The library, open twenty-four hours a day. Four o’clock in the morning. I’d dozed off at some point before midnight, but now light filtered through the trees outside like thin, peach fingers.

I awoke with a start. Printed lecture slides clung to the side of my sweat-wet face. I stretched, yawned, and chipped with a fingernail at the crusts that had developed along the ridges of my eyelids. Peeling the papers from it, I swung my head lazily. I was alone in the library. Save, of course, for the voices. 

‘I heard he killed a man,’ a woman’s voice whispered.
I frowned, and stood. I rearranged my hair, reflected in the screen of my battery-dead laptop, and strained my sense of hearing. 

‘No… He was a German spy during the war.’

A man’s voice. American. I followed the sound of these whisperings, deep into the ‘20th Century Fiction’ zone of the Crystal Maze that is our university library. The murmurs emanated from a particular blue rectangle in the shelf. I pulled it out, and set it on its back. The Great Gatsby. I’ve never read The Great Gatsby, but I know that there’s a terrible film by the same name coming out in a few days. 

‘He’s related to the Kaiser,’ a page whispered. I opened the book. A slender, pale arm emerged, topped, quite sensibly, with a delicate hand. It grabbed my shirt and pulled me in.

‘It’s so good to finally meet you.’ A woman gleamed falsely. One of the arms to which she was attached was still gripping my shirt. I glanced at her hand and she let go. ‘I am sorry, I was just so surprised to see you.’

I looked around. I wasn’t in the library. A huge house overlooked the scene, its windows like a fleet of burning floodlights. Hundreds of people swirled around like a Van Gogh painting of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Laughter was the hottest sound, but there were gasps and shouts and fragments of chatter. The woman who’d pulled me into this vast garden party was adjusting her dress, smiling widely. ‘It truly is so very nice to meet you,’ she beamed. 

I blinked. When my eyelids parted, I found myself in a speeding car, which was biting forwards like a golden shark. A woman was at the wheel. Before I could offer a noise of quizzical jeopardy, she yanked the wheel to the side and we ripped into the course of another car. I realised that she was swerving to avoid a woman who’d run into the road, but my driver lost her nerve at the last moment and pulled the wheel back. Instinctively I reached out, but the vehicle shuddered as if struck down the chassis by a lightning bolt, and I knew it was too late. I closed my eyes, and opened them.

I was lying on my back, staring up at the sky through a veil of yellow leaves. The surface on which I rested was soft. I let my hand droop, and I touched water. I was about to sit up when a figure emerged at my side. I raised a hand, and he raised his. There was a thunderclap, and I woke up in the library, standing over a copy of The Great Gatsby. I threw it back into place, gathered my things, and headed for the bus stop.

On the way, a group of drunken students laughed at me and threw a soggy kebab at my knees.

MORE THIS WAY - Unbelievable Uni Confessions By Uni Students Who Are Students At Uni 

I was invited to a house party last year. My girlfriend’s housemates were celebrating. I think one of them had gotten an internship or pregnant or something. Whatever the cause, I was invited to a house party. And I went to it. 

It was your usual affair – a semi-circle of medical students sat around a body dragged illegally from the morgue, turning its skull to powder in a blender and snorting it through plastic tubes; a geology student filled the television with milk and dropped a boxset of David Lynch DVDs into the electrical white fluid; a child dressed like a clown sat on the stairs, whispering ‘red rum, red rum’ over and over again; a tired girl sat alone in the kitchen, gazing, bored, at a live chicken roving along the worktop; and I was stood on the landing with my girlfriend, making my mouth go flat and noisy against hers.

We’d met on a barge six months prior, and felt that ‘we met on a barge’ was too good an anecdote to go to waste. So we entered a relationship, and told everybody about how we’d met on a barge. Eventually, after a few weeks, we began to develop feelings for each other. I’d realised that I quite liked her black hair and different coloured eyes, one blue and one green. And here we were, half-a-year after the barge, kissing at a house party. Needless to say, I felt like I was Elvis Presley. 

‘Shall we take this further?’ she asked me, pulling away from my exhausted, dripping face-hole. 
‘Further than kissing?’ I asked, wiping my lips on the stair-child’s clown costume. ‘Like, biting each other’s teeth?’
‘No,’ she sighed, taking my arm in her grasp and pulling it into a bedroom. I followed, and found her lying naked on the duvet. 
‘Ah, right, yes.’ 

So we ‘played improvised jazz,’ as they say, and rolled breathlessly onto our backs. We rolled too far and landed on either side of the bed. I shouted to her. 
‘Was that good for you?’
She shouted back, a simple nod. I was about to shout again, offering an apology for the fact that I’d kept all my clothes on throughout and performed my half of the activity through a rip in the knee of my jeans, but I noticed something on the floor next to me. It was a small, glowing chasm. It cast a pattern on the ceiling, like the shimmer from a swimming pool or toilet bowl. I reached out with trembling fingers and touched the edge.

