Good Robot vs Bad Robots

As I was halfheartedly clearing my study today (oh, for full-hearted clearing!), I came across an autograph book my mother had owned, and her mother before her. Inside the cover, grandmother had inscribed her name, Mrs MacAllister, and grandfather had written the place/s: The Hawthorns, Burnham-On-Sea, Somerset, then later (or possibly earlier), Malvernhurst, Barrow Road, Burnham-On-Sea, and a date: 1936.

Most of the family's autographs were accompanied by sketches or lines of verse. I looked for a watercolour I remember seeing, by my mother or her sister, but that must have been in another autograph book. My uncle Niall showed a talent for drawing and a liking for things military, including, from 1945, a very accurate insignia for the 41st Panzer Division -- an eagle clutching a swastika -- and below it, in German script, an anthem, 'Die Wacht am Rhein'.

I found a drawing I'd made in 1965, when I was 8: two Daleks, naturally, one of them calling (rather needlessly) to 'arrest the prisoner.' I showed this to the wean and suggested he add his own drawing. Naturally, this was a scene from Star Wars (he's obsessed with the eponymous Lego). In fact, it was the first movie from the franchise, which I saw when it came out in the 1970s: when Luke clumsily activates R2D2's message and sees the hologram of Princess Leia. I'm pleased to say the wean's drawing is far superior to my own, and of course he wouldn't have time for the bad robots (maybe when he's a teenager).