1. TIM IN HIS SIXTIES BEDROOM Hi me, it’s you here. I can’t talk long – my power pack’s going flat and I have homework, but I just wanted to make contact. Agent T. You know who I am. I’ve been picking up your brainwaves on the Futurizer, so I adjusted the coordinates on the starblaster and quantified the substanciator. I hope this gets through to you this time. To me rather. I need your help urgently and I’m worried about you – I can’t wait for our next adventure. Where have you gone?
A strong wind blew last night upturning our sun loungers and smashing a chunk out of the plastic table we gather round for breakfast. And, as happens on holiday, at night we each dream and lay awake not dreaming, our nocturnal thoughts filled with the unsaid, with the anxieties and sorrows we bring with us from home along with the underwear and sun block. This house at night alive with sleepless souls mulling over careers and love lives and mortality, overdrafts and things to do lists. At breakfast in the sun we recount our dreams. I open my laptop to check for the latest emails re. tax and the will and find another of these messages.
3. YOUNG TIM AND THE BRAND NEW ADVENTURE Sorry. I’ve been analysing the energy fluxions and I realise my mistake. I’ve got the right year and approximate dimensions, but you’re not in the allocated geo-zone and – you are not me are you? I’m terribly sorry. But you’ll know me for sure, so can you please ask me to get in touch? It is really quite urgent.
2.JENNIFER’S HOLIDAY BLOG During the day we do what we godless always do on holidays: go pink and visit churches. At nights we grill fish and slabs of lamb and talk. Everyone is being very careful with me. And when we gather on the veranda in the evening around the big plastic table for meals of barbecued fish, lamb and fresh vegetables, alongside the round of talk about work problems, life decisions, plans to move house or switch jobs, the subject of death is tiptoed around. It is very beautiful here. Maybe that’s why I feel so ugly. Our neighbour Yoshko left us a tray of figs for breakfast and now my fingers are sticky on the laptop keys as I tap away in the sun on the terrace overlooking the bay; he brings these every morning and is now out on the water standing up, paunchy, silver haired, red-bellied, in his rowing boat checking fishing lines attached to old plastic bottles which he uses as floats. All around are mountains, and opposite us a beautiful small town of warm grey stone and red slate, palm trees and church spire.
His Lordship will be at the House probably. You could jetpack over and rap with him maybe? Or perhaps he’s on the road with his band. If you go to the stage door and tell them I sent you, they’ll stamp your wrist and let you in. Please see if you can find him. That would be so kind.
4. JENNIFER AND THE MISSING CHEESE-GRATER I dream of things I thought we had and now I can't find, like evidence of his love and our savings. Meanwhile things I was sure had gone missing long ago turn up again: photos from several of these holidays with Dan and Veronica; D&J's girls growing and blossoming as the rest of us flesh out and grey up. And that cheese-grater. When we went to Ghana that time, for a conference on trends in development at I think it was called the Golden Tulip, which sounds exotic, but was just an international business hotel, albeit with a swanky poolside bar. My only real taste of Africa was sneaking off one morning to the thrilling chaos of