13th Doctor

My idea for who (Who?) should be the next Doctor...

Paul McGann.

Yes, yes. I know. It should go to a person of another race/colour/sexual preference/etc. I agree the world needs to change in it's attitudes, but personally I like Doctor Who the way it is. Now, back to Paul McGann. Go on. Give him his chance. He would be brilliant! He has demonstrated as much in The Night Of The Doctor and many, many Big Finish productions he has done. He has been hard done by. He is the best Doctor there never was... or almost was... or something.

But how can the 8th Doctor be the 13th Doctor?

I have ideas around that too. There are a number of occurrences that give precedence to a Timelord regenerating into whoever the Timelord wants:

• In War Games, the 2nd Doctor was allowed to choose the 3rd Doctor's face.
• In Destiny Of The Daleks, Romana tried on a number of appearances before settling on her regeneration.
• In The Night Of The Doctor, the 8th Doctor drinks a potion to regenerate into a warrior.
• In The Day Of The Doctor, The Curator (Tom Baker) implies he is the Doctor revisiting an old face. 
• In The Girl Who Died, it is revealed that the 12th Doctor chose the face of someone he previously saved, to remind him to save people.

That gives me 3 (yes, THREE) ideas of ways the Doctor could be Paul McGann in his next regeneration:

1. He simply chooses to regenerate into the form of the 8th Doctor again. Revisit the face, as it were.
2. The regeneration process goes screwy because it has been interfered with in the past. It goes back to when it was first interfered with and resets the regeneration back to that point. The Doctor who drank the potion to choose his regeneration was the 8th Doctor.
3. My favourite, as it could last a whole episode and has lots of nice fanboy geek moments. The regeneration process goes very screwy and he starts regenerating backwards. The 12th Doctor regenerates into the 11th Doctor. Oooo. Hello Matt Smith! The process is dangerous and so keeps nearly killing him, causing him to regenerate again. So before the 11th Doctor has worked out what is going on, he regenerates again into the 10th. Mr Tennant, I presume. And so on. It could get progressively worse and so the 9th and War Doctors could be done pretty quickly, requiring no intervention from the actors. Although if they could get Christopher Eccleston... FANTASTIC! John Hurt, as the War Doctor, not so much. So either the 10th or 9th (depending on the actor) would need to hit upon the solution and put it into effect. It would take place a regeneration or two down the line and.... BOOM... it settles when the Doctor reaches the 8th. Off we go with Paul McGann as the next doctor.

Of course, it won't be Paul McGann. You can never go back. But it would be cool.

Why Are There No Fucking Signs Anywhere?!

Hello. I haven't blogged in a fucking loooooong time. Not had anything to say in a public forum. This started out as a Facebook post that seemed a little long, so I made it into a blog instead. And then it grew from there. 

Still with me? 

Good. 

It's about running. 

Still there?

Then I shall begin. 

I'll start with a bit of backstory.  I used to run on and off, quite a bit. Then clicky knees; a son and, most significantly, laziness got in the way. A couple of years passed and I didn't really run for anything except the normal everyday things like buses and when your son shouts "One, two, three... GOOOOOOO!", whilst you are pushing him in his pushchair. Then, one day, I decided I wanted to give running a go again. But I needed an in. An edge. I find motivation a difficult thing to maintain, without some gimmick to keep me interested. Then an email went around at work. It was to invite people to take part in a "Bitesize Marathon". Basically, in the month of September, you had to run the equivalent distance of a marathon (26.2 miles) in as many runs as it took you to get to the cumulative total. So if you ran 2.62 miles for every run, you would have to go for 10 runs in that one month period.  You also got sponsorship for the said endeavour and the proceeds went to the British Heart Foundation. That was my in. I quite keenly got involved and managed to run 42.51 miles, in the month of September. I was running 3 times a week and I was enjoying it. I also got extra motivation by my cousin Dan offering to sponsor me £20, plus an extra pound for every mile I did beyond the 26.2 mile goal. That extra £16 was hard earned, but worth every step. Once the month was over, I needed an in to keep me interested. I decided to just continue as I was. Every month, I would run 26.2 miles. I would only run twice a week though (Wednesday and Friday... I'm a creature of habit... without routine, I also lose motivation). 3 times a week would burn me out pretty quickly. I found it was rather doable by running my optimum distance of 3-4 miles. We are now in January and I ran 30.25 miles in October; 26.91 miles in November and 27.66 miles in December. Four months and I was still interested. Great! We are now on month 5 and I show no signs of stopping. I've just ordered some new running shoes and, after a lot of research, I got a Garmin Vivosmart HR+ watch for Christmas. It's brilliant! It shows my running time; distance; heart rate; steps and all sorts of other bits. Including telling the time! It also has GPS built in and so it maps my runs out for me. Very handy if I decided to change my route, or go less/more distance. To be clear, it isn't a Sat Nav. It doesn't tell me where to go. It just tells me where I have been, when I sync it to my phone, after the event. As I said, I'm all about those 2 runs a week and hitting that arbitrary goal of 26.2 miles a month. I need to know my distance ran. I also like to monitor my minutes per mile. Historically, I've always ran a rubbish 9:30/10 minute miles. Consistently running for four months has got me to sub 8:30 minute miles and I'd like to maintain that average.

