So, I was wondering why the only thing I’ve never seen Doctor Who do with his sonic screwdriver is to tighten a screw, when it occurred to me how very very sad my life has become, and then I realised that it has always been that way: my ability to whittle over something that is not only inconsequential but also entirely fictional is without equal.  You know the kind of thing: why do terrified people always walk into a darkened room; if there is more than one of them, why do they always split-up?  Why does the gun always run out of bullets when just one round would see off the bad guy?  Why do I worry that my own particular skillset would boil down to gibbering quietly in the corner, attempting to hide in my own sock?  Why do I worry that with my back to the wall I would be less John McClane and more clematis?

The only thing that separates fact from fiction is that they are completely different things: situations are not real, reactions are not real and no-one ever feels sick because they have eaten too much chocolate.  And of course reality is so much more rational, isn’t it?  Well, we have a world led by a man who seriously looks as though he is only managing to dodge the coffin on the grounds that The Lords of the Universe have looked at him and thought, “Well, what harm could he do?  And anyway, look at the alternative.”  We have Putin, we have Xi, we have Israel and Hamas, we have Iran, and we have madmen running around with guns and knives… doesn’t it all make a sonic screwdriver seem quite logical?  (In reality, logic is something that only mathematicians and astro-physicists believe in.  For the rest of us it is The Chaos Theory and Wacky Races on TV.)  Nothing really makes sense.  Why is there nothing in the world that makes you crave a cup of coffee quite like the sound of the coffee machine turning off?  Why does nothing make you realise that you’re not that hungry quite like the ‘ping’ of a microwave?  Why does nothing make a politician quite so contemptuous of the common man as being elected as a man of the people?

Perhaps we need Doctor Who to sort these things out.  Could his ‘wonder tool’* turn the previously pretty teenage girl away from a short-term future as a dead-skinned puffer fish with lips that can only drink through a straw?  Could a sonic screwdriver ensure that all of the clocks in the house did not run out of battery at exactly the same time; that your phone didn’t run out of charge at the very second you manage to find a signal; that your keys were in your pocket at the end of a journey as well as at the beginning; could it fix the kind of extremely annoying personality trait that has idiots fretting over things that they cannot control?  Could it stop them from believing that a sonic screwdriver actually exists…

You need to find out
‘Cause no one’s gonna tell you what I’m on about
You need to find a way for what you wanna say
But before tomorrow… Supersonic – Oasis (Noel Gallagher)

*Oh come on, you’re making your own jokes up now!