Additional Storage

"I need to store some tools," said Roth.

"Where?", I asked.

"Scotland."

"Scotland," I repeated, trying not to sound surprised. "Where in Scotland?"

"Culloden Moor, somewhere near the middle," he replied.

As was common with our conversations the next question was critical, and not to be confused with a normal conversation where it would mean something quite mundane.

"May I ask when?"

When in a regular conversation would be request as to how soon, in ours it often meant which century.

"15th April 1746 probably in the afternoon."

"What were you planning to put said tools in? Some kind of box?"

"I was thinking maybe a shed."

"Where from?"

"The DIY shop just down the road."

"May I ask when?"

"Yesterday, 2am."

"Good choice, that'll avoid the annoying people who expect to be paid."

"That's what I thought."

"Why Culloden Moor in 1746?"

"It's nicely out of the way. I hate clutter."

"Have you considered a parallel universe as well as displacing the tools in time and space?"

"There are parallel universes?"

"Lots."

"Which one is the furthest away?"

"That's the problem, the further away we get the less like this one it becomes. It could get dangerous. If we go too far away we'd be two pizzas talking and thinking about ordering a takeaway Indigo Roth and iDifficult this evening."

Roth checked his limbs, and suggested, "Maybe we stay in this universe."

We acquired the shed without incident, adding some burn marks to the floor and spreading some sulphur about to give the impression it was a demonic shed possession.

A four hour tea ceremony later (you can't rush a good cuppa) and we were ready to go.

Time travel requires an exchange of dimensions. There are three dimensions of space and another of time. Given the right technology, a skilful flick of the wrist and travel into the future or past is possible.

Soon the wind was rushing past us. We were in 1746. "Pull the rip-cord!" I shouted. "No, do the shed's first!"

Three parachutes opened and we drifted to the ground, Roth, I and the shed. We'd exchanged quite some vertical height for some years into the past. Note to self: Need a mineshaft or a cliff for travel into the future...

We hit the ground, cleared away our 'chutes. Roth opened the door of the shed and threw the tools inside.

"Where on Earth were you keeping that scythe?"

"Top right pocket."

"Err. OK."

Before Roth had the chance to close the door a Scottish clansman blowing bagpipes loudly and expertly came walking over the hill and straight into the shed. Thinking quickly he slammed the door and threw the tiny little toggle lock. The piper continued to blow inside the shed, whilst hundreds of his comrades followed him over the hill.

"Have you brought the invisibility deodorant?" asked Roth.

"Yes, indeed," as I handed over the aerosol can. It was one of my least successful inventions. It didn't really deodorise or act as an antiperspirant, but by being invisible no one could see who smelled so bad.

"What date did we arrive on?"

"16th April 1746. Ohhh. I see. You said 15th didn't you? Bugger."

We hid behind the shed, invisible for some hours whilst the battle raged on around us. The piper trapped in the shed blew his pipes more and more frantically, until eventually, late in the afternoon, he ran out of breath.

Darkness fell. The battle was over. Everything was quiet. We opened the door to the shed. The piper staggered out, exclaiming, "Och, scmells of socks in there." And with that wandered back over the hill he arrived from.

Roth looked at the socks lying all over the floor of the shed, carefully wrote a note and threw it into the shed.

A few moments later we were back.

"Does it feel tidier now the tools have a proper home?"

"Indeed it does. Very much so. Shall we order pizza?"

Somewhere else, very far away, a tall well-dressed pizza picked up the phone and ordered a take away human on a two for one offer.

Tales from the Sock Drawer

Infinity is a hard concept to understand. The neverendingness of it all. To be able to go on and on and on without end.

It is especially hard thing to grasp if it is your sock drawer that is infinite.

My sock drawer is in a cheap, originally flat-packed, chest-of-drawers. Not the sort of place you'd expect something metaphysical, I think you'd agree. Infinite sock drawers should only occur in antique furniture of unknown origin, especially those from the far east or Egypt. Not something that arrived in a cardboard box from Argos and was put together with a screwdriver, some glue and a lot of bad language. It was totally normal. There were even bits left over.

Sometimes I forget the nature of the drawer. Months go by and I place socks in it, take socks out and nothing unusual happens. Then I'll get a sock out and it'll be covered in snow. Like it'd been to Narnia. The Lion, the Witch and the flat-packed wardrobe. Or I'd reach in and I'd have a pair of socks where one would be normal Marks & Spencer and the other a rough Scottish tartan. The piper playing in the distance only adding to my unease.

Most nights I feel safer if I tie my dressing gown cord around the handles to keep the draw shut, or prop a chair up against it to jam it closed. I wouldn't want my bedroom to be overrun by the cast of Braveheart whilst I sleep.

