From the book: If Only Suomi

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The Arrival 1972 Al found himself naked in a strange bed, in a strange room, alone As he rubbed his eyes, trying to escape from the nightmare and deal with this new reality, he felt lost. He had no idea where he was or even when he was. Yet somehow he felt sort of younger. He looked around the small room, seeking out his clothes and his phone. Nowhere to be seen. Strangely enough he saw a pair of spectacles on the bedside table. 

They reminded him of the heavy glass dark-rimmed ones he used to wear. He put them on. He could see through them clearly! He spotted an open wardrobe and grabbed himself a clean pair of jeans and shirt, underwear and socks. It fitted well. He’d lost a lot of weight. Several stone in fact. Probably all that climbing he thought, but no, wait a minute, that was just a dream. 

He left the room and quickly found a toilet where he emptied his now bursting bladder and then his bowels. 

That made him feel better and sort of brought him more back to reality. Then he looked in the mirror over a sink. He saw himself and was shocked! His hair was long and dark again as was his beard. His face was thinner and he looked, well he looked like a 21 year-old again, not the 78-year-old man he had been. Surely another dream. 

Al wondered how he could wake himself up again and where he would find himself. His last memory, although vague and unreal in itself, was of 2028 in Leeds. What had he been trying to do. He had been with the wheelchair-bound Daniel, a man in his 80’s and his elderly but beautiful wife, Rachel or was it Rebecca? Something about Daniel wanting to be healed. Something about a car crash. Something about a new life for the couple, before they died, Daniel had said. 

Al left the bathroom, feeling very unsure and shaky about what was happening and went down the stairs towards the music and voices he could hear. It sounded like Pink Floyd. As he entered the kitchen dining room he saw three people, two young men and a pretty young woman with long red hair. One of the men had long black hair and a long straggly beard. He other man looked a little older and remarkably like the younger version of Al’s friend, Paddy, whom he had known for decades. 

He looked at Al and smiled and said “At last, you’re awake. Want a pipe?” and passed Al a small metal pipe containing a smouldering residue or what was obviously cannabis resin. That smell was so familiar to Al, but the ‘older Al’, he real Al back, or rather forward, in 2028, had not toked for years. But this was just a dream so why not. 

So as Paddy busied himself preparing a breakfast of bacon and eggs, toast, fruit pancakes and lots of tea and coffee, the four of them passed along the hash pipe which Paddy filled again as soon as it was burned out. Al got high, very high, and it felt so good again, but did not ease his feeling that this was all just a dream. 

Although this man who said his name was Paddy, looked and sounded like the Paddy Al had known in the 1970’s, of course he couldn’t be. Whatever it looked like, Al knew he was in his bed dreaming in Leeds 2028. But then again, he wondered what was real and what was a dream. Maybe his whole life was a dream. Maybe he was dying and reliving it, as people said one’s life flashed before one’s eyes at the end. Otherwise he had, in fact, travelled backwards in time. That made him think he had read about time travel for the super-rich in 2028, a means of revisiting the past. But he could never have afforded that. The other two people, Daniel and Becky, as Daniel called her, said little but laughed a lot, saying how they remembered this or that track from the several music albums Paddy was playing on an old vinyl LP record player. 

As well as Pink Floyd, there was Fleetwood Mac, Caravan, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchel and Bob Dylan. It was just SO good being stoned with these people, enjoying these classic sounds and even singing along to some. Foxey Lady was one of Al’s all-time favourites; memories started to flood back into Al's still foggy brain; it reminded him of an old girlfriend from the time he had travelled to India in 1972, by the name of Diane; and Joni Mitchell reminding him of his Canadian girl friend, he had met in Afghanistan and travelled from Lahore to Delhi with, Miriam. He had not seen either girl since 1972 but had often wondered what had happened to them. They’d be grannies now, probably, if they were still alive. He half expected one of them to walk into this dream room. 

