Three Wishes.

Newhaven is a port on the south coast of England.

As a name it is somewhat confusing, as very little about it is new - and it would be more appropriate if we called it Oldcrumblyhaven.

As you approach from the sea, however, and if the sun is shining and the sky is blueing, the Seven Sisters Chalk Cliffs that stretch eastwards are behold-worthy – whereas the cliffs next to Oldcrumblyhaven looked stained through years of people pouring their tea dregs over the side.

I love coming to England now – my visits are rare, viewed through senile nostalgia (where telephone and letterboxes appear as works of art) and imbued with years of living on the other side of the road in France.

You have to drive on the left in England so between boat ramp and passport control I chanted, “Drive on the Left” rhythmically and repeatedly.


The lady at passport control looked at me as though she thought I should be impounded, and then scrutinised the three documents.

“Is this a planned trip?” she asked.

‘Er, no, we just found suddenly found ourselves on a boat in the middle of the channel and…”

The search of the car lasted three hours.

Now, teleportation (sudden appearance on boat in middle o’channel) is the bridge between Newhaven and today’s topic which is Dr who.

Some of those who read this blog are Neil Gaiman fans, and I count myself amongst you. A Neil Gaiman related post won A Pearl in this year’s Bitsnbobs Oscar Event – handily linkable here – and much, much earlier he featured in a little visited post – linkable here. I have wanted for some time to draw your attention to his personal account of ‘being Neil Gaiman at the Hollywood Oscar event” but until now have been unable to write my way into that; today a post all about Dr who seems like an ideal opportunity.

I confess to being a big fan of Dr Who and have certainly hinted as such in these pages.

If I had three wishes……

By the way, I love playing “If I had three wishes.” It’s a game that is constantly changing and you can learn so much about each other. When you play with little kids it’s strongly imaginative – “I would be a fish” - later there is a more idealist phase – “I would end poverty” – but at the heart there is always a strong conundrum; selfishness, collectiveness.

A bit like election choices really.
In fact I guess the various party leaders are playing a convoluted version – “If I had three wishes and if you vote for me I might”.


Two of my perennial choices, even in childhood, have been the wish to fly and the wish to travel in time. Selfishness, see?
I have realised lately that I can combine them all into a single – “I wish I had a real TARDIS” – thus economising on a wish, always good to do when the opportunity arises.

The TARDIS, if you either don’t know or don’t follow Dr Who, is this (click here for the Tardis).

Anyway…..

Neil Gaiman?
Ah yes.

When I finally arrived in Sussex, (or was it Kent?), and after sleeping for a few deep drive-across-France hours – I went shopping.

What is the point of going to a funeral in England if you can’t get in a bit of shopping eh?

I left the family looking for “clothes-I-can-wear-at-a-funeral-without-scaring-the-vicar” – apparently I am the only one of us who has such things; it must be something to do with teaching – and set off to look for a good bookshop.

The place was no longer where my memory had left it but instead I found a BBC shop.

I entered, it was very quiet and library-like, and headed for the alphabetically arranged rack of Drama.

I couldn’t believe it, not a single Dr Who DVD!

How could this be - the single most important, nay the world-record longest running Science Fiction TV series in the history of long running Sci Fi TV series.. and… nothing?

I was about to become “disgruntled and stomping out, Tunbridge Wells’ when I turned and crashed into something.

Of course, they had a whole rack devoted JUST to the series. A floor to ceiling rack bigger than me and with annexes down the street – how could I have missed it?

And there I found it, reduced from its original price. A DVD of the ORIGINAL, first ever episode!!!!!!!

This was worth the price of European flight disruption because of volcanic ash for days to come in my opinion!!!!

And worthy of another couple of exclamation marks!!

I was 8 years old when I sat down with my family in front of what was a ridiculously small television set; I was almost 9 when the Daleks scared me and the rest of my generation into hiding behind the sofa; of course the TV set was only capable of black and white reproduction but, as Minnie long time believed, wasn’t the world itself in black and white at the time?

I hesitated of course, could the BBC be trusted, (the BBCB Trusted)?

I approached the counter - I was under strict wife-orders not to spend any more money than is necessary and although she too loves the series I was unsure this constituted necessary. I hadn’t bought any food, for example.

“Er, excuse me - this collection Beginnings, is it just a selection of the early episodes or is it really the FIRST episodes in order?”

“I’ll check for you.” Click, clickety-click, stare at computer screen, click. “Well, An Unearthly Child is the first episode but then they are not in sequence after that…”

But suddenly, time and space like, another customer popped up, he looked like everyone’s favourite boffin – round, smiley and balding.

“Excuse me,” he had a slight lisp and an incredible sparkle in his eye, “the Unearthly Child is the first episode and is also known as 10,000 years B.C.”

“Where they set off from the junk yard and end up in the Stone Age?”

“Yep,” my eyes were sparkling too, now.

“Perfect.” I paid, left, bought some bread from the bakers just in case and strode back up the hill to the meeting point.

So what has this got to do with Neil Gaiman?

Neil has signed up to script one of the episodes in the latest Dr Who series!

Cool.

Maybe he will tackle “three wishes” as they once did in the X-files (another good programme, just not mythical) giving Mulder and Sculy some serious problems in trying to reconcile the selfish and the collective.

By the way, if YOU had three wishes granted, certain to come true…. what would they be?