A plethora of Who-related goodness

Happy St. Stephen’s Day! A review of ‘The Snowman’ will come when we actually get round to watching ‘The Snowman’, which was something I’d intended to do yesterday, but sometimes (and it’s a long story) peace and goodwill come first.

Anyway, Christmas gift-giving in our house almost always involves Doctor Who – Emily knows that’s always a safe bet as far as I’m concerned, and we now have not one but two children who are latching on to my obsession. Our town has its fair share of charity shops (actually I think it has our share and that of a few neighbouring market towns as well) and there’s always stuff turning up, and given that we splashed out on a new TV and PC back in October, we agreed that gift-buying for each other would, wherever possible, be restricted to car boot sales and thrift stores.

Amazon is cheap, and the online book clubs are filled with stuff for the boys, at a fraction of street price, and so we did pretty well.

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The encyclopaedia was for Josh; the others were for Thomas. The sonic screwdriver set at the back was mine, but I suspect I will be sharing it with the boys. The Amy Pond figure was sold at the bargain price of £2, BOXED AND UNOPENED, which almost never happens in the likes of Cancer Research (although when it does, of course, I invariably blog about it). The Cybermen Etch-a-Sketch at the front is rubbish, but I could never get the hang of the things anyway.

The braces are part of a wider thing. Thomas has been asking for the last few weeks if he could have a red bow tie – which led to much upset at a grotto a few weeks back, an event I wroted about at Things My Children Said. When it came to Christmas morning we were finally able to oblige, and his face lit up when he opened his stocking yesterday. Of course, things are never that simple – Thomas also wanted a fez, because “fezzes are cool“, but it wasn’t until the Ebay parcel had already been dispatched that we discovered that what he meant by a fez was actually a stetson, and that he’d got his hats mixed up. You can hardly blame the kid – the Doctor wears two different headpieces in almost as many episodes, and we watched them more or less back to back. It’s no wonder he got confused.

The nearest we could manage in the time that was actually going to fit him was a straw hat, which looks about the right shape. This led, of course, to cries of “IT’S NOT THE RIGHT ONE!” when he opened the box, which – from any other child – would sound bratty, but with Thomas being the way he is we’ve sort of learned that it had genuinely upset him. It took fifteen minutes and a lot of Googling to show him that actually a straw hat would probably work on the Doctor, and when he emerged from the study later that morning wearing it round his neck, I wanted to punch the air. Sometimes he surprises all of us.

In any event, Thomas now has two hats and we have a collection of bow ties and he was quite amused when I did this.

And now I hear my family calling. Toodle-pip.

 

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