Doctor Who: I Remember... "Remember I"
By Keith Dunn
Right, says Tony, I want an article about what Doctor Who means to you, ready for the next update.
He doesn't want much, just blood from a stone (writing well doesn't easy come to me)
Sit at the keyboard until blood starts to seep from forehead.
Ok lets work my way up to this. My earliest Who memories are probably my earliest memories. To begin with, it's the second Doctor being chased down by a unicorn. I can't remember any Yeti stories but I can remember calling Auton energy units Yeti eggs and being very disconcerted when we traveled through disused underground stations on the train.
I can remember the sense of anticipation after tea on a Saturday waiting for Grandstand round up to finish, I can remember being told that I'm too close to the T.V., sit back, or to sit over here to stop mum from being frightened. (I don't remember hiding behind the sofa or watching through a crack in the door, it was always up close and personal, though my mum may say differently).
That was what the Mary Whitehouse brigade couldn't understand; everything was going to be all right. The Doctor was there!
Later came the conventions, starting with Longleat and the queues (yes I was one of the people who lent against the wall to look at my program and a queue started behind me), but mostly it was the sense of silly fun. It was talking to people that I have never met before and have never met again but they had the same mind set as me (at some places the queues got so crushed together that if you bent over to pick up a thrown postcard you couldn't get up again. I helped many young American ladies off the floor that day).
I then moved on to proper conventions where I met people who were true friends, people to whom I'd like know what happened. We have drifted due to time and distance but every now and then one will pop back in to my life. But this time of my life can be summed up in one word (well looking back it can) joy, pure unbound joy.
It's where I met Karen (by connecting straws to drink my cider!) and later married (later followed by two sons).
It was performing the Whovian Brothers in front of about 50 people with Shawn (Now gone and sadly missed but not forgotten).
It's were I first met Jean in That! Dress (I could never work out whether she was outside that dress trying to get in or inside that dress trying to get out.)
It's the look on Paul's face when he told us he had been commissioned for his first book,
It was meeting Heather; the only thing she can do is in lighten your life.
Later Adam snaked in, bringing his own bizarre sense of humor, Tony gatecrashed into my life, then followed by Andy (with his booming laugh)
So in answer to Tony's question, "what does Doctor Who mean to you?": joy, fun, anticipation and love. A good way to spend 25 minutes or a weekend.