I've looked in the drawer with a torch. The light just disappears into the distance. Sometimes I can hear things. Wolves howling, wind blowing and storms raging. Once something crossed the beam of my torch. I wasn't sure what it was, but it had teeth. They glinted in the light. I'm sure it wasn't the cast of a mid-day soap, smiling inanely.

Last week I opened the drawer, and sitting there was a huge pair of wickedly sharp shears. Handy for home defence if you happened to be Michael Myers. I pushed them as far back into the drawer as possible and shut it quickly. I may have lost some socks with them.

Two days later, I got dressed, plucked up courage and went for the sock drawer. Laying the full length of the drawer on top of the socks was an set of edging scissors. The sort with big red handles so you can edge whilst half-standing to feel like a cripple and want to ring bells at Notre Dame within half an hour. Again I pushed them as far back into the drawer as possible. I'm sure I heard a voice say ouch.

Tuesday, I bought a pair of socks. I couldn't bring myself to open the draw.

Wednesday I wore the same pair of socks from Tuesday.

Thursday, I held my breath, opened the draw and fumbled for some socks. I nearly sliced my hand on the business end of a full sized scythe. The sort Death would feel very happy about. I picked up my wooden back scratcher and pushed the scythe back where it came from, grabbed some socks and shut the drawer.

Friday, this morning, I opened the drawer. There was nothing odd there at all. I pulled out a pair of socks, both black. There was no piper droning away in the distance. The socks were nicely tucked together as a pair. As I pulled them apart a small piece of paper fell to the floor. I picked it up, unfolded it and read the note. It said, "Please stop pushing socks into my gardening shed. Kindest Regards, Roth."

Don't Cross the Line

"Don't cross the line," I warned.

"What line?" replied Roth.

"That one, there!" I nodded my head in the direction of an empty area of wooden floor. It was quite dusty, as though the building had been abandoned for years.

"There isn't a line there. I'm puzzled. Should there be?"

"We're early. It's not there yet..."

We weren't, as it happens, all that early. As we watched a chalk line appeared and slowly sketched out an intricate shape on the floor.

"It's lovely to see an artist at work, don't you think?" I asked.

"I agree," agreed Roth, "Hey, it's the outline of a body! Like at a crime scene!"

"Ex-police artist."

"Why can't we see him?"

"Ex. He's dead. The police don't often employ ghosts. I think they are prejudiced."

We watched for a while.

"Do you think the body really did have two heads and three arms?" enquired Roth.

"I think he drew the way he felt."

Rambling Uphill

As I watched Roth pulled a small tube from a pocket on his snow jacket and deftly, despite the gloves, pushed a small button. Out of one end came a point and shaft, out of the other came a flag which unfurled in the harsh cold wind. He turned it up the right way and spiked it into the ground.

He stood back and saluted, "For King and Country," he bellowed against the wind.

"We have a Queen now," I bellowed back.

"Does no one tell me anything, anymore?" came the reply.

We sat down by a nearby snow covered rock, which gave some shelter from the blizzard that had enveloped us.

"You know," I said, "I'd always expected the top of a mountain to be kinda, well,... "

"Pointy?" Roth completed.

"Yes, exactly. Pointy. This is quite flat. Because of the blizzard we've had to walk around quite a bit to make sure it doesn't go up more than this. When I drew mountains as a child, they always had a point on the top and a completely obvious place to put a flag. We bumbled around for ages before we found what you called The Right Spot."

"Shall we explore?"

"Yes, OK. The snow and wind seems to have abated a little."

We set off towards the middle of the summit and were surprised to find a petite woman sitting in a slightly snow encrusted padded armchair. It was our friend Eolist.

"I wondered when you two would turn up. Did you stop off for a curry on the way?"

"Where would we find a curry house half way up a mountain?" exclaimed Roth.

"Well, there was this doorway in the rock face that opened directly into...Owwww!" Roth dropped his rucksack on my foot.

"What are you doing up here?" I asked, knowing that if the question were returned I couldn't begin to answer.

"Getting away from it all, seeking a bit of peace and quiet," she reflected for a moment, "although the blizzard was somewhat loud and annoying."

Answering the question that hadn't been asked, Roth said, "I'd invited iDifficult here over to help me with something at the bottom of my garden. Last Tuesday."

"I thought I was perfectly safe, seeing as he lives in a third floor apartment. I thought I'd go there, he'd realise he didn't have a garden and we'd go and eat pizza."

"Yes, my apartment comes with a share of a large communal garden."

"In bloody Nepal..."

Resolving to be Less Rubbish

Lets face it most new year resolutions are not kept. I've been to the future and, trust me, I've broken all of the ones I've made so far. There is just no point in getting hung up about this, what I need are not more stupid, hard to keep, challenging resolutions, but a better class of resolution.

