You'll never guess what I heard last night. I'm sorry to burden you with this, but it's been haunting me ever since. I just have to tell somebody, get it off my chest. Now, if you're of a nervous disposition, just stop reading at this point. That's your warning, so I'm not responsible for what happens to anyone who chooses to keep going after this and can't handle it. Please, be careful if you decide to read on. I almost broke a heart.

The background to this heinous happening is as follows. I was on my way to my weekly evening class on Conversational Russian and... What? What's the look for?

Oh, Tardis translation matrix... Yes, of course it still works, but the fact of the matter is, it can't teach me to draw those pretty squiggly letters they use. And again, yes, naturally I could have taught myself, but things are just so much more fun when there's a pack of like-minded people, all together, all learning the same thing, making the same mistakes. It's great!

...Or it was.

Because last night, we were sitting outside the room at Reading Polytechnic, March 1982, waiting for the Cultural Sensitivity seminar to pack their bags (one class I do not need, thank you very much), and the question was asked, 'Why are you learning Russian?' A general question, passed around between the pack of us, the fun, lovely, wonderful pack of us, except we weren't, for there was a traitor in our midst and-

And I'm getting ahead of myself. The question was asked. All the usual answers were heard – I want to work there, I wanted to learn a language, I wanted to meet new people, I want to be able to draw the pretty squiggly letters. I never even get to see the squiggly letters for very long, you know, not before the matrix kicks in. It's added an extra challenge to the learning process. I really can't stress just how very much I was enjoying going to that class and now... Now it's ruined.

Ruined, because the question came round to one sullen student boy, who had not been among us long. His answer, ladies and gentlemen, and please remove all children, elderly and infirm persons from the room, was, "I just want to be fluent in something else, because..."

Sorry. Give me a second. It pains me to repeat it so soon and the pain so fresh.

"...Because I just hate English so much."

English! Hate! How? What? Do you understand it?, because I certainly didn't. He then proceeded to add a string, a veritable beaded necklace of insults to this initial slight, calling the language ugly, and ineloquent (!) and all manner of horrors I shall not commit to print.

Now a moment's silence, please, so that those amongst the audience who have fainted with sheer shock might be resuscitated, or brought to aid.

...

Everyone alright? Good. Then I'll continue. I'll continue with the categorical statement that I am not of this opinion. I am merely reporting it. Just in case anybody came in late and thought that was just me talking, it's not. I do not hate the English language. It baffles me how anybody could ever hate it. It is gorgeous, and elegant, chameleonic, now shimmering like a beetle's shell, now stark as icebergs in the night, turning itself without effort or strain to whatever purpose might be imagined, and allt hat stuff about Shakespeare and Tennyson and cannon to the left and right creeping out its petty pace from day to day! I speak English, you know. This is not the translation matrix, this is me, speaking fluently in a language which is not my mother tongue, because it is beautiful and must be celebrated!

Not that I hate Gallifreyan. This isn't the same thing as young Clive sitting in the hallway telling us, in English, how much he hates English, this isn't the same thing at all. I just love English, pure and simple.

Look! Look at all this talking and explaining and describing I've been able to do in English! Look upon this, Clive, and wonder!

...And then I was asked to leave Reading Polytechnic. Don't worry, though, they've let me keep the worksheets. Pretty, squiggly letters will have to get up earlier than that to escape me.

I'm sorry to have gotten so passionate about all this, but you see I can't stop thinking about it. I went and saved a race of microscopic butterfly people (commonly mistaken for fairies) from catastrophic discovery in a rural Irish garden, and I still can't stop thinking about it. It won't leave me alone. Maybe it's that one single word, that hate which bothers me so.

That's one of the things I love about English (and I do, in case you missed that bit, love it); it's the weight it can give to just one certain word.

Some of these words are very obvious. Hate, joy, war, beauty, love; loads and loads of words that mean big things and big sensations and whole-world phenomena. Tornado, earthquake, flood, cure, aid, better.

But it's the subtler ones I like best.

