The Question Answered

This is the thing that has been approaching. We are moving. Leaving America and returning to the UK. It is happening now, albeit at a glacial pace. The removal people are here, packing and wrapping, and heroically trying to decipher all the explanatory post-its we have left up about the house.

We aren't, ourselves, flying home today. That's not happening until after Christmas. So the whole process is strangely drawn out; longeurs of planning or tidying interrupted by bursts of activity, like today, when Things Suddenly Change.

We've greatly enjoyed our time here in America, and I'll come back to that at some point in the future, but right now I feel mostly just relieved. Ever since we arrived in Houston, since before we even decided we were coming here, the question has been hovering: how long were we going to stay? All the time we've been here, that's been second, sometimes the third thing anyone has asked us. "Where are y'all from? Do you like it here? How long are y'all staying?"

We didn't have an answer, which is fine as long as we weren't asked. In between times, the question sank to the bottom of our minds, obscured by the muddy waters of day-to-day life. There's no reason to agonise about where you're going to be living in ten years time when you've got to decide what's for dinner tonight.

And the main thing was that we were happy. Laura was happy with her job, we were all happy with the schools. Houston was an easy place to live. We were fine. If we stayed, we would carry on being fine. If an opportunity to move back turned up, we would probably take it, but there was no way to engineer such an opening and so in the meantime we could just carry on. The day-to-day stuff kept happening.

But every time someone asked the question, it reminded me that we didn't, couldn't know what was going to happen to us. And it began to feel like there two very different futures waiting for us simultaneously: one American, one British. Neither unpleasant, but would we get to choose, or would the decision be made for us? The longer we stayed, the more likely it was that the day-to-day stuff would harden about us like concrete: as soon as one of the boys was in a serious relationship, or got a job, it would be almost impossible to consider moving back home.

And then, rather suddenly, an opening did come up. In August we were adapting to middle school, planning Christmas, and mulling over if we should move neighbourhoods. In September we were faced with choosing between two continents. That we got to choose between those two futures, that we got to weigh up the advantages of each, that was a big relief. It felt good to go through the process and to evaluate our options. It went back and forth, but it was soon clear that we should go home, that the UK was home, even if the boys had spent more than half their lives across the water. It's not that the US is a horrible place: for all its faults, it has been exciting and fun to live here. But it has always felt like a foreign country, and I have always felt like a visitor.

Going home means that this has been a wonderful adventure, and these six years become an extraordinary episode in our lives. If we were to stay, no matter how much fun we might have, at some point America would become boringly normal.

Boom Town

It was strange living in Cardiff. My girlfriend moved there a few months after we started going out and I eventually went too. We bought a house, time passed. We got married; William came along and then, the strangest thing, Doctor Who arrived. In Cardiff.

When I was a kid, all television, and therefore Doctor Who, happened in the Big House in London, Television Centre, so far away and remote that it might as well have been another dimension. The idea that any programme could be made in my vicinity was an alien concept. That Doctor Who was returning was incredible enough - but when its universe started to materialise around me, I couldn't quite believe my luck.

The place where you live always feels like the centre of the universe because that's where you are, walking around seeing and hearing things, experiencing existence and filtering reality through your location. But all of a sudden Cardiff became the centre of all things Doctor Who and, for a while, it was weird. Nice weird. At work, people would come back from lunch and say "Oh they're out filming today!" as if they were talking about the weather. Production meetings would be held in hotels down the street from our offices and I would walk past Noel Clarke or Camille Coduri on my way to the sandwich shop on the corner. I even went out to have a look at the filming of Rose, a night shoot on St. Mary's Street doubling for central London. Me and some other stunned fanboys watched the TARDIS prop being assembled on the pavement outside Howells.

"Is it a bit too.. big?" one of them whispered, full of what Gareth Roberts calls 'anticipointment'. But I was just trying to understand how it was that the TARDIS had appeared in front of my eyes, not on a television, but in my real waking life. In Cardiff.

