Chorlton - A nouvella

                                     Prologue

       I was born at the Stretford Memorial Hospital, less than a minute's walk from West Point and the Chorlton-cum-Hardy border, in the August of 1945.

      When I married Angie in June 1964, we moved into a three storey Victorian terraced house in Whalley Range, where we were renting the living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor. Before that I'd lived with my parents at their redbrick semi in Firswood, from where a short walk across the railway bridge and down the path to the Scott Avenue allotments would bring you on to Oswald Road, the gateway to Chorlton.

        Since the day my parents decided I was responsible enough to venture out on my own I'd always been attracted to Chorlton, almost as though some kind of psychic magnet were constantly drawing me there.

       By the time I was attending secondary school, me and a couple of my school chums would spend much of our Summer holidays, weather permitting, out on Chorlton Meadows. We'd catch a bus to Hardy Lane and walk across the meadows to Jackson's Boat, from where we would follow the twisting course of the River Mersey as far as Crossford Bridge. We would then climb up the embankment and walk along the tow path of the Bridgewater Canal to the Cut Hole aqueduct, where long ago the farm wagons would trundle along the pathway beneath on their journeys in and out of the township of Stretford. We'd complete our journey walking down the lane that ran alongside the Mersey flood plain and then take the path through the woodland until we arrived at Chorlton Village. We'd break into a run as we reached Hawthorn Lane, racing towards the shops at the village green, where we would treat ourselves to a shared bottle of lemonade and an ice-cream cornet apiece.

        In later years there were visits to the Gaumont and Palace cinemas, the Gaumont being the posh one, the Palace strictly for the plebs. And during my early teens I would often hang out on my own around various parts of Chorlton during the evenings.

      The night was dark, the moon was a dull yellow ball in the autumn sky, the footpath alongside the park railings on the opposite side of the road was a carpet of soggy, fallen leaves. I was standing on the corner of Nell Lane and Mauldeth Road, adopting a mean, moody pose, in my black leather jacket, skin-tight blue jeans and crepe-soled, blue suede shoes. It was 1959. I knew no better. I was a 14 year-old boy, pretending to be a man. 
        99 girls must have passed by during the evening, in twos and threes, probably thinking, 'Who does he think he is, James Dean?'
        Girl 100 was on her own, she stopped in front of me. I'd seen her around, always dressed in the same black duffle-coat and red and yellow tartan skirt. I knew her name was Celia and that she went to the girls' grammar school on Wilbraham Road, and that she was a year or so older than myself.

        'Do you like Cliff Richard?' she asked.

        'No.  He's not rock 'n roll,'  I replied, my cocky smile masking my nervousness.

     'You're Edwin Greatrex, aren't you?   My kid sister goes to your school.  She fancies you something rotten.'

       Confidence building up no end, without hesitation I asked,

       'And what about you?'

       'No, you're not my type. Do you want a shag?'

      We went into Chorlton Park and, after just about enough preliminaries to get me ready for action, we did the dirty deed standing up against a big oak tree.

Afterwards I thought, If that's what shagging is all about, I'd be better off sticking to barking at the moon.

      I left school shortly before my 15^th birthday in the Summer of 1960, and was introduced to the world of work two weeks later. My first job was at the Kraft factory in Trafford Park, working in the despatch bay, loading heavy cartons of margarine onto the wagons.

      The rest of lads in the despatch bay were aged between 17 and 20, I was good-naturedly looked upon by them as 'the kid'. The majority of the lads were continually grumbling about the job, always on the look-out for something better. 'Gonna pack it in next week', not that any of them ever did. The job was dull, boring, totally tedious to many of them and, although I never voiced it, it wasn't long before I began to feel the same way about it too. However, what never failed to spark-up my interest and alleviate the boredom for a while was the older lads' tales of what they got up to at the weekends. At the morning tea-breaks I would listen intently to them talking about what new 'gear' they would be buying when they got their week's wages on Thursday, and where they would be going on Friday and Saturday night. They talked of the latest shirts, sweaters and shoes they were going to buy. Occasionally they would have saved enough money to put down a deposit on a new suit, to wear on their nights out at the Ritz or the Plaza in Manchester, the Locarno at Sale or the Princess Club in Chorlton. My imagination would be set a-fire by the Monday morning reminiscences of their weekend. They would brag about the amount of beer, 'the bevy', they'd drank and the girls, 'the birds', they'd 'pulled', and not forgetting the laughs they'd had. If they didn't manage to 'pull a bird', there was always the laughs.

