This is ..............my perfect dinner party guest list

The this is topic this week is a really good one and has had me considering for days. So here we go, the table is set ready, the candles are lit and Peter is in the kitchen prepareing the feast.

I think I would like to start with a few of my rejects and the reasons why I cut them from the final 6, though if I could I would probably like to have a barbie out in the garden and invite 20- 30 guests.

The first people I thought off where my family Mum, Dad, Bryan my brother and my three nieces. Being down here in NZ I don't get to see them as often as I would like. But that is not really the spirit of the suggestion this week, so I will save them for another time.

Now this is the sad bit if you don't want to read it please skip to the next paragraph, but I had to include this one. My first son died when he was a baby, he would be 19 now. I would really liked to have had him there to find out how he would have grown up. But I would have just ignored my other guests and I don't think I could have let him go again at the end of the evening. So it is perhaps best not to ask him. Sorry for the note of saddness in a fun game.

Back to the game I am afraid I had to reject George Clooney, Neil Armstrong (perhaps if we get him tipsy he might tell us if the moon landings were faked or not), Billy Connelly (he might be a little too loud), the whole herd of female news readers that Peter suggested (not sure why he seems to have a thing for female news readers, you better ask him), the dinosaur and the cave man that the kids wanted to ask (might be a bit messy, they would be better at a barbie), Richard Fenyman (perhaps too many scientists), Sir Edmund Hilary (a difficult choice to reject) and Charlotte Bronte (this last one was a very close call).

Here is the list at last, though I am afraid that my inner geek has definatly reared its head.

Agatha Christie - I would love to meet the person who invented Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.

Carl Sagan - I have always beeen an avid SF reader and would love to discuss the next frontiers with him and my next guest.

Isaac Asimov - I have loved his stories for nearly 30 years now and will continue to do so. He is in a way responsible for my career choice. In one of his books he describes a society of people who can use Computers and people who can't. I wanted to be one of the ones that is able, and ended up a Software Developer, a job that is perfect for me and I love.

Bill Bailey - To make me laugh out loud how could I not include the fantastic Bill Bailey. A bit of another geekey choice.

Ada Lovlace - The daughter of Lord Byron, and an amazing mathamatician who may possibly have been the worlds first programmer, if Charles Babbage had been able to create his difference engine a calculating machine.

Vera Brittain - I read her book Testament of Youth and its sequels when I was a teenager and was profoundly affected by her pacifist ideals.

So there they are and I am ready waiting at the front door with a glass of champagne in my hand.