Holidays in Time 1

Some very strange things had been going on outside my neighbour's house. All sorts of unfamliar vehicles were pulling up in his designated parking space where the big number 6 was painted on the ground. Last week there had been a really old looking Ford Zodiac. Now something even stranger. This little white vintage car with an open top, bright red leather seats and a tiny little engine at the front that might have been a hundred years old. A really old looking van, with the same kind of vintage engine, had pulled up outside my neighbour's flat. A man in a bowler hat opened the swing doors at the back of the van. He carried out a large number of huge tins, one at a time, and took them into the flat. After he had finished he inserted a long metal starting handle into the front of the van and turned it around a few times. The engine coughed and spluttered into life. He jumped into the van and drove away.

 

I could bear the curiosity no longer. I knocked on my neighbour's door.
"Hello Chris. What's going on? Have you turned your flat into an air bnb?"
"Yes, my en-suite bedroom is a holiday let."
"All right, you're not supposed to sublet a council flat but I won't tell. I just wondered why anyone would want to take a holiday in Rotherham. It's not exactly a tourist attraction."
"They've all got cars. They can drive from here to wherever."
"We're nowhere near the airport or the railway station, we're right on the edge of the city. What can you do here that you can't do anywhere else?"
"Travel time."
"What do you mean, travel time?"
"There's a timeline in Rotherham town centre. Just fit one of my little boxes to your car and drive past Tesco's. You can travel amywhere in time. That's where the timeline is. You cross it when you go through the bus station traffic lights."
"Are you insane?"
"I hope not. I must admit, the possibility had crossed my mind. This could be the early stages of a complete mental breakdown. Or I could be a time travel agent."

 

I noticed that Chris' bed was in the living room in front of the television.
"Why is your bed in here?  It's a two bedroom flat. If you comverted the en-suite to a self contained holiday let with a double bed and a shower, you should still be able to sleep in the other bedroom."
"The other bedroom is where I run my business." Chris led me into the spare bedroom. I picked up a tin of chocolates from the dozens that were stacked on the floor. It was huge. The size of a modern tin of chocolates except that it was a foot deep.
"A six pound tin of chocolates from before the war," said Chris. I removed the lid.
"Wow! I could eat myself sick on these sweets for a whole week. Could I have one of these?"
"Certainly. That'll be £40 please."
"£40 for a tin of chocolates?"
"Five times the size of any tin you'd find anywhere else."
"I can understand why they kept reducing the size of the tins. I'll just see if I've got £40 in cash." I opened my wallet. "Lucky me, I have." I paid him for the chocolates amd carried them into the front room.

 

A  man came running into the living room wrapped in a bath towel.
"I've soaked all my clothes."
"Stanley," said Chris, "you're meant to close the glass doors and then turn the shower on."
"Oh, is that how it works. Silly me."
"Put your clothes on the radiator and I'll turn the heating on. They'll dry in no time."

 

The next day wo men in suits and bowler hats were standing in a supermarket.
"Chris gives me £20 for each of those tins of chocolates," said Stanley. "I can't complain. I pay ten shillings for them at home and he gives me £20. But everything seems to be a hundred times more expensive here. 28p for a tin of peas."
"How much is that?" asked Billy.
"5 shillings sixpence. 7 shillings and six for this tin of potatoes." Stanley took off his bowler hat and put a tin of peas and a tin of potatoes into it. "These little tins of fish are nearly 4 guineas." He took a five pack of tuna fish and put it into his hat. He stood in the queue at the cash register. Stanley offered the cashier a £20 note.
"Would you like a bag?"
"A bag? Yes please." She took the tins out of the bowler hat, scanned them, and handed the tins back to Stanley in a carrier bag. She gave him the receipt and change from the £20 note.
"Well I never," said Stanley. "What will they think of next? A glossy paper bag if you forget to bring your own bag."

