What's that coming over the hill? Is it a monster?

It’s a particularly adrenalised SFX office today, and not just because the final, serious, “no really, stop mucking about now, we need to send the pages to the printer soon or we’re all sacked” deadline is looming for SFX176 (it’s another cracker. You’re going to love the covers...)

Why? Because we’re still buzzing from the events of Tuesday afternoon, when the SFX office was shaken (literally) by a series of distant booms in Bath city centre and the sight of a huge plume of black smoke rising into the air from about 200 yards away. Early theories – “It’s the Cloverfield monster!”; “Osama Bin Laden must really hate Bonekickers!” – turned out to be off the mark. In fact, some gas cylinders had exploded on the building site of a new shopping centre, sending jets of flame shooting 50 feet into the air. Fortunately, no-one was hurt, allowing us to enjoy the ensuing mayhem without the bitter aftertaste of guilt.

The thing you never see in disaster movies is the bit where people spend ten minutes going “Wow, explosions - brilliant!”, excitedly running around the building to gawp out of the windows, and cheering as emergency helicopters swoop overhead.

What it looks like when an emergency helicopter lands in the bus station in front of your office. Kinda cool, basically.

It wasn’t all fun and games, though. Both Nick and Leah found their flats on the wrong side of a police cordon, and had to stay at friends’ houses overnight. All in all, it was definitely the most exciting thing to happen in Bath in at least the last five years. Possibly ever.

Status updates:

Ian is: dashing off reviews of David Lynch shorts, Asian horror flicks, and miscellaneous DTV cack; wishing he could chat about Lucio Fulci with Charlie Brooker every week; mightily relieved that that Sarah Jane Adventures guest star turned out to be 19.
Nick is: heading to London to see Laughin' Frank Miller unveil The Spirit. And then he's away to the Gollancz autumn party, where no booze will touch his god-fearin' lips, no sir.
Rich is: mostly doing what Nick is doing. He’s also plotting an interview with the writer of a huge SF movie and churning out news pages like there’s no tomorrow – you never know.
Other Dave is: still giggling at some of the Robot Chicken sketches he watched last night to prime him for his Seth Green interview this afternoon. Who would have thought the phrase, “Dishes done!” could be so chortlesome?
Jon is: looking forward to watching Apparitions tonight — it’s supposed to be a bit of a pants filler according to Dave G!
Simon is: pleased he finally remembered that the scandalously underpublicised Medium was on last night – my weekly poker night, and it was my turn to host. Luckily I’d seen off my half dozen opponents by 10.30 and was able to watch another great episode of the show with a glass of wine and £25 winnings in my back pocket. Result!
Proper Dave is: in London, having very important meetings with very important people.
Adrian is: at CollectorMania in Milton Keynes, where SFX has a stall. He’s probably bezzie mates with Craig Fairbrass or The Bloke Who Was a Hath by now.

Now for the latest round of the game absolutely noone’s talking about – it’s Whose Hand? Last time the surprisingly girlish digits belonged to our reviews ed Ian. But whose mitt is this?