20 June, 1969

My job is demeaning and boring, and the weather is crap. I'm meant to be a doctor, for Christ's sake, not a shop girl. And I'm not even a shop girl yet – I'm a shop-girl-in-training! Because it's so difficult to work out how to fold clothes and stack them in order of size, it takes a full two weeks, with probationary pay, to learn the ropes.

I can handle crap weather if I'm doing something constructive with my life, but this? And I know that my Time Lord friend is a little eccentric, but are we really saying he couldn't find a gig repairing radios to help bring in some rent?

Not in a good mood now.

So... when I arrived back at our flat after work this afternoon, he was sitting slumped in one of the armchairs that faces the radiator (I suppose someone's idea of a surrogate fireplace). He was staring at the big metal thing, scowling.

"Honey, I'm home," I joked.

He sighed deeply then smiled very slightly and looked at me. "How was your day, dear?"

"All right. Yours?"

He gestured half-heartedly to a messy pile of gadgets in his lap. Gears, twisted metal, Christmas lights, and a whole array of rubbish I couldn't identify. He showed me the sonic screwdriver in his hand, then put the other hand on his forehead and leaned his head back.

I assumed that it was all meant to be part of some greater gadget that had gone wrong. "So, not good?"

"Not good," he agreed without looking at me. "I was trying to build a remote control that would bring the TARDIS back to us, but I can't calibrate the time circuits because, well... I don't have the TARDIS. It's a bit of a pickle."

I kicked off my shoes and sat down in the other chair. "Why don't you just follow the directions that What's-Her-Name gave you?"

"Sally Sparrow?" he asked. "Because her way will take forever, and we have no idea how long we have to wait! It's a dodgy process over a period of thirty-eight years, and there is no guarantee it will work! Someone wrong might even stumble upon that information and use it for... you know, badness."

"But if that happened, wouldn't we know about it? Wouldn't it be part of her documentation?"

"Probably," he conceded, sort of. "But again, not guaranteed. The future can be changed, Martha. It's all... wibbly wobbly."

"But if you can't get the time calibrations, then what choice do we have? We're stuck in the past without a time machine. But what we do have is an instruction manual. How many stranded time-travellers can say that much, eh?"

He sighed again. "I suppose." He closed his eyes and was silent, forlorn. I felt a lump in my throat, even at this slight display of distress from him. "We don't have a choice, do we?"

"No, not really," I agreed. "Why is this bothering you so much? Our work is laid out for us – should be easy."

"It's because..." he began. "Aw, never mind. I'm just being a big baby. Are you hungry?"