Paul Magrs's Blog, page 5

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

 

This HAS to be the soundtrack to my Mars novels...!

 

This new Rick Wakeman album just arrived in the post. My present to myself for finishing a project I've been writing. Now I really want this record to be the soundtrack to the movie of my Lora on Mars trilogy. (How come those rights haven't been sold to anyone yet..?! That's ridiculous..! Ha'way, film makers, TV people. Get this MADE!)

The Great and the Good

 

All these happy moments just came back to me, one after the next this morning. I guess they’ll make me sound like a bloody awful name-dropper, but I couldn’t care less. These are all great writers and they were all, in the times I met them, really nice to me. I think it’s good to share those moments and those messages. (And carefully not mention the *awful* moments with *dreadful* writers! Or *terrible* moments with *terrific* writers. I’ll just give you the good bits…)

 

When I met Gore Vidal it was in the bookstore on campus following his reading and I got introduced by the head of department. ‘This is Paul, he’s a novelist, he lectures in writing here at UEA and this is his partner, Jeremy.’

            Vidal looked Jeremy up and down and then stared me straight in the eye. ‘Courage, my boy!’

           

And I remember going for lunch at Lorna Sage’s house with Doris Lessing and we had a fuss round the drop-leaf table, pulling it away from the wall to make enough space. We were dithering too much, clearly. Doris rolled up her sleeves: ‘I’ll do it!’, giving the table an almighty yank.

 

I took Iain Banks out for dinner on my second day working there, after his reading. We sat up till two and he told me that he wrote for six weeks in every year and spent the rest of the time playing with bikes and cars. ‘But they’re a very busy six weeks.’

 

I remember Louis de Bernieres digging me in the ribs while we had dinner and going, ‘Look! She’s eaten the whole thing – bones and all!’ And, indeed, the whole fish had vanished from Muriel Sparks’ plate.

Earlier in the cab, she’d been yelling: ‘That woman’s been saying I’ve been running about the continent for decades… being a lesbian…!’

 

At a buffet for Frank McCourt the lovely, genial old fella took me aside and said: ‘Writing your books and teaching here at the same time, you’ve got the perfect life, haven’t you? It would be for me too, I think.’

 

I got a postcard from Beryl Bainbridge: ‘Carry on! As if anything could stop you..!’

 

I remember Malcolm Bradbury coming out to the Jumbo Chinese restaurant with us and giggling like mad because I was insisting everyone got up and sang karaoke, like it was a part of the course. Humiliating yourself loudly in front of people who don’t care seemed like good training for writing novels.

 

And I remember W G Sebald – Max – messing about with the venetian blinds, making them go up and down, getting them tangled up as he adjusted them before a Phd panel, just to make the student whose exam it was crack up laughing: to set his nerves at ease. It was the morning of the very day Max died in a car accident, the last day of term before Christmas. I was on a train going to Manchester that afternoon. A five hour journey and a friend in the US texted me the news before I even arrived.

 

I remember Tony Warren sitting in the foyer of the Midland Hotel and I was telling him, ‘You’ve ruined my life! You made me think it was a sensible thing to have it all out with people. To go over and say, ‘Hey, listen lady!’ And bring up all your grievances.’ And he laughed like a drain. ‘That works for Elsie Tanner but, on the whole, it’s a terrible thing to do!’

 

Maggie O’Farrell said: ‘You encouraged me! You’ll have no memory of this – but there was a party in a flat near King’s Cross in 1998 and I was telling you all about my novel I was writing and you were so encouraging.’

And it was the Nineties so I had no memory of it at all, until I checked in my diaries – my endless novelised diaries – and there she was! We were friends of friends of friends of some bloke who was dolled up in a wedding dress! And we did have a long talk about novels! When I read my journal back, I completely remembered. (From this I took two things – keep on keeping that capacious journal. Also, carry on being nice and interested to people who tell you that they’re writing.)

 

And Russell T Davies! In Pizza Express in 1995: ‘Are you a fan, Paul? Are we both Dr Who fans? Are we coming out to each other?’

 

I remember Alan Bennett and having tea outside a café in Yorkshire when I was 22 and being amazed because he took an interest in the novel I was writing.

We talked about listening in on people and how interesting it always is.

 

 

 

 

 

Mr Child - part 1

 

                                                (homage a M. Guillotin by Judikael)

I've started a new short story - about a subject I feel strongly about. I wanted to try out my first couple of scenes on you. Let me know what you think!

Mr Child

 

‘Watch out for people who go putting on airs,’ said Mr Child. ‘Beware of people going out of their way to show you how clever they are.’ He looked up from the little philosophy book he said he’d found in Durham’s Oxfam shop and grinned. ‘Because they’re full of shite, usually. Watch out for them!’

            He had dragged his chair out from behind the teacher’s desk – as usual – and was sitting right in front of our class with one leg crossed over the other, holding his little book up. He smiled at us in the half-light through the black venetian blinds.

What was it with that room of his always being half in darkness? It was right at the top of the glass building, and it should have been the lightest and airiest of all the classrooms. It looked out over miles of bright yellow fields. Mr Child jumped up to adjust the bent and dusty blinds once more. He didn’t like the direct sunlight, he said, so down they came, lowered noisily like a broken guillotine.

            ‘The… man who… invented the guillotine was actually called Mr Guillotin… and he invented it especially for the French Revolution…’ Mr Child was puffing and panting as he pulled the strings at his end of the blinds. I was pulling on the other end and the blinds were making an awful ratcheting noise. ‘He practised decapitating sheep! On the cobbles in the street… outside his house, in a little alleyway near St Germain des Pres… in Paris. Imagine the poor sheep queueing up and watching him experimenting with his terrible machine!’

