Torchwood Forum Meet-up: Getting to Know Cardiff...

[fajrdrako]

This morning I met up with the Torchwood Forum group at the fountain in Raold Dahl Plass, where we were greeted by Tristan and the day's activities explained – except for a mysterious early afternoon event which we were not supposed to know about. We didn't know about it, actually, but we could guess.

First,we went to the Doctor Who exhibit at the Red Dragon Centre. It was a bit smaller than I excepted, delightfully laid out and explained, and really a lot of fun. My favourite bit? Easy: Captain Jack's greatcoat from “The Doctor Dances”. My second favourite bit? The Ninth Doctor's outfit. And a huge poster-picture of David Tennant on location in Rome. But it's also a treat to see the props, and the levitating Dalek, and the Stone Angel, and the Cybershade, and the clockwork robot from “Girl in the Fireplace”. I liked the section in the guide book that said:

WARNING: Although we've been assured that these examples are immobile, if any adults with you get scared, remember to hold their hands!

Confession: though the place was littered with signs saying please do not touch, I fondled Captain Jack's coat. Just a little.

Then we went with our trusty guide for the Torchwood tour of the Cardiff Bay area. It's astounding how much is in a very tiny bit of space. One thinks of the BBC as going to such far-flung places as Dubai and Rome, though that's atypical. But 51st Century Boshane is just the other side of the Bute Docks building where Martha and Ten said good-bye to Jack at the end of “Last of the Time Lords”, with the steps Gwen and Rhys sat on to eat ice cream on one side of it, with the Norwegian Church that Tosh and Tommy visited on the other side.

Round about that point in the tour, a chatty native on a bicycle stopped to talk to us. He'd seen a lot of the filming, and more, had seen the reconstruction of the Cardiff Bay area over the years. He talked about seeing Matt Smith filming recently: "He looks about twelve years old, really. He looks younger than the girl he's acting with. But he has the Who spirit."

Our tour ended with the doorway to the Hub, the one I've described already with the flowers and memorials to Ianto. I looked back along the quay to the place where Ianto, begging for a job, pursued Jack with coffee. Allowing for the distorted perspective of the camera, it looked just right.

Then we had a break for lunch, and I headed with kelticbanshee and her boyfriend into Cardiff city centre, where I got a coronation chicken sandwich for lunch. I'd never had a coronation chicken sandwich before, and can't remember ever hearing of it until I was talking to my cousin the other day in Hexham, where she told me the history of the recipe. Cool. I liked it, too. Ate it picnic-style in the grass in front of Cardiff City Hall (not thinking about Margaret Blain), and then we went with the group on foot to Border's and the site of our Special Afternoon Surprise, which was, of course, an autograph session of our own with Gareth David-Lloyd.

He was, of course, charming. He signed things and took care to spell things right, and smiled for photos, and posed with people.

We had time then to wander the centre of the city. I had a good look at Cardiff Castle, and took pictures – it's far larger than I had imagined, and kelticbanshee was telling me about the parts of still-extant Roman walls it is built on. I went to Waterstone's and bought a book – having ditched my books at my cousin's place, to have a lighter load, I wanted something to read. The problem with my load now is that my backpack is increasingly full of guide books with beautiful pictures of castles and cities and cathedrals.

We met up as a group at The R Bar at the Red Dragon Centre, and had a rather complicated and extremely difficult trivia game that covered all series of Torchwood, classic and new Doctor Who, miscellaneous science fiction movies and TV shows including Forbidden Planet, Thunderbirds and Battlestar Galactica. My team got thirteen and a half out of a possible fifty-odd points; the winning team got twenty-four. “You have no life,” the quizmaster told them. “It's sad, really.”

Prizes included the new Captain Jack action figure with the dark blue shirt, which looks better each time I look at it.