So here is my list:

• Eat more curry.
• Put on at least 5lbs before the end of January.
• Wash my car one less time than I did in 2010. Simple arithmetic yields the answer of zero times.
• Avoid walking past a gym.
• Never bathe the cat in jam.
• Don't wear wellington boots on my hands at work.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE

The Slacker's Art

Roth and I have been on a mission to return dignity to the art of loafing.

In addition to loafing, I am a black-belt in lurking and Roth has achieved similar status in looming. He has the height on his side, although I wouldn't wish to detract from his obvious skill.

Whilst neither of us are entirely work shy, we do blush quite a bit and run away most of the time.

In his earlier work (I use the word carefully, but mostly because it only contains four letters and is hence less effort to type) In Line With My Worldview, Roth explains that he is a fractal slacker and at any level, whichever way you choose to view things, he is a raving success at doing absolutely nothing.

Having the technology at my disposal, I have become the world's first* Temporal Slacker. Throughout time, at major points in history, if you look carefully in the background I am there, doing absolutely nothing.

When the Berlin wall fell, there I was at the bottom resting up against it with my head on a pillow. Asleep.

When Stephenson's Rocket first shot down a railway track, I was there. In first class, reading the daily paper.

When the apes were waving sticks around at the base of a huge black obelisk, I was on the other side, leaning against it, sipping a beer and pondering why navel fluff is always purple.

You can think of me as an alternative Doctor Who, but without the heroism, the TARDIS, the assistant, the enemies or the charisma.

There are, without doubts, moments of frenetic activity in my life. Just the other day I lost the remote control down the back of the sofa. They are rare.

* Designations like world's first in time travel are rather hard to substantiate. So I haven't bothered, I've just claimed the unprovable.

---

iDifficult will return in the Chronicles of Nana, a tale of yellow fruit, flatpack bedroom furniture, a lion and snow, in the new year.

Balls

As recounted by Indigo Roth in a wonderful Lemsip fueled haze called Making a break for Venezuela, we shared an interesting few years at the same school.

The school was typical for it's era and location. Wood panelled, ancient, dimly lit, and with masters that looked like they had fought in both World Wars. On the wrong side.

At the end of each year there was a test. Unlike today where this involves individual desks, a piece of paper and a sharpie, tests in our school had a more practical nature. This has been so since the year a master gave Roth a pencil and turned his back.

Roth, myself and Bernard Drentwistle, the principle boy, were chosen for this particular test. We were taken from our normal classes and ushered down the wood panelled corridors to an area of the school I believe none of us had seen before. The floor was dusty and we left fresh footprints. Ultimately we arrived at a corridor with three white doors cut into the wood panelling.

The masters moved as, none too gently I seem to remember, in front of a door each. This close I could see the door was absolutely perfect. Not a blemish. Nor a handle.

The doors hissed open in front of us and we each were ushered into the room beyond. And what a room it was. It was perfectly cubic. The walls, ceiling and floor were brilliant white. It was hard to work out where the light was coming from but it was bright, almost painfully bright.

"You have one hour," said the master, in tones that would have made Death give up his job as a voice over artist. The door shut behind me. Perfectly. So perfectly there was no line around the edge of the door that could be seen. If I rubbed my nail across where the join should be I could just perceive a faint click.

The room was empty, so very empty. Except for two 12 inch diameter stainless steel spheres. I walked over and attempted to pick one up. It was absolutely solid and heavy as lead. This could be an interesting hour I thought.

Some weeks past, during which time Roth and I amused ourselves in biochemistry lessons by making the lunchtime custard sentient. In physics we were successful in electrostatically levitating our physics master up to the lab ceiling, until he had this misfortune of touching the metalwork of one of the light fittings. Brightest flash I've ever seen.

And we managed to restore the library building to it's former position although the selection of pre-historic predators in the reading room was not truly appreciated as the educational aids we had intended. As Roth said, "You try to help some people."

It was a November assembly when we got the results of the test. The headmaster was walking from his office to the lectern whilst the music master played "The Death March" on his piano.

The headmaster cleared his throat and projected, "I'd like to read out the results of our end of year tests." He proceeded to describe the test we had undergone, "Three identical clean, cubic rooms, three pupils, six solid steel balls, two in each room. No communication and one hour to work."

"In first place, Bernard Drentwistle, did extraordinarily well. When we returned to the room he had got one ball balanced on top of the other. Clever chap indeed."

"In second place, by a huge margin, is Indigo Roth. When we returned to the room he had his head on one ball, his feet on the other and was fast asleep. There was a pizza box next to him. We aren't sure how he managed to order a take-away."

"In last place, and banned from ever taking the test again, is Mr Difficult. When we returned to his room, he'd lost one and broken the other."

"Would everyone please clap and show their approval for our excellent pupils." Under his breath he was heard to say, "and restrain Mr Difficult NOW!"