For instance, almost. If one were the sort of person to make sweeping generalizations about these things (I'm not, I'm subtle and clever and witty and don't say otherwise), one might almost say that almost is the most important word that there is. But I'm not saying that, because I said almost.

I am almost one thousand years old.

Bloody right it's an important word, it's delaying my thousandth birthday. Of course, after the first four hundred years or so, you stop worrying about birthdays. Arbitrary milestones, really, nothing to worry about. It's not as if I'm ageing, now, is it? ...Is it? No, of course not, don't be ridiculous. This body's hardly forty yet; I'm a mere child. No, I don't mind that I'll be the old One-Treble-Oh soon... Honestly. Really. What's the look for this time?

Ooh, I forgot one. I forgot a word which means a really big thing and can be imbued with incredible weight all at once. And that word, ladies and gentlemen, is Me.

River, wherever you are, whenever you are, I can feel you laughing. Kindly stop. Kindly refrain from making any and all jokes about 'my favourite word' and 'can't see wood for the trees' and 'me-me-me'. That's not what this is about at all, darling, and you don't know the story behind it.

Stories. That's the other thing English is really specially-super-good for

'Grumble' is a lovely word, isn't it? Grumbling isn't a nice thing to do, but it's got a nice word. That's why, not so very long ago, I was able to investigate a grumble.

It was a grumble I heard deep in the depths of the Tardis, down near the engine room. Well, I think it was, anyway. I presume there's an engine room. Must be one somewhere. I'm still not entirely sure of that because that wasn't where the sound was coming from. Anyway, I was much farther away from the comfort of the console than I generally wander. I got it into my head somehow that there was a copy of War and Peace down there in the squiggly letters, I thought it would help with my night classes.

I say, 'a copy', I mean I think he left the original manuscript here when he got me read over it. 'Bit long', I said. 'Could do with a custard-pie fight', I said. Why ask for somebody's assistance if you're not going to listen?

But I digress. In short, ladies and gentlemen, I was on the hunt. As such, I was listening to some hunting music over the speakers. And before anybody feels the need to ask, yes, The Carpenters do count as hunting music.

And then there was a grumble. Lovely word, terrible thing to hear when you're supposed to be alone with everything running smoothly. I turned down the music, listened close... And then came another grumble.

Now, as I said, this was most disconcerting. However, I was distracted by the perfect loveliness of the word 'grumble', and thus was able to investigate. See what a useful language English can be? There! Point proven! Proof positive! Perfecto.

...What was the grumbling noise? Oh, well, if you're really interested. Sorry, I only started that story so I could prove to you that English is wonderful. But if you want to know...

It was a Lourdge. You know; short, fat little creatures, covered in hair, big eyes. Grumpy Northern voices.

Yes, apparently he'd been living down there for centuries. Picked him up from his own planet round about the third century B.C. and he never got off. Just been sort of living in corners in the far reaches of the Tardis. He was grumbling because the music was too loud, then grumbling because I turned it right down and he quite likes The Carpenters.

Don't tell him I told you that. He doesn't want people to think he likes anything. I learned this very quickly from him. Once, of course, I'd gotten over the fact that I had a housemate I never knew about. That took a bit of adjustment, as you might imagine.

But I've been on my own, of late and I thought it might be nice to have a sort of built-in companion foisted upon me.

"Sorry," I said, once all these formalities were dispensed with, and I brushed off my hand to hold out to him, "I'm the Doctor."

"Yeah," he said, and presented no hand in return, "I've only been living here the better part of eight centuries."

Which, for the average Lourdge, would be about mid-life crisis time, so I tried to blame his grouchiness on that.

"And you are?"

He grumbled. I had to ask him to repeat. He repeated loudly and slowly, as if speaking to a difficult child, "Eric!"

But you know me; never say die. I ploughed on, bright and happy as I could be, "Fancy an adventure?"

"No."

"Hijinks? Mischief? Mild, harmless naughtiness, oh, go on, Eric, it'll be a laugh. We'll get chips on the way back."

