Grandmother Paradox brings Chrístõ, Julia and Natalie across the river Mersey to New Brighton, on the Wirral Peninsula. Now, one reason why I set this story in the early 1970s, was that I used to go there on day trips a lot in those years, in dad’s car, through the Mersey tunnel. The lack of sand on the beach fascinated me. The bare rocks really DO look as if the sand was petrified, and it is possible to imagine all sorts of sinister reasons why it would be. It wasn’t until high school, when coastal erosion was on the geography curriculum that I really understood WHY New Brighton has no sand.

And it wasn’t until I came to write this story that I realised that New Brighton’s fate as a consequence of alterations to the tides further up the coastline serves as an analogy for the sort of alterations to causality that Time Lords guard against. And that was exactly what this story was about.

The obvious Grandfather paradox of popular culture is, of course, The Terminator, and in this instance, Terminator II. A less bloodbath style reference would have been nice, but the first of those films was very well written and portrays exactly the kind of problems time travel produces.

Writing a story that stated exactly where The Doctor’s Earth family came from, was a dangerous thing to do, of course. Setting his family tree in stone, is a bold step. There were a FEW people who wrote to say they didn’t think The Doctor’s mother would be a scouser. Well, actually, Birkenhead isn’t technically scouse. So that’s ok. Some objected to his mother being illegitimate. But that’s just nitpicking. Anyway, in my version of things, his grandmother was a girl called Diane who was more sinned against than sinning. His mother is Marion, the child born despite the efforts of the Yamelian to prevent it. And that’s that.

The Yamelian, is an anagram of the name of an annoying person who I decided would make a good villain. If anyone wants to unscramble a name from that, feel free. You probably don’t know him.

Duke Street, Birkenhead, was a gift of a setting. It has exactly the sort of housing that I wanted and that bridge at one end, leading to the docks. I found enough pictures of the area in the 1970s to be able to describe it fairly accurately. The only problem is one that anyone who actually lives or works near Duke Street would spot straight away!

Duke Street Bridge is a single bascule. That means it rises up from one side only, not like, for example, Tower Bridge, which opens in the middle. And it opens from the opposite side to that described in the story. I realised that only after it had gone online and decided to leave it because it would be complicated to change the story. Call it poetic licence.

As for the Romany camp. There isn’t one there NOW, since the whole area has been redeveloped from a working dock into an open air maritime museum, but in the 1970s when casual labour was plentiful there would have been one. The Romani words used in the conversations Chrístõ has with the people in the camp are accurate to the best of my knowledge. And Chrístõ’s respect for their way of life is something other people should try emulating. The attitude of the settled residents expressed in this story are far too prevalent.

http://www.geocities.com/soho/3698/rom.htm