The Time Bubble Box Set 2

by Jason Ayres

  “You took your time, mate,” said the obnoxious, overweight lad who now greeted him condescendingly. “Trying to get out of the first pint, were you?”

  “Daniel Fisher,” said Josh. “What an unpleasant surprise. I had forgotten you were coming.”

  He tried to sidestep Dan and make a beeline for Charlie, but he was deep in conversation with a couple of the other lads and he couldn’t get to him. Dan’s bulky frame was blocking the narrow aisle between the long bar on the left and the cheap, wooden furniture beneath the grimy windows opposite.

  “I can’t think why,” said Dan. “I was there when we all arranged it all at the end of term. Have you got your kitty money? Give it to Ryan here: he’s in charge of it.”

  “Good to see you again, Ryan,” said Josh, and he meant it. Although Ryan was Dan’s best friend, he was a pretty decent guy underneath it all. It was pity that he was practically joined at the hip to Dan who generally treated him as his own personal dogsbody.

  “I only saw you on Thursday,” said the lanky, ginger-haired lad nervously.

  “How much is it?”

  “Thirty quid, can’t you remember?” snapped Dan. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Josh ignored him and handed his thirty quid over to Ryan, prompting Dan to call over to the landlord.

  “Oi, Jim! Get this man a Stella.”

  Big Jim, the old-school and politically incorrect landlord, came over and eyed Josh up, before saying, “Stella? I don’t normally let people have that until their balls have dropped. Are you eighteen?”

  “Of course I am. And you’ve already served the rest of this lot Stella. They’re all the same age as me.”

  “They ordered Foster’s, sport,” replied Jim in an appalling attempt at an Australian accent, causing Josh to round angrily on Dan.

  “What are you trying to pull here, Dan?”

  He didn’t remember any of this happening before. Had Dan secretly been plying him with stronger brews all night to scupper his attempt to make it to the finish? It would certainly explain a lot.

  “A mere slip of the tongue,” said Dan. “I meant Foster’s of course,” but he said it in a sarcastic tone that left Josh in no doubt that he was going to have to watch Dan.

  He might not have been wise to these tricks first time round, but never was the phrase ‘a wise head on young shoulders’ more apt than in his current situation. He knew just how much trouble Dan was going to cause in the future and it wouldn’t do to underestimate him.

  He would have to keep his eyes peeled for any more dirty tricks, and if that was how Dan was going to play it, perhaps he ought to employ a few of his own. Even on Foster’s, Josh wasn’t confident he could manage eight pints, especially in his new skinny, inexperienced body.

  Clutching his newly acquired pint, he sidestepped Dan and Ryan and made his way to the back of the group where Charlie was talking to a short, dark-haired lad with a severe acne problem. Josh couldn’t for the life of him remember the unfortunate boy’s name, even though they had been in the same class for several years. Fortunately, Charlie came to his rescue and jogged his memory.

  “Evening, Josh,” he said. “Ben here was just telling me that the PS5’s meant to be coming out this autumn.”

  “Wow, that sounds awesome,” said Josh, trying to sound excited about a console that was as much a museum piece as his iPhone by his time. If these lads could see the virtual reality holographic gaming he was used to it, would blow their minds.

  “Certainly is,” said Ben, and promptly launched into a boring summary of all the amazing new features that the new console was going to have. As he listened, Josh quickly demolished his first pint which was going down quite well. So far, so good.

  “Get in!” shouted Dan loudly, and Josh looked up to see that Millwall had scored the opening goal against Luton. Of course, Dan was a Millwall supporter. If Josh recalled correctly, Dan’s rather dubious reason for choosing them was that they supposedly had the hardest fans, an outdated way of thinking that had no place in the twenty-first century.

  It wasn’t long before the lads were heading on to the next pub, which was another spit-and-sawdust, long-defunct establishment.

