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Clacton Collaboration (5)
posted Sunday, 20 July 2008
OUT OF TIME
by Clacton Writers' Group (July 2008)
In years to come when, or if, anyone asked, “Who was it who thought of the question?” no one would be able to provide the answer. There was no hint in their conversation that they were about to start sharing memories or recount embarrassing situations. But once the question had been asked it became the inevitable course for their inebriated talk. They would not remember the question had been asked in that drunken way so common during the latter stages of an evening in the “White Pelican”. That decidedly tricky yet innocent way in which really difficult questions are always asked. Asked as if the answer would not bring pain to the teller. So, it was asked and as alcohol had lowered their guards, they would answer the question, “When were you out of time?”
Pete decided to get his confession over and done with. He’d been so embarrassed by his situation at the time that these days he didn’t dwell on it any longer than necessary. In fact, to be honest, the story still held a whiff of shame so strong that it made him shudder whenever the incident flittered into his conscious. Hence his reluctance to recount it, however fleetingly – and so he never dwelt on the detail.
“It was soap box night at the Sup-up”. He set the scene before anyone else had time to draw breath. “We got 5 minutes. I’d done everything right. Got a great hook, the rational and I’d rehearsed in front of the mirror until I was word perfect. And it was good. I was passionate, serious and engaging. My subject was important, real and relevant to everyone. I asked the pertinent question: Why do 99 ice-cream cornets cost £1.20 when they should cost 99p or be called £1.20’s? I then went on to ask other associated questions which involved the mismatching of names and monetary amounts. It was the best theatrical performance of my life. But horror of horrors, I’d forgotten that it was ‘Time Voyager’ night as well. I realised at length that my audience was getting restless and low mumblings became loud protests. Many had travelled from different decades, and some from different centuries. It dawned on me that I was in the wrong time period for at least part of my audience, no matter what I’d said. I left the stage to the sound of jeers and confusion. I had also broken the rules and had run out of time and so couldn’t deliver my planned masterful finale. It was humiliating.”
“I was there,” Simon laughed. “You ought to have seen the face of the chap who had come all the way from the sixteenth century when Pete went on about the penny farthing bicycle. He thought he was facing an argument in favour of transubstantiation and hadn’t a clue what Pete was on about. It was the funniest thing I’d seen in a long time.”
“Well at least I know what transubstantiation means, unlike you, you moron!” Pete was getting annoyed, a not unusual occurrence when in his cups. “So lets hear your own embarrassing ‘Out of time’ moment. This should be interesting.”
Simon was beginning to look pale. He knew Pete’s temper of old. He tried to dredge up a suitable humiliating moment of his own which at least matched, or even surpassed the one his friend had just recounted. It was time for appeasement. He hit on the very thing. “Do you remember the time we were in Spain twenty years ago? I made a right fool of myself then. Talk about being ‘Out of time’!”
“Spain, you say? Tilting-at-Windmills, eh? Don Quixote, wasn’t it? A bit like fighting against giant clocks rather than wilndmills! All is out of kilter in Spain, anyway! Bull-fights being just an anachronistic echo of humanity’s brutal past. But do go on, Simon.”
Pete was pleased he had managed to find a chink in Simon’s armour, even before Simon himself had humiliated himself with the biggest self-inflicted chink of his own, namely that he had once addressed a whole army of Spaniards in Seville thinking they were English tourists, viz: “I don’t want to interrupt your holiday too long, but there is something you need to know about the Spanish.”
Simon had looked around surreptitiously to ensure no Spaniards were over-hearing him and continued:
“Spanish time travel is not like our time travel. No big jumps from decade to decade that our friend Pete talks about in the ‘White Pelican’. No vast shifts between generations. No star-travellers leap-frogging millennia. Spaniards just side-step between minutes or even seconds. There they are. Then they are gone. Then they are back, some clutching guinea-fowls, others straddling a couple of sovereign states simultaneously, yet others waving red capes. Spaniards need to shift real quick to dodge any bulls. Being ‘Out of Time’ puts them in danger of being gored...”
Pete laughed. But laughter soon died. Pete was astonished to see that Simon’s audience had suddenly disappeared. Only to appear almost immediately behind him, wheeling their arms relentlessly clockwise as they shuffled (rhythmically clicking and ticking) towards him.
Luckily, Simon managed to learn a lesson in body-strobing from the Spaniards and was able to focus this ability eventually by stabilising it back towards the Sup-up (ten years before it had changed its name to the ‘White Pelican’).
Soap-box night was in full swing and there were no memories of Spain as they hadn’t yet happened. But Simon, as he stood on the soap-box to deliver a new drunken tale, suddenly saw a girl at one of the tables and felt himself falling in deep deep love. This was Sylvia. He vowed to himself that if in future he went on holiday abroad, he’d be going with her, in preference to being accompanied by his old pal Pete.
“What about your confession, Sylvia?” asked Simon, hoping to get some juicy tit-bits to tease her with later (or earlier) when he knew her better (or worse). She had been twiddling her hair whilst Pete and Simon had been talking about their embarrassing ‘Out of Time’ moments. Sylvia just wanted to keep quiet and not have to enter into this particular conversation. She started to fiddle with a beer mat whilst staring at her white wine Spritzer.
“I haven’t got one,” she replied, hoping that was the end of it.
“Bet you have,” smiled Simon. “Come on, tell us.”
“Ok then but it’s a bit boring. I go to a line-dancing group as you know.”
“That’s embarrassing in itself,” Simon chuckled.
