Prologue

To celebrate 'the end of the world', I thought I'd post the prologue to something I've been working on for a while. It's far too long to go up in it's entirety, but here's a teaser: 

“And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that accendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them... and shall overcome them... and kill them.”

The beast that stood before them towered nine feet tall and growing. It morphed as it grew, its face swelling crimson. Two more faces appeared out of its cheeks, one of yellow, one brown, an unholy trinity of voices intoning the words in a phased, discordant chorus as they emerged. Its clothes fell away to reveal hoofed legs of thick brown fur, pendulous testicles and a cock standing proud and veined and purple. It continued to grow, now twenty feet high, great horned leather wings unfurling at its spine, chilling the air around them with each monstrous flap. And as it reached the apex of its transformation, it leaned back and held its clawed hands out to the sky and gave a blood curdling howl of delight.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear NO evil, for thou art with me, they rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

The woman that faced the beast had fallen to her knees. She stabbed a crucifix in its direction, her flamed red locks sodden, already blowing in the sea breeze and blowing all the more in the vortex of the beast’s wings. Though terrified, she faced the thing bravely, her chanting all but lost beneath the mockery that echoed back at her. The words whistled through the gap in her top teeth, a wild stare fixed on the creature, tears streaming from unblinking eyes.

Dan stood twenty feet away and watched the scene as from afar. Like the dreams and fantasies of his youth, time had slowed to a crawl, giving rise to those same feelings of dislocation and fear. He took it all in: the showdown between impossible creature and insane preacher, the volley of biblical passages, the rumbling of the storm clouds. The rain was pelting down, but the very raindrops were deflected from the beast’s form. The grass began to smoulder beneath its feet, grains of sand rose from the dune like dust in a static field, crackling in the air around it. A discarded motorbike lay on its side a few feet away, handle bar buried. A sailing ship bobbed in and out of view on the horizon.

All this Dan saw, yet watched not through his own eyes, but as through a TV screen broadcasting live from behind his retinas. Reality, not for the first time, seemed distant and unattainable. How had he arrived at this point? He thought back through the disappearances and the global panic, through the requests to meet his elusive relative, way back to the nightmares of his infancy and saw that he had overshot himself. Was there a moment when he could say all of this had begun? Was he really responsible for what had happened? What would Jim have to say about all of this? And when would this women realise that she didn’t have a prayer?

The heavens rumbled, the sky cracked, the flow of time resumed its natural course. Dan lifted his eyes to meet those of the triple faced thing and witnessed oblivion.

He closed his eyes.

We Heartily Recommend... Moby Dick

Moby Dick is one of the pinnacles of English literature. Which is to say, steep, inhospitable and littered with pitfalls for the unwary reader.

The actual plot of the novel, Captain Ahab's obsession with hunting down the eponymous white whale, occupies only a fraction of the novel's length. The rest of the book is dedicated to diversions and digressions on every aspect of whales and whaling life. It's a dense, complicated book, employing a variety of styles from Old Testament damnation to sailor's yarn to scientific journal, the narrative taking on the obsessive mania of Ahab in its need to give the very last word on whaling.

It's tough going and a lot to take in, you will glaze over in places, but if you can last the course then you should find a tour de force in storytelling. It's not a book to read idly on holiday. It is a fine instructional manual for the budding writer. Melville shows great mastery of a number of styles and there's a lot to be learned on how a writer can bend the medium to tell his story rather than wedging the story into the confines of the medium. Indeed, many of the techniques Melville pioneered in Moby Dick weren't rediscovered until the great modernist writers of the early twentieth century.

It truly is one of the most remarkable performances that English literature has yet produced. Not one for the casual reader, but worthy of an obsession. Ahab would understand. 

The Hill of Howth

Oh there once was a babe born of fire and ice and Andy was his name oh.

And he vexed his mother for the things he drew all upon her kitchen table.

And he drew in the yard and he drew on the walls,

And he drew on her skirts and he drew on her shawls.

And he drew all over our Queen Vic's halls.

Andy. Andy, Andy, Andy.

And when he was a boy-child, beasts of burden folk would bring.

And he cured them of their ills all and learned them how to sing.

And the priest called him heathen and brute before God.

And he packed up his things and away he did sod.

But he still had time to heal one more dog.

Andy. Andy, Andy, Andy.

And when he was a young man to the Yankees he gave aid.

Sawed bones and sewed their wounds shut and at night the nurses made.

