Mum’s voice breaks the silence and my reflective thoughts.
“So what have you got planned for the day, sweetheart?”
“Not much, going to see a friend at lunchtime,” I reply, still conscious of my awkward teenage voice.
“That’s nice. Will you be back for tea?” she asks.
“Yep.”
“Good. It’s toasted crumpets tonight, and I’ve made some of that Battenberg cake you like,” she smiles.
My mind floods with a surging sense of déjà vu. It’s not the first time in my life I’ve experienced it, and I’m aware that it’s a trick of the mind; a false memory of a situation that never happened. But this isn’t déjà vu because I know for sure I’ve lived this moment before. I know for sure that the Battenberg never gets eaten because when I return from Tessa’s house, I lock myself in my bedroom for the evening. We quickly forget the mundane moments in our lives, but those that trigger strong emotions always live on. The Battenberg might be mundane, but the connection to my impending emotional turmoil saved it from the memory recycle bin.
We finish our breakfast in silence. The old man clears his plate and heads straight out to the garden without a word of thanks. Riled by my father’s lack of manners, I pick up my plate and take it over to the sink. I stare at the cupboard below, trying to recall if we ever had a dishwasher, but it seems unlikely so I turn on the hot water tap and rinse my plate off. Mum approaches me from behind.
“What are you doing, sweetheart?” she asks with a puzzled voice.
“Just rinsing my plate off. If you wash, I’ll dry,” I smile.
One simple, innocent gesture, but judging by the look on my mother’s face, I don’t think this is typical of my teenage behaviour.
“Have you done something wrong, young man? You’re not in trouble at school are you?” she asks with a stern expression.
“What? No, course I’m not. Just trying to be helpful,” I reply, a little too defensively.
Mum tilts her head slightly and stares at me through narrow eyes before a smile breaks across her face.
“Okay, thank you. It’s sweet of you to help.”
I grab a plate from the drainer and dry it with a gingham tea towel. With the plate dry, I turn to the array of white laminate cupboards on the wall and realise I don’t have a clue where anything goes. This was not a good idea. Spotting my hesitancy at putting the plate away, Mum comes to my rescue.
“Shows how often you help with the washing-up. Second cupboard from the end,” she laughs.
“Why don’t we swap? You wash and I’ll dry,” she suggests, much to my relief.
Washing-up is not a skill, it’s a simple process we refine to maximise efficiency. As such, I prefer to rinse everything off before filling the bowl with hot water and washing-up liquid. With all the food debris rinsed-away, I can then get through it quickly. These little idiosyncrasies usually go unnoticed, but not today. My washing-up technique is clearly an affront to my mother’s domestic principles.
“What are you doing, Craig? You're wasting an awful lot of water doing that.”
“I’m rinsing the grease off so the water in the bowl doesn’t need to be changed half way through.”
“Why would you change the water half way through? That’s Fairy Liquid in there you know, good for an entire dinner service,” she replies, nodding towards the bowl.
Christ, no wonder I never helped the first time around.
I revert to my mother’s inefficient washing-up method and after a few uneasy moments of silence, she switches on a portable radio sat on the window sill. The feeble speaker omits a piece of classical music which Mum happily hums along to. I pull the last remaining items of cutlery from the soupy water and give them a quick wipe with a bacteria-ridden cloth. I drop the cutlery onto the drainer with a clatter, making a mental note to wash my knife and fork before I use them later.
Washing-up completed, Mum thanks me, although I’m not sure she’ll be calling upon my services in the future. At least I tried. I return to my bedroom and lie on the bed, bloated. I’ve still got over three hours before I’m supposed to be at Tessa’s, if I go. That’s my first dilemma. The obvious decision would be not to turn up, and then I could spend the weekend wallowing in nostalgic pointlessness before returning to my new and improved future. However, two things trouble me about that plan.
Firstly, there’s Kevin, Tessa’s younger brother, and his inability to get his computer working. I’ll never forget his reaction when I showed him how to load a game, and the thought of him sat there staring at a blank screen day after day makes me feel particularly uncomfortable. I don’t want to let him down.
