Creeping Depths of Autumn

It's been a funny old week. I started the week with a run on Monday which was absolutely appalling. The worst run I've done in a long time. And then I realised - I'd gone back to eating bread, which I hadn't really done since the start of the year. It made me feel bloated and horrible. So I've cut it out again. Let's see how I feel when I go running again.

Speaking of running I've decided to rejoin the running group I used to go with on a Wednesday evening. I know the deepest darkest depths of Autumn is not the ideal time to start up again, but I've missed them and I've also realised that I've spent a lot of the last few weeks returning home and sitting in front of the TV. Nothing wrong with that. I do a lot of running, biking and working and need my downtime, but I also realised I'm not interacting with people outside of work. So I'm going to rectify that and meet up with my friends again.

Reading wise I'm halfway through "Splinter of the Mind's Eye", which is the "original" sequel to Star Wars, which had the option of being turned into a low budget film sequel if Star Wars hadn't done so well. It's a fascinating read, but I just have to keep remembering that in this version of the Star Wars universe Luke and Leia are NOT brother and sister...

And speaking of books I found a copy of the Doctor Who book "Touched By An Angel" in a charity shop on Thursday. It was only £1 and it's meant to be a good read. I'm not exactly going out of my way to pick up the NSA's, but if I see them in the wild I'll grab them. I also want to get back into reading Tom Cox's stuff. I got "Villager" from a second hand book shop in Glasgow and I've read "Help The Witch" before. And now we're entering the back end of the year his books and writing just seems very appropriate. His writing fascinates me.

The other big news is that poor old Patrick Stewart passed away. I'm feeling immensely sad about this. Yes, I didn’t know Patrick, and yes, Picard is a fictional character, but he was someone I looked up to throughout my childhood, teenage years, and adulthood. Even now, I still think to myself, 'What would Picard do?' He was my hero. RIP, Sir. Getting older seems to be watching your childhood heroes pass away...

And here's a misty photo taken at 4am. Until next time!

STORM!!

Today the UK is caught in the grips of Storm Boelo, and don't we know it! I've just popped to the shops (picture below) and it's horrendous out there. The wind is whistling through the window seals, the rain is pounding on the glass, it's very, very dark in my living room, and it's at times like this when I truly am well aware that I'm living right by the coast.

And the storm is quite fitting considering it's been a very stormy week for a lot of reasons.

As always I won't go into details, but it's been a rough one. A friend of mine is going through the most unimaginable pain right now and it just brought a lot of things into perspective. To push forward and take a leap and take the chance and to stop putting things off. And most importantly to just do what you love. I've often been guilty of not being able to make decisions or procrastinating for too long. And it's very hard to get yourself out of that mindset, but life is too short and we just need to grasp the nettle and DO IT.

We're recording Ghost Light tomorrow, which will be complexly fun! And I'm onto series 3 of The Traitors. This team seem a lot more fractured than previous teams and I'm not really warming to any of them just yet. But I'm only four episodes in so we'll see. Still enjoying it immensely. I've also started watching the Halloween special of Last One Laughing. Hilarious as ever with some great team members.

I'm a big fan of Reece Shearsmith and Daisy May Cooper so I am happy!

That's it for now. Stay indoors. Stay safe!

Warning Team!

It's been a mixed week. Slowly getting to grips with a few new things at work, but, after two years, still really enjoying my job.

As my memory has significantly eroded away over the last few years I can't remember if I mentioned in my last post that I've started watching The Traitors...

A quick check has revealed that I actually did mention it last time! See, bad memory! Anyway, I finished series 1 and I'm definitely hooked. I'm now four episodes into series 2 and I'm trying to do at least one episode a night. Weirdly I used to really dislike Claudia, but I've massively warmed to her after seeing her on this show.

Also this week I recorded for David Gillespie-Pratt's wonderful "No It's Not Doctor Who" podcast where I talked about Knightmare. It's not out yet but I had such a laugh talking about it and the buzz of recording was such a good feeling. I can't wait for everyone to hear it.