            Mr Child tugged on the string and his end of the blinds shot down faster than mine. We had a lopsided triangle of shade bisecting the brilliant sunshine. ‘That’ll do. Will that do? Half the room’s in shadow, and the rest of you can just sunbathe…’ He shrugged as our class gave him an ironic burst of applause. ‘What can I say? I’m a ginger fella. I can’t stand being in the sun, I evaporate! Now, where was I..?’

            He went back to his chair at the front and picked up his book. ‘Oh, yes. Don’t trust those who crack on they’re intellectuals. Just watch out for them! And ornate prose styles! Oh, my god, watch out for people covering up the fact they know nothing by putting on an overly ornate prose style! That’s bullshit of the highest order, that. Awful! And the worst thing is, people are taken in! If they read something they don’t understand they think – ooh, it must be clever. Too clever for me to understand!’ Mr Child burst out: ‘But, no! They’ve been hoodwinked! They’ve been blinded by bullshit! Absolute bullshit and bollocks!’

            He flapped his book and kept shouting the words ‘bullshit’ and ‘bollocks’, and this was the bit we liked the best. He was getting excited and red in the face. He rolled up the sleeves of his grey shirt and rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Now, where was I? Aye, yes. Just think! What must have been going through the heads of those poor sheep? Besides a razor sharp blade, that is! Mr Guillotin had an arrangement with the restaurant next door and he’d pass on all the heads and bodies and grisly bits of mutton when he was finished. Forty thousand people died on the guillotine during the Revolution! Forty thousand human heads followed all those sheep! Including Monsieur Guillotin’s own!’

            There was a knock at the door and, without waiting, the head of German stepped into the room. ‘Is everything all right in here?’ Mr Robbins asked. He was a beaming, worried kind of man. He wanted the best for everyone, but something about Mr Child always made him feel nervous, you could tell.

            ‘Aye, Mr Robbins. All fine in here. Am I being too noisy again? We were trying to fix those bloody blinds…’

            Mr Robbins surveyed our class worriedly. Clearly he felt protective of his small band of A Level students. There were only three of us studying German with him and Mr Child. We were an elite band he was very fond of. He had high hopes for us. While he was our main teacher, Mr Child had the responsibility of guiding us through the Literature part of the syllabus. It was a big task. Fully half of the final exams were on books that Mr Child was teaching us. When he heard Mr Child getting excited and shouting ‘bullshit!’ and ‘bollocks!’ and playing with the blinds in the next room, Mr Robbins always became nervous. He’d come darting through to check on us all.

            ‘We’re fine, Mr Robbins,’ said Mr Child. ‘We’re having a lovely time. Just dandy.’

            ‘That’s all right then,’ said Mr Robbins. ‘Entschuldigen sie.’

            ‘Aye, whatever,’ said Mr Child and gave him a wave. The door closed again.

            ‘Right, where was I with philosophy?’ Mr Child flapped his little hardback book at us again. ‘Okay, Verstand and Vernunft. That was it. Now, I’ve got a feeling that Emanuel Kant is the key to all of this. Verstand and Vernunft. Two different kinds of understanding. Now, does anyone want to have a go at describing the difference between the two different kinds?’

            He looked up at us and his eyes were very pale and blue. He looked like he really expected us to have all the answers. He was trying not to seem impatient with us, but we really weren’t on the same page.

            My friend Gail asked him, ‘Is this to do with Wilhelm Tell, sir? Are we still talking about Schiller?’

            ‘Yes, yes, of course we are,’ he said, impatiently, and smiled to soften his tone. ‘But my feeling is that you can’t read the Schiller without understanding Emanuel Kant first…’

            We hadn’t read the Schiller yet. We were still on the first page. After two classes on Wilhelm Tell we hadn’t got very far at all.

 

*

 

We were used to going off on tangents with Mr Child. He’d get carried away. We’d encourage him. His tangents would take us further and further away from the point. They’d take up whole lessons. We loved them though.

            ‘The moon! Lunatics! Lunacy! Do you know about the connections between the moon and madness? Werewolves! Legends! And… Psycho..! Who’s seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho?’ He stared at us with disbelief. ‘What?! None of you? None of you have seen Psycho..? But it’s a bloody classic movie! Where have you all been all this time..?’

            ‘We’re not as old as you,’ Gail said cheekily. ‘We’ve got catching up to do!’

            ‘Hey, you’re not that much younger,’ Mr Child laughed. ‘I’m only twenty-three. What’s that? Five years older? When you get to my age, you’ll find that’s nowt. That’s nowt at all! Age is an illusion! It’s all bullshit! Now, where was I… Yeah! Psycho..!’

            And he spent the rest of that hour acting out the whole story of Psycho. He did all the voices and actions. He crept around the classroom like it had been transformed into a chilling murder house. He mimed being Janet Leigh standing in the tub, lathering up and then shrieking when the shower curtain got ripped back. He acted out the frenzied stabbing and we sat there in amazement. Was he really going to do the whole film? He was! Right to the end.

            ‘I wouldn’t even hurt a fly…’ That was the final, unnerving line and we got there eventually before the home-time bell, but not before Mr Child had taken a detour into explaining schizophrenia, transvestism and the Oedipal complex. When the bell went he grinned and took his bows and said, ‘But we still didn’t get to Wilhelm Tell, did we..?’

            The German books we were supposed to be reading for the syllabus came out of the cupboard at the back of the room and they smelled really damp and old. The print was tiny and generations of kids from our school had written notes in pencil on every single empty bit of page.

