the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

The Ides of March

There I was, pottering in the garden doing my Winter chores one afternoon. As I stepped back to admire my handiwork a familiar sound echoed around me. A sound that anyone who has seen a certain sci-fi show will know all too well and, sure enough a Police box materialised onto my deck. A good job I had recently replaced those rotten boards, I thought. It would be a bugger of a job to have got him back to the perpendicular, although maybe he could just dematerialise whilst on the tilt. One of those imponderables, like Daleks and stairs.

The police box door opened, and an arm appeared, beckoning me in. We had not parted on the best of terms last time, well the only time, we had met, so I was a little unsure of my ground, but there are times when you do things without thinking it through, and in I went. There was still a sense of wonder at the inside being so much more spacious that it should have been, and the light was very bright after the British Winter gloom in my garden.

The Doctor was not the same as the one I’d met before, but I was aware of the regular changes of form. This one was large, Caucasian and male, and was busy operating various controls. He hushed me as I went to speak, and motioned me towards a seat, and then, having finished what he was doing, approached me.

“I need your help, much as it pains me to take it” he said, “I’ll explain in a moment, but first, a drink. Beer, do you?” I nodded assent. As he opened two bottles of beer, he told me not to worry about my wife, for he could drop me back into my garden to the second and she would not have noticed my absence. I wasn’t sure about that one; he didn’t know the Berkshire Belle, but there wasn’t much that I could do about that now.

“It’s the Daleks again, and you did rather confound them last time. Twenty-two years ago, wasn’t it?” He moved around the console to get nearer to me, and tripped, his bottle of beer flying from his hand a hitting the control panel out of reach of either of us. Sparking noises and puffs of smoke erupted and the equipment stopped with a graunching noise. I kept quiet, for there was nothing that I could do but let him fiddle with his beloved machine.

Eventually he told me that we were somewhere, possibly the correct location, but possibly not the right date. “We’re a little North of Oxford in the UK, and it’s 54BC. Julius Caesar is part way through his second invasion, he’s heading for The Wash, and we have a force of Daleks on the loose over near Cambridge. I want to keep them apart. Now listen carefully, for this is important. You have met Caesar before, and he trusts you.”

“I don’t know Caesar! What are you talking about?” I interrupted.

“Be quiet and listen. It is one of the aspects of time travel that time is not entirely linear. I don’t expect you to understand that, but you are going to meet Caesar again in your future, but in the past as far as today is concerned, so your meeting him has already occurred for him, if not yet for you. So, you are going to meet him and talk him out of something. Assuming that I can fix this mess.” He indicated the control panel.

I had learned that I should just accept some of these things and just go with the flow, but I felt that I needed to know what had happened in this previous meeting with JC, and why he apparently trusted my word. This was not the moment to ask though. Instead I asked if I could go outside, for the view on the monitors showed that we were in what looked like open countryside. He said that I could, but to stay close, and to come back inside if I saw anyone.

On my return I found the Doctor agitated; “Where the hell have you been?” he roared, “You’ve been gone for six hours!”

I asked if he had fixed the TARDIS. He said that he was almost done, and should soon be able to make the final move to Caesar’s camp.

“Don’t bother” I told him, “It’s just over the hill there, and that’s where I’ve been. Your problem is solved, he’s going back the way he came to Kent and will pick up some tributes on the way. I told him that there was a hostile tribe called the Ides on the route he had planned, and that he would be outnumbered.”

“The Ides? That’s also the 15^th of the month. Surely you didn’t tell him to beware the Ides?”

“Er, sort of. You see the idea came to me from that saying and knowing that March is a town roughly on the route that he was planning to take, as well as him trusting me like you said that he would, it just seemed like a plan. I didn’t actually tell him to beware the Ides of March, just suggested that it would be a good idea not to go that way. And the a messenger came to tell him that some of his ships had been damaged in a storm, so he’s struck camp and is on his way back the way he came. So there, aren’t you glad you brought me along?”

“Beware the Ides of March!” He shook his head, “Let’s get you home.”