How To Handle Charity Representatives

So, although I like to think I'm quite a charitable person, I have a thing against charity representatives in the street.

I understand why they're doing it, I understand it might be a great cause but I don't agree with their methods. I don't agree with the fact they pull you out at random, give you their spiel and then ask for you contact details.

The amount of times female ones have asked for my number and I've had the urge to say "buy me a drink first" is staggering. But I always bite my tongue for some bizarre reason. Anyway.

Over the past year, I've had two incidents with these people that have stuck out in my mind. One of which happened just today, the other happened earlier this year. And to those who think this first story is made up, I wrote it down because, I'm actually quite proud of how it went. I'm re-writing it from where I wrote it down and changing the descriptions slightly but I promise all this was said.

Earlier this year, my mum and I took my Nan to the local city to go shopping. I had some time to kill so I decided I would walk across the city centre to HMV to see which Doctor Who DVDs they had that I could get as I had some money spare.

Now, thinking back on it, the reason I was picked out was totally my own fault. I was wearing black trousers, a white smart shirt and a black waistcoat. I stood out. A mistake I'll never make again. Anyway. The representative walked in front of me and said "May I say you're looking very smart and handsome today sir?" Considering not many men say this to me, I was cautious. "Thank you?" But it was too late. I was ensnared in the trap. And I was confronted by a man who wore a woolly hat in the style of a panda's head. My life would never be the same again.

He was from Friends Of The Earth and was telling me all about how deforestation was affecting the planet. I didn't mind this, it was the fact he promised to condense everything he wanted to say into a minute as I said I was late for something that annoyed me. Because 5 minutes later he was telling more about the Amazon than David Attenborough has in his lifetime. Eventually, he asked for personal details. Numbers etc so he could contact me about possibly donating to the cause.

At which point, I refused. "NO!" I said rather abruptly. I regained composure and said "I can't. I need to go. I REALLY need to go..." He then asked me where I was going.

Now, I try not to lie in life. But today, I just let me head go with it.

"I'm going to meet my girlfriend!"

I said, surprised as I was saying it. (I should probably point out I'd been single for a year at this stage and it was all a complete lie. Which I'll probably end up going to hell for but still...) The man smiled and started asking me questions.

"Ah! I see! Can't leave the lady waiting! What's her name?"

I don't think my mind's ever worked so fast...

"Angeline!"

"Angeline?"

"She's French..."

"Your girlfriend's French?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"No, no. No reason".

I couldn't believe I was getting away with this. It seemed my imaginary French girlfriend, Angeline, may well be saving me from this awkwardness...

"Well...Is she into saving the planet?"

"Oh yeah. She does geography so she's into all that!"

"Maybe you could bring her here to talk to me?"

Another trap had been laid. Brain don't fail me now...

"I don't think that'd be appropriate!"

"Why?"

"Because...This date could save or end our relationship!"

Both of us looked confused as I said it. I realised the hole I was in and how deep it was getting. But I carried on...

"The truth is, due to circumstances outside my control, I was 2 hours late to our last date. Seeing a movie at the Odeon here. And she wasn't best pleased as I'm sure you could understand. She said 'If you're late again I'm giving up'. [I even said it in a French accent!] And I love her. I really do, and I don't want to be late again. So I really need to go..."

The man looked at me for a few moments before saying

"Ok, sir. I'll let you go. But you come visit me later won't you!"

"Of course"

We said goodbye and left. He carried on grabbing people in the street while I walked away with a big smile on my face. I couldn't quite believe what I'd said had worked. Merci Angeline.


The second story happened today in the city of Winchester. I was walking back from town with lots of shopping in hand having to cope with quite a steep hill. Anyway, I was stopped by a young woman on the High Street.

"Hello, sir. Do you have a moment?"

I immediately started thinking of Angeline.

"Yeah, sure!"

She went onto explain that she worked for a local charity which helps blind children intergrate into mainstream schooling. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great cause and a wonderful idea, but I could see where this was headed.

After about a minute later, the lady asked the inevitable question.

"So could I have your contact number?"

"No. Sorry. I don't give out my number to strangers out of principle".

She didn't take this too well. She started asking how I was going to access their work online if I didn't give her my number. She even showed me a device of some description where she said:

"I won't even see your number".

"I don't doubt that, but all the same I'm sorry. Don't you have a card or something I could have?"

"Yes but we don't like giving out our cards as it costs us to".

This was a confusing statement but all the same.

After another minute or so of arguing, she eventually conceded and let me go. I wished her a good day and carried on.

I had barely walked 10 feet up the road before being snared by yet another.

