In 2009 the BBC will be resting Dr Who with only three specials planned for the year. ShipsCook wondered what the future held for the alien races that oppose the Dr during that time.

I tracked down Dalek Sek who was facing up to a new career as a postman with Royal Mail.

"Its a good job with a free uniform and an early finish that gives me plenty of time to concentrate on my plans for universal domination, plus I can send some money to the wife and kids in Skaro," he said "Royal Mail have been very accomaodating adapting equipment for my needs under the DDA (Dalek Discrimination Act)."

Dalek Sek's supervisor, the Master, added: "Dalek Sek has been an exemplory employee, after getting over an initial tendency to exterminate Special Delivery customers who were a bit slow opening the door, even if he does have a bit of trouble negotiating stairs in tower blocks"

Cyber Leader One has recently started work at a call centre, Cook asked his boss, the Face of Boe how he was adapting.

"Cybermen are really good workers, they can be plugged in at their desks and they don't take breaks for lunch or the toilet. There is no trouble with sick absence either as they are never in a hurry to see the Dr"

"OK there have been some problems, but these have been mostly down to cultural misunderstandings." the Face of Boe went on: "Telling Cyber Leader One to enforce the clear desk policy did result in an unacceptable loss of life amongst the human staff and some extensive damage to furniture, while asking him to delete the double entries from the customer database have left huge parts of the UK a radioactive wasteland, but hey anybody can make a mistake."

What an adventure, got up way too early to drive to Dover, what a hero Mr Wolfe is with his Volvo, Mrs F navigated, Old Nick the Powder Monkey and I kipped most of the way.

Sailed through French Immigration at Dover, (Allo Rostbiffs you come to spend your money on our superior French produce oui?) Had a nice easy crossing with Sea France (£32 for all of us and the car) and drove straight into France no waiting around for customs.

The weather was a bit rubbish and we had been warned by a fellow voayager that the big shopping centre at the City of Europe was jammed with shoppers, so we drove on to Boulogne and had a leisurely lunch at the Nausicca Sea Life Centre, I had a warm herring and spud salad followed by a huge piece of salmon and mash and then a nice chocolate and orange gooey thing. It was delicious and considering there were five of us and we had drinks and wine, very good value at 148 Euros, you would never get that at home.

From there the heroic Mr Wolfe drove on through driving rain to the City of Europe where we could not find anywhere to park. So letting us out of the car he drove around for ages while we bought loads of cheap booze and then picked us up outside.

Back to Calais and once wew had passed the expensivly branded (with our tax money!) UK Frontier having proved to the paranoid government's satisfaction that we were not asylum seekers, economic migrants or terrorists, we discovered that Dover was closed, due to bad weather and spent about four hours playing I spy in the car while waiting for the ferry. Its amazing some of things we spied including a giraffe, a humpback whale, Sir Lawrence Olivier and a Shetland pony.

One of the highlights was going to the cafe in the ferry terminal,which absurdly involved passing through French immigration (show the passport and tickets), discovering it was full of drunken English idiots and then on the way back passing through a security screening involving a metal detector and then passing through UK immigration (all passports scanned into the computer) yet again. Somehow the absurdity of making us turn out our pockets when all we wanted to do was go back to the unscreened big metal box full of booze on wheels we had left in the ferry port seemed to have escaped the authorities in their War on Terror.

Eventually we were able to board the ferry and after passing through the long queue at UK Customs, get back home, so up yours Mr Broon we have lots of wine that the French government have got the duty on cos its not taxed to the hilt. And while we are at lets join the Schengen area like the Czechs just have, so we can dispense with all this fucking about at the border like grown up Europeans.