As Stacey asked me questions, I found I was able to answerthem with no problems:
“How long should I boil these potatoes for?” she asked.
“Roughly ten minutes,” I instinctively replied. “Until theyare just starting to soften and go flaky on the outside, but before they startgoing mushy and falling apart.”
“What’s the best way to keep the turkey moist?” she asked.“I watched a video on YouTube where they put some bacon on top, but I need thatfor the pigs in blankets.”
“You don’t need to put bacon on the top, that’s a mythstarted by some celebrity chef years ago,” I said. “I find it doesn’t help atall. The bacon goes all dry and crispy and then you can’t baste the turkeyproperly. And that’s the secret – baste it regularly, every 20 minutes or so.”
As the words flowed from my mouth, I had no idea where theknowledge was coming from, but it was clear that I was in full possession ofall the facts I’d learnt in my past life. I didn’t know who the celebrity chefwas, though. I was relieved that I knew how to do things. It would have beenextremely irksome if I’d had to learn everything again from scratch.
With my help, Stacey managed to produce a most agreeableroast dinner, though, in my weakened state I could not manage to eat very muchof it. David didn’t make much of a contribution to the cooking, preferring tosit at the table munching his way through a tin of Quality Street and polishingoff most of the bottle of wine.
I even managed a small tipple myself, joking with them thatit wasn’t likely to kill me.
Despite the circumstances, the brave faces held up and wemanaged to have a fairly normal Christmas Day. Dinner was followed by watchingan old Bond film on TV, and sitting around chatting and reminiscing, withStacey doing most of the talking. As far as I was concerned, I hadn’t seen theBond film before, or at least I thought I hadn’t, but had an uncanny knack ofbeing able to predict what might be about to happen.
I was going to have to get used to déjà vu: it was clearlygoing to follow me around everywhere I went.
I found David to be quite an entertaining young man. He wasfull of amusing anecdotes about things that went on in his job which got me tothinking about my own career. This was one of many things that I would need tofind out more about in due course.
But I was too tired to think about any of that today. Byearly evening I was exhausted. I’d done amazingly well, considering theadvanced state of my illness.
A Macmillan nurse came in to help Stacey put me to bed, andwith the help of the medication she gave me I was able to drift off to sleep ahappy man for the first time in my week-long life.
Fire
November 2024
The day of the doctor’s appointment when I would find outwhat I already knew, that I had terminal cancer, had arrived.
Did I even need to go to the appointment? Over the past fewweeks, as my health had improved, I had had the chance to consider my situationin great depth. Was there any point redoing things that had already been done,which were not going to make any difference?
However, when Stacey rang to remind me and told me she wascoming round later, I decided I’d better go through the motions. If I didn’tgo, she’d find out, and then she’d nag me about it for the rest of the day.
During the cold, dark November and December days, I hadspent as much time as possible researching my own life history. I’d also takenthe opportunity to experiment with various things to see what effects theywould have.
One thing I didn’t have to worry about for a while was work.It seemed I had done well enough in my career to retire with a big pay-off anda very generous pension when I was 50. That was four years in the past.
The home I lived in was testimony to my comfortably well-offstatus. I lived in a spacious, four-bedroom house on an affluent roadin-between the Banbury and Woodstock roads in North Oxford.
It had a lovely, big garden out the back, largely laid tograss but with a nice patio area close to the house, and many mature bushes andfruit trees at the far end. From house to the far end, which could not even beseen from the house, it was nearly 50 yards in length.
It looked immaculate even at this time of year, and Iapplauded myself on my green fingers, until a gardener showed up one day to doit all for me. He looked to be at least 80, but was very enthusiastic, andfurther conversation suggested that he had been coming to do the garden everyFriday for years, and more often in the summer.
I hoped I might have a cleaner, too, but no one turned up.However, after a while I realised I didn’t need one. The house seemed to getcleaner day by day without any help from me, an unexpected benefit of mybackwards passage through time.
Every now and then I would wake up and the place would be afilthy tip. Presumably that must have been the day I had cleaned up. So thatwas one thing I didn’t have to worry about. Even the unpleasant stains on thetoilet bowl miraculously vanished if I left them long enough.
As the weeks passed, I felt progressively better and noticedsome quite startling changes in my physical appearance. For a start, I began togain weight quite rapidly. By early November, I was looking positively tubby. Ihad taken to weighing myself each morning, and by the day of the doctor’sappointment I was packing a hefty sixteen stone.
This was quite a lot for man of my height, which I hadmeasured at five foot nine inches and on the fringe
