Favourite year/s in your life/milestones

1980: My earliest memory - watching the telly in the living room at approx 6 pm Sat 18th Oct. I’d just turned three, and seeing the TARDIS nearly fail to take off in time from an exploding planetary base imprinted on me in a way that continues to be stamped through the very core of my being. That year we acquire an artificial Christmas tree and some fairy lights (little illuminated lanterns and coaches) that remain my favourite bits of tangible magic and most treasured possessions. Yes, I still have tree and lights to this day, some twenty years after they were otherwise destined for the skip and I gave them s last minute rescue. 

1982: I start my lovely primary school and Peter Davison is now the Doctor. He and his companions become my all time favourites as I watch the scary yet reassuring magic of the era unfold.

1984: the last memories of living on our first house, the last year of having a reliable little playmate in the girl next door,  though we’d stil see each other at school. 

1985: early heady memories of the new house, still in its unmodernised and vintage state. Snow on moving day. Watching Colin Baker’s first encounter with Cybermen from the foot of my dad’s decorating ladder. Pocket money and comics (Buster, Oink) becoming a Friday ritual.

1986: the death of innocence. My mother loses a child hours after he is born. She was aware that this would be so. The house feels strange and sad and tense long before and long after. My father falls off the wagon after some years of sobriety. Binges after weeks or a couple of months  will now be the new norm. Tapering off becomes a time of ‘uncanny valley’ characteristics and hyper-vigilance for anything even mildly off about him or interpersonal dynamics in the home.

1987-1989: My last three years at primary school, with my favourite teacher for all three years in a great wee mobile classroom just behind the main school. Being encouraged to write poetry and draw, and the benefits of a school ethos that saw the injustices of the 11+ and tried its best to keep focus off that and on kindness, creativity. 

Late 1989: My first major struggle with what I now know must have been the natural disadvantages of my brain wiring. From the calm and smooth gear changes of life in one classroom (primary) I was now in this churn of 35 minute slots and running from one end of the building to the other, trying to keep up and re-focus on the jarringly contrasting environments and styles of information delivery. The misery of PE. Faking illness after the first few days (I’ve never pulled a sickie since, the guilt is too horrible) out of sheer fear and overwhelm. Being sent back several days later when the fake was up, having lost ground I never regained. No friendships formed, and a serious detachment from the rituals everyone else now knew well. The world wasn’t going to stop to let a slower brain try to understand it all. Doctor Who’s final season goes out. I am unaware it is being rested. A vital ritualistic comfort has slipped from my life. Momentarily!

1990: yucky sort of a year. Most chart music begins to sound awful but with a few likeable ones here and there. The synthy inventive sounds of the 80s have given way to something .,. sludgy, retrograde. School remains a struggle. I begin to sense that Doctor Who is not returning. The malaise deepens. But.. I realise there is a Doctor Who Magazine. And a fan-club. My subscription to the former (unbroken to this day) commences. I get answers. The show is being ‘rested’ - a clever way to cancel it without protest. 

1991: Doctor Who continues in book form, with writers who allow the sho to grow up with its readership. I know that I will never dessert this most precious of touchstones, which I just know will remain my lifeline through good times and bad. I start collecting the show on VHS- my first real chance to see episodes from before the 1980s as well as getting all those ones too. The release schedule ping pongs me between the decades in a haphazard voyage of discovery and rediscovery. 

1993: One or two friends at last. They befriend me - I’d never have had the nerve to initiate, I’m still like that. One friendship remains in place to this day. The others briefly burn brightly for two or three years, then fade. But they like me for who I am, and have equally nerdy interests of their own. Trek, role playing games, war-hammer models etc. we have a sort of cultural exchange, though largely continue to default to our own interests. Doctor Who turns  thirty. They make a documentary that goes out on BBC2. 

1994: The first year in secondary school where I feel I have found a coping mechanism, and have enough continuity and narrowing down of subjects for there to be stability, predictability, safety in ritual even if some of it (PE) remains the ritual of ‘ok, this is the worst bit - just these two hours and that’s it for another week’). I meet the Doctor for the first time: Sylvester McCoy, at the stage door of the Grand Opera House. He signs my ticket and says my name, then wanders off into the night. 

1996: Telly Doctor Who is back! Paul McGann is the Eighth Doctor and I love the co-production pilot of the attempted relaunch when it goes out. Sadly Americans don’t give it the ratings it got here, so it’s mothballed again. But novels once again take up the story. 

1997: I get a part time job in a book shop. I am the apprentice processor and cataloguer of new book stock, out in a wee secluded store behind the shop, and I love it. I meet Tom Baker at a signing. Get his autograph. Can barely speak. 

1998: one of my all time favourite years. Maybe the first one where I was so aware of its specialness that I consciously registered the need to be ‘nostalgic at the time‘ to steal a phrase. I get another book shop gig (actually books, magazines, stationary) part time while I study. The staff are mostly lovely, I find a lovely routine with all the tasks,… and I fall in deeply love for the first time. With a colleague. She seemed oblivious but friendly at the time. Gently teased me a lot. Took me out to lunch once, unexpectedly. I considered it a charitable act. Gave me her phone number. I assumed she felt sorry for me and intended me to use it as a last resort. I never did. I wanted to. continued to admire her from afar. Twenty years on, the penny dropped: I think she may have had reciprocal feelings. Was taking the lead? It’s possible. I’ll never know. She left in early 1999. I was privately distraught. She did stop in once or twice to say hello, then sadly… never again. 