And he sawed off their feet and he sawed off their arms,

And he bound up their wounds with his ointments and balms.

But he washed his hands 'fore he worked his charms.

Andy. Andy, Andy, Andy.

And he became a wise man and through the seas he set to roam.

Felled trees and gathered lumber and carved the ship of stone.

And he threw up the decks with a flick of his wrist,

And he found him a ship that the seas daren't resist

Bent the sails to his will with his mighty fist.

Andy. Andy, Andy, Andy.

And as he was thought an old man, an inn and wife he kept.

And from hill and o'er dale they came and sang and danced and leapt.

And he poured for them porter and he poured for them stout,

And he dished out his council and cooked them his trout.

And he filled up their wives when 'is weren't about.

Andy. Andy, Andy, Andy.

And oh they laid his body down. Way down. And I pray you remember people, I think you do. They laid him out in that big old airship he liked to fly around in all day, having his adventures. Placed brandy bottles at his feet and at his head and all around him until his whole outline was in cognac and bathed in bronze. And they jigged and danced till dawn and sent him on his way into the grey sunrise. His ship did rise and float out to sea and folk cried and they moaned. Andy. Andy. Andy.

And an age went by, another life it did seem.

And all across town folk had the same dream.

And weren't long then till folk said he were seen.

Andy. Andy. Andy.

Andy. Andy. Andy.

And he returned a new man to teach what he did know.

And gathered 'round him students wide and learned them how to grow.

And he found them a college and he built them a school,

And expounded at length about freedom and rule.

And Fridays gave his lectures from the pool.

Andy. Andy, Andy, Andy.

Dark shades on a Lillo like some fool.

Andy. Andy, Andy, Andy.

Andy. Andy, Andy, Andy.

a(n)d(y) Infinitum

Whiteout!

Shit. Mistake this was. Who are these people? Faces keep changing. Morphing. One person one second and another the next. How long is it? Two months maybe. Always happens this way. Always have to go through this one time and then its fine. Better now than tomorrow. No. Not here. Not in front of strangers. What are we doing again? Why are we here? Oh yes. Stop looking at them. Cold. Look at the fire. Visions in fire. Figure in the backlight. Stay still. Long stare. Eyesight narrows. Blinds out the corners. Limbs gone numb. All that remains of the world is this fireplace and its occupant. Silhouette glowing in cherry red. Red Knight. Flanked by rock guards. Pieces of fake plastic coal make their head and torso and arms. It all hones into sharp focus. His helmet comes to a point. Flames flicker at his visor, lighting up his eyes. They bare into me. Only two points left in whole universe. Heart pounding. Look away. Have to. Look away.

Look at Jeff. Know Jeff. His house. But Jeff's three people at the moment. In three pieces. The top half of Jeff is from his head down to the v neck in his hoodie. You can see the separation between Jeff's hoodie and his t-shirt underneath. Sections two and three of Jeff are split down a crease in his hoodie in a left to right diagonal across his stomach. He looks like when the magician cuts his assistant in half and pulls the pieces apart. His face is changing too, his red cheeks and shaved head for an instant turning into a man at a party I once saw who threw up into a pint glass. Nauseous. Jeff's features morph on but the acrid smell still in my nostrils. Reminds me of playing Fish. Fish? Fish, where the person holding the blunt shouts 'Fish' and next person shouts 'fish' gets the next toke. Then people start using fish in sentences, only the most alert getting a go. Leads to such hilarious variations as 'I think I've pulled a mussel', 'Oh, I'm getting a bit of a haddock' and 'As a mackerel fact, I'm vegetarian'. Best I ever managed was, "You sea horses, right?" I tried, "You sea cucumbers?" but they were on me before I could finish the sentence. Stop carping on. Change the tune-a. Short of breath. Not enough air. Chest tightening. Need to get up. Can't sit here anymore. Shivering. So cold. Must find bathroom. Just for a moment. Have to be alone.

White. Gone white. And grey. Feel like I'm having a heart attack. Always this way. Need a distraction. Had a girlfriend sit on me during a panic attack. Poked me with her fingers until I screamed at her to get off. When I asked what the hell she was doing she smiled and said well it got rid of the panic attack didn't it? She was not wrong. Not sure that was why she did it though. She took it to the extreme. Usually just play a game on my phone. Or flick through an atlas. Get lost in the places. Or splash of cold water. Lost my place by now. Five second rule in operation. Everyone's gonna know. Why not just say? Remember what Jeff always says. If you feel yourself having a whitey, tell someone. It loses its hold over you if you admit it 'cause then you don't have to hold on to it anymore. Most people are sympathetic. It's only very rare you get sat on.

