May 1974
I went to play school on two days a week, and on the otherthree I went to Grampy and Granny’s house, a place full of excitement andadventure for a three-year-old boy.
On Mondays, Granny used to do her washing using anold-fashioned mangle. I loved watching her squeeze the clothes through therollers. At lunchtime, she would cook me some fish fingers and chips. She usedto cook the chips using a big white block of lard she’d melt in a pan. Theywere delicious, much nicer than the ones my mum and dad made.
I would sit at the round table in their living room to eatthem and Granny would put the telly on so I could watch Rainbow. Myfavourite was Zippy, he was really funny and I loved it when he was naughty andgot his mouth stitched up.
After lunch, I would go with Grampy into the back garden tofeed the chickens. There were four of them and I had given them all names. Hesaid we were going to eat one of them for Sunday dinner, but I think he wasjust joking.
In the afternoon Grampy liked to go and get his paper fromthe shop at the bottom of the street and he always took me with him and gave me6p to spend on sweets. I would point at one of the jars on the shelf and thenice lady behind the till would weigh a few into a little white paper bag forme.
I was a little confused about how life worked. I heard myparents and other people talk about growing up, but it didn’t seem to makesense to me. Sometimes my parents started sentences with phrases like “When youwere a baby, you used to…” but I didn’t have any memory of being a baby. Ithought I used to be bigger.
Sometimes at night I’d have strange dreams about people thatseemed vaguely familiar to me, and faraway places I couldn’t remember everseeing. It all made very little sense to my three-year-old brain.
Some of the things that my parents said confused me. Theywould say things like “We’re going on holiday tomorrow, are you looking forwardto it?” when it would seem to me that we had just come back. Perhaps they weregetting their words mixed up. When they said tomorrow, they must have meantyesterday.
Or maybe it was me. I was still learning words and I gotthem wrong sometimes. I was sure I’d figure it all out eventually.
Prologue: Birth
21st October 1970
It was warm inside, dark, wet and comforting. I hadn’t beenhere before, but I liked it. I tried to breathe but I couldn’t. It seemed likeI didn’t need to, though. I was aware that there was some sort of tube attachedto my stomach, but I had no idea what it was for.
There wasn’t much room to move about, and before long, Istarted to feel a great weight pushing me forwards. There were contractions allaround me, forcing me into a tight tube, head downwards. I didn’t know where Iwas going but I didn’t like it and tried to fight against it.
Suddenly, there was a bright light, forcing my eyes shutagainst the glare. I was outside, in a world full of light and noise. Iinvoluntarily cried and gasped for breath. There were people around me and Icould hear voices. How I knew that, I didn’t know, but I knew I had been herebefore.
I didn’t know the meaning of the words the people spoke. HadI been able to, I would have heard a nurse say: “Congratulations, Mrs Scott.It’s a boy.”
And then I was in the comforting arms of my mother,recognising her immediately. I definitely had been here before. I lookedgreedily at her nipples, my own personal milk machine, and couldn’t wait tosuck on them.
The rest of the day was a blur of feeding, sleeping andhaving my nappy changed, much like any other day. I didn’t really have anyconcept of time, but my instincts suggested I’d be back inside the warm, wetplace soon.
I was wrong.
22nd October 1970
It was morning. I was in my cot, next to my mother’shospital bed, when my father came in. Something didn’t seem right, but itwasn’t something that my immature brain was able to work out.
I watched as my father moved over to my mother’s bedsidetable, and listened to the conversation. The words made little sense to me, butthe voices were familiar and comforting.
Something told me I shouldn’t be here. I should be snug inthe warm, wet confines of my mother’s womb. That was the way things weresupposed to work.
I couldn’t read. If I had been able to I would have noticedthe sticker on the side of my cot that read “Thomas Scott, born 21st Oct 1970”.I couldn’t read the calendar on the bedside table either. It was one of thoselittle square ones with a page for every day of the year that you tore off.
“You didn’t change the calendar,” said my father, as he torethe page reading “21 Oct”, leaving “22 Oct” exposed.
None of this meant anything to me. If it had, I would haverealised for the first time in over 54 years that time was moving forward forme once again. I wasn’t destined to shrink inside my mother’s womb until allthat was left was an egg and a sperm. The moment of my birth had restarted theclock.
“He’s amazing,” said my mother, “and he’s got his whole lifein front of him.”
“I wonder what he will be like,” said my father. “Justthink, when he’s grown up it will be nearly the 21st century. He’ll see amazingthings in the future, things we can’t even imagine.”
None of this meant anything to my newborn ears. I was tired,and wanted to go back to sleep. I had a long life in front of me.
The end…for now.
The next book in the series is Happy New Year. This tellsthe story of nurse Amy who previously appeared in Splinters in Time, Class of’92 and the first chapter of this book.
Happy New Year
Chapter One
2016
I’ve really grown to hate New Year. What do I
