…Bought two Doctor Who books today…

I would have got these from WHSmiths in the shopping precinct, who always had a good stock of the latest Target Dr Who novelisations.

Chances are they would have been adventures from the Peter Davison era, who back then was my favourite Doctor*. Chances are they would therefore also have contained, on or close to the opening page, a description of the Doctor having “a pleasant, open face” and “sporting the garb of an Edwardian cricketer, topped off with a sprig of celery in the lapel”, both of which seemed to be contractually obliged to appear in all Fifth Doctor novelisations.

At the time, I was hoping to own all the Peter Davison stories. As it turned out, I didn’t complete the set until the mid-90s, when I felt obliged, after many years of apathy, to do the deed and find the missing volumes from a second-hand shop in the Silver Arcade in Leicester.

Come to think of it, I still don’t own a copy of The Five Doctors novelisation, which I remember only ever borrowing from the local library, being impressed by the silver cover, then finding the actual story incredibly dull.

The two I bought on this day in 1986, whose titles I didn’t see fit to mention, didn’t take me long. My diary says I finished them within 24 hours.

*Then as now, I disliked Colin Baker’s Doctor intensely.