I'm out. Walk of shame. Ok. Said everyone would look. Jeff asking if I'm ok with that wry smile of his. Ok then. Time to fess up.

Laughter and ribbed that I only fessed up 'cause it's so obvious from my face. My grey corpse face. True what Jeff says though. Feel easier already. Faces still morph, but it's a slower cycle. The faces become friendlier. Start telling stories. Heard this one before but it's worth hearing again:

Jeff, Kev and Clarkey dropped acid once and went for a drive. They did it before Bill Hicks made it cool. And they didn't get pulled over by the cops. Not on the country lanes of Gloucestershire. Only thing they found was a junction. Dusk. Off to the right they see some lights and wait for the car to pass before they pull out. Three hours later they realise that the lights are really the porch lights of someone's cottage. It was that point they realised how fucked they were, Clarkey gone white and humming to himself in the back seat, and decided to go home.

The first time I tripped I had a massive whitey on the come up. Standing still I felt like I was moving at 60, my legs were on one side of the room and my head the other side and this voice came out of the heavens to announce to me that in the grand scheme of things I was nothing. Then we just played Magic the Gathering all night, falling into long silences, then both looking up at the same time and having an epic conversation about something random. In my head we became a sitcom, the next big thing after the Fast Show. Two stoners who say nothing for most of the episode, but when they do speak, it's dynamite.

Kev starts saying how gutted he was when Richard Whiteley died, 'cause he wanted to pitch him a show called 'Whiteout' where two teams got stoned in increasingly bizarre ways and the winner was the last one not to have a whitey. We play a few rounds. There's taking a toke and holding it in till it comes back around the circle. A game for sadomasochists. Then there's the blow back into a chilled pint glass. The smoke just sits there in the glass and you take it back like a drink, throwing it back like a shot.

Then we're on to building things, putting a hole in an apple to smoke through and making complicated joints using the instructions from the 'Spliffs' books. Me and Jeff's bursts into flames and for a second I see the Red Knight's hand in its combustion. A fleeting paranoia and then we're on to making buckets. Finally a piece of toilet roll is stretched over the rim of a pint glass, coin placed in the middle, and we take turns burning the paper. Burn two holes into one big hole and you do a shot of tequila. Suits me, alcohol relaxes me. Drop the coin in the glass and you have to shotgun a whole can of beer.

Jeff loses and jabs a pen into the tin and it comes over his face and he swallows the lot. Then he falls back down into his chair and starts off on a rant about decriminalisation and how the Dutch have got it right and that we should stay out there when we go and not get the flight back. Kev says nah, we have to fight for it to be decriminalised in our own land, not hide in a corner of someone else's country like we're ashamed of who we are. Have to fight for it where we live.

And it’ll happen eventually, Jeff says. Legalisation I mean. ‘Cause eventually a generation will come into power that realise the truth. That in spite of its side effects, compared to coke, heroin, alcohol, tobacco, Prozac, Valium, Tomazepan, Big Brother, X-Factor, religion, New Labour, the Democratic Republican Party and the myriad other narcotics and carcinogens which saturate our society, Marijuana barely even fucking registers on the fucking scale man.

Everyone goes quiet as Jeff's words hang in the air. He gets ups. Puts some music on. AC/DC, 'Powerage'. And by the time 'Gone Shootin' comes on I am floating through space in a bubble in my mind and Jeff is draping a duvet over my corporeal form on the sofa. Ba da, dum dum. Ba da, dum dum. Ba da dum dum. Early start. Ba da dum dum. Amsterdam by lunchtime. Say it's changed. Saying that for years. Clarkey snoring? Red Knight still staring out the corner of my eye. Oh come on now, don't stop me getting any sl

Coffee Shop Blues

Selections from the journal of Danny Roberts

Welcome to my favourite observation post in all the northern hemisphere. The second floor of a certain coffee shop, St. Antoniesbreestraat, Amsterdam. The walls are painted a medium shade of blue. Ganesha, the god of new age cliché reclines, serenely, in the corner. The stairwell leading from the street bisects the room. One side contains the bar and pot counter, the other is the chill out/lounge area. Both halves are glass fronted and partly enclosed by Plexiglas like the crystal turrets of a high street castle.