  The Crown was representing the blue properties on the board, and was more of a restaurant than a pub. It had recently been rebranded by the large brewery that owned it as a cheap, family eaterie. It was still possible to go and stand at the bar and have a drink, but anyone doing that seemed somewhat out of place in the family setting, as the lads were now discovering. They were the only customers there purely to drink, and had to wait ages to get served due to all the food orders being taken at the till.

  The place was full of kids who, when they weren’t stuffing their faces with as many chicken nuggets as possible from the all-you-could-eat buffet, were running past Josh and the others to the soft play area and ball pool. These were a recent addition, replacing the pool tables and dartboards which had previously occupied the space but no longer fitted in with the pub’s target demographic.

  They didn’t linger long, heading next for The Carpenters Arms, which was the first pub in the actual town centre. It was in an old, Tudor-style, listed building which still stood in Josh’s time, though by then it had become an upmarket bistro. It wasn’t a place he and the other lads had frequented in their youth, being seen by them as a place for old fogeys.

  When they arrived, the regulars were enjoying listening to an old-fashioned folk singer as they supped on their real ales. There wasn’t a pint of lager in sight as the group of eight young lads crashed in, rudely disturbing the peace.

  “What’s this crap?” asked Dan, loudly enough for both the singer and the landlord to hear. “Why haven’t they got the footie on?”

  “Shut up, Dan!” protested Charlie. “Do you want us to get served or not?”

  “Ryan, do the honours,” commanded Dan, bossing his young acolyte around as usual. “Eight pints of lager, on the double. That’s if they’ve even heard of lager in here.”

  “What the hell did we have to invite him for?” said Josh to Charlie.

  “He invited himself, remember? We tried to keep it secret but he wheedled it out of Ryan.”

  As soon as Dan had his lager in his hand, he rounded on the landlord, a nervous-looking man in his late-sixties with an old-fashioned handlebar moustache.

  “Where’s the telly, mate? I take it you have got one?”

  “We don’t, actually,” replied the publican, wishing the obnoxious loudmouth would shut up. “There’s not much call for it in here.”

  “Did you hear this, lads? They haven’t even got a telly! Unbelievable!”

  Josh felt incredibly embarrassed by Dan’s obnoxious behaviour. He probably hadn’t really noticed when he really was eighteen, but with the benefit of maturity, it was unforgivable. All he could see was a group of perfectly affable senior citizens enjoying a bit of a singalong with their friends, being made to feel uncomfortable by this rude, ignorant oaf.

  “Cool it, will you, Dan?” said Josh. “You’ll get us thrown out.”

  “Who’s going to throw me out, these sad old gits?” scoffed Dan. “I’ll have finished my pint before they can even get out of their chairs.”

  “Let’s go out into the garden,” suggested Ryan, attempting to defuse the situation. “It’s a nice night.”

  “Excellent idea,” replied Josh. At least it would get Dan away from the other customers.

  Crisis averted, they went out into the courtyard at the rear of the pub and got on with necking their third pints, but Josh was already struggling by the time he was halfway through his. This couldn’t be right – he’d only had two and a half pints and he already felt decidedly unsteady on his feet.

  Had Dan doctored his drink in some way? Or was it just his body’s tolerance levels? His older body was accustomed to several decades of drinking alcohol, but this youthful model wasn’t used to it. He was also desperate for the loo.

  “Charlie, can you hold onto thi
s for me a minute?” he said, handing his pint to his friend as the others bantered away. “I just need to nip inside for a slash.”

  Unfortunately, Dan overheard, and broke off from a completely fictitious story he was telling Ryan and Ben about a non-existent Swedish girl he was claiming to have shagged on holiday. Most people realised it was utter rubbish apart from these two who were gullible and lapped it all up.

  “Oi, have you heard this, lads?” he exclaimed. “Josh here can’t hold his beer. He’s going for a piss already after three pints. What a pussy!”

  “Shut it, Dan,” hissed Josh, feeling increasing anger rising within him, which he was struggling to keep a lid on. This young body was certainly full of fire. Just as with the alcohol, he also seemed to be at the mercy of whatever hormones might be raging through his physical body, and his older, wiser mind was fighting to keep control.