 

Outside in the car park, Stanley put the starter handle in the front of the Ford Model T and turned it around a few times. The engine started and they climbed in. Stanley drove to the car park exit. They could not leave because of the traffic.
"I've never seen so many motor cars," he said. There was a gap in the traffic and Stanley drove half way across the road. There was a queue of traffic on the other side. "Now I'm stuck in the middle."
"I think that guy's waiting for you," said Billy. "Mind the taxi behind him, he isn't." Stanley gave way to the taxi, drove into the gap, and turned the car around.
"Driving is not the pleasure that it used to be." They drove to a service station. Stanley drove up to the petrol pump and shouted,
"Hello, hello, anyone home?" Enraged, he came into the shop and walked up to the counter.
"Where is your pump attendant?" he asked the young woman behind the till.
"My what?"
"The person you employ to put petrol in the customers' cars."
"Employ somebody to put petrol in the cars? Why would we do that?"
"Oh well, I'll just have to do it myself, then." Billy came into the shop.
"Stanley, that might be what they do here. I've just seen a man blow up his own car tyres. There is no garage attendant."

 

The next day Stanley and Billy were driving down a motorway. A police car pulled them over on to the hard shoulder. The policeman got out of his car and stood in front of Stanley, who was sitting in the driver's seat.
"Officer, I was driving as fast as I possibly could but it just takes such a long time to get up to 30 miles an hour."
"This looks like the kind of car you see in a museum. What is it doing on a motorway?"
"We bought this handy little pocket atlas," said Billy, who was holding a mobile phone in his hand. "It's very clever. It's got a little wireless in it and it talks to you. It tells you what to do. We asked it where we could catch an aeroplane. It suggested we catch one at Manchester Airport. Then it directed us on to this road. There was all this fast traffic and some of it was on the wrong side of the road, so we couldn't turn around and go back again."
"Leave the motorway at the next exit," said the policeman.  "And ask your pocket atlas to take you to Manchester Airport avoiding any motorways." Stanley left the motorway and spent the next six hours driving along country roads to Manchester Airport. The car was going up a steep hill and a long line of cars was overtaking it. One driver behind them couldn't see well enough to overtake. He started playing an angry rhythm on the car horn.
"Can't we go any faster?" asked Billy.
"The car's only got two gears, low and high. I don't think it'll do more than 10 miles an hour in low gear."

 

Late in the evening Stanley and Billy arrived at Manchester Airport. Stanley walked up to a man in uniform.
"Excuse me, Sir, could you tell me the way to the ticket office."
"Airports don't have ticket offices anymore."
"Of course," said Stanley, smiling. He was getting used to this now. "How do I buy a ticket?"
"Go to your airline's website, Sir, there you will be able to book a seat on a flight."
"Thank you," said Stanley. "Well Billy, do you understand what he just said?"
"I think we should ask the pocket atlas." Billy took the mobile phone in his hand. "We want to buy some aeroplane tickets. Look, there's a talking movie appearing on the screen telling us how to do it. Stanley, give me the plastic card that Chris gave you." Stanley handed Billy the card. Billy struggled to understand the booking system on a budget airline for a few minutes. He finally succeeded. "I just booked two return tickets to Paris for £150. Plane leaves from gate 5 in half an hour."
"Great," said Stanley. Half an hour later they were standing in a queue waiting to board the plane.
"Passports, please," said a man in uniform. Stanley took out his passport. "Is this a joke?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"Your passport's out of date. They're only valid for ten years. Yours was issued in 1914."
"I didn't think they ever went out of date."
"And it hasn't got a photograph on it."
"A photograph? What do you expect me to do, borrow someone else's?"
"Do you think this is funny? Your passport says you were born in 1896. You don't look a day over 30."
"Thank you. I'm not a day over 30. Oh dear."

 

They returned to Rotherham and told Chris what had happened.
"You could park the car in a railway station and get a train to Manchester Airport," said Chris.
"That might be easier," said Billy.
"And quicker too," said Stanley. "What do we do about the money we paid for the tickets?"
"What time did you leave the airport?"
"About twenty five minutes before the flight."
"Go back to the airport fifteen minutes before the flight. With proper passports this time."
"Where do we get those from?" asked Billy. "Do you forge passports?"
"I don't forge passports. That would be a serious criminal offence. I would go to prison. I forge birth certificates. I told the registrar I'd lost my birth certificate and could I have a replacement birth certificate? They sent me a document that was not difficult to edit on a computer. I can put your name on it. If you're using a replacement birth certificate you need two other proofs of ID, so go back to 1925, open two bank accounts and put £1 in each one. Then I'll get some bank statements printed out on my PC. Put my address on the two bank accounts so they can send the passports here." Chris' mobile phone rang. He answered it. "Hello? Yes. I'm a chartered engineer. Who am I chartered with? The Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Emgineers. Check me out. Oh, you've checked me out already. I have known Alan for more than two years. I've known him since 1973. Yes, that is a long time. We went to school together. I suppose I do have a lot of friends that I went to school with. I was a very friendly child." He put the phone back in his pocket. "Another satisfied customer who needs a reference."