            ‘Verstand and Vernunft,’ he kept saying, chewing on a biro. ‘It’s all to do with these two different ways of understanding. Can anyone help me? Does anyone know what I mean?’

            And we’d struggle with the opening scenes of Wilhelm Tell again. We all knew the famous bit, with the apple on the kid’s head and the arrow and all that, but we hadn’t quite got to it yet. ‘But it’s just like last term and Brecht,’ Mr Child said. ‘We got there eventually, didn’t we? And now you’re all experts on The Life of Galileo! I could ask you anything about that play, couldn’t I? You’d all know the answers in a flash. I could ask you like… like  I was the Spanish Inquisition..!’

            This really cracked him up. Every mention of the Spanish Inquisition during the Brecht play had made him howl. ‘I know it’s not funny… and they were bad buggers really, all the things they did… but I just… can’t help thinking of the sketch…! You know… You know the one..?’ 

            Then he was horrified that we had never seen the Monty Python sketch. The very next week he turned up with photostats made on the school copier. Pages from his book of Monty Python. We were all going to act out the Spanish Inquisition sketch in class and by the end we’d understand Galileo much better. And we did! We really did!

            He was lugging the heavy Multimedia trolley into the classroom. He’d brought his copy of Queen’s ‘A Night at the Opera’ on vinyl. He flapped the gatefold sleeve at us excitedly. ‘Now, just listen to the words! We can sing along! ‘Galileo! Galileo! Magnifico-oo-oo..!’ He beamed. ‘See? It’s all about Galileo, too! Beelzebub… has a devil put aside for him! And it’s the moon again, you see? The moon going round and round the world! The moon in the sky and madness! Lunacy..!’

            So then he had the three of us taking different parts to sing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ along with the school’s ancient record player.

            Mr Robbins came knocking. ‘Erm… that’s a bit loud, Mr Child… We’re doing our language lab next door…’

            But Mr Child was still singing: ‘Bismillah, no…!’

            Suddenly Mr Robbins was frowning. It was rare that we saw him frown. ‘Mr Child,’ he said, warningly. ‘Turn it down. Bitte sehr.’

            So Mr Child did.

            Weeks later he harkened back to that scene and he told us: ‘Now, it was my Verstand that gave me my immediate understanding of the situation. If I don’t turn down the volume Mr Robbins is going to be very angry, and with possible awful consequences for all of us. But my Vernunft… that was a different kind of understanding of the situation. I think that’s the right way round, anyway. All to do with principles and the bigger picture. Did I think it was important that I played Queen at top volume to you three, sitting here, last thing on a Tuesday afternoon? Did I think that was dead vital for your understanding of Bertolt Brecht?’

He looked faraway and thoughtful for a second. His eyes closed and you could see that his eyelashes were actually white. ‘Why, yes, of course I did! Of course it was!’ He dashed back to the blinds and started yanking on the cord again. The late afternoon had shifted and the sun was getting on his nerves. ‘And do you know why? It was important because you lot – you three – because you’d remember it. And I was right, wasn’t I? You do remember all of it, don’t you..?’

 

           

           

           

 

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World - by John Baxter

Little Book Reviews…

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World – by John Baxter

This was in lieu of my summer trip this year. John Baxter’s a Parisian-based writer who leads walking tours through the city, telling tales and hoarding wonderful, bookish anecdotes. He mostly concentrates on the Left Bank and the racy literary history of St Germain des Pres – which suits me fine: it’s my favourite bit of my favourite city. Here’s a book full of wonderful sights and smells and gossip (ciggies and hot chocolate, sexy stuff and Modernism!) – (plus a couple of chapters about Australian folklore that had me going, ‘What’s this even about..?!’) But mostly it’s a fabulous read… and one that makes you feel like you’re sitting in the greenish afternoon light under those plane trees by the café in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

 

 

 

Miss Benson's Beetle - by Rachel Joyce

 

Little book reviews…

Miss Benson’s Beetle

I’ve read almost all of Rachel Joyce’s books as they’ve been published – this is the best yet, and I’d say, the best book I’ve read so far this year. A perfect choice for my holiday reads. It’s the story of a dreadfully damaged misanthrope intent on travelling to a remote island to find and suffocate a legendary golden beetle. The travelling companion she ends up with is a brazen hussy with an alarming secret. It’s a wonderful adventure – with lots of suffering and sniping. You’ll feel like cheering by the end when Miss B tells us that joy is ‘the most serious thing in the world.’

Season 13 - Chapter 8

 

Season 13 – Chapter 8

 

I’ve become a companion in my own adventures!

And you know, really… it isn’t half bad.

            Dusty’s in charge now. She’s not much good at piloting her ship, but who cares? We’re not really bothered where we go. Just so long as we’re together.

            This control room’s pretty swish. Psychedelic swirls of purple and tangerine. Funny clanking things hanging from the ceiling like gigantic earrings. They serve no purpose whatsoever, from what I can see.

            Get this! She’s got tall, elegant leopards and panthers – all beautifully trained – slinking in and out of the place, bringing refreshments and providing security. Tails flicking elegantly. Snarls twitching. Would I like to see the menu? Would I like to read the Programme Guide?

            There’s a fancy alcove. It’s lit up like a shrine. This is where she keeps her wigs. Each one has a name: Cleopatra, Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Cavell. Lulu, Cilla, Cher, Divine.

            I keep suggesting: ‘Let’s go to Sheffield. Let’s pick up my friends.’

            ‘Oh… oh, well, all right…’ says Dusty. ‘What year was it again? When did you drop them off..?’