Al remembered now that he had written the story of his overland trip to India and back in his book, self-published in 2014, called ‘All About My Hat, the Hippy Trail, 1972’. 

 It had been fun writing but it had never been a best seller. It was supposed to have been written by the hat that Al had been given by a barber in Greece and Al had worn it to India and back to the UK to Norwich. Al wondered where that hat was now. He also wondered if he had written it, would write it, or whether that was just another dream within a dream? How could he be here and on his way to India at the same time? 

 Al decided to ask dream Paddy what was going on. It was seeming strange that he was dreaming, if he was dreaming, yet knowing it was a dream and it had all started to become very real. 

What was the dream? Going to India or being here. Had he been to India and come back and then come here? Or had he never actually been to India at all. Did he live here or in Norwich? And if this was Leeds, was it 1972 or 2028. Was it some sort of joke or scam? 

Who was this Paddy? The Paddy he knew, or thought he knew, died in 2014 or so, aged about 75. Was he, Al, really just 22, or a 78-year-old man dreaming? Would he wake up? How could he make himself wake up? This was all doing his head in, especially after the pipes of hash. Maybe he was in some sort of mental asylum. 

“Paddy, I am really confused! I am not sure what I am doing here. I’m not even sure that I am here at all! 

“Are you the same Paddy I met in Norwich in 1974? What’s going on? Paddy chuckled: 

“That I don’t know, I’m no prophet, man! I don’t know the future, only what you visitors tell me and that ain’t much. 

“Anyway it’s only 1972 so I don’t even know about next year. I never met you before Al, but I do live in Norwich sometimes. Is that where you’re from, ‘cos that’s where Daniel and Becky are going? They can’t stay here. They can’t risk meeting their other selves or anyone that knows them, that could be a disaster, who know what could happen, man. But if you lived in Norwich, well you can’t go there. Have you ever lived here, in Leeds?” “

No,” said Al, “Never been in Leeds, except one for an afternoon in about 2004. You trying to tell me it’s 1972 again? I went to India in 1972, left Norwich in February for about nine months. How can I be here if I’m heading for India? What’s the date anyway, what day is it supposed to be?” 

“Yep, 1972, Leeds it is, to be sure, Friday 26th of May. 

“Leeds just beat Arsenal one nil in the FA Cup Final a few weeks ago. That was a good match. I went to Wembley to see it. 

“Your other self is probably off to India about now, what date did you leave? 

“But you can’t go there now anyway, people would think it strange if you’ve left then turn up again and if you haven’t left there’ll be two of you to be sure!” 

Al was even more confused. 

“If it’s end of the May 1972, I should be in Afghanistan or somewhere, with Keith, smoking chillums! So I wouldn’t be in Norwich anyway, or Leeds.” 

Al started to remember more. He had been an old man, seventy-eight years of age, living in Norwich where he had met an older Daniel and Rebecca. He had gone to Leeds with them and been somehow sent back in time to 1972. He started to remember his long life bother before and after 1972, some of the many places that he had visited and people that he had met. It was like his life was flashing before his eyes, like he was dying. 

“You’d better spend your seventy-two hours here then man.,” continued Paddy. “I’ll give you some money and you can explore the city. There’s a music festival on in the Roundhay park about two miles out, you can walk it or get a bus from near the station. Daniel and Becky were going to drive to Norwich with you but you can’t go now. 

“Maybe they’d better not go there either, they might meet people who know the other you!” 

Al stood up and said, rather loudly:

 “So I’m back in time, I can change the future! Just can’t remember much about between now and 2028 which I think it was yesterday. How do I know what to change? I can’t remember what date we left Norwich in the van, there were five of us.” said Al rather enthusiastically. 

“I don’t know nothing about Leeds? Can I phone my parents?”

 “No you can’t change anything, man, too many complications. Better not phone anyone. 

