The Big Country

“No!” 

“You fool!”

“Why!?”

I stare at the display on my wrist, wondering just how stupid a person can get. Truth is, anyone can be as stupid as it gets. All they have to do is not think.

The truth is I panicked.

Then I acted.

There was no thought involved, so a default was provided.

The default was 1984.

I could blame George Orwell for that. We’re quick to blame, especially when we’ve done something that shames us. But then, I’d not even started to read Orwell’s book. It was the next book on my pile. One of the last things I’d looked at before I decided to see whether my Dad had really invented a time travel device.

Turned out that he had. 

And maybe it wasn’t an Orwellian coincidence that I’d come back to 1984, because this year was right in the midst of my Dad’s stomping grounds. Near the outset really. The seventies didn’t really count. He was too young to appreciate them, but by the time the eighties came along he was all ears. Literally. I’ve seen photos of him when he was in his early teens and he hadn’t yet grown into his head and features. Those photos are strange. I can see it’s him, but there is no way it can be. The man I know now just works. It’s as though he wasn’t ready to be him and in that awkwardness, he’d not found out how to be. These days, he’s comfortable in his skin. I can see that and it’s a comfort to me. I’m safe when I’m with my Dad. He’s a walking talking part of what I consider to be home.

Now I’m here in this bygone era, I find myself thinking about my Dad in those photos. Hard copy photos that have a filter on them that my Dad says is a result of aging. He says that, and yet I’m here and I’m disappointed that the eighties don’t have this red-brown tinge to them. That said, the quality of the light here is different. Brighter than the day I left. I’m assuming that it’s the same day and that I’ve shifted back exactly forty years. I hope that’s the case. Seems warmer here though. 

I realise that I am happy as I stand gawping at a living piece of history. This is where my Dad grew up and learnt his trade. The trade of living and living well. I’ve never thought of it like that. I feel a wee pang. Invisible fingers tug at me and that’s all that is needed to remind me that I have been lacking recently when it comes to my relationship with my Dad. I have ceased to be vocal and my silence has been disrespectful. I have taken him for granted. I have wasted time and opportunity. 

I miss him.

I miss him, even though he has been there all of the time. It takes my being removed from his reality to face my laziness and what that means for me. And for him.

“I love you, Dad.”

I whisper it into his past, feeling ashamed at how weak and quiet my voice seems. I could do better. But I do not redress matters. Falling short and leaving it at that. My arrogance should astound me, but I’m already looking away and distracting myself adeptly.

Further up the road are three boys. Now I see them, I attend to the noise they have been making. They are chattering and laughing. There is something different about these boys. Some things are different. I can’t put my finger on them all at first. I am over-faced with their difference, and so I remind myself that we’re all more similar than we are different. They are boys after all and they’re hanging out.

That’s part of what is disconcerting. I came to the era of my Dad’s gawkiness and discomfort, and yet here I am witnessing three boys hanging out. On the street. Nearby, there are three discarded bikes. They’re the BMXs that Dad talked about. Two look quite new. The third has a badly hand-painted frame and is built from mismatched parts. I like it. Given a choice, that bike with a spoked rear wheel and mag front is the one I’d ride. I imagine tinkering with it. Finding alternative parts to swap out. Not exactly upgrades, just ways to make it different all over again. 

They have a football and two of them are standing opposite each other. They throw the ball at the kerb and score points when the ball bounces back at them and they catch it. The taller of the two is winning eight-four. 

The third lad is lounging on the grass verge and they are all talking as the game progresses. I guess he’s the one with the mongrel BMX because his trainers are battered and don’t have branding on them. His clothes are similarly worn and they look like hand-me-downs. The fashion inherent in those clothes is older and again, I find I like them better. I’d wear those clothes.

The two ball players are wearing branded clothing. One has blue tracksuit bottoms with white stripes. The other has what look like school trousers, but obviously aren’t. They are both wearing polo shirts. One has a croc on the breast, the other a shark. Their trainers look new. There’s a scuff of mud on the white toes though. I smile to myself. That is a tradition that we still have. New white trainers have to be sullied. It’s the law. And so friends oblige by dragging their foot across the nice, clean toe cap.

I begin to feel self-conscious at my standing gawping. It seems wrong. Voyeuristic even. These are not museum exhibits. They are living, breathing people. It’s me that is out of place. I don’t belong here. That feeling conjures forth an uncomfortable feeling. Do I belong anywhere? 

