Doctor Who Time and Relative Kim Newman

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.Only the most suicidal soccer players among the boys complained.Wendy Coburn asked Mr Chesterton if we could play records on her Dansette, and he said it would be all right and that we could even dance to keep warm.He would be only too happy to keep an eye on us and had to be persuaded not to join in.Some of the girls danced to Susan Maughan ( 'Bobby's Girl'), Neil Sedaka ( 'Breaking Up is Hard to Do') and Chris Waites and the Carrollers ('Christmas Caroline'), but I played Snakes & Ladders.Up the ladders, down the snakes –comforting, meaningless movement.Wendy Coburn put on 'Love Me Do'.'You can't call that din music,' said John the Martian, who only likes classical.'It's just a bunch of yobs making a noise.''You're not "with-it", Martian,' said Gillian, teasing.'This is the best and most important 45 single of the last five years,' I said.'For the rest of your life, you'll remember that you were there when the Beatles started.'Wendy and her clique were dancing dreamily.Even without the benefit of the long view, it was obvious that The Beatles were special.Poor Chris Waites wasn't even playing in the same division.'It isn't exactly Mozart,' John snorted.'Grandfather says Mozart was a bad-mannered show-off with a silly hairstyle,' I said, 'who made a racket just to get attention.'Grandfather has longer hair than the Fab Four, I should mention.'It's what grown-ups say about pop groups we like,' I carried on.'It's always been like that.It's because adults are threatened.When music changes, it means that we're taking over.The young.'John was looking at me oddly.'Where did that come from, Forehead? Deep thoughts.And they call me "the Martian"?'I must be more careful.Later –The door of the Box was iced over when I got back to Totter's Lane.Before I could get inside for my tea, I had to use a scraper from the junkyard to chip it free.Grandfather didn't notice.At the moment, he's interested in the cold.'John's Dad says it's the Russians,' I told him.'Hardly likely, child.''He says the Russkis only ever win wars when they have the snow on their side.''Don't take that too literally.'Even in the Box, it's cold.And that shouldn't be possible.'Snow, Susan, isn't on anybody's side.'Saturday, March 30th, 1963No School today.And I did my homework yesterday evening.Grandfather is busy.When he thinks about the cold, he becomes cold.Sometimes, he's just normally grumpy and crotchety, which is what you expect from grown-ups throughout the universe.But now he's different.It's as if he's an organic machine, doing what he was designed to do.Calculating and tabulating but not connecting, not caring, not feeling.Even being irritated is feeling something.This is standing outside a window, looking in, watching a child being beaten but not smashing through to do anything.Finding it interesting, but having no reason to change it, as if the whole universe were a big painting in a gallery, to be admired for its technique but which we should never think to add a brushstroke to, not even to repair damage or improve on a shoddy bit of work.Where we come from, all people are like that.I worry that if the fog ever clears, I'll find that I'm like that too.Grandfather can't be like that at bottom, or we wouldn't be here.We wouldn't have run away.I have a headache, a bad one.I must stop thinking about this.Later –I went out, wrapped up warm and being careful on the iced pavements.Safety notices are up everywhere.The British government likes nothing better than telling people what to do for their own good.And the British people like to grumble, ignore the Men from the Ministry and make do with cups of tea.Since we're here, I suppose Grandfather and I are honorarily British.We both like tea, and I suppose we grumble and know better than officials too.It could have been a lot worse.We could be honorary Americans.I expect we'd be noisier, smile more and have guns.The snow-cleaning crews have stopped coming down Totter's Lane.They have to concentrate on the High Street and the arterial roads, which mean streets where people only live have to get by as best they can.A few humps in the Lane show where parked cars are buried, awaiting archaeologists from a future society.Mrs Faulke at Number 79 stubbornly clears off her front step and a path to the kerb every morning.She told me she was writing to the council to complain.The drifts in the gutters and on the pavements are several feet thick.Dogs and cats are frozen solid under some of them, probably not in suspended animation.The Star, News and Standard each give different figures, but people have died.Every day, there's a story about a pensioner expiring in a fridge-like flat, or a lost child turning up white and lifeless.There is skating on the Serpentine, but a student rag crew has been banned from doing a charity walk on the Thames.Current still runs under the floes, and the ice in the middle of the river is dangerously thin.Our School snowman isn't the only one.Parks and allotments are full of the fellows.Some kids have dressed up their creations like bishops or bowler-hatted gents and ask passers-by for pennies, like for Guy Fawkes' Night.At the bus stop, children have shaped a drift into a row of fat folk waiting for now-rare buses.The High Street is swept and salted.It was busy today.A lot of shops close most of the week, because of the quiet crisis, but open on Saturday morning.That means people have to get all their things at once.The Pump, the pub on the corner, has newly-raised prices for brandies and spirits chalked up outside.In opening hours, there are always motorbikes parked outside The Pump, with lads in black leather jackets comparing the noises they can get out of their machines and jeering at anyone who complains about the racket.They call themselves the TonUp Boys.Apparently, you can't get into the gang unless you've driven your bike at over a hundred miles an hour ('the Ton') and lived to tell the tale.Now, the motorcyclists all wrap their bikes up in canvas shrouds and make even more noise getting them started because the points ice over.I'm always sure to cross the road so as not to walk past the pub when the Ton-Up Boys are out and about.They say horrid things to any girls in sight, even those as tiny and unnoticeable as me.I went to the shops for Grandfather, with a list.There are shortages, and I couldn't get everything.Eggs, bread and tea are difficult.In the queues, women were talking about rationing coming back.Milk is impossible to find.The float stopped coming round two weeks ago.Bottles left on doorsteps froze and the pintas popped top-bursting white fingers.A lot of shops have policemen supervising the queues, with thick capes and helmets.Some people get shirty.Truncheon-prods are not unknown.I spent my pocket money (6d) on chocolate, but it was frozen and I hurt my teeth eating it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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