The Time Travel memoirs: Lost And So Alone

Everyone has a name.
A name is of much importance, a name labels you. A person can become important, sometimes for the wrong reasons, but people rarely remember the person for what they were. They remember the name. My name is George Carter, not to sound immodest or anything, but as the universe stands, it is a well known one. I’m a bout 6”7 and I have black charcoal hair, it’s curly and it always had been.

This is my story; choose to listen and I’ll share my secrets with you.

My life started the way your own life started, but a sequence of events that I shall share later made the beginning of my life an unhappy one.
My life changed in August 1985; it was a day of absolutely no significance what so ever but it happened anyway, you know how these things go.
The ruination of my initial life began in stages; the stages began to construct a new life for me. This was a different life, with a surprise round every damn corner.

Firstly my girlfriend, Faith Milligan ended our relationship. Faith was sick of me. If I’m brutally honest I never began to see our relationship going anywhere, she would have been better as a friend anyway. She had always been lonely. Being with me was a big mistake; I was a loner, what some may call a lone wolf or a recluse. Faith shouted her way out of my Apartment. I suppose saying; “cheer up,” to a person who is severely depressed isn’t the best thing to do, especially as it was me who had made her like that.

As Faith left in she had called me shallow and worst of all cold, Jesus that hurt but she was right. To my recollection I hadn’t acted like a boyfriend should. I hadn’t ever told her I loved her because I never felt as romantically inclined towards her as I should have. In the early stages of my life I was barely human, believe me, I wish that was an exaggeration; I wish I could have gone back and righted things.

I never laughed.

I never cried.

It felt like my life was a lie, like I shouldn’t have been living it. Like I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time, an outer body experience, but every hour of every day. I never felt alive.
Have you ever walked in on two people kissing, or perhaps walked into the bathroom whilst someone was on the toilet? It was like that, the feeling that I definitely shouldn’t have been there. It was embarrassing and I felt like an intruder in my own body, in my own home. Hell even on my own planet.

Getting a new life handed to you on a silver platter isn’t common. Perhaps you know of someone. Someone who has had a near death experience in their lives and when they re-introduced themselves back into there old lives they feel like a new person. August 1985 I was given the gift of a new life.

I went back to my flat in Chelsea; I had sat down in front of the television with nothing but a sour expression on my face. I remember vaguely feeling sorry for myself about what happened with Faith. It was all my fault and back then I simply didn’t realise it. I walked slowly over to one of ten tall bookcases and drew out a book that I had read a million times. I closed the curtains and sighed heavily.

I put a meal in the microwave, you know, one of those ready meals that doctors and scientists say will kill us if we eat on a regular basis? Whilst the ready meal slowly rotated in the heat of the microwave oven I sifted through my old desk. The desk was like everything in my apartment; second hand and old. I hadn’t noticed how much junk I had, pens, pencils, old letters, cards, an old pocket watch and a spoon.

A small wave of self loathing swept over me and I sighed and flung the spoon into the sink. I wasn’t exactly the tidiest of people. Even though I was in... Used to be in a relationship, I lived here alone. Faith had only entered my apartment once or twice. I tried to comfort myself, stereotypically; men have messier apartments than women.

When Faith left me I had been nineteen years old. Most guys my age were still living with their parents, but I was different. I couldn’t stand the sight of people, which was one of the main reasons I lived on my own. I had studied at Eton, I had left there, rather quickly, I’m afraid I wasn’t one for the attitude of many of the students there. When I was young studying at Eton I was bullied considerably, I was punched around and I did some punching myself. Eton wasn’t my sort of place, neither was any social education establishment. So I left.
See when I say left Eton I mean expelled.

I had gone to a public school afterward, which was only slightly better. Public school was basically the same, except the people who bothered you didn’t pay for they’re education. I didn’t get bothered as much as I did Eton. Don’t get me wrong, Eton is a brilliant school, I learned a lot there, I just didn’t fit in. I flunked out of the public school too. Teachers simply couldn’t stand me. I was one of those intelligent people who debated some points that the teacher would put forward. For some strange reason they saw it as arguing and shouted at me. Now who do you think was the person in the right? I think it was me; I wasn’t the one shouting and losing my temper.

