Only smarties have the answer

I bought a tube of smarties today on my way home. I had vowed never to buy them again after they changed to the hexagonal packaging, but I was peckish and they looked appetising and I figured they'd been punished enough. It's not the same, though. There's no excitement, wondering what letter will be on the underside of the lid. And the new all-cardboard packs just look so cheap and nasty.

Still, there's good news too. In London I found a video of Bobobobs, the extremely weird cartoon series (originally Spanish, I think), that in its English translation appeared on channel 4 in around 1990. It's a very unusual space-odyssey saga about a large cast of little people who sail their wooden spaceship around the universe. They're theoretically on a quest to find a distant planet (Earth, according to the endless theme song) and save the inhabitants from dinosaurs, but in practice they just have a different adventure every week and never really get anywhere. It's one of those things you have to see to understand the appeal, so just take it from me.

My ear's burning. Someone's talking about me. Must be one of the people I just emailed - only three 'fan mails' to catch up with after a week and a half at the MSO, obviously nobody likes me any more. Or perhaps it's because I never get round to writing to people unless they write to me first. I'm terrible like that, it's nothing personal, I assure you.