Doctor YOU

New Years day 2010, David Tennant’s dashing 10^th doctor has regenerated into Matt Smiths quirky 11^th and somewhere in a galaxy far; far away a woman in her mid 30s takes on the post of cleaner at her children’s school in a bid to make ends meet as the recession bites.

It’s not the career she’d been dreaming of during those years as a stay at home mum but she’s willing to do it to make sure her kids don’t go without.

A year or so down the line though, scrubbing other peoples skid marks off toilets as she watches various friends succeed in their chosen fields of interest, the job that she was quite happy to take at the time started to lose a little of its sheen . The loss of her granddad in the summer of that first year , the man who had always told her how brilliant she was and how she could do anything if she really put her mind to it, hit her hard as she realised she’d never been able to make him really proud of her while he was still around .

Not one for x factor style sob stories instead she bottles up how bad she feels about herself until one night fed up of being everyone’s favourite laughing stock she erupts into a basil fawlty meltdown and breaks down into a sobbing mess in front of her own mother, making a a vow to prove to everyone who’s ever made her feel like a failure or a nobody that she’s not some big joke.

And prove it to them she does, having made a new year’s resolution to actually do something about her life, she signs up during the summer of 2012 for an adult education course on journalism. She nearly doesn’t attend when some suggest that she won’t be any good at it but then dismisses the people who think she’s just “the bird with the big boobs”, the girl with no opinion and the person least likely to achieve anything, to work really hard at something she had discovered a real passion for.

In the words of Katy Perry, she went from zero to her own hero and her personal regeneration is there for all to see in that 4 year old photo that still hangs round her neck on her school cleaner badge to the image you see at the top of this page (I am a happy person really, I just don’t tend to look like one in photos!)

 So if you’ve made New Year’s resolutions to  change  your life but are already thinking about giving up because why bother , nothing  will ever come from it just remember that with a little bit of effort and hard work it just might.

And if by any chance your excuse is “I’m too old to change my life” just remember those words of the 10^th doctor back in series 2 episode 7 in a nod to the lyrics of Kylie .

It’s not too late, it’s never too late

And he should know

He’s recently changed his life yet again and he’s over 900 years old...

MEDWAY MESSENGER - GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN COLUMN 13TH JAN 2014