And today "Silver Nemesis" is out with the Jeff and Liam. It's a favourite of ours for sure!

I feel Halloween creeping up and I haven't had any time to sit and watch any horror or spooky things (apart from The Living and the Dead), but I'm one of those types who tends to watch ghosty things all throughout the year (especially at Christmas), so there are always other times.

I had a bad dream last night and I'm feeling pretty tired this morning so I'll leave it there for now. 

Bye-Bye Sunrise Season

The other day whilst on a search through the Internet Archive for the very first Knightmare website I visited (research for a podcast I’m appearing on) I just happened to enter the website address for my “homepage” that I had in the early noughties. You know, back in the day when we had personal websites. Our own space where we post all that stuff about our lives before social media emerged and wiped them out.

Anyway, that led me to an archived version of an old blog I wrote back in 2004. I won’t go into detail in what was in that blog, but I was 22 years old and a very different person back then! But my main takeaway from it was that it was brief, small updates on what I was doing (very much like my posts on Bluesky) day to day and week to week. And as I still have this blog here I thought maybe I could get back into the habit of doing that. Maybe a few times a week. We’ll see. 

I still intend to write longer blogs and introspectives on events and moments from my life or the things I’m interested in, but I think writing those short posts was something worthwhile and something to look back on without scrolling through countless social media posts to find something.

Right, at the risk of this turning into one of those longer posts I just mentioned...

This week has been quite tough. I won’t go into all the details but I’ve been incredibly busy with work and we’ll leave it at that.

Run-wise I managed two (maybe another one this afternoon when I’ve dropped Jacob off. We’ll see). One run took me to the coast where I was turned away by the police. Sadly they found a body up by the beach. The other was a basic one down the seafront and towards the pier. Two functional 5Ks, but I need to keep the distances up, so hopefully I’ll get a 10K in soon. I don’t want to lose that.

I’ve also got into The Traitors. It was something I was pushing away from for a while because I always tend to turn the other way when the general public are hyping things up. I’m glad to say though that after a few episodes of series 1 I was hooked. Close to the end of that first series now and I’ve remained spoiler free. I’ve also started series 3 of House of the Dragon, and maybe it’s because I’m so overly familiar with Game of Thrones, but I find HOTD a much more competently put together piece of TV. And am I the only one who cries when a dragon gets killed? So sad...

Podcasting - we’ve just recorded the commentary for Battlefield. That was a lot of fun with Jeff and Liam. We’re having a week off and then recording Ghost Light. It’s going to take a lot of prep for that one. We’re close to the end of the McCoy seasons now and it feels like we’ve only just begun...!

I'm also trying to get the podcasts recorded before the end of November as I'll be jetting off the US again. This time...Portland! But more on that next time (as it involved me chatting about Twin Peaks!)

So that’s it for now. Jacob and I have had a quiet weekend and sometimes that’s what you need. And finally...feast your eyes on this sunrise picture I took. Probably the last one for quite a while now sunrise season is over. So bye-bye sunrises! See you again soon.

Knock Knock

This covers two events that took place roughly a year apart from each other.

The first event took place on a Tuesday night. It was the early 1990s. My parents were divorced and my dad would always visit me between 8pm and 9pm on Tuesday evenings. After my dad left I would then flick to BBC2 and watch Quantum Leap, which would run from 9pm until roughly between 9.45pm and 10pm.

It was on one particular Tuesday night, whilst I was watching Quantum Leap, that I heard a knock on my bedroom door. My bedroom was at the back of the house with the bathroom to the left-hand side as you exited the door and a short corridor leading to the stairs and a turn to the right to my sister's bedroom before continuing to my mum and stepdad's front bedroom.

There were three distinct knocks on the wooden bedroom door. Startled, I asked who was there. There was no response. I then rushed out of bed and flung open my door.

There was nobody.

I went into my sister's bedroom and both of them were fast asleep. My stepdad was at work and my mum was downstairs watching TV. The next day I asked my mum and my sisters and they promised that neither of them had been up there.