"Hello, sir..."

"Seriously? Seriously? I've just been caught by your colleague there and I've said no. Sorry".

Then came the curveball.

"I'm different..."

"Oh. You're different? How so?"

"I'm a monk..."

I'm not sure what you can say to that really...

I stuck to my guns though and no one got my number this day. But keep an eye out people. They are everywhere.

And guys, if you get stuck and are single, just think of Angeline. She's an easy going girl and she doesn't mind you thinking of her...

What Doctor Who Means To Me - #SaveTheDay

You may have worked out by now that I'm a raging Whovian. And, in 9 days time, the Day of the Doctor will air at the same time right across the globe. A celebration worthy of a wonderful Time Lord who's been racing around our screens for 50 years. (With a sabbatical in-between).

But I wanted to take a few moments out of my researching for my new politics essay to just explain what Doctor Who means to me personally.

So there's this girl on my course. I shan't name her but she doesn't particularly like Doctor Who but she's obsessed with Merlin. (We have great sassy arguments about them. It's fun). And the one thing I often say to her is "I'm sorry, is Merlin celebrating 50 years this year?" Which is both childish and harsh I know. But it's the best thing I can say in that situation because, well, I take Doctor Who incredibly seriously. And to me, it's more than a TV show.

I had never heard of Doctor Who until a week before Christopher Eccleston made his fantastic (see what I did there) debut back in 2005. That being said, my mum claims we looked round the Doctor Who Exhibition at Longleat back in the 90s but I don't remember it sadly. I wanted to watch the show as it seemed pretty cool at the time and I resolved to. Mum proceeded to tell me the day before that Doctor Who had been around in her childhood and had been going since the 60s and for all intents and purposes, it was a very British show. She loved it growing up and it was a huge part of her formative years. The more I heard about it the more I wanted to watch it. If mum liked it, why wouldn't I?

Sadly, I missed the original broadcast of the 2005 episode 'Rose' as our car broke down on the way home from the cinema that night. We got back in at 7:46 and I missed the whole episode. I was gutted. The credits were rolling and I was rather upset. But didn't think anything of it at the time.

A week goes by and mum reminds me Doctor Who's on again. I sat down and watched it, not sure what to expect as I'd seen nothing of it. So my mind was completely open to what was coming. Then came 'The End Of The World'. An episode where the Doctor takes Rose to 5 billion years in the future to watch the Earth burn as the Sun expands. (Judging from the ending of the episode, I think Rose has had worse first dates...). I watched it eagerly and immediately fell in love with it. I loved how sarky the Doctor was and I loved how he was...different. I fell in love with the show. I was in love with Doctor Who.

I continued watching the show eagerly in the weeks that followed. 'The Unquiet Dead' was next with the Gelth. Gaseous creatures claiming to be benign but ended up being an evil invasion force coming out of Eve Myles in Victorian Cardiff. (God that sounds so wrong...) That was my first Doctor Who fright. The Gelth scared the shit out of me. As a 10 year old, the idea of ghosts made of gas fighting Charles Dickens was both brilliant and terrifying. Especially the zombies that came next.

Then game 'Aliens Of London' and 'World War III'. A two-parter which saw the Doctor challenge the ambition driven farters the Slitheen. This story didn't scare me so much but I remember staring in amazement as the Slitheen unzipped their forehead to reveal a cute, yet disgusting, alien beneath hell bent on melting the Earth for molten scrap. I fell more and more in love with the character of the Doctor as it became apparent he actually had no clue what he was doing. I liked that in him as well as his very dry humour. Being a 10 year old boy with Autism who couldn't quite grasp humour, the fact I understood what the Doctor was saying was a miracle in itself but still I watched with eager eyes.

Then would come my life-long fear. When I look back on this particular experience, I feel a bit like someone watching the first ever series in 1963 when they were confronted with the iconic Daleks for the first time. I'd come across Daleks before, but not in Doctor Who. I'd first seen them in the film 'Looney Tunes Back In Action' when it was revealed a Peter Cushing Dalek was a lab rat in the Area 52 facility run by 'Mother'. Anyway, the episode 'Dalek' was genius in itself. For people my age, we were made to feel sorry for the Daleks. Being the last one of its kind, just like The Doctor, yet the Doctor was being horrible to it. But then it became apparent what Daleks really do. And then I got scared. I remember as a 10 year old, seeing Rose touch that Dalek and watching it rebuild itself, that was terrifying! Suddenly the alien wasn't restrained and it was hell-bent on killing EVERYONE. That's scary.

