Time travel’s tricky
TIME travel has always fascinated – from the genius of Einstein who maintained it was theoretically possible, to TV staples such as Dr Who.
It creates many headaches, mainly through seemingly impossible situations known as paradoxes. So, for example, if you went back in time and killed your own ancestors before they’d had children, the argument goes, how could you have gone back to kill them in the first place if you’d never been born – due to your ancestors being deed?
Another time travel paradox – which neybody seems to tackle – is why time travellers, in science fiction and in theory, seem so bent on going back and bumping people off? Givowwer!
How about a randy young bloke going back and copping off with his great-great-great-grandmother when she was a single and hot young chambermaid.
Is this worse than going back and bumping the poor lass off ?
And to be fair, being your own great-great-grandad wouldn’t raise many monobrows in the more isolated and banjo-playing outreaches of Wales or Cornwall.
A similar thing happened in the Terminator movie where the resistance fighter sent back to our time to protect the future rebel leader’s mother turned out to be the father of the aforementioned (older) leader guy who sent him on his mission in the first place!
If that makes your heed hurt, just think about the mess the social services would have – “the bairn qualifies for child support as well as his state pension, while the fact he’s his own grandad means he’s allowed visiting rights to see his own kids, who are his parents too.”
The fun really starts when you Google “evidence of time travel” and a bevy of “proof” photographs turn up. There’s the supposed modern ‘“hipster” complete with T-shirt, hoodie and wrap-around shades supposedly snapped in a trilbied and suited crowd gathered for a 1940s bridge opening.
If the photo is real (many gameplaying, bedroom-dwelling, live with their mum 40-year-olds swear it is!) then it’s a bit of a waste of an epic journey – the equivalent of me going back to see the footbridge that once stood at the top of Lobley Hill bank being opened in 1968. Surely Woodstock or the launch of Apollo 11 would be a better use of such mind-blowing technology.
However, me fave time travel tale has to be this radgie Swedish gadgie I found on You Tube. Asked by his missus to fix a leak in the kitchen, our Scandinavian hero got his tools out of the garage and, like you do, stuck his heed in the cupboard under the sink and began scratting aboot to see what was what.
Nowt weird there at all, but as he delved deeper he began to sense all was not as it should be. A massive shock awaited him – one that indeed took him to another time and place. Had he found an old Breville toastie maker which took him back to his youth, having the munchies after coming in after a neet on the hoy?
No, nowt as simple as that. Our hero found himself in a blinding tunnel of light which led, Narniastyle, to the land of the future.
There he met, I kid you not, a version of himself as he might appear in his ripe old age. Did he ask for lottery numbers for the next decade? Did he ask for advice on his/their lives? Nope – he did what any selfrespecting millennial would do and took a selfie of himself – with himself!
Admittedly, the older bloke did look a bit like him and they had exactly the same tattoo on the same arm. Proof of time travel, or proof that blokes will do just anything to get out of DIY?
You can just hear his other half – “So you didn’t fix the tap because of a time slip meeting with your future self? **** off monkey boy – you must think I’m soft! A blue felt tip pen and an obliging uncle would produce the same effect...”
Mike is performing his own brand new one-hour show, “Shearer shared me Pram” – a tale of heroes, legends and tuppence back on the bottle” at the Stand Comedy Club in Newcastle on June 25. Tickets available now.