Then, on my lunch break one day in W.H.Smith's, Billie Piper walked past me. It was February and she, like me, was looking for a Valentine's Day card. I didn't say anything of course, she was busy making Doctor Who, presumably on her lunch break too and I wasn't going to interrupt or jeopardise that magical process. Then I realised that they were probably filming close by, and that she was in costume. This was Rose Tyler, walking the streets of Cardiff. Where I lived.

They were filming just around the corner, at City Hall, working on this episode, Boom Town, which is set in, er, modern day Cardiff. My wife worked at the Wales Millenium Centre and called me to say that the TARDIS had been parked outside all day by the fountain. The fictional universe had broken through the Rift into our real lives.

We went back to Cardiff for a week this summer, partly to show the boys. We walked around and I pointed out landmarks, real and imaginary. "That's where I worked. That's where Rose worked. That's where Wilf's newspaper stand was. That's the castle where your mother and I got married - it also doubled as the Tower of London in The Christmas Invasion."

We had a good look around the Bay, ate in the restaurants, went to the Doctor Who Experience of course. It was wonderful to be back. It's changed so much in just a few years, but it still feels like home - and Doctor Who is very much part of that feeling.

It was all very fresh in the mind when we watched Boom Town, which was lovely. Throughout, the boys chorused "Been there! Been there!" every time they recognised something. There was even a hiss of indignation from them when Margaret announced that Cardiff Castle would have to be demolished to make way for her power station - that was messing with us directly. There were lots of laughs, the loudest yet, when Mickey clattered and stumbled through the corridors of City Hall and they laughed again when Margaret tried her tricks on the Doctor over dinner. They both could only give it a nine. William said it was "complicated" and raised "interesting questions. Is she a baddy? Is it her fault?" Chris said he liked the ending, but both of them were repulsed at the description of the Raxacoricofallapatorian death penalty.

The great thing about Boom Town (other than seeing Cardiff on screen, properly, on BBC1) is Eccleston's performance. Annette Badland is great as Margaret: by turns duplicitous, sincere, evil and troubled - and her scenes with the Doctor are excellent. But Eccleston is just amazing. Those tight close ups over dinner: every twitch of his face, every blink, is deliberate and calculated. It's intense and compelling and completely lacking in any crazed histrionics or bellowing. Everything is perfectly gauged and full of nuance. He is superb.

But then the TARDIS coughs up some magic light that turns the baddy into an egg and saves everyone the trouble of having to answer complicated questions. Which is a shame. It's a great ending for Margaret, and it is right that second chances should be on offer - that's a compassionate Doctorly thing to do and it won praise from all three of us. Except that the Doctor doesn't do anything to achieve this outcome and the TARDIS is transformed into some sort of genie's lamp, bestowing wishes on anyone who can rub it up the right way. It's a bit rubbish.

This is also where the rot begins to set in with Rose, sadly. Up until now she's been great, but this episode shows us how she, Jack and the Doctor look from the outside: smug, self-centred and silly. It's a brief glimpse, during which Mickey momentarily becomes the audience identification figure, but in the future, when the Doctor and Rose seem to be enjoying themselves too much, we are going to remember how this felt.

Well, I am, anyway.


NEXT TIME...

The Last Corner Before Home

There is a corner on the way to your home. You might not even be aware of it, but it is the last one before you turn into your street or road and see the lights of your own house. Before you quite reach it you can see the very beginnings of the road where you live curving out of sight but so close now that there is no more need for doubt - you are home at last.

I got that sensation twice yesterday in Cardiff and ended up walking past my house – my old house. Chris calls it ‘the Brown Door’ and has talked of it often whilst we have been abroad. The three of us were walking to the school and it is the way we had always walked so we were in sight of that corner before I could even ask him if he wanted to walk past it or go the other way. He said he wanted to see it and so we walked down our own road. Something made me keep to the far side, but we went slowly. William seemed oblivious but Chris and I lingered, trying to see inside. The hedge was trimmed, I noted grudgingly, but I was surprised to see the same pictures we had left hanging on the wall. The only difference I could see was a spray of foliage or something on the edge of the bay window. I picked Chris up and forced us on.