Then there’s Tessa herself. While cancelling our brief liaison is unlikely to make any difference to her future, in a few weeks she’s due to encounter Marcus and his erection issues. I think back to our conversation at the reunion and how she described herself as “fucked-up” in her teenage years. Perhaps this is an opportunity to point her in the right direction and save her from years of grief? The problem is that I don’t know what happened to Tessa after we left school and any interference is just as likely to do harm as it is good. She seemed really happy with her life so whatever twists and turns she encountered, things seem to have worked out well in the end.
I think through the options and decide that I shouldn’t mess around with things I don’t understand. It’s one thing trying to change my future, but a completely different matter when it comes to people whose lives I don’t know enough about. For all I know, my interference could create a future for Tessa where she ends up as a crack-addled prostitute, or an estate agent. No, I’ll head over there, sort out Kevin’s computer and make some excuse about needing to be somewhere else. I will leave with my virginity intact so when this is over, my teenage self will pick up his life like nothing has happened.
I snigger at my reference, ‘his life’, like teenage Craig is a different person. Then another thought strikes me — what will the teenage version of Craig remember from this weekend? When he wakes up on Monday morning, will he recollect everything I’ve done as if he’d done it himself? Surely he won’t just have an empty void where his memories should be, like a particularly brutal stag weekend in Amsterdam? It’s a paradox I can’t begin to unravel, but I guess I’ll find out when the timer completes its countdown.
I turn my attention to how I'll fill the hours before my trip to Tessa’s house. I could go downstairs and watch one of the four available TV channels. I could read a book. I could listen to the radio. None of these options appeal and the alternatives lead me down a blind alley, with an Internet-sized hole at the end. We’ve become so reliant on the Internet for information, for entertainment, and for communication, we only really appreciate how embedded in our lives it’s become when it’s no longer there. However, a more interesting, and more obvious option slaps me around the face. I should go and explore 1986. I could be the only human to have ever revisited a bygone era so who needs the Internet? Idiot.
I head back to the bathroom and indulge in a retro bowel movement, complete with translucent single-ply toilet paper. I grab a towel from the airing cupboard and strip off my t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. We don’t have a shower cubicle, or even a shower for that matter. What we have is a five-foot hose with a shower head at one end and two rubber cups at the other. These cups have to be pushed onto the hot and cold taps with sufficient force they don’t detach when the taps are turned on.
I climb into the bath and force the cups onto the taps. Three turns of each tap and a disappointing jet of water spouts from the shower head. One thing I haven’t forgotten is the ‘Goldilocks Game’ we had to play before any showering could take place. This game involved numerous miniscule adjustments to each tap, followed by a cautious hand being placed in the jet of water to see if it was too hot, too cold or just right. For added spice, once you’d found the right temperature and commenced showering, another tap being turned on anywhere in the house reset the game. You could be
rinsing a head full of suds when, without warning, you’d be showered with freezing cold or scalding hot water. On the positive side, it was good for the environment as nobody dared spend more time in the shower than was necessary. I conclude my shower within two minutes.
I hop out of the bath, dry myself off, and then wrap the towel around my skinny waist. I open the bathroom cabinet in search of my limited toiletry collection: a can of Lynx deodorant, a pot of toxic-green hair gel, and a bottle of Jazz aftershave. I grab the can of Lynx and spray it liberally under my arms and across my hairless chest. Although you can still buy Lynx in my time, its reputation as the deodorant de rigueur amongst teenage boys puts it strictly out of bounds for any self-respecting adult male. For me, it’s the smell of school changing rooms after PE, and getting ready for youth club on a Friday night. I guess things probably haven’t changed much.
Now I smell like a teenager, I shuffle across the landing back to my bedroom. I open and close several drawers before I remember that my socks and underwear are kept in a drawer in the bedside cupboard. I open the wardrobe and pull a pair of jeans from a hanger, noting with some shame that the waist size is ten inches smaller than the pair I purchased for the reunion. I grab the burgundy shirt, which is still lying on the bed, slip it on and button it up. The finishing touch is a pair of Nike trainers from their box at the bottom of the wardrobe.