“You’ll like it here, Leeds ain’t bad. Roundhay Park is massive and there’ll be a band playing. It’s got lakes and woods and a couple of little cafés, even an outdoor swimming pool. It’s over five hundred acres to wander. And you can nip into Woolies, you know Woolworth's, there’s a nice little café and a record lounge place. And there’s Seacroft Market, I often go there, buy some grub when I’m in Leeds. And the river Aire is good in places too. 

“I’ll give you a street map. You can check out the music bar in Woolies. It’s on High Street, just up the road, easy to find. 

“And Donovan’s on at the University tomorrow.” 

“I’m going to give you fifty quid spending money, should last you. You can crash here for the nights if you want. Just make sure you’re back before midnight on Sunday or you may turn into a pumpkin. 

“Seriously though, if you miss the deadline you might not get back at all.” 

Paddy continued.: “You know Jackie Charlton plays for Leeds United. He was in the sixty-six world cup team. Maybe he’s in town and you can get his autograph, post it anonymously to yourself, ha! You’re other self wouldn’t know who sent it. 

“But Daniel said he wanted to change things so he would avoid a nasty car crash that cripples him in the 1980’s but he can’t do that, I told him already. They’re driving to Norwich in my red Triumph Herald. I’ll pick it up next week when I get back. I’ll go on the train. 

 “See, man, there’s two of him now, the one living in Leeds that will crash and the one in the house now and going to Norwich. And two Becky's too. It may be that our Daniel may avoid a crash and avoid being crippled. They’ll be living new lives for sure but we don’t know what’s going to happen. He mustn’t try to stop the other Daniel’s crash; that could mean he never had any reason to come back and won’t be here to stop it. We just don’t know enough about that type of paradox. If he had stopped it, you wouldn’t be here either. Fuck it’s complicated. “

Maybe he’ll crash anyway, maybe he’ll never get to Norwich. Maybe he’ll stay with Becky, maybe he won’t. None of us know our futures. I don’t know yours any more than you do. I just know that they came for a new life and you came for seventy-two hours. God, if I knew more I’d be a millionaire. 

“You people that I host never tell me nothing much. It’s up to you what you do. If you’re going back to wherever you come from, you got to be back here by midnight February, it’s the 26h now and you’ve been here eleven hours already. Just enjoy it and don’t make any contact with anyone you know!”

 Of course, Al from 2028 knew far more about Paddy than Paddy knew about himself. He knew, for instance, that Paddy had sadly passed away over a decade earlier, after suffering from Prostate Cancer for several years. He’d better now tell Paddy that, he thought. In 2010 they had been to, or would go to, Luxor together with another friend, for two weeks. They had stayed in a small bungalow. By then they had been good friends for decades in the grounds of a hotel on Kings Island. When they had arrived, in February, the temperature was a lovely 23 degrees. A week later it was 38, too hot to move, but before then had managed to visit the Temples of Luxor and Karnak, which was one of if not the largest temples in the world, built by various pharaohs over a thousand years. They went to the Sound and Light show. They also visited the Souk, and had crossed the Nile to the West Bank to see the great mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, the Ramasseum and several tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

At the hotel they both ate copiously in the serve-yourself buffet three times a day.

Paddy had taken with him a small piece of Moroccan hash so each evening they had a smoke, using an upturned glass over smouldering hash on a pin. 

Al remembered that when he had first met Paddy, in 1974. Al was looking for somewhere else to live and Paddy arrived at a mutual friend’s house, saying he had a house for rent. Without further ado, Paddy became Al’s landlord for a five-bedroomed house for six months or so. There are many tales to tell of what went on in that house, but that’s for some other time. Paddy had been running one of the two 24-hour cafes in Norwich but had closed it. It had been on Kings Street. An apt name. For most of the time that Al knew Paddy, he lived on a converted coach and travelled between Morocco, Spain, France, England and the Ireland. Eventually, in the early twenty-first century, he was “set up” and arrested in Morocco at the point of exporting a large amount of cannabis on his bus. He spent a couple of years there in prison in Tangiers, also suffering from prostate cancer. Paddy had five children, with three mothers. he looked after them all. So Al decided to go out and stroll round the area and find his bearings, something he usually did when he arrived in a new place. They had actually been in a flat above a small ironmongers shop on a busy main road. 

