Altogether now: dangdanandanandandandandandang ooooweeeeeooooooooo oooooooweeeeoooooooo wwwwweeeeeooooooweeeeeoooooooooooooweeeeeee. No its not the sound of Dan and Dan being chased by the police. Nor is it the sound of a camp robot. Its the Doctor Who music, which as of yesterday, is now my theme tune. That’s right ladies, gentlemen, bears and wizards, it was discovered during my journey to Northampton University last night, that I am indeed a time lord. Oh yes. I, using merely my mind, my car and faster driving than I probably should have done, travelled through time. Not sideways, or backwards. Not even horizontally or through alternate dimensions. No, I did it chronologically, like most people. Only I did chronologically the way that say Jack Bauer would do his food shopping ie he’d fuck it right up. He’d storm in kick over the triangle of stacked beans, shoot someone in the freezer section and then steal someone’s trolley while saying ‘I need it, I can’t tell you why, you’re gonna have to trust me’. Yeah like that. What I’m saying is that last night, on the eve of the Harvest Moon, I beat my satnav by a whole 9 minutes. ‘Oh yeah’ you say, ‘beating your satnav isn’t time travel’. Well Moany McMoanerson, Picky McPickerson, that all depends on what your concept of time is doesn’t it? Does your concept of time mean that you could only be travelling through it if you visible see the clocks going backwards or dramatically forwards and your surrounding areas and scenery change in appropriate fashion? Does your concept of time mean that until we discover a way to bend light to point where we can traverse between dimensions using some clever quantum mechanics that I will never understand not least because I don’t listen to it when people say stuff in the first place? Yeah, well, mine doesn’t. My concept of time means that if I beat my satnav and end up – despite distance calculated by speed travelled – somewhere earlier than I should be, then HG Wells can kiss my future denying derriere.
So now I know I have these powers, how to use them appropriately? Well I mean, for a start, when I say I’m meeting someone somewhere, I can leave 9 minutes later than I would and still end up there on time, which is pretty sweet. Think of what those 9 minutes could be used for? Thumb twiddling. Biscuit eating. Staring into space. Its like I’ve opened up whole new avenues of life. And surely what starts at just being 9 minutes early will get more and more as I hone my new skills. Soon I’ll be 20-30 years early and meeting up with Jimi Hendrix for a cuppa instead of my friends. Then I’ll be aiming to get to a gig but instead I’ll be sitting with Julias Ceasar telling him what Brutus said behind his back the other day, or telling Hannibal how his name has been used for both the A Team and Silence of the Lambs. So many possibilities. Of course, I have to be careful as so far, I’ve only been able to be earlier than anticipated which may mean I can never go forwards, thus trapping myself in the past, and I like electricity and not having the plague.
There’s a lot to think about, and I’ll be honest, though it was tough, I chose not to say anything to the students as I walked on stage. No, it was their freshers week and they had enough on their plate. Mostly booze. Why they had booze on plates and not in glasses, no one knows. I said nothing about how just minutes before we headed into a 21 mile tail back on the M1 with 3 hours of delays we conveniently turned the radio on and heard about such things, turning off in the nick of time. Nick of Time is another time lord. He is responsible for stealing hours away from you. You know when you say things like ‘how is it 4p already? Where’s the time gone?’ Nick took it. Or when you get drunk and you lose hours. Nick did that. Nick’s an arsehole.
No instead of telling the students all that sort of stuff, I merely warned them how all the people they meet in freshers week they will hate for the next 3 years, insulted a man who’s nickname was ‘Splitz’ and then informed them all that the only way to get around the union poster saying ‘you’ll be banned if in possession of controlled drugs’ was to only carry uncontrolled drugs that you have no idea what they contain. Hopefully I will return in a year’s time to find most of them have left full of disillusion and hope. Its a tough job doing this, but having been into the future (I haven’t been to the future) its totally for the best, and I can say that with full knowledge of how true that is (I can’t). Must go, I have to be somewhere at 1. What time shall I leave to get there? Maybe I should dabble with leaving ten minutes after one and see if I can arrive by 12.30? Maybe I should leave tomorrow and get there yesterday? Muthafrikkin timelord I tell ya.
I’m going to leave in ten mins cos its important and I’ll lose money if I’m late. Wish I was a real time lord. Sigh.