The speed at which I shot from the bed to the door meant that neither of my sisters would have been able to scamper away from the door to their bedrooms and then get back into their beds and pretend to be asleep without making some kind of racket outside on the landing.

The second event took place around a year later. Again, it was the early 90s. It was also the early hours of a Wednesday morning. I was fast asleep so, yes, it is entirely possible that I was dreaming this, however I don't believe I was.

I opened my eyes because I felt a...presence in my room.

I had gone to sleep with my small bedroom lamp on. The room was dark but still bathed in a very gentle yellow glow from the bulb. The first thing I did was glance up at the clock on the wall. It was 2am. My eyes were then drawn towards the door.

The door was slightly ajar and about two thirds of the way up the door was a face peering around the side of the door, looking into my room at the height of a grown adult, not a child.

As the lamp was only very weak, the area near the door was cast in shadow, but I could make out a few fuzzy details of the face. Its hair was very short - almost a crew cut. The eyes were dark and deep-set into its face. Very much in shadow so I could only really see the sockets. It had thin, red lips. No expression on its face. It was just staring at me.

But the thing that struck me most about the figure was that it had what I thought was an enlarged forehead. Not huge, but bigger than your average person.

In my confused state I glanced at the clock again and said, without really thinking, "Go away. It's 2 o'clock in the morning." And with that the face slowly withdrew and the figure closed the door behind it.

I fell asleep.

The next morning I went downstairs and spoke to my mum, who said that she had been fast asleep, and that there had been nobody else awake at that time. And, out of all the people who lived in the house, the only one that ever would have checked on me during the night would have been her.

I never found an explanation for what the knocking was or who the face belonged to. Was it paranormal? Is there a simple explanation? I don't know, but it's something that has stayed with me for a long time. So much so that I almost expected something to happen the following year, which it never did.

The Allure of 60's Who

It's been a while since I wrote a blog, but I'm going to try and compose one anyway.

Only a year or so ago I finished a Doctor Who rewatch. I did the whole of the classic series and the TV Movie. There was an intention to continue with NuWho, but the Classic series speaks to my nostalgic obsessions, and so it didn't feel right, at this time, to do a NuWho rewatch. I should add that I have done NuWho rewatches before. Maybe too many. Maybe I feel like I've watched it to death. I just didn't feel the desire on this occasion.

So if I've only just recently completed a Classic Who rewatch, why am I drawn to watch again so soon?

Now, look, there's no chance of me doing another full pilgrimage. I just don't have the time for that, but there's a certain era I am constantly drawn to. A certain type of Doctor Who that constantly pulls me back in, begging me to pull out the DVDs and Blu-rays and soak myself in them again. And really, I just wanted to put my thoughts down on the digital page as to why I feel a pull to this particular era.

And that particular era, if you haven't already figured it out from the blog title, is Seasons 1 to 4. This, for the uninitiated, and I doubt there's anyone out there reading this who doesn't know, encompasses the entirety of the William Hartnell era and Patrick Troughton's first season.

So, why Seasons 1 to 4?

I truly believe this ties into those nostalgia vibes again. But that can't be right, surely? I grew up watching Day of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, and The Five Doctors. So why am I not drawn to them? It's very hard to explain. Very hard to unpick. But I think at the core of it are a number of different factors. So let's first look at the nostalgia factor.

The very first William Hartnell story I ever saw was The Daleks, which I still refer to as The Dead Planet.

I was seven years old when it was released on VHS in 1989. My dad had bought it for himself, and also for me to watch. It was a Friday night and we sat, with the lights off, as these weird black-and-white images played out before us on his 14-inch TV set. Even now, whenever I get to the end of “The Ambush” and Ian realises they've left the fluid link in the city, I still feel the need to switch VHS's over!

Not long after, I saw the pilot version of An Unearthly Child when it was shown on BBC2 in 1991. I thought they'd landed on Skaro and that the shadow on the landscape at the end was a Thal. It blew my mind when I eventually got An Unearthly Child on VHS and discovered three other episodes I had no idea existed! I was so confused because I had no idea that there was a caveman story following on from that.