I am uncomfortable, but I don’t want to break the spell. Not yet. There is something here that I am looking at, but not seeing for what it is. I envy these boys what it is that they have. Not the BMXs, or the clothes, it’s how they are. They are here in the moment. They are present in a way that I don’t see that often. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed anything like this. 

Then I catch a fleeting glimpse of something…

It’s what’s missing that counts. Dad has told me this often enough. To look, not see. To listen and not merely hear. This requires effort. Thought is a lot of it, but I don’t think it’s everything. Thinking too quickly can get in the way.

What is missing?

I’m struggling with this because whatever is missing is affording these lads more than they would have otherwise. I cannot fathom this. The concept is counter intuitive. They have more for lacking something.

Whatever I am missing must be something I expect to see and therefore something that I possess. I pat my pockets automatically. I’ve seen my Dad do it often enough and now it is my habit also. I visualise my Dad and I hear what he says as he pats those pockets of his.

Wallet

Keys

Phone

Phone!

Not one of them has a phone in his hand! I shudder at my discovery and without thinking, I take my own phone out of my pocket. It’s dead and seeing the blank screen hurts. I have a feeling of loss that goes deep. Deeper than I could have expected. I should be shocked, but I’m too numb for that. 

“Hey!”

The tall kid has spotted me and all three boys are looking my way. There’s nothing I can do other than walk over. My options are limited and I’m not in a state where I can consider them anyway. A numbness remains as I sleep walk over to them.

“Hi,” I say as calmly and cheerily as I am able. I find I am nervous. A stranger in a strange land. I recall my Uncle talking about his time in Australia and how he was wrong-footed by people who appeared to speak the same language as him, but ultimately didn’t because their culture and experiences differed from his and they all knew he wasn’t one of them. He was a Pom and would for a long time stand out and in standing out, be set apart.

I feel them checking me out. That’s only fair. I’ve done the same.

“You’re not from around here are you?” asks the other ball player.

The third lad is getting to his feet. They’re friendly, but I feel wary all the same. There’s three of them and one of me. I’m acutely aware that I have nowhere to run to. 

Not from around here.

A wave of dizziness and nausea threatens to undo me and send me to the ground. The lads see the consternation on my face.

“You alright?” asks the tall one.

“Yeah,” I manage to say, but I’m far from alright. 

Only now do I get that I haven’t just travelled in time, but also in space. The shock of appearing forty years back in the past has rendered me dumb. I had previously been in the kitchen of my home. A home that was at least eighty years old. 

Now I’m outside.

I’m outside and I have walked up a road that is unfamiliar to me in its current presentation. This road is too new and it looks different enough to have wrong-footed me. In forty years’ time, this place will have grown. Quite literally. Right now, my grandparent’s garden is a bare lawn and their car is old and the red paintwork is flaking and gone orange in the sunlight. 

As though in a dream, I pad across to that car.

“Vinyl seats,” I say in a monotone.

“Yeah,” says the shorter of the two ball playing boys, “burnt my legs on them more than once!”

I turn around and look at the boy anew. His ears aren’t big, it’s that they stick out too much. I know Dad never had surgery to move them closer to his skull, but a boy in his class at school did. His nose looks big too. He was right about short hair not suiting him at this age, and the flat top cut he’ll have in a couple of years won’t help matters. His curly hair will thwart any attempts at him looking like his on-screen heroes, but he’ll go ahead and ask for it anyway, even when the barber laughs and asks if he’s sure. I wonder whether that’s the barbers with the guy who has a tick and sometimes cuts the boys ears, especially when they ask him about it.

“Dad?” I say this in wonder, a sense of joy welling up inside me.

“You what?!” says the tall one.

The wonder and joy crashes away from me and I threaten to go crashing down with it. A hole opens up within me. I need to act. I need to save myself.

I shake my head and smile. Then I make a show of clearing my throat, “your Dad?” I say this as though I’m repeating what I have most recently said, “Is he John Cooper?”

My Dad nods, “yeah, do you know him?”

“I know of him,” I say, “my Dad’s mentioned him. He works up at The Works doesn’t he?”

My Dad is nodding.

“What’s with your clothes?” asks the tall lad.

“Oh these?” I ask, looking down at what I consider to be unremarkable garments; jeans, t-shirt and trainers. I have an idea and I just say it before I can over embellish it, “my aunt lives in Australia and she sends me this stuff every now and then.”

The tall lad nods. He seems satisfied with that. The boy in the older clothing continues checking me out. I wonder if he’d consider swapping. That’s a stupid idea though and I look away from him, feeling my stupidity burn my face.

“Great bikes!” I enthuse, and I mean it. It’s not just a way of deflecting the attention away from me.