Today I went for a run that ended up a little different than planned. Not exciting different. If you're hoping for wild adventures; car chases; kissing girls and light-sabres, you'd better stop reading now. You will be disappointed. Although, if you got through the backstory, you are pretty oblivious to disappointment. It was my first run at work with my new watch (I did a couple at home over Christmas). I'm not overly familiar with the area I work in (even though I've worked there for 8 and a half years!), beyond knowing the best routes to my office from the motorway and the location of the shops. My familiarity has grown over the past 4 months, as I have used my Wednesday dinner to go for a run and explore the area. My routine is to plan a route on Map My Run and then follow it, as best I can. The past few weeks I have settled into a run, that I can tweak slightly, depending on whether I want to run 3 or 4 miles. Today I had a top goal of running 4 miles, with an option to drop it to less (I'm full of a cold), but decided to modify the run slightly.

This is my usual 4 mile run (I know the pictures hang out of the frames, but it means you can see what is going on):

This is the tweak I made. It's simpler. Run further up the A5145 and turn right, at about 1.25 miles (my watch shows how far I have currently run), to make it one long run through Heaton (GRRRR.... we'll come back to that) Moor. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Could it?

I passed a mile and kept an eye on my watch. 1.25 miles passed. I didn't turn. I didn't see the turn. I was expecting a major junction. I don't like turning around when running. That's no fun. Finding the way yourself is fun. Kind of. Sometimes. I blindly ran on, in the hope some right turn would leap out at me, as the best way to go. Nothing did. My watch signalled I had run 2 miles. In a fairly straight line from work. I only wanted to run a maximum of 4 miles. Shit!

So I just turned around.

Nope!

That is what I should have done, but I don't like turning around. I took a random right turn. I was in very uncharted territory now. I was further afield than I had been on any of my previous runs and was just running in what I hoped was vaguely the right direction to take me round back towards work. Unfortunately my blind right-turn had taken me onto a housing estate and I got turned around pretty quickly. Unwilling to give up, I ploughed on, in the hope something would look familiar, or a sign would point me towards somewhere familiar. My watch signalled 3 miles. I started to worry. Shops and things started indicating I was in, or near, Burnage. Where the fuck is Burnage in relation to work?! All I know of Burnage is that it is where the Gallagher brothers are from, so was probably a bit dodge. That meant I was definitely going to die!

So I turned around.

NOPE!

I ran on in the hope of seeing a sign for Heaton Moor or the A6. From my previous runs, I can easily find my way from either of those two places. 2 things became apparent. Every fucking place in the area is called Heaton something! And there are no fucking road signs on any of the roundabouts or junctions in that area! I saw a sign that said "Welcome to Stockport" (or something like that) down a right-hand turn and figured that was a good turning to take. Burnage seemed straight on, and sounded very wrong. I work in Stockport. You don't need to be an expert in navigation to realise it was my best call to head towards the sign welcoming me to Stockport. My watch indicated 4 miles (my maximum target distance). I still had no clue where I was, but hoped I was heading in the right direction now. I reached a junction. No road signs. I think it was then I shouted, "Why are there no fucking signs anywhere?!". I continued straight on and reached another junction.

A sign.

A FUCKING SIGN!

Stretford was right. Stockport was left. I turned left. Again, no expert navigation required there. The normal people amongst you will be thinking, "Were the streets deserted? Why not just ask for directions?" Hello?! There were loads of people, but do you not know me at all?! 

I. Don't. Do. Social. Interaction.

Especially with strangers!

If my only option is asking a stranger for directions, I will blindly run until I reach the coast, then (AND ONLY THEN) turn around and run the other way, like Forrest Gump, if it means I don't have to have a conversation with another human being!

I reached another junction. And you guessed it...No fucking signage. I turned right, it felt wrong, but I thought I could see a sign a couple of hundred yards ahead. I can't remember what the sign said, but it was useless as far as I was concerned. I instinctively turned around and ran the other way. That doesn't count! I had just run up the road a few hundreds yards, with the intention of running back after I checked the sign. I thought this an excellent piece of navigational instinct. Little did I know it was something different. But what was it? I carried on and 2 things happened. One: I clocked up 5 bastard miles and still didn't know how much further I had to go. Two: I crested a hill and saw the Stockport viaduct AND my office building on the horizon! Out of nowhere, there they were! I carried on heading towards them and then I realised something. Turns out that something different to excellent navigational instinct was something I believe scientists call "memory". I was back on the bloody bastard road that I'd started on when I'd originally missed my twatting turning! I suddenly knew how to get back and it was less than a mile. It was also the bit of road I originally shunned turning around on, because I don't like turning around. I was now running back along it, as if I'd turned around. Except I'd run 4 fucking miles in the process! Yeah, yeah. Fuck off! As I approached work I looked at my watch. I'd done 5.8 miles. In 50ish minutes. I. Was. Knackered!

But, you know what?

5.8 miles...

That's nearly 6 miles.

And 6 miles is nearly 6.2 miles...

Which is 10K!

I. Ran. Past. Work...

...to the park next to the office and ran a lap around the field. I ran back to the office to clock up a total distance of 6.21 miles! It took me 53 minutes and 48 seconds. A time I am extremely happy with. I got back in the office and drank 2 pints of water; had a shower and inhaled my butty and cup-a-soup. I hadn't even eaten! Here is the route I ran. All in all, it's not terrible. I instinctively/through pure luck ran a fairly consistent circle... on the end of my running up and down the same road. That thing I went out of my way to avoid doing.