I'm home alone! The misses has abandoned me and I'm sitting in my dressing gown past midday, because i haven't got anything better to do today. So I'm sat here watching the grey sky outside my window and the rain tumble down. Actually i think it's stopped raining now. It was raining a minute ago, but i haven't just been sat here staring out the window, About a Boy's on ITV2. I can see why they've put it on on a Sunday afternoon, but there are a few curse words and discussions about randy, desperate single mothers and suicide. Maybe not what you'd put on when your gran comes round for Sunday lunch.



If you've ever found yourself just sitting, staring into space with nothing to do (well actually the washing machine has just stopped, so i could go hang that up, but i won't just yet), you will find your mind pondering the most pointless, mundane and ridiculous things. Like, what the front room would be like if you moved the sofa to the other wall and the bookshelf and table to where the sofa was. Or what it would be like if there really was such a thing as a time machine. You'd think it would be great, but films like Back to the Future do have a stark warning about what could happen if you fucked with anything when you went back.



I was thinking about this the other day (not the sofa moving thing, that was about an hour ago, when contemplating the angle of my head when watching TV) when i was on the bus going into the town that i work. Its quite an old market town with lots of old Tudor buildings and very small narrow roads that they've turned into an impossibly complicated and dangerous one way system. There is also a picture of the crossroads up to the wide street where the market still is, joining the main high street, in an office where i work. It depicts the busy market and crowded street circa 1540. I have found myself looking at it and wondering what it would be like back then. You could imagine it stank, everyone was a little bit dirty, and it would have been very loud, but it would be incredible to BE there, only for a while, half an hour or so.



But i couldn't see myself stopping there. If i could go back in time there would be hundreds of places and era's i would want to go to. For example, i was in the beautiful city of Durham a month ago and you could look across the bridge up at the Castle and Cathedral, across the rooftops and you could be in any century from the past 500 years. How could you not want to experience that?

However, what happens if inadvertently you did do something that changed the course of history. Not just in the Back to the future "making your mother fall in love with you and nearly making yourself obsolete" variety, but actually changing major events. Because if time travel was universally possible then someone is bound to screw something up. After all there are enough idiots out there unaware of history that they would do something. Who knows? Maybe going to the very point Hitler and Chamberlain met in Austria and killing Hitler and therefore preventing WWII would still render a number of people non- existent (although of course in some cases that would be a good thing) or even worse, cause such a shift in time that a whole new course of events were created and that resulted in Great Britain being waged war on and even invaded and conquered by France again, or even worse....erm.....theres got to be someone worse...errrr..anyway, who could predict the catastrophic results, by doing something someone believed to be good.

You see what happens when your sat at home on a wet (well actually, its not raining anymore and its quite nice out there now) Sunday afternoon, all alone, with only your thoughts as company.....