            I try to remember. But like I say, everything has started to fade a little round the edges. The details and stuff. Just like it always does.

            ‘2020..?’ she gasps, when I remember. ‘Oh, let’s not. Let’s not bother, The Doctor. I really don’t think you want to go there.’

            And she distracts me with more and more kissing.

And random, lovely adventures in time and space.

I have a flick through the Programme Guide.

 

*

 

Doc!!

 

There’s a woman here who reckons she knows you!

            Well, from what I can make out, anyway.

            Captain Bush reckons many things. She keeps spouting off and striding about and shouting at the top of her voice. She’s had poor Ravio taken away and clapped in irons!

            ‘I want to talk to this one… by myself!’ she bellows into my face, and tosses out this mane of bright red locks.

            She’s a frightening woman, tiny as she is.

            She’s got this crew of… well, I guess you’d call them desperadoes. All of them are cutthroats. All of them are terrifying.

            Except Alpha Centauri. They aren’t terrifying Not at all. They’re quite friendly, actually, and they’ve made a point of jittering over to where I’m tied up. They’ve blinked their single huge eye and it looked like it was full of sympathy. ‘She never used to be so brutal. But the years have changed Pirate Captain Bush.’

            ‘The years have changed us all,’ I said. ‘And disappointment can do awful things to a person.’

            ‘That’s it! That’s it!’ the green person shrilled. ‘She’s been awfully let down in her life, has Captain Bush. Well, we all have, aboard the pirate ship ‘Charity.’ Turning to a life of space-crime like we have… it’s an attempt to wrest back control of our destinies and to have some fun…’ But even as the nervous hexapod says this, I can tell they aren’t completely convinced. One of their six tentacles ends in a hook, which they wave around limply. ‘Harr harr,’ Alpha Centauri says sadly.

            ‘What’s that?’ I ask.

            ‘It’s what we’re all supposed to say,’ they sigh. ‘In order to sound like pirates. Harr harr. Arrr, lad.’

            ‘Oh, I see.’

            ‘You’ll have to start practising, if you’re to join our crew.’

            ‘I’m joining your crew, am I?’

            ‘Captain Bush has given the nod. You’re just her type. Also, you look disappointed, Graham. You look like you, too, have been left behind.’

            I think that squeaky octopus creature might have a point. They bring me green food and drink.

            Funny how so many of Captain Bush’s piratical followers are green. Bright green! Shipman Erato, for example, who takes up quite a lot of space on the rusty bridge.

            Do I really want to be a pirate? Is this what I travelled through the galaxy for..?

            Harr harr!

 

*

 

Fam!!

            We’ve been having adventures, one after the next. More or less at random! One episode, then another episode. Sometimes running over, from one to the other. Cliffhangers, leitmotifs, running jokes, recurrent images and hints at the season’s climax!

            First we had a gently quirky kind of escapade aboard a Drahvin ship. Elderly Drahvins. Women warriors near retirement. They’d converted their warship into a boutique called ‘Curl up and Dye’ and Dusty and I paid a little visit. Of course it had all to do with those wicked women setting their sights on Dusty’s marvellous transdimensional wigs. Quite a palaver!

            The thing you have to say when you step inside Dusty’s TARDIS is: ‘Ooh! It’s even more fabulous on the inside than it is on the outside!’

            She flippin’ loves it when you say that.

            Then we zoomed off to the far future. The year ten million. Just to see how things are on the outermost edges of reality. Turns out it’s all amoebas. Nihilistic ones at that. Quite hard to fill up a whole episode with just drifting about in a rotten mood. But we did some songs to liven it up.

            Episode three was a historical adventure featuring someone famous from history meeting alien invaders. We popped in on old time Hollywood to see Greta Garbo and guess what? No aliens. We just had some drinks and made our excuses.

            ‘It’s altogether possible,’ said Dusty tersely. ‘That we are the aliens.’

            ‘Never mind,’ shrugged Garbo, who didn’t want to be alone at all, it turned out. I think she was glad of the company.

            A double-episode, then. Quite action packed. Reviving an old enemy in a surprising way. It was the Quarks. Quite fun, really. Noisy. Dusty kept rolling her eyes.

            Then what they call a Pure Historical! Set in 1832 in Manchester, during the cholera epidemic. Quite gruelling.

            Then a Dusty-lite episode set entirely inside the mind of one of her wigs. Quite mind-bending.

            An episode featuring the return of an old friend! I’d forgotten who they were, but kept smiling and nodding and I don’t think they realised.

            What was the big theme of our season in the sun? Who was the Big Bad?

            I kind of lost count. For once I wasn’t paying attention! I was just having a good time. Keeping track of all that was Dusty’s job.

            Wicked jellyfish monsters in Bath. Jane Austen co-stars.

            The web planet! It’s inside a steaming compost heap at the bottom of someone’s garden! Dusty’s wig is possessed by the spirit of the bees!

            Andy Warhol’s Factory! Superstars! We stay with Dusty’s fancy sorcerer friend in Greenwich Village and it all goes a bit mystical and peculiar. Plus… something about Merlin!

            A finale that sees us in New York, 1976. A lovely disco at Studio 54. But what’s the Brigadier doing there? His disguise doesn’t fool us!

            Something cosmic and grand. That’s where all of this is heading. Timelines and history getting bent all out of shape. Is it Daleks? Dusty hopes it’s Daleks. I’m not so keen. Do we get a Radio Times cover, though?

            Ahh! That’s it! The repeated motif! We’re being chased! Of course we are!

            All through our fabulous adventures we’ve kept getting glimpses of this woman with pink hair…

            Bianca! Bianca’s chasing after us. With guards from the prison.

