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Flight Time
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NOVEMBER 2018
Real Life
s you step off the bus and
gaze around Allendale’s
marketplace, it feels
strangely otherworldly,
like some quietly-eerie English village
from a Seventies sci-fi TV show.
Nestling in the North Pennines, not
far from Hadrian’s Wall, it’s a corner
of Northumberland that walkers and
cyclists adore and has twice been
crowned Village of the Year. The
famously-gloomy poet Philip Larkin
used to revel in its Tar Bar’l festival,
where men parade through the streets
with flaming barrels on their heads in
celebration of the new year. But on the
whole it’s a sleepy place, untroubled by
alien invasions – until now.
Teacher Neil Cole and his wife
Lisa, a cognitive behavioural therapist,
bought a four-storey Georgian
townhouse just off Allendale’s main
A
Wo r d s
Dav i d R yan
square a few years ago. The terraced
property in the Tynedale district,
near Newcastle, must have seemed
like a tranquil spot in which to raise
their two young daughters and was
spacious enough for Neil to pursue his
hobby, collecting costumes and props
from geeky television series and films.
He’s crazy about classic
Doctor Who
– though the BBC’s modern revival
leaves him slightly cold – and many
of his items would no doubt have
ardent fans (known as Whovians)
salivating. As a result, he’s converted
his basement into a science-fiction
museum.
“Lisa’s worked in the NHS for 20
years, I’ve worked as a teacher for 20
years and we’re both getting fatigue,”
explains the secondary school head of
art, who intends to pursue another of
his sidelines, drawing comics, in the
space he’s created. “We’re trying to get
some balance back in life.”
Once you start talking to people,
he says, it’s amazing how many turn
out to be covert sci-fi fans, but he’s
quick to point out that he’s not putting
his household finances on the line. “I’ll
be doing it part-time,” he says. “I love
sci-fi but my head’s not absolutely in
the clouds.”
MEE T THE MAN
WHO ’ S CR E AT ED
H I S VER Y OWN
SC I - F I MUS EUM
I N H I S BA S EMENT
Out
of this
world