A large brown, L shaped sofa dominates the lounge area. The coffee table in front is littered with the various accoutrements that every good pot smoker requires: Ashtrays, lighters, tobacco and papers, a full size hookah and of course the gear itself. Skirting the Plexiglas there is a semi-circular, Formica table which sweeps out past the windows as far as the jukebox in the corner. Nina Simone’s ‘Mood Indigo’ is playing. And there I am next to it, staring out the window and into space.

I love to just sit here and do nothing. Not only can the finest green and black be bought from a few feet away, but the view is splendid. Everywhere you turn everything is perfectly framed. The open window before me to the pavement below. The archway across the street.  The stoners staring blankly through the glass from the other side of the room. An arcade runs underneath us, through which people pass, gaining a precious few seconds respite from the ubiquitous Amsterdam rain. And it seems that I myself am framed for the delectation of the shoppers passing beneath.

I could sit here for hours (I probably have). Allow the world to orbit in an ellipse with me at one foci and the spliff smouldering in the ashtray at the other. And as it rushes past my eye-line I’ll let my attention roam and relax on individuals and try to discern as much as possible before they exit stage left, stage right. The girl on the bicycle in the sky blue jumper. The acid casualty tramp who jogs past holding his cupped hands to his face as if carrying some precious cargo. The guy in the white shirt, business suit and a Rasta hat. He staggers through my field of view, arms in the air and shouts in the poshest way imaginable, “Hey, where are all the white women at.”  He’s paler than me.

And as below, so all around. The two women who look out of place outside of Hampshire who eat space-cake and swap icing tips and wait for something to happen. An entire family occupy the sofa behind me. Seriously, father and son, nanna and granddaughter. Fuck knows what that’s all about. Maybe one of Bill’s rants got through. You see son, the thumb is opposable, that’s why we can use tools and  live indoors. Cool dad. And sat next to me, an American. He looks like Hemmingway, but as he speaks (“Hey look honey, the walls have babies in bubbles in space.”), he sounds more like Al from Home Improvement.

All these people have stories to tell. Most are just passing through. Since the rupture (I refuse to call it the 'event', it sounds so fucking stupid), there are a few places like Amsterdam, Venice, Timbuktu, San Francisco, Singapore and a handful of others where the local space, time and reality shattered during the rupture and later stabilised. Throughout the city there now exist places where you can walk from one version to another.

If you want to go back to the 1870s, get the 51 tram from Amsterdam Central and stay on until Westwijk (although you may find yourself doing the last couple of miles by horse and trap). The Venice Bridge of Sighs can be accessed via Admiralgracht. Hendrix is busking in the market around the corner from here. Oberon and Titania and all the other fairies have taken up residence in the Vondelpark and may receive you. The shopkeeper from Mr Benn has a place near the station and people stumble into his poorly animated premises all the time. He's either malevolent or means well, I've yet to decide which.

If you want to see zombies take the ferry at the back of the station and head up to the campsite in the woods up there. The army pretty much have the place in lockdown but there are breaks in the fence and enough guides prepared to take you zombie spotting. Hunting them costs a little more.

Many come through the city on their way to try and join Star Fleet. Fuck knows who discovered this route but I am reliably informed that you have to head down to Max Euweplein, where the Hard Rock Cafe is located. You approach from the main road, up to the precinct and out through the arcade, passing the giant chess board on the left.

Then you get a train to Schiphol Airport, fly out to San Francisco, take a guided tour of Alcatraz and once there use the men's room on the second level, first stall. Once in the stall, hop two over to come out in the third one along. You emerge into a vision of what people in the 1980s imagined the future might look night. At most any other time in my life I would have jumped into a Star Trek universe without giving it a second thought. But damm it if Andy hasn't made a sailor out of me. I guess it was inevitable. If my parents hadn't met serving in the Royal Navy, I wouldn't be here at all.

Andy is the reason I'm in Amsterdam. I've sailed all over looking for a clue to his whereabouts. Been at sea so long that the feel of solid ground beneath my feet still seems unnatural. For a while I gave up looking altogether and spent years sailing around and around the globe, coming near land only rarely. It was useless, Andy deliberately makes people forget him, so how was I supposed to pick up the clues to find him?

