There is a well-known controversy surrounding, in a very narrow way, the question of who invented the telephone. Now, obviously, what with you all being human and wonderful learning creatures with the ability to archive and compile failures until they become sudden and perfect successes, it was something a cumulative effort. It starts, for instance, with the first bright spark to tie two paper cups together with string, rattles its way on along through electricity and telegraph and other related technologies and all their inventors. It is only after a long lot of messing about and haphazard, slap-dash attempts that Elisha Grey and Alex Bell got to lock horns over it.

It has never occurred me until just now that I could go back and settle all that. Have a look, see who got to the patent office first, so on, so forth. Settle that. Put the whole thing to rest. Know which one to take back with me and strand on some hellish salt-mining moon where the first taste of the air peels your lips off like sticky tape.

I don't like telephones. Not even my own. Especially not my own, and certainly not when it's ringing when all I want is a cup of tea. Every time, I end up having the same conversation with myself. I should answer it. But then it might not be important and the person on the other end will still expect me to get involved and spend time and effort on it, because I answered the phone. And if don't answer it, and it is important, they'll call back anyway. But then again if it's really super-mega-life-or-death important, they might not be able to call me back, or anybody back, ever, and that would be horrible, only I probably wouldn't know, but that's not the point, but what you don't know can't-

By which point the telephone has stopped ringing like the good little thing it is, and I'm off to make a cup of tea. Wonderful things, telephones. Connecting an entire planet, all the thousands of disparate cultures, all that intraversible space traversed.

Intraversible-as-yet , I should say. You're a bright bunch, you'll get there. That's nice, that makes me smile, almost out of the console room, when it rings again.

What did we say about if they rang back? That it's important but there's no immediate physical danger, so I could probably go and make my tea and then dial 1471 and everything would be oh to hell with it…

"Hello?"

"You." A low, vicious growl. One of those calls I shouldn't have answered. Typical, just typical.

"Sorry, who is this?"

"I've just had my daughter on the phone in tears because of your complete and utter uselessness and I want you back here, because I have scissors, and if she won't divorce you I'll do it for her and-" Pond, apparently. Doesn't sound like Pond. Sounds like some really angry evil Pond twin. She's been going on, by the way, while I formulate that thought and live with the image of it and wish I'd never thought of it. "-mess up one of the big ones, it will not be my scissors that are waiting for you, it'll be a hammer, because that seems to be the only way I'm ever going to get anything through your thick skull!" A pause, while she takes several deep, Mummy Bear breaths. "Hello?"

"Hello."

"I swear to God, if you lecture me on manners right now…"

"Wouldn't dream of it. Thanks for slowing down, though, much obliged."

"You are running dangerously close to missing your own wedding anniversary."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration, it's not until New Year's Eve!" Well, no. Technically it's no time at all, having never really technically officially happened in a time line that still exists. And technically it's all the time, having happened in a time in which all things were at once and existence was total, but that was turning out a bit time-consuming, and a bit costly in terms of presents, so we settled for New Year's Eve. Which is, as I tell Pond, still two days away.

"No it's not, it's in about two minutes, and she says you haven't even called to say you're coming or not."

She's clearly wrong. Nonetheless, constantly placating her even in her absence, I check the monitor.

"Ah…"

"'Ah'?" she echoes dully, "What's 'Ah', what does 'Ah' mean?"

"Just a general exclamation, really, usually kept in the lower rangers, below the more explosive 'Oh'…" She tells me not to be smart and I explain that, somewhere in the depths of last night I decided to go and commiserate Pluto on no longer being a planet.

"And what difference does that make?"

"You know how when you go, say, to America, the time changes, to keep everything right."

"Yeah."

"Well, when you fly between planets with longer or shorter days, you lose or gain in a similar fashion. Hence I'm showing the 29th and you're showing-"

"Just gone the 31st."

"Call her back, tell her I'm on my way."

Hang up, off to get dressed, and try and count how many we've had by now, and find out what the present for that is, and figure out something to do because, with all of time and space at one's feet, the wife gets high expectations, don't you know…

Again, I get as far as the doorway.

And the phone rings.

This time, I don't even think about it. Ninety-nine-point-extra percent likely to be River, wondering who I've been on the phone with the last five minutes, where the hell I am, and I can comfort her myself. I'll explain about Pluto, she'll understand…

Actually, scratch that; I'll probably leave out the part about me nearly missing our anniversary because I forgot to change my clocks.

"Darling," I begin.

And Pond comes back again, "Don't you 'darling' me, you-" And proceeds to string together words I shan't record here. For the sake of the children. "Why can't you get something right for once in your life?"

I won't lie to you; that hurts. I do lots of things right. Not always first time, mind you, but I get there. I get there in the end.

"Pond, I haven't left yet."

"Are you still in my garden? Are you still in my garden, you – Rory! Hand me that frying pan!"

"Amy, when are you calling from?"

"Oh, yeah, like I'm going to fall for that. You just ran out my back door faster than a greased pig after-"

"…Ah." I cover the receiver and ask the Tardis, via the console, if she's behind this trickery. A minor temporal shift, rerouting this second phone call from some later spot in time to now, when I need it, when it's actually useful. No reply. The guilty-child technique. "Amy, I need you to think back, very carefully, over everything that was said, everything that River, I imagine, sobbed into your shoulder. And if you care about her, you will tell it all to me, in a series of simple, easy-to-follow bullet points, alright?"