But now I’ve shown you where it is. Oh dear. But I’m really proud of the opening of this chapter. I think it sums up what my Who work was about.

I should mention that Alton’s middle name may become important. But probably not here.

One criticism that’s sometimes made of Human Nature is that we never get spelled out to us exactly why the Doctor has decided to embark upon this adventure. It never occurred to me that the question wasn’t answered. It is, just in a rather oblique way. And here we have Bernice asking that question.

ESB is one of my favourite sorts of beer, of which I drank a lot while living in Lancaster.

The Doctor’s list of things not to let him do includes a reference to his vegetarianism, continuing from his decision at the end of The Two Doctors.

Chapter Four

Just in case: the team Smith puts up on the notice board is of course the Hulton side, in which Dean and Hutchinson would of course be together. In the practice match shown here, they’re not. I do keep track of stuff like that, honest!

The bunny hug, etc., are, of course, dances.

Wyndham Lewis and his vortices (Joan is just the kind of woman to use a playful plural) are from the field of art.

The end of the chapter is a take on the end of a Press Gang episode that I particularly liked.

Chapter Five

Hurt/Comfort is a style of fan fiction where one character tends to another’s physical and emotional wounds. There are a few references in this chapter to Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey and his courtship of Harriet Vane, one of the greatest romances in literature. Harriet is a major influence on Benny, incidentally. She keeps it all in.

The landscape around the school is very much the landscape of where I grew up in Wiltshire. There was a similar statue, to a similar woman, on a hill that we used to pass on the road. And the school is quite like mine, though just a touch more brutal.

I’m surprised to find, reading this now, that the book contains quite a few touchstones to my current religious point of view, which I try not to call anything, but which boils down to a passionate correspondence between Anglicanism and Paganism. Tim’s thoughts on going out of the window are exactly where this stuff connects to Who for me.

I think both traditions are there in the series big time, often hidden, often operating behind enemy lines. But that’s an essay for another time.

H.G. Wells believed in ‘free love’, and smelt like honey. I wish he’d stayed on after Timelash.

Constance quotes from Hamlet, using one of the alternative takes on ‘solid’.