So Al just strolled down the street and when he saw a bus stop, took a bus to the city centre. The fare was remarkably little. It took about an hour, but was quite boring. The bus stopped at the main railway station and Al got off. The streets were noisy and crowded with both people and traffic. Just a big busy city. 

 Leeds, he knew, had been and maybe still was one of the biggest cities in England after London and maybe Birmingham. It had been an important city at least since the times of the Industrial Revolution with its products carried along the lengthy Leeds and Liverpool canal. It was hardly used for that purpose any more, but he thought it may be possible to take a boat along it, or else walk some way. He could see on the map that the canal went close to the station. In earlier times, Leeds was important for wool and flax and then had lots of cotton mills and other factories. It was quite a warm and dry day, warm, so strolling round was an option. 

He bought a copy of the local paper but soon lost it, as he strolled around the crowded train station where he went to see some old steam engines. There were still some pulling passenger and goods trains back then as well as diesels. But it was too crowded and he soon left back out on to the street. He could see by the map that the City square was one side of the station and the River Aire was on the other, so he went to the Square first, thinking it would be quaint. Then he went back and left on the other side of the station and walked down Princess Street towards the river. It was not far. 

The people he saw seemed all in a rush, many carrying large bags of shopping and most looked unfriendly and miserable. He was not enjoying this city at all. He wondered why on Earth of all places he had chosen to come to Leeds. But then maybe he hadn’t been given a choice as that is where Daniel and Rebecca were coming to and they were paying for him. But since arriving here they had kept themselves to themselves and left him to do his own thing. Paddy was friendly, jolly and hospitable but that did not include acting as a guide or showing him the city. Maybe Paddy didn’t like Leeds much either. 

 It would be good if I could find some company, he thought, but I’ll have to be careful. I’’m supposed to know about the last 20 years or so but not the next 56! I mustn’t even hint at future events, not that I can remember much detail. Stay away from politics. Don’t mention Thatcher or Bush or Bin Laden, or the Twin Towers and the wars. In 1972 they’re still worried about World Wars and Vietnam, let alone Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Korea. Half the world was starving and the Cold War was far from over. It’s only nine years since Kennedy was killed and they don’t yet know who did it. And of course time travel was limited to fiction. I am going to say as little as I can. After a very brief look at the river, he went back to the station again for a cup of tea in the station canteen. 

Then he visited a small outdoor market not far from the station. Cheap items that would be almost antiques in 2028, if he could take them back. Collectables like Dinky Cars, old tins, silver jewellery, so much more. He saw a sign at a petrol station that read 35P a Gallon. He decided to head for Hyde Park. Paddy had said that was an area popular with students. It was an area between the University and a district called Headingley.

He passed the City Square and saw the Town Hall and the entrance to the City Museum but he did not go in. But when he got there it wasn’t a park at all. It was streets of Victorian back-to-back terraced housing, almost a slum. He decided to check out the prices in a local food store. Bread, ten pence a loaf. English money was already decimalised. 

The coins were halfpenny, one pence, two pence, five and tens and a fifty pence coin. Notes were £1, £5 and £10. Probably larger denominations but not so common. 

Milk was five pence; a jar of coffee for thirty pence; a box of Cornflakes for eleven pence; a dozen eggs for twenty; two pounds of sugar ten pence; crisps were three pence a bag. He bought a bag. It had the old little blue bag of salt in. But then again, he thought, I had only earned twenty pounds a week for five days and Saturday morning. His grant at UEA had been ten pounds a week and his rent three of four. And that was just for thirty weeks each year; he had to be looked after by his parents or find a summer job. Out of that he had to buy his food and drink, clothes, transport, books and entertainment. But he had gotten through it. He went back to the train station to drink some more tea. 