Mostly I read and marvelled at how even the most magical plots now seemed tame compared to what I had been through in recent times. Yet the new world was created out of these flights of fancy and I resolved that if I didn't have Andy around to help me then I needed to know as much about what possibilities were out there. Books seemed like a good start.

Besides, if you've spent as long as I have staring at the pages of Finnegans Wake, trying to make any sense out of great swathes of its 'narrative' and its dense arcane syntax, then any other text in the English language is a piece of piss by comparison. The Wake powers the most powerful engine on my ship and with a bit of trial and error I've found a couple of hundred secret routes through the bounds of reality and beyond.

Eventually though even a man as misanthropic as me craves the company of others and it occurred to me, rather than running around looking for Andy it would be better to drop anchor in one place and wait for him to come to me? Amsterdam seemed the obvious location for a number of reasons. Not least of which that if I'm going to be sat around waiting for the man, I'd like a smoke while I do so. I also heard of a couple of people that were able to remember Andy that pass through these parts from time to time. Haven't heard a peek out of any of them in months.

And yet a hyper-dimensional crossroads like this is a gift for a writer. This spot isn't just perfect for its visual treats but for the things you hear. I come here every day to hear people talk of triumphs and disasters, narrow escapes and nightmare endings, new worlds and fresh realities, rekindled passions and lost loves and childhood dreams realised and discarded in the blink of an eye. All these tales deserve a chronicler and as I've not been doing much else of late, I've taken the task upon myself to the point where finding Andy seems a secondary mission at this stage. You will excuse me if I have occasionally used some artist licence, but I have that Joycean strain in me and I do so hate to do things the same way twice...

I’m thinking about my first trip here. It was my first time in a coffee shop. First time abroad. Me and a mate popped in for a couple of hours. But the sofa devoured us and we ended up staying six. I forget what we were smoking, but for a moment there time seemed to speed up and slow down and stop.

The whole thing freaked me out to begin with. Sat in a public place, smoking gange and no one gives a fuck. In fact it’s actively encouraged. The first spliff always takes me by surprise and this was no exception. You have to treat it like a roller-coaster. If you tense up, you’ll hate it. But if you lie back and let out a healthy laugh from the pit of your stomach, you enjoy every second of it.

That’s what I did. Went with the flow. Turned on my scanner and took in everything in around me. The Dutch guy selling the dope. He had the look of Brian May mixed with Stretch Armstrong. The girl serving drinks. Dreads half way down her back, nose ring. The epitome of Dutch beauty (And as I’m watching her, she turns and winks at me - but it’s just that time’s broken free of its mooring again and she’s only blinking).

Then there was the clientele. The Filipino boy, with his dad (‘Look father, this is what passes for opium in Europe.’). The local popping in to pick his stash up for the weekend, complete with dog on lead. Can spot British tourists a mile off. The German fallen asleep in the corner. And a couple of twenty-something lads who seem to my pot-addled brain to be a kind of Jeeves and Wooster pairing. ‘Sir, I have purchased half an ounce of the finest Nepalese White.’  ‘Excellent Jeeves, now let us depart with all due ambulatory rapidity before we are observed frequenting this working class establishment.’ (Only in Dutch).

However, the star of the show almost defies description. He works here. He’s dressed in skater jeans and sneakers. Boomerang t-shirt and rainbow suspenders dangling from his sides. He’s white, American I think, with a mushroom afro and goatee. There’s a half finished joint permanently balanced between his lips that I haven't seen him light once. I’m not quite sure what his job is, but it must qualify for laziest occupation on Earth. Having watched him for the most of the evening, I narrowed down his main responsibilities to the following:

1. Emptying ashtrays
2. Shouting, ‘No cameras near the counter.’
3. Lighting four candles at about half seven.
4. Greeting people at the top of the stairs, shaking their hand, nodding his cocked head and saying,   ‘Awright man.’ in his best Jamaican accent.

And you just know to look at him that he came to Amsterdam for a week and he’s been here ever since. He's an absolute star!  I picture him fifteen years in the future when cannabis is legal and not merely decriminalised and space-cake is served to visiting dignitaries as a Dutch delicacy. He’ll be dressed in a tux and cumberbund, the same joint pursed between his lips. He’ll greet visiting ambassadors, shake their hand, nod and say, ‘Awright man’, in twenty five different languages.

