Doctors, doctors and Doctors

Having thought of nothing but elections for days, if not weeks, I was out all yesterday at a Doctor Who convention near Marylebone (you know, where everyone staggers out, dying of Silurian plague). Fun day, but I was a little out of it, at the crossover between my three main states of being: Doctor Who; politics; poor health. And lots of the gayery, obviously (it was a Who con).

Politics

OK, not a huge amount, but I met a fish person who’s a Labour activist, discussed the BNP with a Toclafane’s minder and jotted down the main election bullet points for a Doctor Who author who’d been working hard and missed the news. The main impact it had on my day was down to having been on edge and had very little sleep for the past few days – typical election time symptoms – and when I’m very short of sleep, I either get grumpy or I lose my inhibitions. So… I wasn’t grumpy. But more on that story later; I suspect everyone knows I’m a gayer (getting everything signed to “Richard and Alex” is even more of a giveaway than telling inappropriate men they’re pretty), but, er, this’ll be the day when most people will assume I was drunk. Hey ho. Just a bottle of still lemonade and I’m a sabre-toothed tart, apparently.

Health

Oh, more zonked even than usual, and having a lot of pain walking by the end of the day. Haze of pain on tubes home. That and sitting next to woman standing on DLR with really impressive ‘don’t look at me’ radiation. You know the sort of thing; when my keyring used to mutter “This is the voice of the Mysterons” at awkward moments, I’d stare into space as if it was nothing to do with me. Well, this smartly dressed woman in a very vivid blue coat stood looking firmly into the middle distance as if everyone was completely unaware she was carrying two overstuffed bin bags floating in mid-air. Striking. Anyway, my lovely Richard came and picked me up from the station so I didn’t need to hobble the last stretch home. How can I thank him?

By telling the story to his visit to the doctor, of course. I went to the doctor’s a couple of weeks ago, very unusually, not for me – but to hold Richard’s hand. I’m always ill and go to different doctors all the time; Richard’s health is as hardy as mine is rubbish, so he really isn’t used to it. And we had a fabulous time. A doctor I’d not seen before, either, just the one who was available for booking first thing in the morning so Richard could get off to work, and she was a little unexpected. She was, ah, almost aggressive to Richard over leaving things and not coming to a doctor when he was in pain, while I sat in the corner nodding and feeling like a frumpy embarrassing wife from a Carry On. Most importantly, though, the doctor looked like former Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel. Same rangy frame, same not-quite-shoulder-length dark hair, same cheekbones and an uncanny facial resemblance. Really, all that set her apart was that she lacked the sticky-on beard. I found this hugely distracting, and was constantly having neither to stare nor to laugh. Fortunately, she only bothered to ask who I was after about five minutes – wouldn’t it be the first thing you did, if some strange person came in with your patient? – so I had time to compose myself. Richard and I giggled rather too much in the car home, and I nearly make him swerve when I suggested that I should have said, ‘Actually, doctor, he can’t see me – I’m just a figment of your imagination’.

I shouldn’t tease Richard, though; even though I go to the doctor all the time, I have such a drearily familiar catalogue to go through that I can get a bit embarrassed, too, if I have to bring up something extra. So, after a couple of months where more and more I’ve been hobbling, with my left big toe becoming increasingly painful to walk on and making alarming cracking noises, I finally decided it wasn’t going to go away. Look, I broke a different toe last year, all right, and I can tell that this one’s not dark purple and twice its normal size, so I hoped it’d get better on its own. What did the nice doctor say? Might be a slight fracture. Or rheumatism. Or arthritis. Or gout. Pass me the port and the pension book! Cue entertainment hobbling to hospital for an X-Ray, where the doctor called for an “Alexandra Wilcox”. “That’s roughly like it,” I said. Maybe just a little sourly. Carrying on with the Carry On theme, I was asked to hold my foot at an angle for the machine, which left me wobbling unsteadily and thinking of Frankie Howerd falling off the couch as the X-Ray machine blew up. I managed to stay on. Anyway, after a more than uncomfortable day of standing up yesterday, I get the results this week, and maybe I’ll find out what I can do to make walking easier…

But you probably want to read more Doctor Who stuff, don’t you?

Utopia

Well, this was Utopia, the first full-day (rather than half-day) convention from Fantom Films, a very nice bunch who’re doing a lot at the moment – small conventions, great guests, very friendly, organisers Dexter and Paul both very decorative welcoming, and a mercifully low price. This one wasn’t quite as well-run as they’ve been before; a full day, more guests and more attendees all made the queuing a bit hellish. Normally I get to sit in the theatre and see most of their interview panels, perhaps even ask a question from the floor (I harried people a bit at their Curse of Fenric one a few months back – which reminds me, I’m typing while watching the nerve-wracking European Elections coverage, and at that one a very charismatic Polish actor recounted how there’s even more censorship now in Poland than under the communists: “We are not a democracy. We’re a Catholic Church theocracy,” he said then, when I mentioned who the British Conservatives were bunking up with, “I hope they die a lingering and painful death”), but the autograph queues were so long and so chaotic yesterday that I got to see about one and a half of the interviews, spending all the rest of the time standing.

