1st January: Monstrous hangover spotted in Reading. Air Force sent up but nobody laughs.

2nd January: New Year Sales. Landslide of beads and sequins on Giulia's fabric mountain. Not many dead.

14th January: Marianne's birthday. Alison remembers she had a daughter somewhere and goes hunting for Steven to find out how old she is.

15th January: Cabal return Acme Exploding Present to Acme Complaints Department.

13th February: Boskone. Vast horde of cabalisti descend upon Boston, realising only too late that they should be in Massachusetts and not Lincolnshire.

20th February: New York trembles in horror as giant toddler goes on the rampage. Not many dead.

13th March: Steve's 40th birthday. Plokta Cabal all feel old. Biiig Humph!

25th March: Mediæval British New Year, lending some faint shred of credibility to this New Year's edition of Plokta.

2nd April: Festival of the blessed Eastercon. Patron saint of TAFF, Vijay Bowen, appears in a corset vision to thousands of supplicants in Liverpool. Not many dead.

5th April: Closing date for GUFF ballots. Your opportunity to condemn Steve Davies to Transportation for life.

9th May: Lemuralia. Feast of ancient Roman spirits of ring-tailed lemurs.

28th May: Small horde of Martian war machines spotted in Stevenage. All drink and carouse while Simon Bradshaw feebly wails "but this is a serious SF con".

7th June: feast of St. Meriasek, patron saint of tin miners. Tin miners were very superstitious, and if they encountered a snail while underground, they would feed it lantern wax.

8th June: Joseph Nicholas spotted feeding lantern wax to snails in an attempt to humanely eradicate them from his tin mine garden.

4th July: Invasion of Furbies repelled by unarmed penguins.

11th August: Ancient Norse dragon Ploktaroth swallows the sun. If you all make sacrifices of Hugo nomination forms to his high priests, he may give it back.

3rd September: Aussiecon 3 in Melbourne. Plokta placed above Banana Wings in the Hugo! Unfortunately neither of us make the final ballot.

9th September: Early symptoms of millennium bug strike as date reaches 9/9/99. Thousands of computerised diaries suddenly make appointments with all the people their owners never ever wanted to talk to ever again. Government grinds to a halt. Nobody notices.

13th September: Moon wrenched from its orbit by a mysterious force and sent hurtling through the galaxy, crewed only by a band of bad actors in strange wigs. "It wasn't me" says mysterious force Michael Abbott.

6th November: Your chance to vote for Plokta in the Nova... Oh, you already voted for Claire and Mark. How about next year?

7th November: Banana Wings wins Nova Award for unprecedented fourth time. Cabal get drunk for only too precedented time.

30th December: Government working party on the Millennium Bug delivers its recommendations.

31st December: Plokta Cabal prepare for imminent destruction of civilisation as we know it by partying the night away in our secret hideout -- except for those of us who have to work.

1st January 2000: Error 404 Page Not Found

--Steve Davies

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