In the middle age of Awright Man  he'll be perpetually slumped in the corner of some coffee shop. Muttering to himself about  how Amsterdam’s became too touristy and the best place to toke skunk is now some cabin at the northernmost tip of Norway, 'cause it’s permanently dark there for three months of the year. Then they'll throw him out and he'll trudge home to slump in front of the TV, one hand down his pants, spliff in his mouth, snoring and muttering ‘Awright man’ with every exhale.

I was so high that night, I lost the power of speech for most of the evening. Claire had a conversation with a Parisian about speaking French. Something about how you don’t have to speak French, just believe you can and you will. People talk such bollocks when they’re stoned. Probably true these days. Most things are possible with enough time and space.

We left at midnight. When we arrived back to the street level I turned around and said, ‘Brilliant night.’ and we went off home to our hostel.  You never forget your first love...

My God, that spliff’s massive. Oh, hang on. Hang on. No, it’s just closer.

Of course, eventually I’ll tire of sitting still and drift out into the parabolic streets to wander lost, defeated once more by Dutch street design until I either stumble into another coffee shop or walk off the map or onto another map. Or more likely, I’ll walk in a straight line for forty minutes, turn left and be back where I started. Which will be here.

This place is like a lighthouse to me. Whenever or wherever I get lost in the city, I can always find my back here even if I get lost trying to find anywhere else. Like the second-hand American bookshop with a portal to a fantasy adventure world in the back room. Found it once by accident, meant to go back, can't find the bloody place now.

Then there was the time I was watching the snooker in a coffee shop, left my bag in there and by the time I realised I'd forgotten it, I'd walked in a complete circle and was standing outside the same place. My bag was still tucked under the chair.

But enough of such nonsense. Especially when there are real tales to tell. Like this one...

http://eponymistuk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-evil-that-men-do.html

The Evil That Men Do

He didn't want me to know his name. Said he was ashamed of what he'd done and, well he just didn't. He doesn't remember I met them both going out. For him years will have passed, decades even. Sitting here at the epicentre of this poly-metropolis, a mere three months have elapsed since I met them that first time. However, I will respect his wishes. Let's call them Cleo and Tim.

They were still together but it wasn't the same. I ran into them in the bar at a hostel. I like hostels. Meet all kinds of interesting people there. These days I mostly sleep on board the A.L.P., but now and then I like to check into these places to meet fellow transients and exchange information.

First time I met this pair they were picking up supplies before getting the 51 tram to Westwijk. That route takes you back to the 1870s. I asked them why they were going that far. They said they'd heard there used to be a man out in Montana that could push people back to earlier points in their life. I'd heard the same tales. They wanted him to push them back to the year they were 15. I had to ask why.

They'd been childhood sweethearts. Then at age of 15 her dad was transferred to the other side of the country. Tim soon fell for the daughter of the family that moved into her old house and soon forgot all about her. She was violently raped by her neighbour's son two months after the move and left pregnant. She miscarried and told it was unlikely she'd ever conceive again. The doctors were wrong. She conceived many times, but never for more than few weeks at a time. And yet still what she desired more than anything else was a child.

Tim and Cleo hadn't seen each other in fifteen years when they got back in touch over the internet. She was living up in Dundee and he'd emigrated to France. They met up in Paris and that was all it took to fall in love once more.

The relationship was tempestuous to say the least. She was forever flying into rages at him and with such regularity that he took to keeping a flat near work for when he found himself locked out of his own home.

And always at the end of one of these cycles she would take him back and cry and apologise and they would discuss why it wasn't working. Six months of trying and she hadn't managed to even conceive with Tim. She felt certain that it had to be him. If she was going to carry a child to term then it had to be with someone she loved before her life had been ripped apart. Only Tim could fulfil that role.

Then the rupture happened and they were one of the few lucky ones who weren't sucked away into oblivion. They travelled the empty roads and abandoned streets of Northern Europe and eventually found their way to this, the only bustling city left in the Benelux countries. And here they heard tales of Catapult Pete up in Montana and they knew what they had to do.

I let him tell me the first half of his tale again, nodding my head and raising my eyebrows at the appropriate moments and tried not to look bored. Eventually we got to the meat of his tale.

They'd thoughtfully taken gold with them into the past and once sold it bought them a handsome first class cabin on a liner sailing for New York. The crossing was perfect and with a sense of united purpose they argued all the less and laid entwined in each other's bodies until late each morning.

Once in the States, the going wasn't so smooth. There were no regular inland transport links to Montana at that time and the best they could do was to take the train to the end of the line and then hire horses and ride the rest of the way, risking attack from half a dozen new factions at every state border. But after many months travelling, they came to address given as belonging to Catapult Pete.