The series goes on, Jagrafess, Reapers, Gas Mask Zombies (they still creep me out big time), Slitheen again until finally, the Daleks come back again. But en masse. Eccleston's final stories 'Bad Wolf' and 'The Parting Of The Ways' were the stories that stick out most in my head for the fear factor. Suddenly, there wasn't just one Dalek anymore. There was a whole army of Daleks, made of humans. Gulp. We're screwed.

I watched Eccleston's final story, 'The Parting Of The Ways' , over a friend's house. They hadn't seen Doctor Who much and didn't understand why I was currently in tears. Rose had been sent away and the Doctor, the man I'd idolised for this wonderful series, was sure to die. Then Rose came back but different, after looking into the heart of the Tardis, destroyed the Daleks, the emperor of the Daleks before nearly dying herself. Suddenly, all seemed well. But then the Doctor kissed Rose and absorbed the very time vortex that Rose absorbed. The confusion in my mind was incredible. To top it all off, we see the Doctor dying. He stands in the Tardis clutching his stomach before saying that he's dying but Time Lords 'have this little trick, it's sort of a way of cheating death!' Suddenly, Eccleston explodes and, amongst this amazing spectacle and light show, appears David Tennant. My mind blew at this point. "Who the heck is this guy? And where's the Doctor?"

Christmas Day 2005, I watched Tennant's debut. I'll always remember the first few scenes with Jackie and Mickey hearing the roar of the Tardis and running out to try and find it. I felt safe hearing that Tardis. But imagine my surprise, as I'm sure you all were too when you first saw this, the Tardis comes out of the vortex, crashing into a Royal Mail van with that different man stepping out. But, by the end of the episode, I fell in love with David Tennant and I realised the Doctor hadn't gone. He was right here.

It was at this point mum started explaining the other Doctors. I was also finding them myself and I was shocked at what Doctor Who was as a show. How unique it was to Britain. how much it had impacted our society and what the show meant to so many people. Doctor Who had run, effectively, non-stop from 1963 until 1989. That for any show is impressive! With only shows like Coronation Street matching it. After realising this rich history and canon, I set about watching as many classic stories as I could. And, just like I had with Eccleston and Tennant, I fell in love with the classic Doctors. I couldn't believe the Doctor, the man I'd seen running about in a silly brown trenchcoat, once was a bitter old man, a dandy, the owner of a cute robot dog, an insanely long scarf and jelly babies, a cricketer and a stranger in San Francisco. It blew my mind how many different Doctors there had been. It was then that the show hit me even more.

Move forward 4 years and it was David Tennant's time to leave. People always say that they have 'their Doctor' or 'the Doctor I grew up with'. My mum's 'Doctor' was Jon Pertwee for example. But Tennant was my Doctor. He was like my strange older brother growing up who I always knew would be there to protect everyone and, to me, he WAS the Doctor. That the show really started with him. I know there were 9 other Doctors but he was the one true Doctor. When I heard he was leaving, I was devestated and I dreaded his regeneration scene, which was inevitable.

I felt this all the way through 2010. 'Planet of the Dead', 'Waters Of Mars', 2 more to go, until finally, on january 1st 2010, David Tennant regenerated. I cried 4 times during that episode and I cried most after he said "I don't want to go..." (I'm filling up even as I write that...) It's at this point I say my childhood ended. As Tennant left, so did my younger self. But all was not lost, Matt Smith took over and I fell in love with him from the first 'Geronimo'.

So where does that leave me now? Well, we're 9 days away from the long-awaited 50th anniversary and The Day Of The Doctor. What will I do with it? I'm going to see it in 3D at a local cinema with a friend, while dressing up as David Tennant's Doctor. I'm 19 and I still dress up as a strange Time Lord flying around in a Police Box. I'm never going to grow up am I...

But while I'll have these arguments with that Merlin fan friend of mine, there's one thing she'll never understand about my undying love for Doctor Who. Unless she reads this of course...But Doctor Who effectively saved me.

A year before Doctor Who returned to our screens, I was diagnosed with paranoid depression. It was set off in 2004 when it was reported that a large asteroid would pass close to Earth on March 21st 2014. (Oh shit...) But, in true media tradition, they couldn't help but illustrate this news with scenes from Armageddon and Deep Impact amongst others. In my 9 year old brain, this scared the living hell out of me and it just got worse. I was seeing psychiatrists and everything. I had various methods of calming myself if this kind of news ever appeared again but nothing really worked long term. But then, seemingly out of no-where, this wonderful man appears on my television screen with the sole purpose of helping anyone and everyone in danger and doing his best to save them. When you're 10 and have paranoid depression, this has a very calming effect on you. For a few years, I believed that the Doctor wouldn't let that asteroid hit the Earth because he loved the Earth too much. I believed that the Doctor wouldn't let the human race die. He wouldn't let me die...