As he sat there sipping, he thought he heard two women talking. One was saying “Elaine Silver it was, said some guy from the future was here. If we can find him we can get the soccer results and get rich. Bet he knows a thing or two that’ll come in handy.” 

With that he left to get a green bus away from the crowds. Were they talking about him or Daniel or were there others here. After all, others must have come back even from beyond 2028; if everyone was supposed to keep the secrets who would know? But then again, there’s always one to break the fucking rules. And who made the rules anyway and did anyone police them? 

Were there Time Police? Were they watching him. As he sat on the bus he spotted a discarded local Leeds newspaper. That gave him an idea. He could sort of change the future past without really changing anything. 

When he got off the bus he found a post office on the High Street. He tore off some newspaper which included the top of the front page with the date and name of the paper. He got an air mail envelope from the counter and put a ten pound note inside the newspaper and into the envelope. He sealed the envelope and wrote on the front his own name and Poste Restante, New Delhi, India. That was one way to send mail to somebody abroad, so they could pick it up at the main post office in the city it was sent to. He asked the price of a first class stamp and was told it cost three pence. In 2028 it was almost three pounds! It wasn’t even changing anything at all because, he remembered, he did receive a ten pound note from Leeds in New Delhi and it had helped him tremendously when he had no money at all. That was still a month or so away in 1972 time but in his memories it had already happened. That was one of the two ten pound notes he collected, or had collected, or would collect, or whatever, that day. One had been from a friend in Norwich and the other, well he had always wondered who he knew in Leeds that had sent it. That was a 56 year old mystery solved. He briefly thought of buying some stuff now and burying it so he could dig it up again in 2028, if he ever actually got back. He wouldn’t tell Paddy though. 

Then Al went back to Paddy’s flat. Paddy cooked a good meal of fish, pasta and vegetables with a bottle of good red wine. Then they went in Paddy’s car to a pub called The Fforde Grene on Roundhay Road. It was a drive of about half an hour. The pub, a large and old building, had a rock band playing and it was crowded. 

It was very smoky. This was well before the smoking ban in public places. People were smoking joints as well as cigarettes. Paddy knew one of the barmen who also brought the beers up from the cellar, name of Jimmy and Al drank a couple of pints of his old favourite, Newcastle brown beer. Al saw that Guinness and Newcastle Brown were twenty pence a pint each and most of the other beers like Double Diamond, which he also used to drink, were eighteen.

Paddy filled and lit a hash pipe, he took a puff and passed it to Al. He also took a puff. It felt so good. It was good hash in these days. There was a jukebox and when the band finished playing Paddy put some coins in. The song ‘Metal Guru’ by T. Rex which was apparently number 1 in the charts. Al remembered his ‘other self’ or was it just him, had seen them at UEA in Norwich a couple of years earlier when they were still called Tyrannosaurus Rex. He had seen lots of good bands in those days at UEA. That was one of the best few hours that Al had in Leeds until then. They went back to “Paddy’s Pad”, as he called it and smoked several hash pipes. 

“How does it work, Paddy?” asked Al, “Bringing us back here through time like this?” “I don’t really know,” he replied, “it’s something to do with genetic code, so I was told, something about sending the essential person back though a time tunnel and reassembling them here with a machine called a 4D printer that they sent back the instructions for. Then they build a new body and bring you here in the night. It’s beyond me, I am not a scientist. I was told that at the start they just buried messages so somebody in the future could work it all out. Then, when it’s time for you to go back, you take a sleeping potion and they come and pick you up and send you back. I don’t get to see any of that. They said they can’t send me to the future because the future me would have to come back here first and they won’t tell me anything about the future. I might be dead by 2028.” 

Al went to sleep, his mind still reeling, still wondering at the miracle of time travel. 