Fully dressed, I stand and stare at myself in the mirror. My hair is a mess and I look like a teenage kid trying too hard, which is exactly what I was when I thought this was a good look. I ditch the burgundy shirt and slip on a plain black t-shirt. I head back to the bathroom and run a dollop of green gel through my hair. I’m well out of practice in the art of hair styling, but I eventually fashion a style that is almost certainly thirty years ahead of its time.
I head back to my bedroom, take one final glance in the mirror, and grab my Casio digital watch from beside my bed. I instinctively pat the pockets of my jeans to check I’ve got my mobile phone and wallet. For a millisecond I panic that neither are present before my brain reminds me I don’t own either a mobile phone or a wallet in this time. Panic over, I head downstairs and back to the kitchen where Mum is sat at the table flicking through a magazine.
“I’m going out a bit earlier than I thought, Mum, should be back in a few hours.”
“Okay love. I’m heading into town shortly so don’t forget your key as your Dad will probably be in the garden all afternoon.”
Out of habit, I lean over and kiss her on the forehead. The shocked look on her face tells me I’ve stepped beyond my normal teenage behaviour again. I offer an embarrassed smile and bolt from the kitchen before my mother can question why I’m acting so out of character.
In the quiet sanctuary of the hallway I pluck my key from a hook near the front door and drop it into my pocket. A quick check of my watch, 10.40am. Time to head out and see what 1986 has to offer.
5
As I wander up our street, I yet again curse my decision not to wear a jacket. While the sun sits high in the sky, my nimble body doesn’t provide much insulation against the chilly breeze compared to its later counterpart. I up my pace and slowly some warmth builds. With no specific plan or route in mind, I meander through our estate, paying particular attention to the cars on the driveways. Much like my Dad’s maroon Cavalier, many of the cars I spot are rarely seen on the road in my time. I stop and admire a few of them, in particular a nearly new Escort XR3i, a Toyota MR2, and a Rover SD1, which I seem to recall was particularly popular with the police and nicknamed, ‘the jam sandwich’. As much as I’d love to spend all day staring at retro cars, my loitering attracts attention from homeowners who probably think I’m either a vandal or a car thief. I quickly move on.
I reach the edge of the estate and head in the general direction of Tessa’s house. The scenery becomes more urban as I stroll along a busy road which eventually leads into the town centre. I stop every few hundred yards and absorb the view. There’s dozens of independent shops that won’t survive much beyond the millennium. Trucks pass by with liveries of High Street retailers that will befall the same fate: Rumbelows, C&A, Radio Rentals, Index, John Farmer Shoes, and Courts Furniture — all gone in my day. Everything feels familiar, but also slightly alien. It’s like the first time you visit a foreign country on holiday. You see shops, people and vehicles which are all recognisable for what they are, but they’re not quite the same as those you see every day. It’s a little disconcerting.
Now and then I stumble across a shop that makes me stop and gaze in the window. Big Breakers is one such shop and sells CB radio equipment. Judging by the lack of customers in the shop and the dejected expression of the guy behind the counter, I guess we’re probably at the tail-end of the CB craze by now. Next door is the record shop, Solid Sounds. I think it was part of a small chain of stores. It didn’t survive much beyond the late-90s once their customers realised that downloading music from the Internet was cheaper and easier. I’m tempted to enter, but change my mind when I hear the muffled sound of a Duran Duran track playing inside.
A few doors along from the record shop is The Rendezvous Cafe; a sight that makes me smile. The cafe is long gone in my day; I think it’s now a bookmaker. In this era, it’s where my mum has worked for the last nine years, alongside my Aunt Judy, who isn’t actually my Aunt, and Fat Derek, the affable owner. Mum worked a lunchtime shift during the week, and I’d often pop in for an ice cream float or a milkshake during the school holidays. Unshackled from the domineering presence of my father, it was a place where Mum could be herself. It was a place always filled with laughter.