Instantaneously, my brain exploded and imploded and fell back together. I was lying in a park. A newspaper, sidling along on the breeze like a cowboy, tripped over my face. ‘January 1992,’ its date proclaimed. I crawled to the nearest fence and hauled myself into an upright position. My brain was still rolling around inside my head, like the thing that sloshes about inside a Magic 8-Ball. January 1992. I had fallen into the past. I glanced around, and saw the glowing chasm from the bedroom lying as a split in the ground, just by the swings. Before I could make to dive back through it, it sealed like a wound. I was trapped. 

I spent the next few weeks adapting to the environment. I got myself a job, a hat, and a girlfriend. We met at the site of a brutal road traffic accident, and I felt that it was too good an anecdote to waste. Lovers rarely meet at road accidents in 1992. Our relationship advanced. I knew what sex was now, and so that occurred, as did a lavish nineties wedding.

Nine months later, my wife gave birth. I kissed her forehead, squeezed her sweating hand, and stepped around the hospital bed to see my child. 

‘It’s a girl.’ The midwife smiled like a painting. I looked into the face of my baby. As I registered her features, my wife spoke. 
‘Melinda. She’ll be called Melinda.’
The baby wriggled, and stared up at me with two different coloured eyes, one blue and one green. Her tiny head was topped with thin black hair. I spat hot venom, dropped the baby into the arms of the midwife, and instinctively hurried through the closed window. As I rolled through the air towards the car park, a gleaming chasm opened in the tarmac. I fell through it, and landed on the floor of a bedroom. Glass from the shattered hospital window settled on the carpet around me.

‘Are you okay?’ My girlfriend’s voice drifted across from the other side of the bed. 
I croaked horribly, and she stumbled over to see me.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. It’s… I just…’ I cringed at her nudity. ‘Put some clothes on, Melinda, you’ll catch a chill.’
‘Alright, dad,’ she said sarcastically, laughing at my bizarre, fatherly demand. I winced, and looked to my left. The shrinking chasm closed up, as if the universe itself was winking at me. 

We’ve been together for nearly two years now. We met on a barge, you know.

MORE THIS WAY - Unbelievable Uni Confessions By Uni Students Who Are Students At Uni 

The Five Doctors (1983) & The Name of the Doctor (2013)

Just read that article about John Hurt apparently playing a version of the Doctor between Eight and Nine.

One of the many angry comments below features this line -

’It also breaks the cycle of the doctor appearing younger and younger with each regeneration. You are just going to toss in an old guy?’

What is wrong with these people? Moffat’s destroying the show? What do they want? A show that never adds to the canon? How is it ‘arrogant’ for Moffat to do something like this? It’s not like he’s messing about with the continuity of the classic series, he’s just adding to the foundation of the new - which he is currently in charge of. It’s his job.

RTD shoving the Doctor’s mum, apparently, into The End of Time was much sillier than this. RTD killed off the Time Lords. RTD added to the entire basis of the Master’s madness and character (throughout the classic series and the new) with the drumming malarkey. These people are showrunners; they are supposed to run the show.

’Moffat’s ego has gone too far this time.’

What? I do not get it. He’s (reportedly, mind) written a forgotten incarnation of the Doctor into a show about a time-travelling alien called the Doctor who can change his face. It’s not like he’s put himself in the title sequence.  

Crikey O’Reilly. And it’s only the bloody Sun. Since when have Tumblr types trusted a single word from The Sun?

For what it’s worth (nothing), I think the idea of an in-between, perhaps not completely ‘real,’ forgotten Doctor is a truly interesting idea.

Bloody Doctor Who fans.

Today I read that Steven Moffat is a ‘terrible person’ because a story based around the Doctor’s real name puts across an insulting message to trans* people who’ve changed their names.

‘If we knew his name we might have a clue to all this.’ 

                         - Ian Chesterton, transphobic horror, 1963.

I also read that he’s a dreadful writer because some of his time travel stories, with their self-fulfilling loops (see Blink and the brilliant mop-and-fez bits of The Big Bang for more details), ‘don’t make sense.’

(For the record, they bloody well do. It’s the only kind of time travel that does make sense. I mean, come on, ontological loops? Predestination loops? The Novikov Self-Consistency Principle? Ancient alien with a magical phone box? If you’re going to blindly criticise the mechanics of perfectly coherent fictional time travel, at least give it a Google first, eh? Not to mention that Russell T. Davies’ ‘Bad Wolf’, ‘Torchwood,’ and ‘Saxon’ series arcs depend on the very same model of time travel. If you can’t see that, you’re not thinking fourth dimensionally. It’s the history-changing time travel that ‘doesn’t make sense,’ but it’s a fifty-year-old science fiction programme with an alien in a box that’s bigger on the inside).

I also often see Moffat blamed personally for lines of dialogue in episodes that he didn’t even write. 

Like, whatever, Tumblr.

stop scrolling. Because this might appeal to you.



Months ago, I zipped onto the internet like a weasel into a saucepan, seeking conversation.

