Short story

Still life, 1971

While I was being Nurse Rosenberg I took all sorts of things from home to occupy myself, and one of these was a plastic bag full of my history - music exam certificates, school reports, some of my childhood art, a letter I wrote to my American cousins. A treasure trove.

Here is something I wrote for an English lesson when I was 12, in 1976 or 77. I have copied it verbatim without changing so much as a comma.

My Visit to the Past

It is now 1960. The weather is very gloomy and everyone around me is running. There is a shrill noise.

Everyone had gone by. A solitary woman was left, coming out of a shop door.

"That was better than usual," she remarked.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You got caught in the rush hour," she said. "You ought to know by now to head for the nearest doorway."

"Oh."

I carried on my way. The streets were now deserted, apart from a few early morning shoppers. I looked into a shop. It was a stationers. I wondered if the goods would tell me what time of year it was. Nothing. Not a firework. No Christmas cards. No Valentine cards. Not an Easter bunny in sight. This wasn't getting me very far.

A lady was standing admiring some notepaper. I asked her for the date. June 6th.

I started down a sideroad. Everything around me seemed much quieter. There were no babies crying out of 3rd floor flat windows. Then I realised what was really nagging me. The difference in our clothes. They were wearing two piece garments, at least, the men were. The women were sometimes in one piece dresses or dresses in two pieces. I wondered how they managed to get them on. Now, I was wearing the normal amount of jewelry, with all my rings, and a 5-piece suit, and it looked very advanced beside the primitive clothing of these people.

I heard another shrill whistle. Expecting another mad rush of people, I pressed back into a doorway, but I could only see one man coming towards me, dressed all in blue, with a tall hat, and brandishing what appeared to be a large metal or wooden stick. In his mouth was a little silver thing that was making the noise. He looked extremely fierce, and I just turned and ran, right back to my machine. Seconds later, I was safe again, back in my own time.

It's very strange to read your own composition more than 40 years later, but I find this so interesting. The story isn't much in itself, but the first four paragraphs hook the reader, make you want to know what's next. The rhythm of the writing - sentences, phrases, paragraphs, even the direct speech - I thought it was really cool that it was written by my 12 year old self.