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'It's sunny,' replied the Doctor.

'It's not Benidorm,' said Sam.

'It's England.'

Sam looked around her as the birds flew cautiously back into the trees.

'Been a long time,' she said. It had been years since she'd first started travelling with the Doctor, three of them spent without him on the alien equivalent of Skid Row. Ever since then (about six months ago now by her trusty awkwardly-beeping-at-the-wrong-moment digital watch) the Doctor -

or the TARDIS, or perhaps the pair in collusion - had seemed careful to avoid her home planet. They had spent a long time apart, and she couldn't help thinking that perhaps her friend had been a little worried that she'd be vanishing off home the first chance she'd got. She'd not been back to Earth for years.

And now here she was. England, twentieth century, home. Sam had to admit it was something of an anticlimax.

'I guess you can't go home again after all,' she said, sadly.

"This isn't your home,' replied the Doctor. 'If anything, it's more mine than yours.'

'It's not 1997?'

'It's 1963.1 spent quite some time here, a long time ago.'

Sam felt a sudden sense of relief. Her parents would be kids in this time.

She wouldn't have to agonise over calling, explaining, letting them see how she'd changed. They wouldn't even meet for another ten years.

She smiled.'So - the Swinging Sixties!'

The Doctor smiled back. "They've embarked on a degree of motion, yes.'

'Well, let's move with them, man.' Linking arms with the Doctor, she steered them out of the glade and on to a path. 'So you've lived here before, have you? I bet you were a real hip swinging cat, weren't you?'

'Sam, Sam, Sam, please...' said the Doctor, shaking his head. 'You really are exaggerating the idiom of the period. 'They left the glade behind them in sunny stillness once more. 'And anyway,! was more an arthritic old buzzard than any cat you might happen to mention...'

A few moments later, a man shambled into the clearing, crazed eyes staring about him. The birds flapped noisily away from their branches once more in alarm.The man slumped heavily against the police box, a thick string of dribble escaping from his grinding teeth as he looked wildly around him.

Breathing raggedly and deeply, he took the same path out of the clearing.

***

Sam tutted. 'A garden centre. Back on Earth for the first time in centuries and you take us to a garden centre.'

The Doctor looked a little embarrassed. 'Well, it's set in very attractive grounds.'

Sam said nothing. She was looking around her at the people strolling by, at the fashions she thought of as retro chic being worn for real with no affectation. Her travels in the TARDIS often left her feeling she was on a huge film set. It was quite pleasant to feel like she'd moved off the Terminator back lot and found herself on Summer Holiday .

She looked at the Doctor's own outfit, his starched wing-collar shirt and cravat, his Edwardian breeches. For the first time in a very long while she found herself feeling a little embarrassed to be seen with him.

Still, she thought, who gives a toss?

'Oh, look!' With a stifled gasp that could’ve been of pain or delight, the Doctor suddenly rushed over to a flower bed. Sam watched him, completely engrossed in a world of his own. How many times had she felt he was just like a kid playing in the biggest playground there was? Sometimes she felt it was she who was looking after him on their adventures, not the other way around. He'd probably spotted a ladybird or something.

'I'm going to walk around the park here, or whatever it is,' she called over.

She received no reply as the Doctor continued fussing to himself over whatever he had found. 'If you get lost without me, wait for me at the lost-child desk, OK?'

'Mm, mm,' said the Doctor vaguely, nodding without looking round.

Sam shrugged and smiled as she pulled aside some conifer branches and stepped back into the sunlight.

***

'It's like something, you know, out of R.J. Tolkien.'