Doctor Who: Nothing O'Clock: Eleventh Doctor: 50th Anniversary

8

The young man in the tweed jacket walked round the house at the end of Claversham Row. He knocked at the door, but no one answered. He went back into the blue box, and fiddled with the tiniest of controls: it was always easier to travel a thousand years than it was to travel twenty-four hours.

He tried again.

He could feel the threads of time ravelling and re-ravelling. Time is complex: not everything that has happened has happened, after all. Only the Time Lords understood it, and even they found it impossible to describe.

The house in Claversham Row had a grimy For Sale sign in the garden.

He knocked at the door.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You must be Polly. I’m looking for Amy Pond.’

The girl’s hair was in pigtails. She looked up at the Doctor suspiciously. ‘How do you know my name?’ she asked.

‘I’m very clever,’ said the Doctor seriously.

Polly shrugged. She went back into the house, and the Doctor followed. There was, he was relieved to notice, no fur on the walls.

Amy was in the kitchen, drinking tea with Mrs Browning. Radio Four was playing in the background. Mrs Browning was telling Amy about her job as a nurse, and the hours she had to work, and Amy was saying that her fiancé was a nurse, and she knew all about it.

She looked up sharply when the Doctor came in: a look as if to say, You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.

‘I thought you’d be here,’ said the Doctor. ‘If I just kept looking.’

They left the house on Claversham Row: the blue police box was parked at the end of the road, beneath some chestnut trees.

‘One moment,’ said Amy, ‘I was about to be eaten by that creature. The next I was sitting in the kitchen, talking to Mrs Browning, and listening to The Archers. How did you do that?’

‘I’m very clever,’ said the Doctor. It was a good line, and he was determined to use it as much as possible.

‘Let’s go home,’ said Amy. ‘Will Rory be there this time?’

‘Everybody in the world will be there,’ said the Doctor. ‘Even Rory.’

They went into the TARDIS. He had already removed the blackened remains of the squiggly whatsit from the console: the TARDIS would not again be able to reach the moment before time began, but then, all things considered, that had to be a good thing.

He was planning to take Amy straight home – with just a small side trip to Andalusia, during the age of chivalry, where, in a small inn on the road to Seville, he had once been served the finest gazpacho he had ever tasted.

The Doctor was almost completely sure he could find it again …

‘We’ll go straight home,’ he said. ‘After lunch. And over lunch I’ll tell you the story of Maximelos and the three Ogrons.’