Time Travel Melancholy

Apparently my sister had a dream where she time-travelled back into 1983 and visited our old house. My Grandma answered the door.

"Is Sheila there?" asked Heather. She didn't want to confuse my Grandma, who would certainly not have recognised the 36 year-old version of her 11 year-old granddaughter. Sheila is my Mum.

"Well yes, she's upstairs," said Grandma, a bit suspiciously...

I don't know how the dream turned out. My Mum asked me whether I could think of anything significant that had happened in 1983. As it happened, that was the year I fell down the back steps and fractured my skull. I was 5.

The thing that really intrigued me about it all was the sadness of the thought of time-travel. I pictured my sister walking down the drive in the sepia-tones of an old photograph. I saw people, strolling past in dimmed reds and blues and jeans and jumpers. I saw the trees in the park, waving in the faded sunlight, looking young and old all at the same time. It was a sadness to think that the past itself could have faded, started to disintegrate like an old video or a cine-film.

I wondered too, whether the whole thing might actually have happened. Although it seems unlikely, I like the thought that Grandma once met a strange young lady on a sunny afternoon, who seemed strangely familiar.

-

Danni and James have just returned from Sainsbury's with an enormous quantity of cleaning stuff. Reuben (who missed the house meeting) is doing his late night thing of sliding about in his socks and generating complicated debates. Maybe one day, this too will just be all a faded memory. James tinkering on the piano, the smell of burnt beans in the kitchen and the sound of pasta rattling into an empty saucepan.

I hope not. These are good times.

Monkey Business

"Ah," said Peter. "You're a gorilla."

"I'm a what?"

"You're a gorilla. Give a chimpanzee something and he'll smash it. Give it to a gorilla and he'll delicately take it apart into its component pieces. A bonobo will just hump the thing, and an orangutan will take it apart and put it back together."

"I see," I said, handing him the screwdriver. I had just explained that I am the kind of person who takes things apart but doesn't know how to reassemble them. He quickly set to repairing his mouse, the one with the dodgy scroll wheel. I conceded (without much irony) that the screwdriver was probably of more use in the hands of an orangutan, and that he was welcome to keep hold of it.

-

At lunchtime, the sun broke through the clouds and I looked out past the small collection of books that live on my windowsill. A haze lingered over the smoking shed and a few unhappy-looking people shuffled around, puffing very seriously on their cigarettes. It struck me that there was a story behind each elongated face. Perhaps a decision years ago, a teenage temptation that turned into a lifetime. Perhaps just a moment of madness. I was lost in a reverie for a while.

Reveries are swiftly broken by colleagues talking about their bowel movements. It turns out that Peter hasn't had a poo for four days. He went home this afternoon, looking like a sweaty cardboard cutout. I accidentally told him to 'have a good one,' and then went red with embarrassment.

Bring it on?

The sky was blue. Powdery lines of cloud streaked across the morning, and bright fresh sunlight fell on tall trees, dappling them with glory. It felt, finally, like Spring. And after the coldest and longest of winters, it was most welcome.

"Bring it on," I'd said defiantly. If you had told me then that in six months' time I would be driving down the M4 to work, I would have carefully dismissed it. Like a bedizened passenger stepping aboard the RMS Titanic, I would have waved away such nonsense with a sparkling eye and an upturned nose. Pride does that to you.

So then. The M4 it was; and is, every morning for the moment. Somehow in a way I don't understand, it seems right; although I don't much like it. I guess disciples know this feeling. We grimace and pull out our hair and look to Heaven and somehow find the strength to say "Not my will, but yours..." and we mean it. If only I had meant it when it mattered...

More about all this some other time. To be honest, I just wanted to get writing again. I suppose the warmth of the sun, the hint of summer days, and love, happiness and excitement, speak deeply to this battered old heart.

Psalm 57:1-3

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me,

for in you my soul takes refuge.

I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings

until the disaster has passed.

I cry out to God, Most High,

to God, who fulfills his purpose for me.

He sends from heaven and saves me,

rebuking those who hotly pursue me;

Selah

God sends his love and his faithfulness.

... bring it on.