Later that night, after tea and biscuits with friends from school, I got sent out in to the wintry darkness to fetch the car. Again, my feet were making their own way and before I knew it I was there: the Last Corner Before Home, my hands reaching for my door keys as I turned into our old street. I checked myself. That sense of anticipation is a visceral thing. You feel it in your guts, in your chest. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and carried on, the moon a shining half-biscuit in the night sky, Venus warm and yellow, just above the familiar roof tops. Again I couldn’t do anything other than keep to the far side of the street. Again I went slowly, trying to see as much as I could through the unclosed curtains. There were lamps on this time and, walking the opposite direction from before I realised that the foliage I noticed was a Christmas tree in the corner where the television should have been. It is a comforting thought.

There is one more of these corners - a quarter of the way across the world if you can believe it. Tomorrow we are going to get on a plane and fly back to America. It will be warm and sunny (I hope) and I am looking forward to getting on with life there, becoming more established, growing roots like the ones we have enjoyed and been supported by in Cardiff. I am also hoping fervently that I get that feeling in my chest, in my guts as we reach the corner of ______ and _____. The unmistakable sensation that we are home again.

The Boy Who Came Back

Extraordinary scenes yesterday in Cardiff. On the last leg of our tour of the country we made good on our long-standing promise to W that he would be able to visit is his old school and see all his old friends once more. By the time we were on our way to Wales I had developed misgivings and doubts. I tried to hint that places and people could change and that this could be unsettling. I needn’t have bothered. If anything Cardiff was too familiar and (perhaps unsurprisingly after only 5 months) little seemed different. Either way, W was unconcerned – the reception he got was staggering.

It started in the playground. As we arrived, one half of his year group were outside and they rushed forwards delighted and bewildered shouting his name. ‘Where have you been?’ said one. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages!’ Almost immediately the questions stopped and they fell into an exhilarating game, chasing him around and around. W seemed transfigured, his face shining, his spirit unfettered. He was wearing a suit jacket that we had found in a supermarket (his Doctor Who jacket) and the tails flapped as he ran, looking back, laughing over his shoulder at the chasing pack, the soles of his sneakers flashing white.

The other class was waiting inside and I eventually got him to go in to the Victorian school buildings to find them. They were sat on the rug, about to have a story, when he barged in just ten or fifteen minutes before the end of the school day. The children erupted from the floor and fell upon him like a crashing wave, shouting his name, grabbing him. At the front is one old friend, and they hug each other as the crowd surrounds them, literally mobbing them. Those at the centre even try to hoist him up but after that doesn’t work they calm ever so slightly and make do with just touching him, manic grins on their faces. Those further back are straining forwards and there are strange haunted smiles from those too far away to reach. It’s a little like the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. W himself is laughing, eyes wide. The cut of the jacket’s shoulders make him look older and taller, more alien and stranger. They look at him as if he has returned from the dead. Some of the girls are just stroking him, as if trying to convince themselves he is real.

This class has lost several children - both before we left, and since. I remember friends leaving my school at a similar age and it is like a death – sometimes there’s no warning and a child just vanishes. They never return. But W is the Boy Who Came Back. Whatever the nothingness is into which their former classmates have vanished, he has returned. They are amazed, delighted, stupefied.

The teacher temporarily regains control and gets the class to sit back down so they can ask some questions. W leans nonchalantly back against a desk, occasionally ruffling the hair of some friend or other. He is so assured, so unfazed. Such attention would scare me now, let alone when I was 5 – he is merely glad to see them. Always on the verge of laughter, he waves away the forest of raised hands, the babble of competing questions with an easy smile: 'Now, now, one at a time..'

I don’t listen to the questions although I gather that they want to know what he got for Christmas; almost overwhelmed, I turn to C who has been curled up on my hip throughout most of this. He looks shell-shocked. Other teachers appear and begin talking to me, asking questions about Houston but I struggle to answer, as I have done all day: here in Cardiff, our Texas life seems an impossible fantasy, unreal and exotic.

Once the bell goes and they have all pulled on their coats and scarves, the class processes out with W, back into the playground to show him to their parents. In their wake I ask C how he’s doing.

‘Too much,’ he says.