I had a TV in my room, but it was only a 16” portable and wedidn’t have Sky which was in its infancy at the time. Faced with the fourmeasly channels available or a night at the pub, I usually chose the latter. Idid have a Sega Megadrive, but that was primitive compared to the consoles I’dbeen used to, and as for the internet, no one had even heard of it.
About the most advanced technological feature I hadavailable to me now was CEEFAX on my telly, and that was laughably slow. Sittingwatching the little numbers tick around to flick on to the next page waspainful.
So, the pub it was. I was a local at a good, old-fashionedboozer close to home and spent most nights in there with a gang of like-mindedyoung men. The main activities seemed to be pool, darts and playing on theone-armed bandits.
I really couldn’t see the point of those machines. Theyswallowed money like no tomorrow that could be better spent on beer, and thejackpot was pitiful. It was just £4.80 and that came out in tokens that you hadto put back in anyway.
Despite that, my friends seemed to love playing them andpresumably I had, too, judging by the state of my bank account. My futureknowledge was of absolutely no practical use whatsoever when it came to predictingthe outcome of a three-reel slot machine, so I avoided playing them, regardlessof what I’d done in my past life.
With my bank account constantly overdrawn, I was strugglingto obtain cash. There were numerous occasions when I faced the dreaded “InsufficientFunds Available” message when attempting to withdraw money from the cashpoint.
Under the circumstances, I had no choice but to beginpatronising the bookies again. Conveniently, there was one located a couple ofdoors along from the newsagent’s, so I’d often leave Jenny in charge of theshop for ten minutes and nip out to put a bet on.
Learning from past mistakes, I tried not to get too greedy.A simple 10p Yankee on four moderately priced winners each day was enough formy needs. Picking up £50 or so after work provided more than enough cash forthe evening’s entertainment, perhaps a bit more if I was taking a girl out.
If I was totally skint I used to borrow the stake money outof the till. I could always put it back later.
So that was my worklife in my early twenties. As for my lovelife, it seemed that, prior to meeting Sarah, I hadn’t really settled with anyof the girlfriends that I’d had. Life was a succession of short relationships,never more than a year, interspersed with shorter periods of being single.
Each new girlfriend who came along provided a welcomedistraction from the tedium of everyday life, as well as taking care of mysexual needs, but I didn’t feel particularly enamoured of any of them. Theyjust weren’t Sarah, that was all there was to it. I missed her terribly, thinkingabout her all the time and wondering what she was doing.
Every so often I felt tempted to drive down to Wales andfind her, but decided against it. What would be the point? I could only see herbriefly, she’d have no idea who I was and it would only cause fresh heartbreakfor me. I just had to try and get on with life and forget both her and Stacey.
My one consoling thought was that the day of my appointmentwith Josh was fast approaching. If, and it was a big if, he had unlocked thesecret of time travel, would he remember me? Would he be there on August the6th 1990? The date had been etched in my brain for over 30 years.
Unfortunately, I was about to discover that my plans to meethim on that day were in serious danger of being thwarted.
August 1990
It was in early September that I realised I had made aschoolboy error in picking an August date for meeting up with Josh.
My parents had been reminiscing for some time about thefantastic holiday we’d had. When the holiday snaps came back from the chemist’sand my tan started to develop, the sudden realisation dawned that I could havea clash of dates to deal with.
I rushed to the calendar on the wall in the kitchen where mymother recorded anything and everything, flicked it back over to the Augustpage and was confronted with the news I had feared. From the 30th of July tothe 13th of August, we’d been on holiday on the Greek island of Paxos.
What was I to do? There was no way of getting out of thisone. I was going to wake up on the 6th of August on the other side of Europe,needing to be back in Oxford by 5pm. How was I going to do it? Would I have themoney and means to make such a journey?
Was it even worth bothering? It was somewhat of a long shotthat Josh would even be there in the first place. He hadn’t been at allconfident that he would be able to discover the secret of time travel and to myknowledge, no one else ever had.
The only concrete evidence I had that there was anypossibility of it at all was my own backwards existence, and even that wasn’tanything I had any control over.
In the end I decided that I had to try. It was the onlypossible way I would ever get answers to the questions that I sought. Withoutthose answers, my mind would never be at ease. Had the things I had done made adifference? Did I live on beyond 2025, and if so, was I happy?
I had one chance, a slim possibility, maybe, but it was theonly chance I had so my mind was made up. I would make it back to Oxford by 5pmthat day no matter what it took. I was a man on a mission.
Being in Paxos immediately put me at a disadvantage overmost Greek islands. It
