STICK WITH WHAT you’re good at. That has always been the advice of my young friend, Maxim. I have always been very careful to maintain a career in cartoons, caricature and comic writing. If I had taken a little less care, I may have found myself fronting a pop group on Top Of The Pops or dancing with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. No. Truth will out. Stick with what you’re good at.
It’s as true with writing as it is life. “Write about what you know” is the oft-bandied apothegm. So here’s something about which I have no knowledge whatsoever: time travel. Actually not many people know much about time travel beyond a few theories but I don’t even know much about these. However, with a little imagination . . .
For a start, time travellers abound in our universe and, indeed they are making regular package tours in and out of our present. But we don’t recognise them, because we label their time machines as Unidentified Flying Objects. The assumption that these are craft propelled by extra-terrestrials can be dismissed by the probability that civilised life evolving within shouting distance of our own galaxy is very remote. It is perfectly clear that the only possible explanation is that they are denizens of our future surfing the temporal internet.
Ah, but if this is so, I hear you say (blessed, as I am, with an excellent National Health Hearing Aid), why haven’t they made one-to-one contact with us? How the hell do I know?, you hear me reply (blessed, as I am, with a very loud voice). Can you imagine the cataclysmic consequences of the future meeting the present? We would all evaporate with time, itself, ceasing to exist (really?-Ed).
Sound advice to any time traveller would be to never make contact with the natives. Which would render any such mission quite boring. On the other hand, perhaps they HAVE walked among us, but we just don’t recognise them. This would explain all the ancient stories of prophets, visitations, Loose Women and Cliff Richard.
Perhaps, the travellers themselves are impeded from congress with inhabitants of another time by some natural law of time travel that makes them invisible. In fact, the more you think about it, the more you realise that they have been leaving signs for us, if only we had been bright enough to recognise them. The single shoe in the road: “That should make them realise that they’ve been visited from the future.” The woollen glove on the railing: “A little wave hello from 2396 AD (After Dawkins)!”
You may think that it was you that lost your umbrella on the tube. No, it was stolen by a time traveller. Walked into any unsuspecting lamp posts or plate glass windows, recently? Just two of the ways they are trying to make contact. The Daily Mail! A definite oddity sent from the future, but we’re all too dozy to realise it. Cliff Richard! (Again).
Seen this way, many of our current problems and mysteries could be understood if we saw them as products of the pioneers from the future trying to make contact. Only the other day, I was at Guildford station, crossing by subway to another platform. A sign above my head read: “Beware of tractors using this subway.” Sound advice of a danger that wouldn’t occur to one naturally, but advice that one remembers henceforth. I will now be on the look-out for errant tractors at all my usual haunts. In the supermarket, at the pub, at the taxidermist.
Very wise advice, indeed. But it is so slightly odd that it is bound to have been planted by one of our futuristic friends with a surreal sense of humour. Years ago, they thought that a liberal sprinkling of “Heavy Plant Crossing” signs would tip us the wink of their arrival in our dimension, but we have convinced ourselves that they actually mean something. “This door is alarmed”‘ has reproduced itself in multitudes across the county. I’d be pretty alarmed if I had been hurled across the time barrier as a door. If a pattern is emerging (it isn’t-Ed) we can predict future pranks courtesy of our pranksters from the future. “Lower your seat when leaving your head”; “Thank you for not passive smoking”; “Beware of low-flying trousers”.
Actually, I have been developing a time travel device for some years now, and I think it is ready for testing. Hang on while I attach the helmet to my head and put on the protective groin strap (you never know what you’re going to bump into). Right, plug in, switch on and spin the dial! Aaaaaaagh…
Time Travel and Other Concerns
Stick with what you’re good at. That has always been the advice of my young friend, Maxim. I have always been very careful, in being true to myself, to maintain a career in cartoons, design and comic writing…
History has been made. I have travelled backwards in time about a week to when I first started writing this article. Now to get back, as they say, to the future. Wooaahh!…Right, plug in, switch on and spin the dial! Aaaaaagh…
Time Travel and Other Concerns
Stick with what you’re good at. That has always been the advice of my young friend, Maxim. I have always been very careful, in being true to myself, to maintain a career in cartoons, caricatures and comic writing…
History has been made. I have travelled backwards in time about a week to when I first started writing this article. Now to get back, as they say, to the future. Wooaahh!…
Oh no! I’m caught in a temporal loop. Destined to keep repeating the same set of events over and over again… Right, plug in, switch on and spin the dial! Aaaaaagh…
Time Travel and Other Concerns
Stick with what you’re good at. That has always been the advice of my young friend, Maxim. I have always been very careful, in being true to myself, to maintain a career in cartoons, caricatures and comic writing…
Help!
Simon Ellinas