“One night they were playing ‘Boot Scooting Boogie’ and I had just brought some nice new cowboy boots. The problem was I was so busy admiring them that I forgot to do the ‘Kick, Ball Change’ step and Mavis tripped over me, crashing to the floor. She had to sit out for the rest of it, I felt awfully guilty as it wasn’t long ago that she had a hip replacement.”
“More like the ‘Kick, Fall Crash’,” Simon smirked.
“Stop interrupting me, Simon.” She wasn’t pleased with his constant teasing. “Anyway, I was in all of a flutter after that and completely out of time for the rest of the evening. Talk about stomping in the wrong direction. Mavis wasn’t the only casualty.”
Everyone was now laughing at the thought of Sylvia bowling down members of the local line-dancing group because she was out of time.
“What about Nathan? He hasn’t mentioned his moment yet.” Sylvia was determined that the attention was turned away from her. Nathan was a new or old target, she wasn’t sure which. She was getting really fed up with Simon. He used to go on holiday with her often at the beginning of their relationship but now he kept going off with Pete on time-travel trips and coming back drunk. She didn’t know when and where he was going to pop up next with his body-strobing.
“My worst one was quite some time ago,” said Nathan.
“Like you went … It happened when you were a lot younger?” questioned Pete.
“Or you went back a long way?” Simon, always quick to spot a second meaning, asked.
“Both. I was actually 19 and I went back to the mid-sixties.”
“2360?” Sylvia didn’t want to miss out.
“No, 1967 actually.”
The other three gasped aloud.
“19, and you went to the 20th century?”
“Were you drunk, or what?”
“What about the wars? They had lots of wars then. I know, I’ve studied that century. There were two world wars, a Fleet Name thingy, two break – no, gulf wars and … oh, it was awful.”
“Load of bollocks,” said Nathan, “1967 was called the ‘Summer of Love’ and if it wasn’t for the people then this world would be a far worse place. They changed the world in the twentieth century.”
“If I wanted bloody history,” said Simon, “I’d go back myself and find out.”
“Why don’t you? I’ll come with you,” Nathan, normally non-confrontational, challenged.
“Not interested that much.” Simon realised he’d been caught out and, worst of all, a quick glance at Sylvia and he knew she’d just changed her opinion of him – downwards.
“I wanna know what happened. Why don’t you two give your mouths a rest and let Nathan excercise his, ‘specially you, Sylvia, you wanted to know … or was that so you didn’t have to explain your ‘Out of Time’ any more?”
Simon was about to protest, but one look at Pete and he shut up.
“Well, it was in a country called America and I got involved in some sort of youth movement.”
“Like the cadets?” interrupted Pete.
“No. There was a lot of political revolution coming from the youth.”
“See, told you that it was warmongering.” Pete scowled at Sylvia, who snuggled up to Simon.
“It was just, well, no one knew they were changing things. It was after those two big wars you spoke of but before Vietnam, I think. Anyway, the young people started taking over the music world and all sorts of things were said and protested over. You had to be there to understand.”
“And you were,” said Pete. “So what’s this ‘Out of Time’ thing of yours?”
“Well, it happened when I went to this big music festival called Woodstock.”
“Ah,” interrupted Pete. “I know all about that, some farmer’s field in rural America hosted loads of the top musicians of the day and four businessmen arranged what turned out to be the biggest musical event of the century. They...”
“Who’s telling this? You or me?” Nathan asked coldly.
Pete looked sheepish. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Go on.”
“Pete’s right,” Nathan admitted. “Woodstock was one of the major events of the 20th century, certainly in the music world. I think most of us who were there recognised that even then. It was a turning point; a point where it became obvious that a quarter of a million people could live in harmony. For three days at least.”
“And the happy-drugs helped,” muttered Pete.
Nathan shot him a glance. “Anyway,” he continued, “I’d only just arrived there and, unlike Pete, I hadn’t studied the century.”
“That’s why you didn’t know that America entered the Vietnam war in 1965,” commented Pete,
“No, you’re right, Pete, I didn’t. Although, come to think of it, that makes sense, given some of the music that was played at Woodstock, especially Country Joe McDonald.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I digress. The thing is I didn’t know how to act or anything. My clothes were all wrong, although the crowd was so friendly nobody took the piss or anything. In fact the guy standing next to me turned to me, looked me up and down, took a cylindrical straw shaped thing from his mouth and handed it to me. ‘Look like you could do with this, man,’ he said. I took it from him, noted lots of them had got similar things in their mouths and thought it was something to eat. So I put it in my mouth.”
There was a silence as they all looked at him, waiting for the punch-line,
“Then I screamed,” he said.
Pete burst out laughing. “It burnt your mouth,” he said. “It was a cigarette.”
Nathan nodded. “That’s right. I’d never seen one before, of course. It was alight and it burned the same way that flames do.”
“So what happened?” asked Sylvia. “Did your new friends laugh at you?”
“No, they were very kind. One of them gave me a drink in a can and that cooled my mouth. Then they gave me another of those cylindrical things and I watched what they did with them and copied them. In no time at all my mouth had stopped hurting – well, at least, I think it did. I really don’t remember much until I got back here.”
“That proves it,” said Pete.
“Proves what?” Nathan wanted to know.
“Proves you were there,” Pete told him. “They say that if you can remember the Sixties then you weren’t really part of it, so presumably if you can’t remember them then you were there!” He slapped Nathan on the back. “Well done, mate.”
The words continued strobing out of time, as the famous thunderstorm approached the 99 towers shimmering at the edge of migraine. Or were they windmills?
