The 26th of March 2005 was a confluence of a number of events. Easter Eve, the last day before the clocks whent forward, and the day, after fifteen years away from our screens, Doctor Who returned.

Let me say as a prelude, Doctor Who has been at the absolute core of my special interests and my personality since I discovered it as a six-year-old in 1990 or 91. I was just a year late to see any on broadcast. When news broke of its return in 2003, I had just arrived at university, and the show’s reputation had fallen so far I didn’t know who I could tell of my excitement without seeming like an anorak, which was still a thing back then. This was before geeks and nerds became cool, and long before they became uncool again in the age of entitlement.

Fast forward to 2005. I was in my second year of university, and was back at my parents’ house for the Easter holidays. I was working as a relief verger at Durham Cathedral. Vergers are the people in cathedrals and high churches who aren’t clergy but aren’t stewards. They do a bit of everything else: cleaning and tidying, lighting candles, ringing bells, washing up after communion, a bit of security, a bit of customer service, and the best bit: wearing a cassock and walking into the service ahead of the bishop, or whoever, at the beginning of the ceremony, and guiding them to their proper place. This, while holding a silver stick, called a verge, with a bird on the end, which I think were historically for hitting people who stood in the way. As a relief verger, I only got hours of work during the cathedral’s busiest days, usually around Easter and Christmas, which handily coincided with my vacations.

I think 2004 or 2005 was the time I really started taking Lent seriously. Perhaps even too seriously. My abstention from puddings and meats and booze and hot-cross buns and comedies and web-comics and sugar and so forth made me an inconvenient guest, and probably impacted other people more than they impacted me, which isn’t really the intention of Lent fasting. I was thus greatly conflicted when I learned Doctor Who, my beloved, was returning to our screens on March the 26th, Easter Eve. The thing I had yearned for, and which had seemed for so long an impossibility, was going to arrive in Lent, and on a day I was highly likely to be requested for work.

I steeled myself. I resolved that I would request no days off. Pleasures could wait! If Jeffrey, the head verger, wanted me for Easter Eve I would work it, and watch Doctor Who on Easter day after church. Listener, Jeffrey wanted me indeed! There was to be a late service that afternoon, and an early one the following day, so there was a lot to be arranged. Decor to be changed. an altar to be moved, lots more seating to be put out, hours of work, from 4 or 5 right up to 11 at night. Good, I thought. I shall work in a cathedral while abnegating my pleasure. How deliciously Lenten. I’m not certain it focussed my mind on God, but it ticked my box for petty suffering, and that’s good enough, I think. Curiously, work paused around 6.45, and Jeffrey brought out some beers - or at least that’s how I remember it - to hearten us for the remainder of the evening. We drank those at 7, just as, elsewhere in the nation, Doctor Who was starting. The timing was probably a coincidence, but I appreciated the brief pause. Then we got back to work. The work of a verger varies considerably between hard work with heavy lifting, and standing around in a cassock doing nothing, and March the 26th was very much the former.

11pm, and our work was done. The great big locks were locked. Lent was as good as over. I had only to await the sunrise. I walked home, which was not far, but I did not sleep. Did I watch television’s Doctor Who, which my parents had videotaped for me? Listener, I did not! Because I had work late on Easter Eve, and I had work early on Easter Sunday! The following day there was a crack-of-dawn service at 5.30. I had to be back at the cathedral an hour beforehand to prepare. If you’ve done the math, you’ll see I had five and a half hours between my shifts. I’ve you’ve done the calendars, you’ll know the clocks went forward that weekend. I had only four and a half hours from one shift to the other.

So obviously my course was clear. Twenty-five minutes walk each way, that meant I had exactly enough time to go home, watch Ben-Hur: a Tale of the Christ, and three hours forty later head out for work again. The timing was perfect. Church and work then Ben-Hur, with the unjust tragedy of the crucifixion of Jesus as its climax, and then straight back to work at the church, including a great service of celebration. There was no more Lenten and Eastery way a person could ever hope to pass a day and a night.

Well, I hadn’t slept at all, so I wasn’t a whole lot of use at the morning shift. Thankfully much of it was a standing-in-a-cassock o’clock, so I needed only to fight sleep. When eight thirty or nine came, my shift was through, and I sloped off down the bailey and home. I grabbed a mug of milk, and the easter egg that had been left for me, and went to the television, where a fresh videotape of Doctor Who: Rose awaited me. I plopped it in the VCR, and took a bite of egg. Chocolate is strange and barely welcome after 40 days away from it, but I needed the boost. The BBC announcer said ‘and now, the long-awaited return of Doctor Who’, and the opening titles began, but I had to pause, and have a little cry, that it was long-awaited, but it was here and it was real. And then I rewound a few seconds, heard the introduction and delighted in the adventure. And then I went aloft on that bright, warm Easter morning, and slept