Grace Wants Her Moo Cards But the posties are on intermittent strike and I don't have them!

Strike witterings and magpies inside.→[More:]

Now, I am not supposed to complain about the posties being on strike. They are back today, but I've not had any post for days and don't expect any today. If they don't strike, Royal Mail will cut forty thousand jobs and subject the rest of the work-force to rather punishing conditions. Wouldn't yo

However, I hope they win soon, so I can get my moo cards, which I ordered at the end of last month. They have cool art-deco designs on them and I'm using them as Reporter Business Cards.

In other news, I've cracked my science fiction idea. Plot synopsis below, very rough.

It will be about a girl who works as a forum admin for a scurrilous, sensational, wildly hip and profitable Glasgow-based gadget website called The Magpie, upon which a cryptic forum post about the ultimate, transformational, worldchanging gadget leads her on a curious search in the outer reaches of the freenets and the most obscure irc servers.

She finds other furtive researchers at The Magpie, and using a variety of nefarious (and technically accurate) hacks and social engineering tricks, they track down a family of asylum seekers who each have a random blinkenlight - seemingly glass and metal, growing out of smooth skin - somewhere on their bodies.

They don't remember exactly how they got the lights, although they assume they are from some torture or witchcraft inflicted by he soldiers that kidnapped them. One daughter is pregnant - will her baby have a light?

The group of researchers (mostly secretaries, interns and tech support types) nick the top recording gadgets and a sweet laptop and begin a covert analysis of the blinkenlights. They are mesmerising; they vary constantly in colour and rhythm. Over time, the family has learned to use them as a part of their communication. They have grown closer using the lights.

As the family faces its asylum hearings and the daughter gets closer to term, the rogue Magpies (who are still working their day jobs at the paper) reluctantly confide in one of the editors. They need serious science to go forward. But will the paper protect the family from the government finding out and quarantining them as a biohazard? And who is the inventor of the blinkenlights?

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That's it so far. It's a fruitful base to develop characters, perhaps introducing a few bad apples and outside pursuants of the story. There will also be a lot of real hackery, awesome gadgets, some real Muslims, a wee bit of refugee-stuff, and a gentle send-up of the gadget and hipster cultures.