Monday, August 25

 

"Are you going to write your blog?" Marilyn asked as I started to get up from my chair.

"Yes, I am," I replied.

"Good! Can you put on Brogan for me?"

There's not much we disagree on but Brogan Tate is one of them.  Brogan Tate is a young English blogger with an irritating voice and a gormless husband called Benjy who wears his baseball cap back to front.  Brogan is a blogger and makes programs about her shopping trips and plans for holidays.  I find them mind-numbingly tedious but Marilyn can see value in them that I can't.

Perhaps it's because I am jealous.  The idea of other people having trips to exotic places when I have had to put those days behind me, irritates me.  Although, for me, the joy of going to other places started when I got there.  For Brogan, the joy is in the packing, the selection of clothes and the innumerable little gadgets she packs to make her trip easier.  I remember when she and Benjy were going on a cruise on the Queen Mary, she was excited to tell all her viewers how clever she was in packing three little baskets to help her keep track of all the paperwork involved with the cruise.  Who packs baskets to sort out paperwork when they are going on a cruise?

That's enough of Brogan!  My blood pressure rises when I think about her (and Benjy!)

THE TIME MACHINE                                                                            MARCH 4, 2022

“He had blue eyes, you know,” Brian said, and looked at me to see my reaction.

“Who?” I asked.

“Him,” said Brian, pointing to the drawing of Mathew Brady on the wall in front of us.  We had popped into the Tasmanian Museum to get out of the rain and we were filling in time at the Bushranger exhibit.  The drawing was sepia in colour so you’d be hard-pressed to know if the eyes were blue or otherwise.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I know?” smirked Brian.

Playing the game, I answered, “How do you know?”

“Because I met him last night and they’re definitely blue.”

“It says here that he was hanged on May 4, 1826.  How on earth can you say that you met him?” I asked, wondering whether I was making a mistake in prolonging this conversation.

Brian lowered his voice.  “Because my father has invented a time machine and, last night, we transported ourselves back 200 years and met Mathew Brady at the Rosevears Hotel.”

I think my mouth fell open.  I knew that Brian’s father was, supposedly, an aerospsace engineer and inventor, though I had never known him to work at anything but delivering parcels for Amazon.  To my knowledge he was currently unemployed.

Later that day, we were in Brian’s garage where he was showing me the so-called Time Machine.  The main part seemed to be a large bundle of copper wire coiled on the ceiling of the garage.  The centre of the garage had been cleared and there was a chalk circle about 3m in diameter drawn around it.  In the circle were 2 purple scooters lying on their sides.

“Are these …?” I started to ask but Brian interrupted, “Yes, we found them on a street corner in Launceston and my dad said that if they weren’t in the custody of some person, we were within our rights to believe they had been abandoned and we could take possession of them legally.”

I began to see why Brian’s dad was often unemployed.

“Why do you need scooters?” I asked.

“It’s a bit complicated,” said Brian, “But, as Dad explained it, we’re fiddling with the space-time continuum.  The time part seems fairly reliable so we can be pretty sure we’ll end up in the time period we choose.  It’s the space part that’s a bit tricky.  Last night, we were aiming for The Gorge but we ended up at Rosevears.  So we have to take some transport to make sure we can get home alright.  The scooters are not too big and not too heavy to carry.”

“Can we have a go at the time machine?” I asked.  I had been a nut for time travel as long as I could remember.  I had read HG Wells and even, Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  I had seen every episode of Dr Who and still had a photograph of my favourite companion, Amelia Pond, on my wall, the grown-up Amelia, of course, in her police uniform.

“I’m not sure,” said Brian. “I’ve never done it on my own.  Why don’t we wait until Dad gets home?”

He took some convincing but, eventually Brian sighed and agreed to give it a go.  We took our places in the centre of the chalk circle, each of us holding on to one of the scooters, and wearing the purple helmet just in case.  Brian had moved some dials on the wall which he told me would take us back to New Year’s Eve in 1989, when Launceston’s biggest-ever fireworks display had been held. It was a once in a lifetime event and, afterwards, thirty people had been taken to hospital and several dogs had run away from home, never to be seen again. Brian was holding a device which looked like the sort of thing you would use to open a garage door, and I think he was holding his breath as well.

The coil of copper wire on the roof of the garage began to glow red and there was a persistent humming coming from somewhere.  I clenched my fists.  Brian carefully pressed his button and, as we watched, the garage door rose noisily up to the ceiling.