  Suppressing a strong desire to punch the idiot, he went to the toilet and found the blessed relief he sought in the urinal. When he returned to the garden the others had finished their pints, with the exception of Charlie, who was nursing his to give Josh some moral support.

  “Better?” asked Charlie.

  “Better,” said Josh, wondering how the hell he was going to manage all eight pints. No wonder he hadn’t made it last time. The way he was feeling right now he was amazed he had even got to the seventh pub.

  “Get a move on, you two, we’ve all finished,” said Dan who then started chanting, “Down it, down it!” Much to Josh’s disgust, all of the others apart from Charlie joined in, leaving him no choice but to knock it back which made him feel distinctly queasy.

  He didn’t have long to recover as the next pub, The Marlborough Arms, was a mere fifty yards down the street. It was rather appropriately representing Marlborough Street, one of the orange properties on the Monopoly board, and would mark the halfway point of the journey.

  This pub was extremely crowded, which enabled Josh to sneakily dispose of half of his pint in a plant pot.

  “I hope you like lager,” he said quietly to the large rubber plant as he surreptitiously poured his drink into the surrounding soil. Could plants get drunk? he idly wondered. This one seemed to be thriving and he probably wasn’t the first person to treat it to a drop of liquor.

  Getting rid of half a pint gave him a bit of breathing space but he was irked at the way that his nemesis, Dan, was effortlessly knocking his back. He had always been a big lad but had bulked out a lot in the last year or two which might explain his capacity for drink.

  Josh wasn’t sure if it was an urban myth or not that fat people could soak up more alcohol, but Dan was certainly endorsing the theory. Josh was muscular and fit from all the sports he played but didn’t have Dan’s additional padding.

  They were halfway around the Monopoly board and it wasn’t even 9 o’clock yet. As they departed for the next pub, dusk was falling as Josh reflected that he was effectively now at the square on the board marked Free Parking.

  When Josh had played this game as a kid this square had served no discernible purpose, so to make it more interesting his family had put all the money from the fines in the middle of the board. Anyone who landed on Free Parking scooped the lot.

  He had a long slog ahead if he was going to make it to the end. What he could really do with was an Advance to Go card in his hand right now, but there was no Community Chest on this crawl.

  It was odd how important this had all become to Josh. This was small beer compared to some of the scrapes he had been in, yet Dan had riled him and it had become personal as a result. Nothing mattered more to him now than completing the board.

  Head down, with fresh resolve, he prepared to battle on.

  Chapter Eight

  August 2020

  The red properties on the board were being represented by The Black Goblin, a venue packed with heavy rockers dressed mostly in leather and sporting big, bushy beards.

  These weren’t hipster beards – the regulars in The Black Goblin had been sporting theirs for years, long before it had become fashionable. Such was the prevalence of facial hair that a casual observer could be forgiven for concluding that there was some sort of ZZ Top convention going on.

  The bearded masses were listening to an appallingly loud and tuneless local heavy metal band. Nonetheless they were lapping it up enthusiastically, jumping around with more energy than their rotund frames suggested was possible.

  There was also a lot of headbanging, throwing long manes of hair around that Ryan had to duck to avoid being whipped in the face by one enthusiastic biker type as he was fighting his way to the bar.

  It was extremely crowded which gave Josh a chance to carry out his latest alcohol disposal plan. His idea was to take his pint with him to the toilets at the back of the pub and dispose of some down the sink.

  As soon as Ryan handed him his pint he made a beeline for the bogs, but unfortunately the eagle-eyed Dan spotted him sloping off and collared him at the door.

  “Off to the toilet again already?” he asked, smirking.

  “Yeah, I’ve got to get some condoms,” said Josh on the hoof, spotting an opportunity to put Dan down a peg or two. “Lauren’s coming round later. You know – my girlfriend?”

  “Oh,” said Dan, slightly crestfallen. “I see.”

  That’s shut him up, thought Josh, deriving immense satisfaction at asserting his alpha male position over Dan. He knew full well that Dan knew Lauren was his girlfriend, but couldn’t miss this opportunity to rub his nose in it.

