When I was a lad, like most boys, I was obsessed with outer space and with being an astronaut.

As an impressionable teenager living in a small Scottish town, the sight on TV of the space shuttle blasting off into space filled me with excitement and wonder. And when the space station was being planned, I thought that it must be man's highest technical achievement. However, fantasy and reality are two completely separate places, and the space station has a dirty little secret! According to astronauts who have been there, the space station absolutely stinks! It must do, after all: it's not very big, and people stay there for weeks at a time. When the inevitable happens and somebody makes a bad smell, you can hardly throw the windows open, can you? Astronaut food comes in little silver bags and has to have water added to it. A bit like Pot Noodle, in fact. So just imagine being locked in a windowless room for weeks at a time with some other people, and all you have to eat is Pot Noodle. The smell must be unbearable! I noticed also that scientists were doing experiments on the space station to see how flowers grew in zero gravity. And now we can guess why: they must want to put flowers all over the space station to try to cover up the terrible smell! Scientific research? Ha! Tell the truth!

- Steve Turner