PJ Holden's Blog

I think my earliest memories of Doctor Who are pretty clearly Tom Baker, but less the tv show and more the cut out and keep weetabix models. Toys were a scarce commodity in those toys and tie-in toys to tv film or tv even scarcer.

I mean look at this advert from 1977 – this, for the period looks like incredibly high production values for something printed on the back of a cereal box

There are earlier DR WHO cardboard cutouts, but this is the one I remember, and it spurred in me a need to make more cardboard cut out toys. My earliest memory of 2000ad is also cardboard related. Making the Justice-1 spaceship out of computer punch card with my uncle (not only were tv/film tie in toys a rare commodity but even paper and cardboard was hard to come by in the 70s)

I remember creating a little motorbike bay area for the Justice-1 spaceship that was perfectly to scale and had Judge Hershy, but memory is kind sometimes (and cruel other times) and thinking back there’s absolutely no way it was anything but rubbish.

Around the time of Return of the Jedi (1983, and by this stage I was 13 and probably still a little too juvenile for my own good) I went with the next door neighbour to go to a toy shop so he could measure the snowspeeder toy they had so he could go home and build one out of cardboard (these things were wonderouly expensive, way out of my family’s budget – at least for another few years until we were doing ok and my young brother – by then the perfect age for all things star wars – ended up getting things like the millenium falcon and the deathstar…)

The papercraft landspeeder met a fiery end as many of his papercraft toys did. Me? I’d’a held on to that thing. Again memory being what it was, I remember it as being a perfect 1:1 replica of the plastic toy.

Anyway this has all be spurned on by the fact that the BBC have just put online all of the Dr Who’s it’s within their power too. To be honest, this is what I want from the bbc – every tv show ever produce stuck online, give it to me! let me press pause on getting older and wallow in the nostalgia of my childhood viewing (way back when dr who was appointment viewing, when any random channel at any random time of day I could wander past and tell my parents exactly what it was on tv, because man I had not much else going on).

I thought I’d start by going back to the Sylvester McCoy era, because I did NOT enjoy that series – but I was 17 turning 18 when it aired, and man Dr Who was uncool enough without this goofball turning up and ruining it all. (I mean, he probably didn’t, the beeb was desperate to destroy doctor who by that stage so who knows). I never looked fondly at the over the top drama-school-ness of some elements of Dr Who, but boy I loved mad scifi ideas.

BUT! BUT! I didn’t – I’ve gone back further to Colin Baker (like many who watched at the time, Baker’s choice to play a deeply unlikeable doctor stung, especially since I LIKED Davidson Doctor Who was like a kindly uncle or something, Baker was too much acid after the calming balm of Davidson). So I’ve started watching Series 26 The Trial of the Time Lord. Some shabby acting (from actors I know can do better) some obviously massive budget constraints (the doctor was forever fomenting revolution in places where the local tribe was like 15 people) and a big ol interesting-silhouette-but-obviously-man-in-a-suit villain, and a plot that is so typically doctor who that it feels like a big old dr who cliche. But I’m overlooking it all, because deep deep down, the sight of Dr Who and the cardboard sets always brings me right back to being 12 years old.

The 5th of November is the twentieth anniversary of my mum’s passing. It’s been a raw wound for a long long time. She died aged 50 and so I’ve outlived her by three years so far.

She passed three months after my wife and I married – Annette and I had been together nine years by this point and mum and my younger brother (Who was exactly 25 years younger than me, and born a couple of months after Annette and I started dating) had become part of our entourage when we went places. To the point that mum used to joke that she’d come with us on honeymoon. We got married in Barbados, and mum came with us. Well, for a bit. We’d booked two weeks in barbados, the wedding would happen one week in and we invited everyone who wanted to go with us (they were all paying their own way, though we had secured a bit of a deal) so in the end we had a fair number with us. All for one week. Except mum “well, if I’m going that far, I might as well go for two weeks – so I’ll just come with you” No, mum. I love you, but you can come out one week early and stay for the wedding week and Annette and I can have a week alone. And that’s what happened.