Special points for the queue snaking up the spiral staircase and staying absolutely motionless for half-hours at an end – the upstairs studio rapidly became absolutely full in the morning, with six different queues that absolutely no-one could distinguish and almost no ventilation. Among my many rather undiplomatic slips was, on getting to the front of a queue to meet an actor at his first convention, telling him it was a baptism of fire, “or, rather, a baptism of sweat”. Way to encourage people, me. That and brightly chipping in to another first-timer amazed by the number and enthusiasm of people queuing for them, “You’ve got stalkers for life, now!” I will praise the organisers, though, for realising the morning was a nightmare and bringing some of the guests downstairs after midday, which meant the queuing from then on was much more bearable.

Despite all that, I enjoyed it, basically because most of the people were lovely – on both sides of the table. Meeting friends who I’ve not seen for ages, meeting actors or writers I admire, getting to chat to lots of them – despite the leg, it was fun. The gorgeous and wonderful Anneke Wills has just launched the second part of her autobiography and read a CD of the first book I ever read, and she’s a huge pleasure to talk to. Tracey Childs looks stunning and had real star quality, though it’s possible I may have made another slight faux pas… The woman in front of me in the queue for Tracey offered to hold my place for a different actor who didn’t have a queue for the moment, and I had such an entertaining conversation with him that, er, I missed that place in the queue anyway. So when I’d queued again for Tracey, she knew who I was, as I’d apparently been pointed out chin-wagging obliviously when the woman who’d been in front of me got to meet her. Tracey didn’t object, though; she approves of people who stop for a chat, and finds those who stand in front and say “Just a signature!” then go rather offputting. “Like sex without kissing,” I suggested. Cue raised eyebrow from Tracey (“Too much information, perhaps?”) and face in hands from her minder. Well, it’s true, isn’t it?

A really impressive set of guests for The Sarah Jane Adventures, this time – Sarah’s ‘mum and dad’, Christopher Pizzey and Rosanna Lavelle, were both lovely (and Christopher quite cute, certainly better-looking than he comes across in his Burger King ads), composer Sam Watts was rather nice, and though I missed Julie Cowan (Maria’s mum), she did pass me in the foyer; blimey, she’s tiny! Writer Joe Lidster was there, too, and I’ve vaguely known him for years, so it was a pleasure to have several chats through the day (and maybe scare him by mentioning a mutual friend who thinks he’s very pretty). I did tell one guest he was pretty on my own behalf; Planet of the Dead’s David Ames scrubs up very nicely, I have to say, and was great to everyone he was signing for – I was, though, the only one who expressed relief that he wasn’t a Tory MP, being almost certainly nicer (a backhanded compliment) and much prettier. Well, he didn’t complain.

As well as Joe, writers Toby Whithouse (creator of Being Human) and James Moran were very engaging – I told the latter he’d written my favourite story of last year, though I refrained from saying what I thought of his Torchwood, and we discussed his torrid affair with my friend and other author Simon Guerrier. At the other end of time, some engaging guests from William Hartnell’s era – as well as Anneke, Peter Purves, who’s still awesome, director Richard Martin (goggling at signing a Dalek), brilliant Doctor Who and Avengers guest star Jeremy Young, the series’ very first villain. The Daleks and Davros were no-shows, though, in the forms of Nick Briggs and Rory Jennings, but the fish person who was reported to have slipped through the net turned up in the end, the organisers having fortunately kept a plaice for her. And, of course, all those at the Big Finish table were delightful, particularly Lisa Bowerman – Bernice Summerfield herself, soon to star alongside David Tennant in a Doctor Who cartoon, who now recognises me (having shared my lack of enthusiasm for a recent con in Manchester with the world’s most horrible loos) and signed two recent releases for me. The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel and The Mahogany Murderers are both set in Victorian times, one a brilliantly New Adventures-flavoured Bernice Summerfield adventure guest-starring David Warner, the other a Doctor Who spin-off blissfully reuniting The Talons of Weng-Chiang’s Henry Gordon Jago and Professor Litefoot, both stories rather fabulous.

I’m spending less and less time typing and more and more glued to the election results, but four fellow queuers spring to mind: the dyed blond who I had to keep staring at because he looked so remarkably like a friend from Wales who often comes to these things; the friendly gay guy who I did a lot of queuing with last time; the father who shamelessly marshalled his three kids to different queues so he could cut his queuing time by three; and, of course, a friend of mine who’s a very talented actor, writer and at these events interviewer – one of the conventions I never got round to writing up last year involved his memorably exclaiming “Brotheltastic!” during an on-stage interview, and Sophie Aldred flashing me – and who’s just grown a full reddish beard, which he invited comment on. ‘It suits you,’ I might usually say to a straight friend, but yesterday I may have stroked it, stood back, looked him up and down, told him he looked older (not in any way a bad thing), then suggested that he list in his Spotlight profile that he can now do either “young and hot” or “gruff and raunchy”. Cough. At least the nice man whose chest hair I ruffled was definitely gay, as was the one I kissed, so they were less potentially embarrassing…