The next morning, Saturday May 27, Al awoke early enough, about eight o’clock. He had been dreaming again, a very surreal dream where he was in India with his friend Suomi. He thought it weird. They were both young again. He wondered briefly what was real and what was a dream. Now it felt dreamy but real. He pinched himself. Yes, he felt that, so he got out of bed. He was alone. He suddenly remembered he was really in 2028. Then he remembered he was in 1972, in Leeds and had come backwards through time and was young again. Then he remembered that Paddy had said there were now two of him, this one and the other ‘original’ Al who was on his way to India. That didn’t make sense. 

 Paddy had said this Al had to go back to 2028 and that was tomorrow, Sunday. Al figured that if he left the bedroom and found Paddy, he’d know what was real and what was a dream. Yet a few times before, he remembered, this Al had awoken from a dream only to find that he was still dreaming, and it was said that life itself was just a dream, just an illusion, some sort of trip. Maybe that was it. That was it, he was in some sort of dream trip, layer on layer and that made him feel lost, out of control, living a dream life at the whim of some sort of supernatural comic controller. 

He felt weird. He’d never felt like this is all his 78 years, with or without drugs. He washed in a basin on the table in the room using the water from a large jug and dressed quickly then went to the kitchen where Paddy was sat reading the paper besides a massive pot of tea on the table. Paddy made eggs and toast and beans and they drank tea and chatted. Daniel and Becky appeared about nine o’clock and chatted a while and then set off in the Triumph. They had decided to go to India, overland instead of Norwich, where they could just disappear. First they would go to London and get some money together then they would catch the ‘Magic Bus’ Al didn’t want to tell him that his other self was in fact on his way to India; partly because he was not sure that he was, or whether he was just here in Leeds, or in Leeds and in Afghanistan at the same time, or if there were now two of him!. He thought again of his friend John Sullivan. 

Was John dead or was he still alive? The Al in Afghanistan would not yet have known, yet the AL from 2028 now in 1972, did! Paddy told Al that America had just launched a spaceship to Venus, called the Varana 8. Al also learned that Edward Heath was the Tory Prime Minister, not that he cared. That was, after all, just history and he could do nothing about it, even if he wanted to. They smoked a couple of hash pipes and Al was stoned again. 

Al mused that here in 1972, there were no household computers and few colour TV’s. No internet and no mobile phones, Ipods or Ipads. 

Even the list of chemical elements was shorter and there had been few space probes although men had supposedly walked on the Moon. They still had Apartheid and the Berlin Wall in 1972. He pondered, was the world a better place now or in 2028. What had changed? 

Well, he thought, in 2028 there were a heck of a lot more people for starters. There was more money than ever, more super-rich and more desperately poor. There was more food but more starving people in 2028. 

There were more police but more crime and more prisons. There were more schools, universities and teachers in 2028 and even on-line courses, but there were more illiterate people than ever before. 

There were more doctors and hospitals but more sick people and more illnesses and even though people lived longer so many will become ill or disabled.

There was more automation but less jobs. There was more entertainment even indoors, but more suicides. There were more marriages either in Churches or civil, but more broken families and single parents. There was still famine, pestilence, plagues and wars. 

There was probably more integration of races and cultures but just as much bigotry and racism. There were more commodities and consumables but more waste and pollution. By 2028, well long before, industrialists had realised the profitability of recycling and supposedly cleaning up the rivers and oceans. 

They were putting so many chemicals in the tap water that water filters were essential in homes and eating places and bottled water was a major industry yet the poorest people suffered most. Organic food was common here in 1972 but in 2028 it had its own sections in the massive supermarkets that had replaced so many of the local shops and it all cost more. Al wondered what really changed in people? Nothing. In what ways were we better off in 2028 and in what ways were we worse off? 

Sure people could travel faster, if they had the money, but everyone seemed to have less time and were rushing round like mad men.