's relationship after Jesus was born. Here's a possible answer (whitefonted for unimaginable blasphemy and rude talk):

• NOTE: The following piece may be offensive to Christians. It also contains crude words.

..Aye, well, the boy always was trouble. I knew he'd come to a bad end. It doesn't surprise me one bit. Blasphemy and sedition, is it? Oh, the shame of it. He's no son of mine. No, really, he isn't. I'm only his stepfather, you know. We let on I was his real Dad, mind, for the sake of the wife's reputation and that. There's not many men would have taken her on in her condition, but I stuck by her and look where it got me. You would think the little whelp would show me some filial devotion and respect after I'd raised him as my own all those years, but no. Look at what he calls himself. Jesus 'Christ', for God's sake. The ungrateful little sod doesn't even use my surname. ..Mind you I was never that keen on the name Jesus, either. Poncey name if you ask me, the wife's idea of course. You're asking for trouble giving a kid a fancy name like that, gives them ideas above their station. A couple of times during his childhood I tried to shorten it to 'Jez' or 'Jed' but they never stuck. ..I thought we had a pretty good father-son relationship at first. One day when he was little I heard some other kids asking him who his father was and he replied, "I am the son of God." There was a tear of pride in my eye and a lump in my throat until the wife said, witheringly, "He doesn't mean you, stupid." .."Well who does he mean?" I demanded. .."His real father," she said, rolling her eyes. ..A few direct questions to Jesus satisfied me that this was in fact the case, so I dragged the little cur in the house by the scruff of the neck and started to thrash him with a leather belt. "I'm your father, and don't you forget it!" I snarled. ..In all the times I had cause to thrash my stepson during his childhood, adolescence and young manhood, he almost never stood up to me, the jessy. I suppose in fairness if he had done I would have put him in hospital, but the way he just stood there passively, as he did now, looking so bloody meek and mild and saying, "I forgive you," the superior little sod, used to enrage me even more. .."I'll teach you to forgive me, you little bastard!" I yelled, and leathered him some more. ..On this occasion, for once, I eventually managed to make him yell back at me. I spent two weeks doing it and wore out half a dozen leather belts and a carpentry mallet in the process, but I succeeded in the end. During most of this period my wife was gliding about the house smiling tranquilly and humming hosannas to herself, as was her wont, but eventually even she noticed that all was not sweetness and light. .."Stop, Joe, stop!" she started scriking. "Jesus, why do you have to provoke him? The two of you are tearing me apart!" .."He's got to stop forgiving me!" I cried, grimly redoubling my blows. "And he's got to call me Daddy! Call! Me! Daddy! Call! Me! Daddy!" I snarled, driving home every word with a fresh thwack from the belt. .."You're not my Dad!"Jesus blubbered. "You'll never be my Dad! My Dad's much bigger than you, and he'll kick your head in one day!" .."Oh aye?" I said. "Where is he, then?" .."In heaven!" .."He fucking will be if I ever catch him," I muttered, glaring at my wife while giving Jesus a final backhand. ..This kind of thing went on fairly regularly for several years - until Jesus was thirty and left home, in fact. Once I tried family counselling. The shrink explained that it was quite common for stepchildren to fantasize that their missing parent was someone important. Understanding the problem at last, I went home with a new sense of purpose and attempted to beat the delusions out of him, but to no avail. ..Of course the question of who Jesus' real father was was something I brooded about a lot. "An angel visited me," my wife used to say, dimpling. I've been looking for a blond fucking dwarf ever since, I'll find the cunt one day. .."It's not like you think," she'd say with her usual placid smile. "Nothing happened. The spirit entered me through my ear." .."I don't wanna hear this!" I'd scream, putting my hands over my own ears. The interloper appeared to have been some imbecile yokel from a place where they didn't have any sex education. Mind you he found his way around in the end, didn't he, because nine months later he showed up. ..I suppose the mystery of Jesus' parentage was part of the reason we didn't quite bond with each other in the way I at first hoped we would. To be honest, though, even before he started to manifest his obsession with his real father Jesus was something of a disappointment to me, not quite what I'd hoped for in a son. He was a sissy and a mother's boy, he wasn't interested in sports, he spent far too much time reading books and pressing flowers. One year for his birthday I spent a month making him a full gladiator's outfit, with sword, flail, trident, the works, did he ever play with it? Did he shite. For a while as he grew up I continued to quietly nurse a dream that I might see him in the arena one day, and when he was a bit older I bought him a spear and a knackered old goat to practise on, but he stabbed like a girl. ..Any hopes I had that he might one day follow me into the family business also faded as he grew to manhood. He was the worst carpenter in the whole of Judaea. I reckon his one chance on Friday is if they let him build his own cross. He'd likely come up with a two-foot parallelogram and mumble something about the grain of the wood being wrong for a cross but he'd made a shelf-unit instead. That's all he could ever make, those bloody slanted shelf-units. Chairs, tables, roof-beams,