I walk over. Two of the bikes are Raleigh BMXs, but it’s the bitser that I like the most. The tall lad lifts his and starts telling me about it. My Dad follows suit, lifting his bike and using it to sit on. The bitser stays where it is. I look over at its owner, “I like your bike,” I tell him.

He shrugs, but doesn’t say anything.

“His brother has a Chopper,” the tall lad tells me, “nearly lost his nuts on the gear stick last Summer!” The three of them chuckle at that. A precious shared experience that they will carry with them to the grave.

“I’m Charlie,” I say, remembering myself at last and extending my hand to the tall lad.

He looks at it for a moment, considering whether to shake it or not, “I’m Gary,” he says as he takes my hand.

I turn to Dad and have to swallow down his name. It wouldn’t do to say it.

“Jack,” he says, shaking my hand. The contact of his hand sends a thrill through me. An excitement of an impossible moment. Shaking my Dad’s hand in a past he talked about but I never quite believed. Parents were never young, and the tales they tell are as fantastical as fairy stories. Three channels on TV and no other screens. No pause or rewind. Dad’s family haven’t even got a video recorder at this point in history. Then there’s the food. From what Dad has told me, everything went backwards after the second world war. I learnt about the Victorians at school and those guys ate well. They ate a variety and quantity of food that could only be described with words such as splendid and opulent. By the eighties, there were fridges and efficiencies in logistics, but if my Dad were to be believed, they lived on potatoes, two veg and a dry piece of meat or fish. Take-aways were limited to fish and chips and that was your lot.

I don’t think I ever thought my Dad was lying about his past, but neither did I think he was telling the truth. He couldn’t be. It just didn’t make sense, and it certainly didn’t fit with the Dad that I knew.

“Martin” waves the third lad.

“Do you want to come in and play Atari for a bit?” asks my Dad.

“Yeah,” I smile. Now I understand what my Uncle has been talking about. I don’t have a clue as to what an Atari is, so I just go with it in the hope that it isn’t going to be unpleasant or hurt.

In a way, it is going to. I am about to experience an impoverishment that I can barely comprehend. Moving lines to block a squared dot. This is entertainment?! I spot the phone with a dial as we take our shoes off. This was the extent of the phone in the eighties. All it did was make voice calls. There was no answering machine.

We head to Jack’s bedroom. A poster on the wall for Duran Duran’s Rio. Dad presses play on his tape recorder and the tinny sounds of the taped singles charts begin to play. He’d record a track and stop to cut out as much of the DJ as possible. This practice either truncated the track or had the DJ talking over the music in any case. 

“Do you want to stay for tea, Charlie?” Dad asks.

“Yes, please,” I say automatically as I try to get my paddle to the moving dot in time. It’s only after Dad has left the room that I realise that I am about to run the gauntlet, not only with the food I’ll be presented with, but also meeting my younger grandparents. 

“Crispy pancakes!” he says triumphantly as he returns to the bedroom.

“Jammy bugger,” moans Gary.

Martin doesn’t say anything. He just looks sad, but then that dark spell’s broken and he beams as he comes back into the moment and we all hang out together, taking turns on the Atari and chattering away over the soundtrack of the music. 

“I need the loo,” I announce when my bladder really can’t wait any longer.

“It’s…” begins Dad.

“I know,” I say without thinking, only wincing once I’ve shut the toilet door.

That’s when the trip ends. I’ve paid no heed to the time or when I’ll return to my own time. It just happens. Thankfully it happens as I wash my hands, so no one suffers any undue trauma.

I arrive to a familiar world made just a little unfamiliar by my trip away from it. I’m standing at the kerbside outside our home. Looking out across the road, I make a promise to myself to play kerbsie sometime soon.

Dad’s in the kitchen when I enter the house. I hug him.

“What was that for?” he asks, smiling the question at me.

“Just because,” I answer.

He nods, eyebrows raised.

“Dad?” I say as he continues to prep tea.

“Yep,” he says over his shoulder.

“Can we have crispy pancakes for tea one night?”

He stops chopping the vegetables and time stands still just long enough to warn me of what’s coming, “and then play a bit of Atari?” he asks in a casual, yet loaded manner.

“Yeah,” I say, grinning at his back, “that’d be nice.”

I’m heading for my room, patting my pockets as I go, when he turns and speaks again, “I think I’d better have that,” he says ominously. 

I stop. 

Busted.

Taking the time travel device off my wrist, I hand it back.

“Love you, Dad!” I say before making good my escape.