When mum died, I was working in IT support for a charity and got a phone call telling me to come home. I can’t remember a lot of what happened, it all became a bit of a blur – there was a 16 year age gap between me and mum, and in an odd way we grew up together, I think. Mark, my brother one year my junior, died age 26 and so I felt very keenly that with mum going there were memories that I had that were shared between her, me and mark, that no longer existed for anyone but me.

It was a rough time. I think on the day, I ran into the bathroom (multiple times) just wanting to hide. I found it very difficult.

And for years, there was a numbness. I remember I used to day dream about what would happen if I won a million quid, and I remember one day, after mum died, having the same thought and suddenly cutting it short with “Well, if you’re going to make any sort of wish, you dickhead, why don’t you wish your mum were still alive”.

Mum was cremated and her ashes put in a grave with my brother’s ashes. A grave that, after his death, I used to go with mum to so she could clean it. We’d joke about stuff and it was far from a sombre thing (mum and I shared a very dark and dry sense of humour), it was kind of joyful. Mark and her never got on as he was growing up, it wasn’t until he left home at age 17 that they started having any sort of respect for each other. And at the grave mum would fuss around it with a tenderness I think she wished she could have expressed to him when he was alive.

(As a side note, and since I’m baring all here, Mark died aged 26. Mum and Dad were in Canada, and one of his friends had been in touch to say they hadn’t seen him, so they contacted me and got me to pop round the house. It was locked. From the inside. So I phoned the police, who came and knocked the door in. Once the door was down, I asked if I could go first, because – well, it felt like it would be more appropriate. And Mark was lying on the floor, having fallen off the sofa, eyes open and long passed. I had to phone them in Canada to tell them. It was awful. Coroner reported death by natural causes, Mum and Dad were convinced it was Sudden Adult Death Syndrome – which, at the time, wasn’t something many people had heard of or believed in. Northern Ireland being the centre of crackpots though, and Mark, at the time knowing pals who were in to witchcraft, the Judge decided there may be something more sinister going on – I stood up and pointed out that had he died two months earlier he’d’ve found a bunch of star trek books and that’s as likely as witchcraft to be the cause of his death.)

But, that, of course, made me visiting mum’s grave all the more difficult. Bad enough it’s where mum’s ashes are but it’s also – the drive up, the standing at the grave, the tidying of it – all reminders of mum being alive.

So I’ve been a handful of times, usually at the suggestion (if not prodding) of my wife. And it’s been difficult.

But this year, twenty years, the wounds don’t hurt. There is, of course a gap in the heart where my mum is, but it’s a gap that’s slowly grown over with new tissue.

I’m going to go up, say some goodbyes, and phone my aunt – her sister – who she used to talk to pretty much every day and I’m sure felt the loss as keenly as me.

And I think the hurt will stop.

Here’s the comic strip, I bring out every so often when I talk about my mum, that I drew now five years ago. It all remains true. There are, of course, more things I’d add, I’d like to tell mum about the house, about my brother John about Nathan going to university, about Thomas’s starting GCSEs. But she knows. She knows.

I was pleased with how this page turned out from Episode 2.

(It’s an eight parter running in 2000ad right now)

Rob wanted a lot of stars, and I wanted to give it a lot of texture. so there’s about three layers of stars that I gave Pete (doherty) to do with as he will. Also gratuitous butt shot for those that are inclined.

Ok, my timing isn’t perfect, but might actually be a good thing. I’m off to Cheltenham tomorrow for the book-fest meeting Derek Landy and doing a talk. Will be back on Monday, that means I’m unlikely to get much done beyond reading a book and signing some books (hopefully) so no inktober/blogtober for me (well, I’ll try and blog, we’ll see!)

As I write this, my very basic stats tell me we’ve had 500 visitors to the webcomic, that’s a good start. It’ll shrink, of course, and hopefully pickup again. As I said before I’m not sure what a measure of success is here, but building out the infrastructure and figuring out HOW to do this has been useful in and of itself. As an experiment I’ve also uploaded it to tapas, with a plan to run it there every Wednesday (a few days behind the blog here) to see if there’s a different audience over there (or indeed any audience)/

Anyway, see you monday if I don’t see you before!