Doctor Who_ Time and Relative - Kim Newman [1]
When I think about aloneness, my head hurts. If I think near the fogpatches in my mind, my thoughts skitter away. I try to picture something else, like five-dimensional equations or Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. It's best not to go there.
Jean-Paul Sartre says we are all alone in the universe. I wonder if he means it literally. He could be One of Us. Grandfather and me (and I?) aren't the only exiles (runaways).
Ouch! Do not think about that.
Hate is easier. It brings so much to mind. It cuts through the mind-fog.
I hate the School Rules. By mediaeval law, children must write with stupid old-fashioned pens! Classroom desks have inkwells stained blue with generations of use, and we all have to carry little bottles of Quink black catastrophes. They have ballpoint pens in 1963 – I checked at W H Smith's, and I'm using a sensible biro to write this diary. We're supposed to use antiques for schoolwork because it's 'beneficial for our developing hand'. Fountain pens have more design faults than useful functions. My fingernails are permanently stained blue. My homework always gets marked down for blotchiness.
By the end of the day, I have ink-smears on my cheeks. John the Martian calls these 'Heidelberg duelling scars'. He's Official Class Oddity, so I pay no attention. And he is by no means free of Quinkstains.
I told Mr Grange, our form master, that pens will become obsolete. Everyone will mind-dictate into machines that write out what we say: correcting grammar, translating perfectly into another language or setting down what we meant rather than what we said. He called me 'Mother Shipton' and the rest of 4G laughed.
But I am right. I know.
I must keep my mouth shut. People don't like being told what's coming next. It makes them uncomfortable. Ask Cassandra. She saw the future and was kicked to death for it.
I hate Double Geog on Friday mornings, and 'Games' all afternoon (forms of gladiatorial combat called 'netball' and 'hockey'). I hate school liver.
I especially hate F.M.! He's a dangerous thug, worse than the leatherjacket louts who go to the Pump. His personal mission is to make the lives of everyone else in our year wretched. He has a gang.
We've been in 1963 for five months, I think. It seems like five months. But anywhen we stay, it always seems like five months. You might not think it possible to have spent five months in 1963 when it's only March, but that'd only go to show how hidebound you are by the chronological system of ordering time.
'Continuity, bah!' Grandfather said yesterday or the day after. 'Doesn't exist, child. Except in the minds of the cretinously literal, like the singlehearts who clutter up this planet. Trying to sort it all out will only tie you up in useless knots forever. Get on with it and worry afterwards if you can be pinned to someone else's entirely arbitrary idea of the dayto-day progression of events. Without contradictions, we'd be entirely too easy to track down. Have you ever thought about that? It's important that we not be too consistent.'
What Grandfather means is that he's tinkering with the Box, and that throws timekeeping out. It's one reason I've started writing this diary. I can see that keeping the dates straight will be a major effort. I'll probably give it up. Grandfather says I always want to give up when things get difficult, and then snorts about my generation. Hundreds of years ago, teenagers were supposedly angelic and contemplative, eagerly absorbing the wisdom of their elders. Hundreds of years ago and in an alternate universe, perhaps ...
It's not as if he isn't a Rebel too.
That I have to go to School is my fault. It was my idea: I thought it important to 'fit in, struck with some Pinocchio notion of being a 'real live girl'. Grandfather made it tiresomely clear that he thought I was being silly. Faking the records, documents and forms that got me enrolled at Coal Hill wasn't easy. Grandfather insists I stick by what he calls my 'immature whim' so all that work won't go to waste. Little