The Churchwardens of Skaro

It's a long and horrible story, but we've got to the bottom of the daleks, the unexpected conversions to Roman and Anglo Catholicism and the disappearance of the local churchwardens.

So it all goes back to that incense we were burning at the Vatican One festival on Saturday. How were we to know that it was specially manufactured by a secret Ordinariate lab to incorporate nanocloud technology? It was actually relatively benign, as it turns out - when Young Keith analysed the biotechnological fingerprint, it turns out to be a kind that converts you to the thing you really want to be. The fact that Randolph and the others are just the sort of people, faced with a big cloud of incense, to take a really big lungful means that they were highly likely to go all Catholic in these circumstances. In the same way, Young Keith has proved that the rest of the Beaker Folk have subtly transformed into woolly wannabe mystics with a poor doctrinal basis. And we didn't even notice the difference.

But that, of course, leads us to that whole situation with the Churchwardens and the daleks. Well, what else would you expect Churchwardens to change into in these circumstances?

Of course, we had to act. You can't have two misanthropic, power-mad creatures trying to take control of a religious fellowship and taking absolutely no notice of the person who's meant to be in charge.

Let me rephrase that. In the circumstances, that's exactly the kind of thing that is likely to happen. When we came out of the lab after checking the results, we discovered that the daleks had enslaved the entire Beaker Race and had them working cruelly long hours without reward in the doily mines. Which goes to show they had the right idea. But what could we do? How could the Hnaefs, Keith and I take on the DalekWardens armed only with a cricket bat and a length of gardening twine?

It was Daphne's idea.  No violence, no worlds destroyed, no time/space anomalies and no implausible plotlines. She simply got on the tannoy and shouted "Archdeacon's Visitation. Now."

Well, it worked like a charm. The daleks were off down the drive and heading for the Ridgmont Road at a rate of knots, back to whichever villages they came from. The place is quiet, the Beaker People are pathetically grateful and we've got our fellowship back. The incense - well, I'm afraid that Young Keith rather foolishly threw it in the duck pond. Whoever knew that mallards secretly want to be LibDem MPs? And I wonder if that works both ways?