I had lived my adolescent life mainly in libraries. I read myself intelligent you could say. When I was eighteen years old I decided to retake my school exams at a different institution and when I got the results through the post telling me that I had passed I joined Cambridge university and did a course in forensic science. Briefly, I didn’t learn anything from Cambridge that I didn’t know before. Some of my family had been forensic scientists, I honestly couldn’t tell you who but I knew.

Eventually it got to the point when I asked myself, what did I want to do? The answer was simple; nothing, I want to sit at home and read, that’s what I want to do, and I want to fill my mind with knowledge, more knowledge.
The supply of money I had received when I came of age was keeping me under a roof and it would for a few years, but I decided to fortify my money. A job seemed like the definitive solution.

I was going to go for a job that day in August 1985, but It hadn’t been my day, I felt useless. Screw the job, it was 11:40pm; I couldn’t be bothered to stay up any longer. I went to sleep on my white bed in my blank bedroom. I never decorated, this room matched my personality.

I fell into a deep sleep almost instantly. I was always a good sleeper and in about ten minutes or so I was in a heavy sleep. I became aware of a sound. Like a firework which had just been released into the sky, before the explosion. Then the explosion came, it was huge and deadly and I was instantly torn from my slumber.

You know when you wake up and find that you aren’t in your own bed anymore? That you are elsewhere? I seemed to be in a thatched cottage, this was weird enough, but not enough to draw me out of bed. I just sat there with an unintelligent look of confusion on my face. When the Messerschmitt flew overhead that was enough to draw me out of my bed.
I could hear an air raid alarm, I was in Great Britain that was sure, the countryside was familiar to me, and this looked like Yorkshire. I looked down at my body; I was naked as the day I was born. I looked around the room and spotted a button up shirt with a collar.

I pranced over to the shirt and put it on. Another scout of the cottage awarded me with underwear and trousers. I found a pair of boots too, unfortunately no socks, I suppose that was good, my hands were shaking too much to put them on anyway.
I noticed that most of the things here in the cottage were mine. A solid oak wardrobe greeted me with the sight of my R.A.F trench coat. The navy blue coat was a familiar sight and made me feel more content. I pulled on the trench coat and the familiar weight of the coat quelled the shaking for a little while. I closed my eyes and sighed. When I opened them the air raid siren had stopped.

I opened the front door of the thatched cottage, I only saw a woman, she was dressed for work on a farm, she looked at me and began to stare, I looked away from her gaze and picked up a newspaper from the doorstep. The woman had begun to clear rubble away from her house. It was painfully obvious that a bomb had dropped there; most of her neighbour’s cottage had practically been disintegrated. The newspaper confirmed my fears. I was in the middle of England in a war. “Oh shit” I said quietly. The newspaper read August 28th 1942.

“Dear old Great Britain during Second World War, Nazi’s from all sides and I’m going to be bombed by the goddamn Luftwaffe. This isn’t happening.” I actually began to laugh, though it was hysterical laughter, even so the shock of the sudden laughter had made me abruptly stop. “I must be going mad of course, I am talking to myself.”
The money that I had been living on, the money I mentioned earlier, had came from my parents. I hadn’t known my parents. They had either died or had given me up, I never got told which. The orphanage was unkind that way. I had become of age and was able to live off that money after I left the orphanage.

I sat down and looked around the small sitting room in the cottage. The cottage looked like a version of my apartment, but in the forties. There were a few bookcases and my heavy desk. I put my head in my hands. “What the hell is going on here?” I looked back up and noticed the pocket watch on my oak desk, it was identical to the watch I swept aside in Chelsea… except it had G.C engraved on it.

I picked up the watch; it felt heavy, old and unimportant. But I G.C stood for George Carter and I had no idea where I had got it. I shook my head and threw the watch aside, back onto the desk. I sat back down and began to think of the possibilities and reasons of why I was here. My train of thought was de-railed as someone knocked on the cottage door, well… hammered.

I walked over to the door and opened it to the farmer woman who had glared at me earlier, she was holding a shotgun. She spoke true and confident; “put your hands on your head or Ill blow your balls off you coward.”
I was happy to oblige.