Not only that, I came up with another coping strategy, which I still use today. Most of my personality comes from the Doctor in his various forms. Even though Tennant will always be my Doctor, I identify most with the Eight Doctor Paul McGann. I have a lot of his traits but my personality derives from an amalgam of all of them depending on my mood. It's a coping strategy that, for 9 years of my life, has worked remarkably well. Give or take a few certain periods of weirdness. As a matter of fact, because of all these things, some people have even resorted to calling me 'Doctor'. (I gotta say, I quite like that...)

So that's what it means to me. And it will mean this much to me on my death bed too. Because it's at that point that I can finally accept that the Doctor won't save me.

Doctor Who may not be real, but it's real enough for me to believe in it and the ideals behind it. I'll show it to my kids and, if they don't like it, that's cool. As long as they accept their dad will always be a raging Whovian. But it'll always mean that much to me. No matter what happens. I'll travel with the Doctor as long as he travels.

So, until the next time I write something, ALLONS-Y!

My Songs In Prose: Episode 1 - Bedtime Routine

So the other night, I was putting my daughter, Molly, to bed. It was a fairly normal night. Clean teeth, wash face, snuggle in, read story, sing a song to her, kiss her forehead and turn off the light. On this particular night however, Molly had stayed up and watched an old Attenborough documentary with my wife and I. It was Planet Earth and had loads of different animals on it which she rather enjoyed. The perfect thing for a curious 5 year old to watch.

Anyway. I went upstairs with her to go through the whole bedroom routine but this night she was asking question after question after question. She couldn't help it bless her but all the same it was rather annoying after a while. She asked all the way through cleaning her teeth, washing her face and the snuggling in. Eventually, enough was enough. I told her that there was no more time for questions. She disputed this claim and asked why. "Because you've got school tomorrow!" I replied. "And if you don't go to sleep now you'll wake up late!"

She seemed to accept this notion but still asked questions. I eventually had to tell a little white lie and tell her that I didn't have any more answers. It was time for her to sleep. She asked me to read her a story but I suggested that seeing the documentary was better than a story because she'll have awesome dreams about the animals. She accepted this too. But said that mummy have to read her a story tomorrow night to make up for it. We agreed on this.

As I went to turn out the light, she started telling me that she was scared of the lions that she'd seen on the telly and thought one was going to appear from under the bed to gobble her up. So I obliged in checking under her bed to make sure no lion was hiding under there. "There we are, now you won't have a nightmare because I've scared it away!" She seemed content with this and wrapped the duvet around her.

I always find it cute when she wraps herself in her duvet. Something about it just makes me smile and realise how lucky I am to have her, my wife and my second daughter, Mackenzie. Just in that moment it always happens. And I kind of think she knows I find it cute so she does it on purpose. I don't know. But she's daddy's little girl. They both are really. But as always, I told her I'd have to go now as I have to make sure Mummy doesn't sneakily put on something weird like DIY SOS or something. So I said I'd see her in the morning along with the rising sun. I'm a teacher, so I get up early as does she. So it's a literal thing.

Because of the excitement of staying up past her bedtime, seeing all the animals and the questions she'd been doing, she tried to get me to sing a song instead of leaving. But I just wanted to spend time with my wife to be honest. I said to her "Mol, you have a voice of an angel like no-one's ever had before. But you've definitely got my stubbornness. You need to go to sleep now!" I try not to be firm with her as it doesn't help either of us. But I do lay down some authority. She eventually conceded and settled down for bed.

I looked at her one last time before turning the light off and closing the door slightly. I feel slightly better knowing she's in her room and sleeping because I feel like I've done my job properly. It makes me feel good knowing that bedtime has gone well. It's not long now until the wife and I hit the hay as well. But until that time...

When my wife and I go to bed a few hours after, we both just look in on both of them to make sure they're asleep. We're good parents. We can tell if they're trying to convince us that they're asleep but they're actually. Neither of them were doing it on this particular night. My wife and I look at each other when we see them and smile. Neither of us want them to grow up. We want them to stay just the way they are. We know that's impossible but all the same. We'll always be here to help them that's for sure. Pick them up when they're down but we'd prefer it if they never grew up. I dread the day they bring their first boyfriend home. Or girl. I don't judge and I don't care what they choose to do in that department.

But they'll always be my little girls...