Time warp

How the dickens can it be Tuesday evening already? I don’t understand where the time has gone this week… oh, yes I do. I entered the time warp of my childhood bedroom…

My old bedroom at my mum’s looks as though I never left. In part this was contrived so as my mum would not get despondent that I had left home, but it was also because I never had enough space to house 16 million books, photo albums, art work, scraps of writing, art materials, diaries, cards and old magazines. Although I have since gone through and trimmed it down slightly, I still have an awful amount of tat that I am loathe to throw away (and a very understanding mother, it has to be said).

Today I needed to find a few things that were rather important, so set off to my mum’s telling myself sternly that it would be a fleeting, duck in, dive out visit, and I wouldn’t start reading anything at all. Or poking at anything. I would just find what I wanted and be gone, back to chapter ten.

Of course, once I was encased in the old room with a mug of frothy coffee and a cat by my side, time ceased to have any meaning. I pounced on old books like they were dear long-lost friends, re-discovered shoeboxes full of correspondence, essays, school books… I again pondered on the now defunct magazine Blah Blah Blah (looked terrific, was a pain in the butt to read), laughed at knitting patterns from the 1960s and got way too carried away reading my old copies of Smash Hits, back from the days when Neil Tennant was just a bloke that used to write for them, rather than a pop star in the Pet Shop Boys. I found what I wanted in the end, but it took me several hours to unearth it, considering I stopped every few seconds (and had to disengage the cat from my lap every so often).

Finally, I pulled back from my past into my present, as the future won’t write itself. Still, I am so set up for the day I set my next novel in the 80’s or 90’s. Hmm, did I say ‘my next novel’? Blimey, that’s optimistic!