I go to my first Doctor Who convention, in Bangor. The Irish one! Meet Sylv again companions Ben and Polly from the 1960s. Sadly one of them dies a few weeks later, an accident. 

1999: after finishing my English degree, made the unwise decision to try a computing course to which I was entirely unsuited. You live and learn. Doctor Who monthly audios start, fully licensed, in-continuity, and starring the original actors. I’m glad that we can have new stories without having to rely on hopes for a highly improbable telly revival. 

My second Doctor Who convention. And a sort of separate talk thing with Colin Baker. So that’s Doctor meeting number three! Not sure my nerves would be up to it any more, so I’m glad I made myself be brave enough to say hello then. 

2000-2002: escaped the above, vowed never to work in programming even if my life depended on it, and with no career plan decided to work full time in the book/newsagents place. Which was a home from home and second family to me (or so I naively thought of it) by then. 

2002: My first library job and I enrolled for a Linrary qualification by distance learning. Visited Aberystwyth for the required study week (one week in Sept for each of the three years of study) and found it to be a wonderful place. 

2003: Started in the university library where I work to this day. I love it and never want to work anywhere else. I hope I never have to. Sept: I wake up to an announcement - Doctor Who is coming back, being made by BBC Wales and with Russell T Davies as head writer. I’m astonished and by enjoyed by this unexpected miracle. What did I say about highly improbable? Bless you, Russell - I think only you could have gone it. 

2004: I go from part time to full time on the library. Chris Eccleston is cast as the Doctor. They start filming. there are pictures of the TARDIS on the streets of Cardiff. It feels unreal and magnificent. 

2005: Doctor Who is back on 26th March, and is magnificent. ‘Eccleston quits’ headline breaks on the day of ep 2. Panic. But then confirmation that it will continue beyond.  Ok,let’s see how this goes. Tennant, eh? Ok, that feels right somehow. I can see that working….

2007: I finally get my own house. Well, one bedroom flat. Miles from where I work in a rural town that I have no connection to, but it’s where I can afford, prices exploding as they are going to continue to…  ah. 

2013: it’s kind of hard to explain. It was a time, a place, a collection of people, another ‘nostalgic at the time’ one. Also, my one and only (and temporary) gig in a professional grade library post: as a cataloguer. That’s the only gig  I’d want to do again at that level, all the others are way too stressy and overwhelming.

2015: I start work in the office/sept I’m now in, and intend to stay in indefinitely, if spared. I fall in love for the second time. It is not reciprocal, I don’t even need to confess it would be pointless. She very kindly keeps in touch as a friend - albeit very light touch. Best she can do but massively appreciated and makes sll the difference in the world. Things feel mutually platonic after a lot of work on my side over half a decade. I don’t think she ever sensed it, or was too sensitive to show that she knew. 

2020: The best and worst year of my life. I can’t and won’t go into it here, it’s too private and personal. The strangeness of Covid was an incidental background to it all. 

2021: Having dug my way out of debt and managed to sell off my flat (after years of as many early repayments as I could to the bank and still selling at a big loss) I find and start half buying half renting my forever home: a modest but lovely bungalow with real vintage character and a lovely clear view from the back - mountains and s ton of sky. Sadly my lovely grandmother died, aged 96, the week I move in. I go straight from the funeral to pick up my hired moving van. It is, of course, pouring with rain that day. I kind of like it. 

I begin therapy. It remain ongoing. Life is still a struggle. Many things, not least late 2020’s devastating iron price for its first half, are being worked through in hurt and confusion. 

An announcement: RTD is coming back to Doctor Who! A creative renaissance is hopefully on the way. Let’s see…

in the autumn, someone very important to me (a friend, not family) is brave enough to suggest that I think about assessment for autism. I’ve been wondering privately for a long time, but this person tipped the balance for me and I am forever in her debt.

2022: Jan 8th and 12th: in-person private autism diagnosis assessment sessions. I pour my heart out. Two weeks later, confirmation over Zoom. The journey from relief through imposter syndrome back to relief and onto finding community and support here begins. 

2023: Too early to say. I’m still here, I’m grateful for the things that keep me going, and the kindness and empathy of this community. Especially those who’ve privately befriended me and been so much kinder than they’ll never know. Maybe that, and cups of tea, and Doctor Who heading into new waters again are collectively enough to feel like the saddest things will not overwhelm me. 

i wish everyone here  fortune for the rest of the year. And beyond…

What does Dr Who mean to you on a deep level?  Why do you think you're such a fan?

What does Dr Who mean to you on a deep level?  Why do you think you're such a fan?

I have things and people that have always been there for me too.

I'll have to give that a bit of thought as to how to best express it. Beyond saying 'it's always been there for me.' Actually, maybe that's enough.