            The governor has sent them… The governor wants us back.

            And at the end of our adventures it all comes crashing down.

            Dusty… we can run but we can’t hide.

 We’ve got nowhere left to run.

Glitter comes falling down through the strobing lights.

            Bianca snatches the wig off your head.

            We’re on the dancefloor during the last night at Studio 54. Dancing with Bianca Jagger, Grace Jones and… a robot dog.

            And the guards are coming for us, Dusty. It’s season’s end.

            Time to face another kind of music.

            There’s an autumnal note in the air.

            But it was fun while it lasted. It was good, wasn’t it, Dusty?

            Oh, don’t cry. Your mascara’s running…

            They won’t do anything bad. They won’t take away your memories. They can’t take away your wigs. I’ve been put on trial before… I know how it works…

            I guess we had too much freedom. We had too much fun.

            It’s that Bianca. She betrayed us. Look at her over there. So chuffed with herself!

            I thought she was supposed to be an old friend!

            Come on, Dusty. It’s time.

 

*

Season 13 - Chapter 7

 

Season 13 – Chapter 7

 

 

Ravio

 

Ah, you know what it’s like when you start to think you like a guy. Especially in my life. Things never go straightforwardly.

            And really, I never expected to meet anyone new again. How could I? I was stuck at the end of the world with the last few survivors of the human race. We never even thought we’d last out the week, let alone meet anyone new…

            We really thought we were the last!

            Then Graham and his friends arrived, and everything changed.

            I mean, compared with what I’m used to, he’s a little bit refined in his manners and speech, and the life he’s lived back there in antiquity, back in olde worlde Sheffield, has been pretty soft, but I really like him anyway.

            ‘You okay?’ he asks me quietly, giving my hand a squeeze.

            We’re in a small shuttle-TARDIS manned by Capitol guards. It’s taking us up to that starship.

            ‘I’m just glad not to be a Cyberman,’ I tell him. ‘Everything else is a bonus.’

            He nods and smiles. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Listen, do you think it’s worth telling this lot… about the danger in their future? About the Master and the Cybermen and everything?’

            I shake my head. ‘We’ve got knowledge of their future. I reckon that’s a powerful thing. They call themselves Time Lords… but we know more than they do.’

            Graham looks unsure. ‘I just can’t imagine… how the Doc came from these people, you know? I can’t see how she’d really belong here…’

            I shrug. I’m sick of him going on about his precious Doctor. It’s time he paid a bit more attention to me! I feel like telling him – look at me! I’m here! I’m the one in your life now..!

            ‘Hey, what about those robot dogs though, eh?’ he grins. ‘I’d love to take one of those home with me. Give the neighbours a shock!’

            Then – the hollow clang of our shuttle butting up against the starship. The guard swings his staser at us. ‘Best get ready.’

 

 

 

Bianca

 

I have to tell you, I’m feeling bloody old. My memory’s not the best. But you stir the old fibres, you do. You really bring back the old shadows of things I’d thought long forgotten.

            We were girls together! Can’t you remember?

            How do you look so young and vital?

            You make me furiously envious, you really do.

            I change form, I change form, I change form again and again. Praying for youth. But what happens? Nothing happens! I’m an old bloody woman every single time! I never get any younger! I’m doomed just to get older and older chronologically. All in the right order. More and more decrepit. Just like any normal person in the universe. Do you realise how bloody awful that is, Doctor..?

            What do you care? You seem to become anything, anyone. Each time different. Older, younger, whatever you like.

            And here I am, hobbling round the stone corridors of Season 13 after you. Trying to keep up. Trying to remind you. Trying to take us back to that time when we were both girls at school.

            I don’t think you even really care to remember the past, do you? I think you’d be quite happy staying here, in the moment, with no looking back.

            I envy you that. I really do.

            And flamin’ Dusty!

            That cow’s really got her hooks into you, hasn’t she?

            She won’t leave you alone for a second!

            I caught you in her cell. She was dressing you up like you were a dolly. You looked ridiculous. Hardly suitable for a Time Lady of the first rank! A Doctor of the Academy, strutting about like a show girl! I acted appalled. But you and Dusty just laughed at me. You were only having fun…

            Having fun? Who has fun in a place like this?

            But you even enjoyed school, didn’t you? I remember. More than anyone. You saw it as a place for adventure. A place that was ripe for mischief-making.

            The rest of us were scared and miserable at first. It was so different to little school. Big school took us away from home. We were dragged away from our families. I left my aunties. You had to leave your seven grandmothers, your cousins, your robot badger. We all had to live in a castle that was mostly underground. Far, far away in the scarlet mountains, where the rain sizzled hotly and it was too radioactive to spend very much time out of doors…

            We were the chosen few! The elect!

            Oh, they were all so solemn about that. Drumming it into us – that we had responsibilities. We had so much to learn. Such a fabulous heritage to learn about and to live up to.

            But you just laughed, didn’t you? You didn’t take any of it all that seriously. Easy come and easy go. That’s how you were. Everyone at your family had studied at the Time Academy. It was always assumed that you’d join their ranks.

            But in my family… I was the first. I was from outside. I came from the wilderness. I had never been in a place like this.

            You were kind, taking me under your wing.

            At least, at first you were like that. Back when you were kind. When you were friendly. When life seemed easy and everything was a joke.

            At first we were the best of friends. Inseparable.

            It was you. It was me.

Why don’t you remember?

 

 

Dusty

 

Look into my eyes, The Doctor.

            I know! I know!

            Come closer. Now I’ve got you on your own.

