Sukie’s Birthday Treat takes place at a fictional cart track in Kent. Anyone who knows anything about the sport, however, will probably realise that “Woodside Karting of Rochester, where two of the most famous Formula One winners of this era learned to be champions before they were old enough to hold a driving licence…” is loosely based on Buckmore Park race track, where both Jensen Button and Lewis Hamilton got into racing at an early age. It was looking at Buckmore on Google Earth that led to a clearing in the nearby woods that was perfect for a cloaked alien ship and Buckmore Park Scout Camp, which at the time when the Google Earth photos were taken was closed down. Concrete rails had been placed in front of the driveway to prevent anyone getting in. A further Google search showed that the place had been in administration for some time, and recently re-opened as a going concern again. But the look of the place when it was closed was almost sinister and led me to think of ways a complex of buildings like that might be misused. I called the refugee centre Parkside and it goes without saying it bears no resemblance to Buckmore Park,

The idea of giving failed child asylum seekers to aliens is not entirely original. It was the first idea the government came up with to satisfy the 456 in Torchwood: Children of Earth. Nobody in that series considered asylum seekers to be of any significance, and that is a tragedy. Having Simon Rowe, owner of the fictional cart track, express his disgust at the social injustice covers my own thoughts on the matter.

Rowe was not meant to have such a major part in the story. He was not meant to find out about Sukie and Davie only being part Human. I always planned for Davie to get the boy out of the hospital, though. In the first draft he takes a taxi back to the TARDIS. But I realised that Rowe was a perfect ally in this adventure, and possibly the future, too. Sukie’s trip to the hospital puts me in mind to have a story in which Davie has an accident on the race track and he needs a Human ally to prevent his alien anatomy from being discovered. It’s still a vague idea, yet. But watch this space.

http://www.buckmore.co.uk/
http://www.buckmorepark.org.uk/