Time Machine by Anna Kingston

I have a time machine, but instead of me using it, rather it uses me. 

I can’t often control the journeys, but they are often marvellous, sometimes emotional, sometimes hilarious, occasionally too sad to bear.

You’ve probably got one, too.

Not a Jules Verne contraption, of course, unless there’s something you’re not telling me?!

No, my/your time machine is our sense of smell, and it drags you, unbidden, years and miles into your past, making you bear witness to your younger self.

What sends you back in time?

Certain cooking smells?  Perfume?  Woodsmoke?  Warm, damp earth?  Fresh paint or creosote?

For me it can be raspberries cooking away in a pan, that takes me back to being 7 or 8, and watching mum making jam in our tiny little kitchen.

Or Chanel No 5, first given to me by a friend whose dad travelled for work, and was rather well off, so thought nothing of bring back such luxuries for his daughter; she gave me a bottle, saying she already had one and didn’t need it!

Then there’s the smell of orange oil, reminding me of mum again, and her Aqua Manda toiletries, just about the only fragrance I remember her wearing.

All these, and more, bundle me into my time machine and take me, willingly or not, back years, sometimes decades.

Often I’m very willing to go, but sometimes the timing’s rubbish!

But there are some smells that take me back to times that are too painful to remember, that remind me of beloved people long gone, of uncomfortable decisions or situations, of things I don’t want to remember.

Whenever I’m in a hospital, the clinical smell propels me into distant wards with dying loved ones or, worse, being too late and missing them at the end.

That fusty smell in a pile of old books or fabrics long hidden in a cupboard?  Elderly relatives’ homes, some with bad memories, some good, but I can’t control which memory will resurface.

Certain suncream smells that recall a boyfriend I’d rather forget, and unpleasant incidents.

Then there are smells that are simply nostalgic, that remind you of a time and place when you had few cares, or where you could forget ‘real’ life for a while.

The smell of just-lit or just-blown candles, and incense, puts me in church on Sunday mornings, particularly sunny days when the dust motes sparkled lazily close to the windows, the priest’s voice gentle in the background.

Warm, damp earth on a still, early, summer morning speaks to me of waiting, impatiently, on our steps onto the road for mum to be ready, setting off early for a day at the seaside.

The smell of hot, greasy, vinegary chips transports me to the Friday and Saturday nights of younger years, racing, laughing, to the chippy after last orders in the local pub.

Can you, do you, smell your past?  What does your childhood smell of?  How about your first love, or last home?  Where will your time machine take you the next time that you inhale deeply, and ‘that’ smells hit your nose and races up into your limbic brain?

© Anna M. Kingston

June 2021

Death on the Allotment by Dave Rigby

It’s Cyril Johnston on the phone. Chairman of the Allotment Society. Very particular about not being a chair. I’m a person not a piece of bloody furniture.

But the rest of the committee puts up with him, because nobody else wants the job.

    “You’re needed, pronto, down at the allotments,” he says in his usual clipped tone.

    “Why?” I ask. But his phone has gone dead. Unusual for Cyril. He usually chunters on and on.

What a nuisance. I’m only just back in the house and had been looking forward to a leisurely breakfast in the garden.

Prompted by Cyril’s use of the word pronto, I decide to take the bike rather than walk. Nosy neighbour 1, a relative newcomer to the village, tells me a man knocked on my door last night. Not someone she recognised. I thank her for the information and pedal away. 

It’s a lovely, late June morning. The leafy back lane provides a handy shortcut.  

The blue flashing lights catch my attention on the approach to Lark Lane Fields, Police vehicles are lined up on the grass verge by the entrance to the allotments. I dismount, push the bike through the gate and prop it against the inside of the fence. No need for a lock with all these uniforms around.

They’re gathered around my allotment. Cyril waves me over.

    “A bad business. Didn’t want to say anything over the phone Mrs Rusholme. I’m afraid someone has died.”

A police sergeant introduces himself and attempts to shake off Cyril’s attentions. He can be leech-like. But in a low, very firm voice, the sergeant asks him and the others to stand to one side.

Spread across three rows of my potato crop, head resting on one of the path edging stones, left arm tangled in the raspberry netting, lies a man – face down. Older but not old, tall, unfashionable jeans, plaid shirt, black boots.  

    “Sorry you have to see this,” the sergeant says.

But it’s not a surprise. And after all those years on the intensive care ward, I’ve seen most things.

Officers are busy putting up tapes around my allotment boundary, taking photographs – lots of them – and struggling with the crime scene tent. I’m allowed inside the tapes. Cyril’s stuck outside.

The sergeant instructs two constables to turn the body over.

It’s Patrick. I gasp.

There’s a large gash on his forehead, dried blood, matted fringe.

He walked out on me … twenty years ago … the best day of my life. If only one of us had done it sooner. And now he’s back. It was his allotment originally. How strange he should die back on home turf.

I tell the sergeant who Patrick is and put on a show of emotion. It wouldn’t do to remain coldly detached.

His questions start, treating me alternately as the poor bereaved ex and as a possible suspect. When did I last see the deceased? Twenty years ago. And where was I yesterday evening and overnight?  A restaurant meal with Howard my partner and then back to his house. Yes, I was there all night.

Do I have any idea why Patrick would suddenly turn up on my allotment?