            That old witch Bianca’s gone now. Silly old woman. What does she keep going on about?

Who cares?

            Stare into my eyes. They’re getting bigger and bigger and you’re falling under their spell.

            Why am I here? I left Planet Earth in… ooh, let me see. The year 1999. It was New Year’s Eve. I was in New York, at someone’s party. I looked a little way ahead into the future… using mystical means. We were staying with a wizard – seriously! He had a beautiful town house in Greenwich Village. And a crystal ball! We looked into the future, at what the next hundred years might bring… and I thought: Oh, dear, no. I don’t fancy the look of any of that, thanks!

            So… some time before midnight… when all the world wasn’t looking… I put on my favourite silver wig, packed up my finest stage clothes and I hitched a ride on a passing moonbeam…

            Do you remember New Year’s Eve, 1999, The Doctor? Everything was going a bit peculiar, in a cosmic sense. Of course you were involved. You were in San Francisco. You’d just regenerated and yet still you were doing your best. You were set upon putting the world to rights! And you did!

            But I had slipped away from Earth’s shackles. I swam! I turned cartwheels through the upper layers of the atmosphere and I kicked off into outer space…

            Look into my eyes.

            Step closer. What do you see?

            My silver hair swishes like spun silk. Like a spider’s web.  

            Step closer. Kiss me.

            That’s how you come inside.

            Oh yes. Here you are.

            This is my TARDIS, The Doctor.

            Are you surprised to find that I even have one?

            It’s my hairdo. My beehive.

Isn’t that a blast?

            Come inside. Kiss me.

            Welcome to my world.

 

 

The Doctor

 

Flippin’ Nora.

            This isn’t the kind of adventure I’m used to.

Not at all!

 

 

 

 

 

Season 13 - Chapter 8

 

Season 13 – Chapter 7

 

 

Ravio

 

Ah, you know what it’s like when you start to think you like a guy. Especially in my life. Things never go straightforwardly.

            And really, I never expected to meet anyone new again. How could I? I was stuck at the end of the world with the last few survivors of the human race. We never even thought we’d last out the week, let alone meet anyone new…

            We really thought we were the last!

            Then Graham and his friends arrived, and everything changed.

            I mean, compared with what I’m used to, he’s a little bit refined in his manners and speech, and the life he’s lived back there in antiquity, back in olde worlde Sheffield, has been pretty soft, but I really like him anyway.

            ‘You okay?’ he asks me quietly, giving my hand a squeeze.

            We’re in a small shuttle-TARDIS manned by Capitol guards. It’s taking us up to that starship.

            ‘I’m just glad not to be a Cyberman,’ I tell him. ‘Everything else is a bonus.’

            He nods and smiles. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Listen, do you think it’s worth telling this lot… about the danger in their future? About the Master and the Cybermen and everything?’

            I shake my head. ‘We’ve got knowledge of their future. I reckon that’s a powerful thing. They call themselves Time Lords… but we know more than they do.’

            Graham looks unsure. ‘I just can’t imagine… how the Doc came from these people, you know? I can’t see how she’d really belong here…’

            I shrug. I’m sick of him going on about his precious Doctor. It’s time he paid a bit more attention to me! I feel like telling him – look at me! I’m here! I’m the one in your life now..!

            ‘Hey, what about those robot dogs though, eh?’ he grins. ‘I’d love to take one of those home with me. Give the neighbours a shock!’

            Then – the hollow clang of our shuttle butting up against the starship. The guard swings his staser at us. ‘Best get ready.’

 

 

 

Bianca

 

I have to tell you, I’m feeling bloody old. My memory’s not the best. But you stir the old fibres, you do. You really bring back the old shadows of things I’d thought long forgotten.

            We were girls together! Can’t you remember?

            How do you look so young and vital?

            You make me furiously envious, you really do.

            I change form, I change form, I change form again and again. Praying for youth. But what happens? Nothing happens! I’m an old bloody woman every single time! I never get any younger! I’m doomed just to get older and older chronologically. All in the right order. More and more decrepit. Just like any normal person in the universe. Do you realise how bloody awful that is, Doctor..?

            What do you care? You seem to become anything, anyone. Each time different. Older, younger, whatever you like.

            And here I am, hobbling round the stone corridors of Season 13 after you. Trying to keep up. Trying to remind you. Trying to take us back to that time when we were both girls at school.

            I don’t think you even really care to remember the past, do you? I think you’d be quite happy staying here, in the moment, with no looking back.

            I envy you that. I really do.

            And flamin’ Dusty!

            That cow’s really got her hooks into you, hasn’t she?

            She won’t leave you alone for a second!

            I caught you in her cell. She was dressing you up like you were a dolly. You looked ridiculous. Hardly suitable for a Time Lady of the first rank! A Doctor of the Academy, strutting about like a show girl! I acted appalled. But you and Dusty just laughed at me. You were only having fun…

            Having fun? Who has fun in a place like this?

            But you even enjoyed school, didn’t you? I remember. More than anyone. You saw it as a place for adventure. A place that was ripe for mischief-making.

            The rest of us were scared and miserable at first. It was so different to little school. Big school took us away from home. We were dragged away from our families. I left my aunties. You had to leave your seven grandmothers, your cousins, your robot badger. We all had to live in a castle that was mostly underground. Far, far away in the scarlet mountains, where the rain sizzled hotly and it was too radioactive to spend very much time out of doors…

            We were the chosen few! The elect!

            Oh, they were all so solemn about that. Drumming it into us – that we had responsibilities. We had so much to learn. Such a fabulous heritage to learn about and to live up to.

