“Can you really do that?” asked Kent excitedly. Having alreadyseen this angel shapeshift, he obviously had some sort of supernaturalabilities. “Can you take me back and let me do it all again?”
“Not all of it, no,” replied the angel. “That would be a bitgreedy of you. You do only get one life, after all. But I can give you thechance to relive a few snapshots. A sort of edited highlights, if you like.”
“So how’s that going to work?” asked Kent.
“Well, think of me like one of those pantomime genies,giving you three wishes. In fact, since I’m more generous than that I am going togive you double. What would you say if I offered to let you live six days ofyour life over again? It can be any six of your choice. When and where wouldyou like to go?”
Kent thought back quickly through his life. Where indeed? Itwasn’t an easy decision to make just like that on the spur of the moment. Heneeded time to think about it. And how would this mysterious angel know exactlywhere to send him? He couldn’t remember precise dates and times when things hadtaken place.
“Don’t worry about any of that,” said the angel. Clearly ithad the ability to reach into his mind because Kent hadn’t spoken. “Just think yourselfto a place and time and I will take you there.”
All sorts of possibilities floated through Kent’s mind, gloriousred-letter days from the past, as well as the darker days when things had gonehorribly wrong. Maybe he could revisit those and settle some old scores. Butwhere should he start?
“I tell you what,” suggested the angel. “To start off with,why don’t you go back to that day you were thinking about earlier, the day whenyou bought your first record? You seemed pretty happy when you were thinking aboutthat.”
“Perfect,” replied Kent. It would be fun to be a kid again. Hecould figure out the rest later. “When do we start?”
“There’s no time like the present,” replied the angel. Heclicked his fingers and the rooftop, the sunset and everything else dissolved intonothingness.
What Difference Does It Make?
February 1984
The first thought that went through Kent’s head when he wokeup was: “What a bloody weird dream that was!”
The second was, “Wow, I feel great!”
For as long as he could remember, Kent had felt like deathwarmed up in the mornings. His mouth was usually bone dry and crusted with amixture of gooey and crusty white mucus, caused by lying on his back all night snoringwith his mouth wide open.
The half a dozen beers he knocked back before bed mostnights might have given the illusion of lubrication while he was drinking them,but in reality they only contributed to the dehydrated state he found himselfin by the morning. He couldn’t have felt more parched if he’d been wanderinglost in the Sahara desert for two days.
Most mornings he couldn’t even speak until he’d had the life-savingcup of tea that Debs brought him – if she brought it. Whether he got one or notdepended on what sort of mood she was in. Over time her disposition towards himwas becoming increasingly unfavourable and the frequency of the tea wasdeclining accordingly.
He could normally tell whether he was going to get one ornot by the state of his ribs. If he could feel any pain there it meant he probablywould not. She had been poking and kicking him in the side all night in aforlorn attempt to try and stop his snoring.
At her insistence he had tried all manner of remedies to tryand cure the problem, from various revolting herbal concoctions that Debs hadinsisted he drink before bed, to some stupid plasters that she had made him stickacross his nose. None of them had made the slightest bit of difference. To makematters worse, the plasters had made him a laughing stock one day when he had forgottento remove one before he went to work.
She had even bought some ridiculous contraption that enabledher to strap tennis balls to his back one night. It was bloody ridiculous and uncomfortable.He refused to wear it again, at which point she insisted that he went to seethe doctor about it.
Grudgingly he had made an appointment to see Doctor Dickinsonat the local surgery. He had diagnosed sleep apnoea and recommended that Kent losesome weight. This seemed to be the standard advice dished out for pretty muchevery ailment Kent had suffered in the past ten years, and he was sick ofhearing it. High blood pressure, gout and even a bloody ear infection had allbeen put down to his weight. He couldn’t see how the latter worked. Ears didn’tget fat, did they?
He made the foolish mistake of telling Debs what the doctorhad said. She responded immediately by trying to put him on a diet, serving up saladsand trying to get him to eat less meat and more fish. He hated eating fish: it didn’tagree with him and it made his urine smell like Scampi Flavour Fries. None ofit made any difference to his weight as she couldn’t control what he ate atwork, so he regularly made up the shortfall in calories at lunchtime.
Waking up now, in 1984, he felt as light as a feather and betterthan he had in years. It was an unconventional way of going about it, but hehad indeed lost weight, about fourteen stone of it in fact.
And that wasn’t the only thing. His mouth was mucus-free andhis head was clear. As he sat up and opened his eyes, free of the crusty sleepydust that normally welded them shut, he also discovered that he had razor-sharp20/20 vision. Within a second of opening those eyes, his first thoughts abouthow great he was feeling were superseded as he took in the scene around him.
He knew instantly where he was, even though he had not setfoot in the room for over a quarter of a century. The first thing he saw