  Dan had been trying it on with Lauren for years but, despite her having a reputation for fancying anything in trousers, she had made it clear countless times that she wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole. That had incensed him – why would she give it to all and sundry but not him?

  Josh knew at this point in the timeline that he and Lauren wouldn’t be together much longer. It wasn’t that they didn’t get on, but she just loved the idea of sexual freedom too much to want to be tied into a relationship. None of that mattered in the here and now. He had managed to piss Dan off and that was immensely satisfying.

  “Yeah, got to keep the lady happy,” boasted Josh, “so if you wouldn’t mind getting out of my way.”

  “Why do you need to take your pint in with you?” asked Dan.

  “Look around you!” exclaimed Josh. “You can see how packed it is in here. There’s nowhere I can put it down safely. Someone might nick it or spike it or anything.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Dan. “I’ll look after it while you go. We wouldn’t want you accidentally spilling any of it down the sink, would we?”

  “What makes you think I’m going to do that?” asked Josh.

  “Oh, just something Ryan said to me while we were at the bar,” replied Dan. “He swore blind he saw you watering one of the plants in The Marlborough Arms. So, for the rest of the night I’m going to be watching you like a hawk. And you know what? I don’t think you’re going to make it to the end. I wonder how much of a big man Lauren will think you are then?”

  “Whatever,” said Josh, who couldn’t be bothered to argue. He handed his pint over to Dan, hoping the stupid prick wouldn’t spit in it, and headed into the toilets.

  Inside, he took the opportunity to stick his hands under the cold tap and gulp down a few handfuls of water in the hope it would help to dilute the beer a bit. He was feeling absolutely hammered by now: there were still three pubs to go after this one.

  He looked in the mirror at his youthful, drunken reflection and questioned why he was even doing this. The experiment had been a success, so there was nothing to stop him ducking out of this now and then just waiting it out until he was whisked away at midnight.

  It wasn’t as if he was even enjoying it that much, so what was so important about finishing this pub crawl? In the wider scheme of things it meant nothing, but he couldn’t bear the thought of Dan getting one over on him.

  Maybe his judgement was being clouded by the ongoing conflict betwe
en the rationality of his mature mind and the hormone-driven nature of his immature body. The copious amount of alcohol that had also been thrown into the mix had merely added to the confusion.

  He had thought the evening was going to be a lot more fun than it had turned out. Perhaps that was the trouble with reliving nostalgic memories from the past – they suffered from the rose-tinted spectacles effect.

  It didn’t help that his mind wasn’t eighteen anymore, it was in its mid-fifties. People changed as they got older and what had seemed like the best night out ever at the time now just seemed like an immature waste of time.

  These sobering thoughts weren’t enough to physically sober him up, but they had provided plenty of food for thought to discuss with the others on his return. Going back to being young again sounded hugely appealing on paper but, as he was learning tonight, it might not be quite the Holy Grail they had envisaged.

  Would life be better for people second time around? Possibly – but what about the fifth time or the fiftieth? Would people ultimately become jaded by it all?

  “Hurry up in there!” he heard Dan shout from outside. “What are you doing, having a dump?”

  Josh turned away from the mirror and made his way back out.

  “Come on, finish this – if you can,” goaded Dan. “We need to get to the Old Craphole.”

  He was referring to “Ye Olde Chapel”, a former monastery where monks in the seventeenth century had brewed their own beer. Now it was part of a chain of cheap and cheerful pubs, with historic exteriors, but all identical inside.

  There was still plenty of beer onsite, but it wasn’t made locally anymore. Most of it was mass-produced and shipped in from a warehouse in Swindon.

  During the week the pub fulfilled various functions from an impromptu crèche for mums with pushchairs, to the local Darby and Joan club for pensioners who couldn’t afford to eat anywhere else.

  At this time on a Saturday night it was packed with groups of young men wearing too much cologne and women wearing too much make-up. Most were out on the pull.