I slowly shuffle past, trying to look inconspicuous as I stare through the plate-glass window at the dozen or so tables, all laid with red polythene tablecloths. I look down on an empty table near the window. Amongst the condiments sat on the table, there’s also a straw holder, a ketchup bottle shaped like a tomato, and a house brick. If I recall, Fat Derek got fed up with his ashtrays being stolen so he replaced them with house bricks. It was a crude, yet effective solution. I cast my eyes towards the counter at the rear where the conspicuous figure of my Aunt Judy, wearing a luminous pink headscarf, is fumbling with the coffee machine. Beyond the counter, Fat Derek is stood over the griddle in the kitchen, bedecked in his grubby chef’s tunic. For a second I consider going in and saying hello, but if I recall correctly, Aunt Judy’s pink headscarf is a sign that her aura is absorbing negative energy. Her delusional, new-age beliefs are a little too much for me to handle this morning.
I walk on and the street becomes a little busier with pedestrians as I get closer to the town centre. Every stretch of pavement sparks more memories as I pass long-forgotten shops, buildings and landmarks. It actually becomes a little overwhelming and I really wish I could share this experience with somebody. That’s the thing about memories I guess — it’s lovely to hold them in your head, but the real joy is in sharing them. This feels a bit like looking through an old photograph album on your own. I want to point at things and say, “Hey, remember that?”, but with my sanity already in question, an excited public conversation with myself is probably not advisable.
The one thing that I hadn’t noticed at home, but is now very obvious, is how people are dressed. My parents were never exactly at the cutting-edge of fashion, favouring a look one might describe as 'timeless'. Out on the streets though, people seem to be dressed as if they’re off to a Ukranian nightclub. Garishly coloured leisurewear seems particularly popular amongst the men, while the women favour equally garish ruffled skirts and baggy tops. The one fashion statement shared by both sexes is an obvious fondness for the fuller hairstyle. I catch a glimpse of my own hair, reflected in a shop window, and immediately feel a little self-conscious. I’ve gone for a hipster-inspired side parting with a neatly gelled comb-over; something considered vaguely fashionable in my day. Unfortunately in this era, it’s a style more likely to be favoured by retired Librarians.
A few hundred yards further along
the road and I stop outside a branch of Tandy, another name consigned to the High Street graveyard. I’ve reached the periphery of the town centre and need to decide whether to venture further, or make my way to Tessa’s house. It’s only just gone midday and as I ponder the options, I casually look up and down the road. Then I spot something that really gets me excited — a blue neon sign for Astro Arcade. I dash across the street and just avoid being run over by a putrid-green Austen Allegro. The elderly man at the wheel angrily waves his fist at me before the car lurches down the street, puffing clouds of grey smoke in its wake.
There was quite a buzz around school when Astro Arcade first opened in 1982, and it used to be packed with kids in the afternoons and at weekends. It’s a place I spent an unhealthy amount of time, and money. Sadly, its popularity waned as more games consoles became available and home computers could handle more sophisticated games. It eventually closed down in the mid-90s and became a mobile phone store.
Flushed with excitement, I push open the glass door to my childhood Eden. Within the dimly lit arcade, I’m hit with a barrage of electronic sounds as I stand in nostalgic awe. The space is about forty feet long and gaming machines are lined up along the walls to the left and right, with two further lines of machines stood back-to-back, running down the centre of the room. There must be over fifty machines in total and most of them are being played by pale, glassy-eyed kids. I take a slow walk up the left-hand aisle, studying the distinctive graphics on each game cabinet. My excitement mounts as I read the names on back-lit panels above each screen: Pac-Land, Defender, Galaxians, Scramble, Frogger, Pole Position, and my personal nemesis, Gorf.
Truth be told, there are now dedicated websites for retro gaming where you can download fairly accurate simulations of these games and I’ve played most of them on my laptop within the last year. While the game-play, graphics and sound might be similar, the simulations will never recapture the experience of dropping a hard-earned 10p piece into a slot and grasping a sweaty joystick. Knowing you only had one life remaining, and empty pockets, added a real sense of jeopardy to the experience. You’d enter the arcade with 50p and if you were on your game, you could make that last a couple of hours. But if you were having a bad day, you’d be done within thirty minutes. Every visit to Astro Arcade was either thrilling or galling; there was rarely any middle ground.
The '86 Fix: A 1980s Time Travel Novel Page 18