I need a story to help explain his presence. It begins to unfurl in my head. I start to tell the sergeant.

My neighbour just told me I had a visitor last night. Patrick perhaps.

Not for the first time, he’ll have been wanting to borrow money, though he’s never turned up in person before.

Finding nobody in, short of money and miles from home, maybe he decided to spend the night in my allotment shed. He’ll have remembered where the spare key was hidden.

In gloves and overshoes, we inspect the shed.

It smells of Patrick. There’s a sleeping bag on the floor, a small rucksack and an empty port bottle. Typical Patrick. No cheap cider for him.

My story unfolds further.

Full of port maybe, got up for a pee in the night, staggered across the allotment, got tangled in the raspberry netting and fell, banging his head on one of the path edging stones.

We leave the shed and walk across to the path. Sure enough there’s blood on one of the sharp stones.

+ + +                                                                    

The following day there’s a call from the police.

Patrick was three times over the limit. When he fell, his head hit the stone with very considerable force, causing his death.

I tell Howard.

Fingers crossed they won’t find out.

After the restaurant meal, we’d returned to Howard’s place via the allotment shed to pick up a punnet of raspberries for a late evening treat.

We stumbled across Patrick asleep on the floor and staggered backwards in shock.

I cried out. Patrick woke and started goading the pair of us. We retreated from the shed, he followed and struck Howard.

Suddenly I could take no more of Patrick.

When I pushed him hard in the back, he fell like the proverbial sack of potatoes.

 

A Library Ticket by Susie Field

I’ve travelled the wide world over,

met authors, poets and composers.

I’ve seen kings and queens,

on their islands of dreams,

with their legends and sweet memorabilia.

I’ve travelled to countries far, far away,

seen beautiful mountains and lochs.

All with a library ticket –

to a wonderful world of books.

Three Maths Lessons by Owen Townend

I Am Thinking of a Number

Mr Patel had a big bushy beard. It was mesmerising the way all that black fuzz scraped against the buttons of his blue work shirt, never once unsettling his green silk tie. He had a very energetic way of standing, moving back and forth on his heels and constantly jutting out his chin.

            “All right you lot,” he said to my class one day, “I am thinking of a number. Any guesses?”

            “Four?”

            “No.”

            “Eleven?”

            “Not a chance.”

            A quiet descended, broken only by the occasional knock on our low ink-stained tables or the click of a wonky chair rocking back. Mr Patel looked out at all of our faces, waggling his eyebrows.

            There were too many possibilities, more possibilities than the average junior school pupil could fathom. Still there was one last attempt at this seemingly impossible guessing game.

            “Three hundred and forty-six?” Nazeem asked. He scratched at his over-stretched school jumper in indecent places. No-one took Nazeem seriously.

            Still there was Mr Patel, mouth open and eyes wider than I had ever seen on an adult.

            “Yes,” he said, voice shaking slightly. “That’s, um, correct, Nazeem. Well done. Three hundred and forty-six. That was actually the number I was thinking of.”

            Nazeem wiggled in his seat with satisfaction, putting undue strain on the already cracked plastic.

            For a minute I thought Mr Patel was just humouring him but then I saw him lower himself onto his own felt chair and sigh.

            The number I thought but didn’t dare to say was thirty. I had got it from the digital clock above the whiteboard. The bell rang and that was that.

 

He Owns a Red BMW

 

One day a fat man with a limp and a bad wig came to our class. He was dressed in a fancy grey suit which seemed loose around his shoulders. According to our teacher, he was a mathematical genius.

            “This man can make calculations lightning fast,” she said. “He uses them every day in his business. He runs three companies and owns a red BMW. We are very lucky to have him visiting us today.”

            As he sneered at us from over his straggly white moustache, we began to test him.

            “Ten times fifteen?”

            He waved his hand dismissively. “Hundred fifty.”

            “Seventeen times a billion?”

            He flashed an incredulous glare. “Seventeen billy-on!”

            The teacher cleared her throat, expressing a desire to ask a proper question before this very important man blew a fuse.

            “How about four thousand and eighty-three divided by seventeen?” She emphasised ‘divided’ here as that was the subject we had just covered in our previous lesson.

            The man that could make lightning fast calculations paused. He blinked but the rest of his face refused to change. “Two four zero.”

            I had no idea if this was right at the time but noticed that the teacher continued to look at the man with a patient smile on her face. When no further answer proved forthcoming, she turned away fully.

            The man squinted hard at the back of her head then left for his red BMW.

 

Aww Cute Angle

 

We were all making a fuss of the teaching assistant. She wore an amber sari and touched her circular spectacles as she regarded every one of us at a time. The noise of a dozen voices speaking at once must have been irritating but the clean white smile never left her face.

            I got my turn with her. “What’s an acute angle?”

            She waited a moment until she was sure I was done. Her expression brightened which suggested I had chosen my one question to her wisely.

            “An acute angle is less than a right angle,” she said then held up her forefinger, slightly curled. “When you hear ‘acute’ think ‘aww cute’ angle.”

            In a moment, the sage teaching assistant had turned her attention onto Nazeem who was wiping spit from the corners of his mouth.

            To this day I can’t recall her name or why she was so special in that moment. Still her curled finger sometimes occurs.