            But you just laughed, didn’t you? You didn’t take any of it all that seriously. Easy come and easy go. That’s how you were. Everyone at your family had studied at the Time Academy. It was always assumed that you’d join their ranks.

            But in my family… I was the first. I was from outside. I came from the wilderness. I had never been in a place like this.

            You were kind, taking me under your wing.

            At least, at first you were like that. Back when you were kind. When you were friendly. When life seemed easy and everything was a joke.

            At first we were the best of friends. Inseparable.

            It was you. It was me.

Why don’t you remember?

 

 

Dusty

 

Look into my eyes, The Doctor.

            I know! I know!

            Come closer. Now I’ve got you on your own.

            That old witch Bianca’s gone now. Silly old woman. What does she keep going on about?

Who cares?

            Stare into my eyes. They’re getting bigger and bigger and you’re falling under their spell.

            Why am I here? I left Planet Earth in… ooh, let me see. The year 1999. It was New Year’s Eve. I was in New York, at someone’s party. I looked a little way ahead into the future… using mystical means. We were staying with a wizard – seriously! He had a beautiful town house in Greenwich Village. And a crystal ball! We looked into the future, at what the next hundred years might bring… and I thought: Oh, dear, no. I don’t fancy the look of any of that, thanks!

            So… some time before midnight… when all the world wasn’t looking… I put on my favourite silver wig, packed up my finest stage clothes and I hitched a ride on a passing moonbeam…

            Do you remember New Year’s Eve, 1999, The Doctor? Everything was going a bit peculiar, in a cosmic sense. Of course you were involved. You were in San Francisco. You’d just regenerated and yet still you were doing your best. You were set upon putting the world to rights! And you did!

            But I had slipped away from Earth’s shackles. I swam! I turned cartwheels through the upper layers of the atmosphere and I kicked off into outer space…

            Look into my eyes.

            Step closer. What do you see?

            My silver hair swishes like spun silk. Like a spider’s web.  

            Step closer. Kiss me.

            That’s how you come inside.

            Oh yes. Here you are.

            This is my TARDIS, The Doctor.

            Are you surprised to find that I even have one?

            It’s my hairdo. My beehive.

Isn’t that a blast?

            Come inside. Kiss me.

            Welcome to my world.

 

 

The Doctor

 

Flippin’ Nora.

            This isn’t the kind of adventure I’m used to.

Not at all!

 

 

 

 

 

Season 13 - Chapter 6

 

Season 13 – Chapter 6

 

‘Everything in the city of the Time Lords always runs like clockwork. Almost everything always does. However I am something that almost always runs like counter-clockwork and I’m not sure they ever really appreciate that. I’m not sure they care.

They can’t ever get rid of me, even though they’d like to. I’m a kind of eternal spanner in their works. Maybe even an eternal spaniel in their works!

            I’m their robot dog.

            Well, one of two robot dogs, actually. There are two of us here.

We’ve been here hundreds of years, like people on Earth used to keep pottery dogs, one on either end of their mantlepieces – here we are keeping guard over all of Time City. Me and him, baring our fangs, growling our electric growls at visitors, reminding everyone here of everything they forgot.

            I’m the cleverer and better informed, because I was here first. But both of us are the guardians of wonderful secrets. We are the guard dogs of the greatest computer in the known universe. We sit there with eyes and minds boggling at the thought of all the minds in our care. We’ve both looked into and thought hard about it and, when the great day of disaster eventually comes, we’ll both run away with it. We’ll split that giant brain down the middle and run away with half each. That’s our plan.

            Anyway, that’s us. Hello!

            We’re often at the Time Lord ceremonies and big flashy days of celebration. We’re there whenever there are problems and crises and when the President has looked into the Schism and glimpsed something dreadful heading our way.

            Today my job is to address you directly, and…’

 

‘Wait! I’m here as well! You can’t do this on your own..!’

 

‘I’m sorry about this, there’s an interruption…’

 

A second clockwork dog wheels onto the flat, gleaming stage.

 

‘He dogs me everywhere I go…’

 

‘Hello! Hello! It’s me..!’

 

‘Both of us are here now. I suppose that’s only fair. I can’t stand the sight of him, though. I try to keep out of his way… That bum-niffing fool…’

 

‘But we’re the same! You should love me..! I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I think you’re divine..! I think we are both masterpieces. We should both be glad to be who we are…’

 

‘Don’t start that again. You’re an awful reminder of our limitations. That’s how you strike me. Inside my own, endless, beautifully cavernous mind, I could be anything. I could be a godlike entity. Then I look over at you and see… a cardboard box painted silver. A cardboard box with twiddly ears and his name written on the side…’

 

‘There’s nothing wrong with that! I think we’re both fabulous..! How are your castors? Running all right?’

 

‘Never mind that now. We have a job to do.’

 

‘Oh, yes? Oh, good! I love having a job to do. What is it? What’s going on?’

 

‘Have you forgotten already? You’re hopeless!’

 

‘I knew that I woke up this morning and I was excited. It’s Bank Holiday Monday and it’s sunny in Time City… and I knew there was something we had to do… Is it a day out? Are we going to have fun..?’

 

‘How can you even think about fun? When Gallifrey is in crisis? When a gigantic, horrid spaceship looms large over the Capitol? When it clearly has the capability of blasting away our defences easy as anything..?’

 

‘Oh, yes. I was hoping that was all a dream…!’

 

‘Our job is to bring our readers up to date. We must remember everything that’s happened up till now and provide a nice little summary.’

 

‘Oh! Oh, very well, then…’

 

‘You start.’