The details of what came next in my own jigsaw-puzzle collecting of the stories become a little fuzzy, but I suspect it was The Dalek Invasion of Earth. There's home video footage of me, recorded in the early 90s, sat on a Sunday afternoon with the curtains closed at my dad's flat, watching the story. Eyes transfixed on the screen as the Black Dalek wheels around, issuing out his orders. It was probably this story that made me a Dalek fan and caused me to embark on the insane collecting of Character Options Dalek toys that I have amassed over recent years.

Sometimes, as a kid, when I was walking about, I'd imagine the Daleks chasing me through the streets of Grimsby. I'd walk past power stations and imagine they were Dalek cities. I'd play with friends by old, uncovered air-raid shelters, imagining the Daleks emerging from them. The Daleks were everywhere, and it was because of those black-and-white stories that I'd come to love them so much.

I don't want this to become overly long, but suffice to say I long for those days. Days when the world didn't seem so dark. When I could lose myself on a Sunday afternoon in a monochrome world and know that the Doctor could save me from the monsters. And it says a lot when I admit that I'd rather face the monsters from the minds of 1960s Doctor Who creators than the real monsters of 21st century Earth.

So nostalgia definitely plays a part in that. A huge part.

And stories came thick and fast through the 90s. I was very lucky to have a dad who loved Doctor Who and would buy the VHS's as they were released. And then there were the inevitable UK Gold recordings that his friend Eric taped for us, and later my Uncle Rob. My dad was also one of those people who had seen the stories on original transmission, so he would tell me about how he was frustrated that he missed the first part of “The Survivors”, episode two of The Daleks, because my grandad had taken him to watch Flipper at the cinema. He'd recount his memories of seeing Marco Polo. He clearly remembered the TARDIS being taken across the desert, the condensation running down the walls, and much, much more. I'll have to get him on the podcast one day.

But my imagination was fuelled by those memories of missing stories, stories I'd likely never, ever see. If only we could tap people's memories, eh? And I think that endeared the era to me even more. The fact that, yes, we could watch The Rescue and The Ark and Tomb of the Cybermen, but we'd probably never see The Smugglers or The Myth Makers. What were these fabled stories? My dad had seen them. But I wasn't jealous. I was enchanted by the memories. Again, there's another home video of me reading through an issue of DWM, reading the list of missing episodes out to my dad.

Goodness me, nothing existed of The Massacre? And what do you mean they wiped Patrick Troughton's first story? Utter madness! And we had fragments. We had episodes. We were airdropped into the middle of stories like The Enemy of the World, and forced to figure out, firstly, where we'd been before, and secondly, what happened after. No amount of Peter Davison or Sylvester McCoy filling in the gaps would suffice. We needed to see the whole lot.

My fascination with the missing stories peaked during my mid-teens. I was 14 or 15 and had attended a sci-fi market at Grimsby Town Hall with my friend Alex. There, a dealer had offered him episodes 1 to 3 of The Tenth Planet. Wow! How could we refuse? He bought it, knowing full well that there might not be anything on the tape. But the chance of experiencing a Doctor Who story we'd never seen before was too much to pass up. This was new Doctor Who to us, and not only that, it was forbidden Doctor Who. Doctor Who that couldn't be released because it didn't all exist. We went to his house, switched off the lights, and pressed play, watching these utterly terrifying, sing-song Cybermen striding out from the snow. And even as we reached the end of episode three, there was still that faint glimmer of hope that episode four would begin.

It didn't. Obviously.

But the real gold on that bootleg VHS was the cine clips. Oh my word! What was this? Silent footage from 1960s stories? No. Surely we weren't allowed to have this. Did anyone else know about this? Were we the only ones, and the dealer, of course? And what stories were they from? Oh no, there were scenes from The Chase. But we already had that. But then - but then - there were clips from The Macra Terror. From The Faceless Ones. Scenes from The Savages. And was that a clip from The Massacre? It had to be. IT HAD TO BE!!

It wasn't. It was from the Doctor's chat with Katarina towards the end of The Myth Makers. Still magical, though.