"No," he said again. "You're alright." And he turned, where he stood, and began to lumber off down the corridor. My corridor, by the way, in my Tardis (there's that word 'me' cropping up in variation, pay attention). Lourdges sort of roll from foot to foot. Well, from foot-like-appendage to foot-like-appendage. Matching this slow pace, I followed.

"If you don't like chips we could get a pizza."

"I said, you're alright."

"But you haven't left the Tardis in eight hundred years! Aren't you bored?"

"I amuse myself. No cause for you to fret, Doctor."

At this point, overcome with rejection and self-pity, I may have grumbled something myself, and the something might have appertained to this being 'my house' and him being a 'guest'... Which did not go down well. I knew this, incidentally, because even his gruff, terse attempts at language suddenly stopped. His rolling took on a new speed and purpose, and I found I could follow him at my normal walking pace. "Eric, I didn't mean to make you angry. I wasn't saying you couldn't stay, just-"

But Eric was no longer listening to me. He was disappearing, actually, apparently under the wall. This, as it turned out, was something of a visual trick. There was a little air vent there, it's just his furriness clogs it up when he's wriggling in, and he disappeared through it with a sort of pop.

I crouched to look in, and found the vent cover slammed in my face. "Do you mind?" he snapped. "This is me."

A very small little hollow. Probably for maintenance at some point or another, but no longer turned to that purpose. Now, or maybe for the last eight-hundred years (I've had a housemate for eight hundred years. I wondered where the cream crackers kept vanishing to), it is Eric's home. He has been borrowing a lot of books, so far as I can see. As is typical for his race, he has made a nest of his shed fur. He was reading the manuscript of War and Peace. I didn't feel like I could ask for it, just then.

A day or two later I brought him some of the literature of his home planet. Just left it outside the vent. And some cream crackers. And a note that said he could come upstairs if he ever fancied getting out for a bit. They've disappeared out of the hall, so next time I'll leave a note asking for that book back.

Haven't seen him since. I waited for a while, like he might change his mind about adventures and hijinks and the like.

And then it struck me, that word, me. This is me. Maybe Eric's Me is a comfy nest and a good supply of crackers and a book to read. My Me is the entire universe and all of time too. Somebody else's Me is getting from day to day and trying to enjoy the ride. Another Me is a soldier and another Me is a painter and another Me is someone else and another Me is a silly boy who will learn, soon enough, that the language doesn't matter, not really. What matters is how you use it. I don't suppose that just applies to language, either.

You know, I've just had the most excellent idea...

Young Clive is not amused when I arrive at the door of his small and - here's a thing English can do; it can be polite – charmingly shabby flat, not far from the college. Think I've come to give him another lecture.

"Niet," I tell him, in my best conversation Russian for beginners. "Ya prines vam koyechto."

I hold out the old birdcage in my hand, and pull the blanket off from around it, so show him what essentially looks like a giant hamster clutching a Collected Dickens and a packet of Jacob's. "Alright, mate?" Eric says. "The big fella here says you and me'll get on."

"I'm not evicting you," I tell him, very quietly, so he'll know. Eric just nods. I think he does, anyway; I see his little nose vanish in his fur for a second, so he tips his head at least. Then, to Clive, "You won't even know he's there."

For Clive, it's a friend. For Eric, it's enough an adventure. For both of them, it's just right, just fits in when their definition of 'me'.

And me? Me, I've just remembered; Russian is the one with the angular letters that look like English in a hall of mirrors. Blech. I'm off down the Poly, see if it's too late to change over to an Arabic course.

Here's another word. This one is the kind which is lovely, like grumble, but this time the meaning is sad; to Eric and Clive and to you, ladies and gentlemen, cheerio.

[Since I've been invited to write for the Tumblcon fundraiser, I thought I'd better see if I can still do it. I am officially back on the Eleventh Horse. Still a bit shaky for now but, well, when did that ever stop him? - Dedicated to the ever lovely Avarice, without whom probably *none* of this would ever have happened. You left me one of my first reviews, hon, and I've never forgotten it.]