Ruby Sunday

My birthday last Sunday was lovely. Just a nice relaxed day – okay, I did spend part of it cleaning floors and filing paperwork, but after those chores were done I felt I’d ‘earned’ a relaxing afternoon. So in the afternoon, I started making a teddy bear. It’s been too long since I did any craftwork and my birthday seemed a good time for a new start. When I’m not writing, I like to make stuff! Mike took me out for a meal in the evening to our ‘special occasion’ Thai restaurant. Yum. And my mum gave me a ruby ring. Not for any special reason, just that I like gemstones and jewellery, especially rings, yet I have never in my life owned a ruby ring before. A few weeks ago, I felt a deep need for rubies – red symbolises energy (besides passion) and I definitely need some energy! So, after trawling through 100s of ruby rings on the net, generally being disappointed by the boring designs and/or horrified by the prices, I finally found a little beauty, a Victorian-style design of five large rubies set in rose gold. I ordered it, mum kindly reimbursed me. It’s so gorgeous I’ve barely taken it off since. It’s incredibly comfortable, too. Thanks, mum!

The night before, we were watching Dr Who (‘Turn Left’). I can’t help being impressed by the way the writers create a sense of the vast and epic, with sweeping storylines that make the viewer feel caught up in something really Big and Important. Part of the technique is using highly recognisable and emotive images (refugees on lorries, people being billeted in terraced streets) evoking war-time evacuation. We’ve all seen war films, we all recognise those situations, and they are a highly effective short-cut to emotional effects. Very clever button-pushing. And because it was my birthday the next day, it set me thinking that I have been watching Dr Who for almost my entire life! I may have forgotten a lot from my early childhood but I distinctly remember seeing the very first episode in its ghostly greys, the somewhat mad-looking elderly white-haired doctor, the ‘normal’ young couple discovering the police box for the first time. Some of those early stories (anybody remember the Celestial Toymaker?) gave me a thrilling sense of shivering weirdness that stayed with me and no doubt influenced my own imagination – there was just something about those black and white days! The Quatermass dramas had the same effect, and some episodes of the Avengers. It was never quite the same when they went into colour. And despite the lean years where there were a lot of duff episodes, and then no Dr Who at all, it feels wonderful to have the continuity of an SF drama that’s ‘always been there’, that’s grown up with us, as it were. Okay, it’s only a TV programme, but it feels bigger than that. Dr Who makes me feel (especially after a glass of wine) part of something big and strange and thrilling. Can’t wait for the finale. Won’t those Daleks ever give up? Is it me, or are Billie’s teeth getting bigger and bigger?

I wonder if they would ever dare cast such a ‘mature’ actor as William Hartnell in the role again. Somehow, I doubt it. But if they ever had the guts to cast a mature and female doctor, my nomination would go to Judi Dench.