Alex and I were drunk on these missing clips. We were so young and naïve, and even went as far as to contact the BBC, asking if they had access to these clips. When the BBC didn't show any interest, we attempted to sync up sound to the silent clips ourselves by pointing a video camera at the TV screen, hooking my Walkman's headphones over the camcorder's microphone, and pressing play on the relevant clip from The Macra Terror. God, it took so much effort to get them synced up. And I still remember the hours I spent trying to actually locate where these clips came from.

We are missing so, so much. That's not a new statement. Others have said it before. But think of the amount of Douglas Camfield direction we're not seeing. The playful little moments from Troughton. The utter horror of the end of The Daleks’ Master Plan and the entirety of The Massacre. It's a crime that we can't see this.

But I think this adds to my love for the era. The fact that these stories are fragmented. That they're lost and missing, and even now we're still trying to cobble them together. There's still that tantalising hope that we may wake up tomorrow and discover that Power of the Daleks has been found. There is still new Classic Who left to watch, and that is such an exciting prospect! Maybe one day I'll be able to close the curtains in my living room, with my cheese on toast, as I bask in the Daleks screaming at me that they “will get their power!”

I think the other reason why I am so drawn to this era, and I'll keep this short, is because this is a show finding its feet. Seasons 1 to 4 changes every single story. One day we're on the planet Dido, next we're meeting Nero, and then we're on the planet of the space butterflies. We have something new and modern like The War Machines sandwiched between the very Star Trek-esque The Savages and the pedestrian, but still fun, The Smugglers. Troughton is still cooking during his first few stories. We have a very different version of Jamie McCrimmon in The Highlanders.

It was during Season 5 that the show settled into a style and a rhythm. It felt safer and more secure and stable. And that's good. That's great. There are some amazing stories in Seasons 5 and 6. But it's those first four years that capture my imagination, that I find myself coming back to time and time again. I only have to hear that sting of Tristram Carey's music in The Daleks and I'm back on Skaro, a ten-year-old boy wanting to explore the Dead City with the Doctor. I only have to see the shot of one Macra claw from The Macra Terror and I'm a teenager again, hanging out with my friend Alex, hooking headphones to camcorders. Falling out because he secretly bought episodes 1 and 3 of The Faceless Ones and wouldn't let me have a copy! I was 15. I was obsessed with this stuff!

Well, that came out longer than I'd expected, and it probably only just touches the surface of what this era means to me. Even now, as I type, I'm thinking of going home and popping on Galaxy 4. Well, maybe not Galaxy 4, but you know what I mean. And while we still have missing stories, there will still be new Classic Who to watch. And that's incredibly exciting, isn't it?

One day, they shall come back. Yes, they shall come back...

Adventures at the Country Park

On Sunday Jake and I headed up to the Country Park. It's a place that has held a lot of memories for me throughout my life.

I'll always remember when me and my friend, Jon, were students. We'd been working on a video project all night and kept encountering a glitch in the playback of a particular scene. We flipped and cleared off around 11pm, intent on going to the Pier nightclub in Cleethorpes. It was my first time walking through the Country Park. It was deathly silent and dark and I'm sure we heard ghostly footsteps follow us across one of the wooden bridges...

There was the many Parkruns I've done there. Many times from 2016 to 2017 (and a few more years after that) it was like a ritual. Saturday morning with my mate, Matt. Picked up at 8.30am, at the Country Park by 9am, finishing with (hopefully) a PB by 9.30am. Brilliant days where I met many new running friends.

Then after the pandemic Jake and I visited here for the first time. Eating sweets by the lake and exploring the surrounding wooded areas. We got a little bit lost that day.

I remember visiting there the night after a certain orange creature had won a certain election. Me and Matt ran through their in the dark discussing politics and our fears for the future. Dark nights indeed!

And so we return to the present. Again, it's a place filled with many memories. Most of them happy. It always makes me feel warm when I return here. For a place that I don't visit that often, it's played such an important part of my life. I guess it will continue to do so.

Finally, here's a small selection of pictures that I took on Sunday.