And Catapult Pete (for it was he) agreed to fling them back where they wanted to go in exchange for the remainder of the gold and provisions on their person. The deal was agreed and Catapult Pete, the very model of a Montana man, spat through the gap in his teeth and told them that his aim had been a little off since a bout of flu and flinging two of them at once would make it a trickier shot. They still wanted to go through with it so he lined them up at the side of his cabin and he took a run at them and he pushed them straight through the half logs and as he travelled backwards and forwards in time simultaneously, Tim felt himself fall into the 1990s.

He was coming out of the barbers. His fingers reached for his hair and felt the spike cut. He was holding a Walkman and a pair of headphones. The kind that went over your head and into your ears. He slipped them on pressed play. Iron Maiden's 'Seventh Son of a Seventh Son' roared in his ears. He knew the area well, he'd grown up here, and wandered home, humming to himself as he went.

I asked him what it was like to be a kid again. He said it was fantastic. Everyone looked so young. He said the clothes back then seemed so dumb to him the second time around and it made him cringe to hear the same pop shit coming out of his sister's radio. Luckily he had a well stocked heavy metal collection on tape back then and enough rechargeable batteries to keep him plugged in for hours.

Tim waited on Cleo to come and find him but after a couple of hours of soaking up the atmosphere at home and feeling a thousand and one twinges of deja vu, he went to call for her.

He said he knew before she even opened her mouth that it wasn't her. Or rather it was. It was Cleo as she had been at fifteen. It was Cleo at fifteen. Pete had said they might not come back on the same day and she might not arrive until tomorrow or next week or next year. Next year would be too late. They asked Pete what to do if one of them arrived back earlier than the other. Pete's advice was to carry on as they would have done until the other one arrived. Create too different a version of the past and they'd create a new timeline that the other one couldn't access.

So they went down to the lake and gazed at the weeping willows reflected in the water against a golden sky. And he put his arm around her and let her talk and talk, only occasionally prompting her, gathering information and re-remembered memories as she did so. He felt comfortable. This was the girl he fell in love with, not that bitter old witch who resented him for not fighting to keep her here, for not being there when she was attacked, for not being able to give her a child. Yet this Cleo had her whole life ahead of her and he knew he could save her.

He said it was virtually decided the next day. Before coming back Tim had memorised a number of sporting results in the hope of making some quick cash to run away with when they got there. By luck, one of the big race events was that next day. He checked in on Cleo but she was still plain old Cleo, confused but hopelessly in love.

He put on the suit his mum had bought him for his Nan's funeral and went down the betting shop. He said the bookmaker didn't want to take his money at first. He didn't say anything, but Tim could just tell. But as young as his face was, the eyes you can't disguise and Tim had old, weather beaten eyes and the bookkeeper took him for older. Four horse accumulator. Netted Tim £26,567 in pure profit. He expected a fuss, but the cheque was slid across the counter with a slight nod of admiration. It wasn't even a big win, just enough to keep him going. Wait until Frankie Dettori rode severn winners at Ascot.

That night he took Cleo down to the lake and told her everything. She listened with bulging eyeballs and squeaks of childish horror. He begged her to elope with him. He swore to her and to himself not to lay a finger on her until she was both of legal age and ready, but he had a chance to change a life and it didn't take a lot of convincing. Besides, what choice did she have? If she waited around at home, future Cleo would only warp into her body and take over.

They ran as far as Canada. She finished school, he lied about his age and studied business at college. He made a cool £250,000 sneaking back into Britain for a one off bet on Frankie's Magnificent Seven and they lived twenty happy years together in the suburbs of Calgary. And then the rupture happened as before and they had come this way via San Francisco to find a safe place for them and their family to live out their years. I introduced them to the Venice Initiative. They find new homes for dispossessed people in obscure backwaters of the new worlds and the family sailed on board the RMS Steinbeck last week.

I found her too. That first version of Cleo. The irony is that she's much happier with Tim not knowing what happened to her. She could never undo what had been done but she did have a chance at a second life. Like Tim she made money fast and took the man who looked like him to live in New Zealand and raised three beautiful kids. She could never look at this Tim with resentment, because he knew nothing of what had happened. It wasn't his fault, the fault was with that other Tim. A conceit, but a useful one. And with it she lived a kind of happily ever after.