I found this -

You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

Stranger: hey im a 17 year old guy looking for an older woman

You: I am that older woman

Stranger: really?:)

Stranger: how old are you?

You: Yes, I’m 29

Stranger: niiice

Stranger: what are you up to?

You: Well, I’ve been painting the shed, but my neighbour reclaimed it so now I’m just online, looking for love

You: Yourself?

Stranger: well so am i but more like a one night love if you catch what im saying

You: I catch it quite firmly

Stranger: soo are you up for it?

You: I am up for most things

You: Name a thing

Stranger: wanna roleplay? :P i know its kinda out there

You: What kind of roleplay, young man?

You: The Obama household?

You: Jurassic Park?

Stranger: well i was kinda looking to roleplay with an older dominate woman :P

You: Ah, well, you’ve come to the right place.

Stranger: sweet

Stranger: so you’re going to be my mistress?

You: I’d be your Billie Piper inflatable sex doll if it’s what you wanted. Craft me a persona

Stranger: lol ive never heard that one before

You: It was in a fortune cookie

Stranger: so you’re a cold mistress, but you tend to favor me over all of the other people you “own” you refer to me as little one and you’re feeling quite provocative this day

Stranger: sound good

Stranger: ?

You: It sounds marvellous

You: Let’s flesh out the backstory

Read more

Superman takes photo of self with phone for ‘Man of Steel’ poster

[x]

Just seen someone saying that they don’t think Steven Moffat ‘has the right’ to give the Doctor a name. 

a) There is nothing in the Human Rights Act relating to the naming by head writer of a fictional time traveller.

b) He won’t give the Doctor a name, at least not to the audience.

c) I now hope he does give the Doctor a name and that it’s ‘Steven Moffat.’

I was in an English seminar the other day, daylight lolling lazily against the windows, and I thought, ‘what would it be like if Emma Watson was a student here, in this seminar? What would that be like?’

And even though she wasn’t there, I made a deliberate effort to not make imaginary Emma Watson feel uncomfortable. I imaginarily accepted her imaginary presence as totally normal. I shot her an imaginary glance or two but they were glances of literary interest, not starstruck dribble-stares. I listened as she imaginarily answered the tutor’s question about a rhyming couplet in some old book, and I nodded softly. Good answer, actually, Emma, yeah.

I imagined the seminar ending. I imagined Emma gathering her things together, dropping a pen, folding a print-out. She ran her thumb along the fold, as if sealing it. She swung her bag-strap onto her exposed shoulder, which looked a shade too red - she must have burned in this surprise sunlight - and hung back for a word with the tutor. I packed my things away slowly, at one point putting the same pen into my bag six times. Emma smiled and bid goodbye to the tutor, and made to leave the room. I ran a swift calculation in my mind, and arrived at the door just as she did.

‘Oh, sorry, I -‘

‘No, it’s okay, go ahead.’

‘Thank you.’

Then we went our separate ways. Nothing romantic, nothing lustful, nothing on which to form a major bond. Just… Emma Watson.

I looked up at the clock and saw that my Emma Watsonless seminar had only been going for ten minutes. ‘Oh Jesus, this place,’ I thought. 

I need to leave.

Unbelievable Uni Confessions By Uni Students Who Are Students At Uni

Before discussing the number 13, we’ll take the time to remind ourselves of just what the gosh has happened since the double-digit revolution of 10.

After the chaotic upturning of 6 to produce 9, it was felt that nothing could beat this maverick conception. Flipped into place by the whip of its tail, 9 seemed to be an artistic dead end, the unsurpassable number to beat all numbers.  But then came 10. Cohabiting the first number, 1, with that curvaceous representative of nothing ,0, took everybody by surprise.

I’m not ashamed to admit that even I could not have foreseen the birth of 10. It was as if somebody had crammed far too much dynamite into the mine, utterly atomising the old coalface and revealing a secret lair of diamond behind. Double-digit-mania was a hurricane, blowing the minds, souls, and bodies from frail human frames across the globe. Double digits were here to stay.

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‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ Samuel joked, taking the paper bag from the pharmacist. 

And it was. The doctor had prescribed Samuel a course of heavy antidepressants.

Neither Samuel nor the pharmacist smiled. 

I wrote this review of American Beauty. It is about American Beauty.

It might help if you listen to this as you read. In fact, I won’t let you continue until you get that song playing, even if you have to sit through a YouTube advert.

Right, thanks.

I saw American Beauty when I was a twelve-year-old boy. It was playing to me through the cubic shadow of an unlit Midlands living room, broadcast by ITV at something past something past midnight. Perhaps I sat there, transfixed, staring at the screen as if into the eyes of a benevolent god, splaying open his heart to me, and to me alone, in the black, oceanic depth of that otherwise quiet, untouched night. Dancing with me.

Sadly I’ll never know, because all I remember from that particular viewing are the bits where Mena Suvari gets naked and the bit where Kevin Spacey masturbates.

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This very moment, somewhere on planet Earth, Morrissey is penning a statement that will be discussed at length by the Guardian.

I refuse to accept the following -