 

I saw a Ford Transit van pull up outside Chris' flat. I decided to help the man I could see unloading boxes.
"Hello," I said. "I'm Matthew. I'm Chris' neighbour.  Could I help you unload the van?"
"I'm Gary," the man said. "Fancy an original Yorkie bar from 1976?" I held one in my hand.
"Like when we were kids," I said. "So thick it's hard to break a bit off."
"£3 each," said Gary.
"I'll give you a fiver for two."
"That's fine. Chris only gives me £2 each. He's got to sell them at a profit." We spent the next half hour carrying boxes of Yorkies into Chris' bedroom.
"Gary," I asked, "what brings you to this century? People from the 1920s who want to go on an aeroplane, that I can understand, but you could have gone on a holiday abroad in 1976."
"Do you know how much aeroplane tickets cost in the 70s? When British Airways had a monopoly? When they conspired to put Freddie Laker out of business? Package holidays are cheaper in your century than they were in mine. And Yorkie bars hold their value well." We came into the living room where a middle aged man in a suit sat talking to Chris.
"You can't disappear to the other end of the world for a fortnight when you've got a job like mine. I want to go on a holiday and come back to those traffic lights at the bus station five minutes after I left."
"That's perfectly possible," said Chris.
"Two weeks in the Canary Islands, on the way home in the afternoon, just drive up to those traffic lights as I'm passing through Rotherham. And then I can go back to work the next day relaxed, I've had two weeks in the Canary Islands."
"You could go on a round the world cruise," said Chris. The man laughed out loud.
"Go on a ninety day round the world cruise while I was doing the shopping at Tesco's. When was the last time I had any time to enjoy myself, to enjoy my money?"
"I'm making a radio alarm clock," said Chris, "and when you hit the snooze button you get an extra hour in bed."
"That's impossible."
"It works by time dilation. The alarm is set to five minutes to four and the minutes turn into hours. So instead of getting up at four o' clock, it's like getting up at nine o' clock, you've had five hours extra sleep."
"Thank you Chris. I bought a house in a village near Barnsley and drive my car to Sheffield Station to catch the half past five train every morning to commute to London. I just need something to make my job easier."

 

Stanley and Billy had parked their car at a railway station in a village near Rotherham and travelled by train to Manchester Airport. It was an hour before the flight to Amsterdam they'd bought their tickets for was due to leave.
"We should go and have something to eat," said Billy. "We must make sure that we don't meet ourselves standing in the queue." They had sandwiches and a pot of tea in a cafe and then joined the queue for the flight about ten minutes after the security guard had told them to leave.
"You two again?" asked the official. They took out their passports. "Have you got real passports this time?"
"I must apologise for my friend's terrible sense of humour," said Billy. "He showed you his grandfather's passport. He thought it would be really funny to freak you out and make you think he was a time traveller."
"A time traveller?" asked the official, laughing, "is that why he did it? Well, everybody knows there's no such thing as time travel." They got on to the plane. About half an hour after take off, Stanley pulled up the blind over the window.
"This thing seems to be flying really high."
"Pull the blind down again," said one of the other passengers.
"Oh, you think this thing is frightening? Let me tell you, you wouldn't be frightened by this thing if you had been a fighter pilot in a war."
"Which war?"
"The Great War."
"Which war was the Great War?"
"You know, the big war with the League of Nations and the Italians and the Germans. I flew a Sopwith Camel."
"You rode a camel during the war?"
"No, it's a type of aeroplane called a Sopwith Camel. It's freezing cold and the German pilot's leaning out of his cockpit pointing a machine gun at you. So you think this is scary flying?" The passenger looked at Stanley as if he was mad.
"Is your friend all right?" he asked Billy.
"He has a very vivid imagination. And he loves history books. He's away with the fairies, sometimes. Don't worry. He's harmless."