Not everyone has a mate called Dave

My mate Dave pronounces the word "Magnificent" in such a way that, when I heard it for the first time, it made me realise I had been misusing the word all of my life. I don't use it anymore because if I do, I feel like a fake; a pretender; a pale imitation of its one, true guardian. I know how it should sound and the emotions it should evoke and I don't see that in people when I say it. Or anybody else for that matter. Only when Dave does. I say pronounce but Dave almost roars the initial "Mag" as though trying to gain the attention of any available lioness roaming the Serengeti. By the time he gets into the "ificent" the whole room is electrified and somewhat unnerved. However, as if knowing that his entire audience is now in the exact same mental state as it would be, had they just discovered that a small thermo-nuclear device had been implanted in their underpants, Dave soothes them with gentle yet reassuring tone. To be in the room when he said it was an experience, but to be the recipient was truly a humbling event. When Dave told you something was "Magnificent" you were left with absolutely no doubt that it was. In that moment the magnificence of whatever it was you were discussing was so certain to you that it sat just above the entry for "what is your name" on a list of things of which you were certain.

Dave worked in the same research group as me for a number of years as a quantum chemist with a particular interest in dipole-dipole couplings (no, me neither). His lab was across the 'quad' from mine and I often imagined what might be going on in there - I can spend a lot of time 'away with the fairies'. I could quite have imagined Dave to come rushing out of his lab, frazzled looking and wide eyed. Grabbing the first poor foreign student who happened by and yelling "What year is it?!" Their answer quickly followed with the second demand of "Well, what month?" and so on until he was on the phone to the speaking clock to test the accuracy of the students wrist watch to the nearest millisecond. When you went into his lab, you never knew if you were gonna find him stood their all 'Gordon Freeman' like, clutching a crowbar demanding to know if "you saw them too". Or whether, late at night you would find the room bathed in the glow of a completely new colour, Dave struggling with the controls of some enormous, slightly unstable looking contraption mumbling something about "the portal collapsing too soon". Even receiving an email from Dave could bring butterflies to the stomach. Seeing his name under From I half expected the text to apologise for some recent disruption to the space-time continuum and to assure us that he will have the value of pi back to close to the original within the hour, but in the meantime we may experience some irregularities with anything reasonably spherical (and that it was probably best not to drive).

I still hold out hope for Dave to take his rightful place as the next Dr. Who. That way I really could relive my childhood; hiding behind the sofa to watch it. Not because the monsters scare me you understand. No, no. Solely because, with Dave at the helm, I'm pretty sure the visual effects for the TARDIS dematerialising would start to look just a little too convincing.