 

‘Well… all right. I suppose one might as well begin with The Doctor and how she suddenly found herself imprisoned on a mysterious prison asteroid somewhere deep in space…’

 

‘Yes, quite! Very mysterious! Who had dragged her there? What crime had she committed? Why is life so unfair?’

 

‘She was dealing with the whole thing quite well. The first few days were hard. She was still reeling from her previous adventure… and all the queer things she had learned about her past… but already… already the details were fading away. It’s funny how that always seemed to happen. Now she was in Season 13 and she was living in the moment…’

 

‘But she was still haunted by some of the events of recent months, wasn’t she?’

 

‘Oh yes… she kept thinking about the woman in the lighthouse. The woman who had somehow grown a Police Box in her garden. From a strange blue seed she’d found in her possession, did she say? And this Earth woman was suddenly claiming to be the Doctor herself, in a long ago time that had completely slipped the Doctor’s mind…’

 

‘All very suspicious. Myself, I think it was hoodwinkery and bluster!’

 

‘Do you now? Well, I believed it all. I think it opens up curious vistas into the past. Endless possibilities beyond the times we already know…’

 

‘Enough of that! Carry on with your update!’

 

‘Well, Dr Who even started to enjoy her life in the space-prison, and now she was making new friends. She started playing keyboards for a blues band. They weren’t bad! One of the things I very much admire in her is this ability – no matter how dreadful the circumstances – to enjoy herself. To seize the best out of the moment!’

 

‘It’s idiocy, if you ask me…’

 

‘I think it’s marvellous! She’s a happy soul. She’s free, even when she’s locked up. That’s how I want to be. Not like you! Look at you – with all of time to look into, you’re embittered and snarling at the universe…’

 

‘Do get on with it! I’ve my part to tell yet. About events here on Gallifrey, and the arrival of the people from Earth in that stolen TARDIS in the shape of a house. The man and the woman from Sheffield and how they became our emissaries and our only hope of making peace with our invaders from that dreadful, hellish starship…’

 

‘Wait! Let me finish my part! I’ve a bit more to tell… about how the Doctor had been talking with an elderly woman with bright pink hair. Bianca was conniving and insinuating and she kept dropping hints that she and the Doctor knew each other of old. She kept saying that they had been at school together and had known each other many centuries ago.’

 

‘I really think the Doctor is listening too much to absolute rotters. I think she’s gone crazy. Doubting everything she ever knew and turning much too credulous. She’ll listen to anyone! People will tell her anything and she’ll give them the time of day…’

 

‘She’ll give them the time of day, yes. Now she’s locked up she has nothing but time to give away. She has a plenitude of time. The clock has stopped ticking. The years all yawn and stretch before her, around her and open up into her past. For once in her life she’s still and quiet. She has nothing but time to give away… nothing except, perhaps, her hearts…’

 

‘Oh, don’t say she’s going to go falling in love..! I can’t bear it! She isn’t the type. She never was…’

 

‘There’s always time and space for falling in love. And she’s never quite met anyone like Dusty before. Look at them now, laughing and trying on clothes. She’s never had anyone to help her dress up. And look at Dusty’s stage outfits. All that satin and lace… and the wigs! Those incredible wigs.’

 

‘Gallifrey is on the point of falling again and Dr Who is dressing up?’

 

‘She’s never had so much fun. Dusty is good for her.’

 

‘Hmmm.’

 

‘But Dusty’s got secrets. You’ll never believe what happens next…! When Dusty puts on her favourite wig and the room is filled with all kinds of floating frocks and feathers and sequins and all the wardrobe is empty. She turns those black-painted eyes on the Doctor and says to her: ‘We should get out of here. Don’t you think, The Doctor? Shall we break out?’ And the Doctor gasps and asks, ‘What? How? How is that even possible?’ And so Dusty tells her.’

 

‘Is that all? Are you up to date? Is that where we are right now?’

 

‘That’s all I’ve got.’

 

‘Ok, well, that’ll do, I suppose. Now let me finish my bit and then we can stop. Job done. We can go back to our places and keep watch… as Gallifrey faces another terrible moment of disaster. And all that stands between us and invasion are these two unfamiliar, hapless humans… one from the end of the Cyber-war and the other from somewhere called Sheffield. They have been sent up to the steam-powered starship known as ‘Charity Begins at Home’ for an audience with the ruthless pirate queen, Captain Bush…’

 

‘Oh, how dreadful! How frightening!’

 

‘She sits in her command chair: Titian-haired and leather-clad, furious all the time, decked out in jewels purloined from a thousand worlds. She wears a necklace of shrunken heads, ripped from the shoulders of her innumerable foes. She’s known as the fiercest blackguard in the galaxy. And her crew..!’

 

‘Tell us about her crew!’

 

‘No time, now. But her righthand man is a cactus. The most evil-minded succulent there ever was. Every single member of her hideous crew has been handpicked from the most abject and bitter souls that Melanie Bush has ever met. It’s a starship stuffed to the gills with resentment and envy and an endless, hankering thirst for revenge..!’

 

‘Sounds awful! And that’s where Graham and Ravio are headed, is it? To meet these horrible people?’

 

‘They’re just about to arrive…’

 

‘And there’s no Doctor to help them, or us? The Doctor’s too busy dallying with Dusty?’

 

‘Oh, yes. The Doctor’s much too busy. We’re on our own, I’m afraid…’

 

‘Then we’d best return to our watch!’

 

‘Yes, you’re right. Back to our positions.’

 

‘We must both pay careful attention to whatever happens next..!’

 

‘We are the watch dogs of the clockwork city! And we see all..!’

 

 

*