      I wasn't going out much during the Autumn and Winter of that year. I'd gradually lost touch with my school chums after we'd all started working for a living and hadn't found anyone new to pal out with. I had got past the age of hanging out aimlessly on street corners waiting for something to happen and, although I would occasionally go out on my own to one of the Chorlton cinemas, I spent most of my evenings watching TV with my parents or up in my bedroom listening to pop music on Radio Luxembourg. I was handing half my wages to my parents towards my keep, but my mum would still be giving me the odd couple of quid back when I was in need of new work clothes or boots, and consequently I had plenty of money in my Post Office savings account by the time Christmas came around. But I was bored, bored to tears, thoroughly fed up with being Billy No Mates, plus I'd very rarely spoken with a girl, let alone kissed one, since I'd had my one and only shag, with Celia Crellin, the previous year.

     I envied the older lads at Krafts, especially whilst listening to their Monday morning reports of their weekend adventures. But any day-dreams I harboured about adopting their weekend lifestyle soon evaporated when the reality of my situation seeped into them. Although I might have passed for 16, or 17 at a pinch, I was too young to legally drink in pubs or to gain admission to the dance halls that sold alcohol. Plus I was still a blue jeans, leather motor-cycle jacket and blue suede shoes lad at heart, which might have been OK for the local youth club, but it wasn't exactly the right attire for the dance halls at the beginning of the 1960s.

        It was the following January, after a very lonely Christmas and New Year, that my raging teenage hormones propelled me into adopting a new image. The first Saturday of the new year I went to be measured up for a suit at Isaac's Bespoke Tailors on Barlow Moor Road. Italian style, three button single-breasted jacket with straight-legged trousers sans turn-ups, in dark-blue mohair. Mr Isaacs promised that the jacket would be ready for a fitting in a fortnight's time. I then went to Manchester city centre, where I embarked upon on a marathon shopping expedition. I bought a pair of black lace-up, pointed-toe shoes, a couple of black and blue pin-striped, penny-collar shirts and a narrow, black tie. The following Saturday I had my floppy hair cut and blown semi-crew style at Antonio's on Wilbraham Road.

      After Mr Isaacs had completed the final nip and tuck on my suit, I was up and a-raring for some beer, birds and laughs. Dressed up to the nines and smelling cologne-fresh, I was ready to make my first appearance at the Princess Club.

       The Princess Theatre Club, to give the place its full title, started life during the 1930s as the Chorlton Palais de Danse. Chorlton Palais originally catered for ballroom dancers, and boasted a full orchestra. The place didn't have an alcoholic drinks license, the management used to run what were known at the time as 'tea dances'.

       After the 2nd world war, the management set aside a regular evening each week for younger people who wanted to do the Lindy Hop and other more energetic, 'throw yourself about' dances. The Lindy-hoppers needed something a little more reinvigorating than tea between dances, so they started taking their own booze into the place.

       During the mid 1950s the management started putting on skiffle groups and rock and roll bands, to which young guys and gals could jive the night away; and eventually, due to escalating costs and the falling off in popularity of ballroom dancing, the orchestra got shunted out of the place.

     At the beginning of the 1960s the management acquired a drinks license. To obtain the license they had to turn the place into a club with a strictly 'members only' admission policy - provided that you were over 18 years of age, you could buy a membership card at the pay desk as you entered the club.

        I wasn't yet 16 when I first visited the Princess Club, but as long as you didn't have the appearance of a 15 year-old kid just out of school, and remembered to amend your date of birth accordingly when filling in the membership form, you wouldn't be required to provide verification of your age.

      When I started frequenting the Princess Club in 1961, it was run cabaret club style. There were tables set around three sides of the dance floor, with the stage taking up the fourth side. During the first part of the evening there would be various ex-music hall acts. Comedians, jugglers, ventriloquists, trick-cyclists and the likes would perform their acts to a relatively sober audience. Then there would be an interval where a DJ would play all the latest hit records for the club members to dance to. In the second half of the evening there would be a performance by a singer or band who more likely than not would have had a recent top 20 hit record. Then the DJ would play the evening out with more pop records, finishing up with a few smoochy numbers.

         I started going to the club on Friday evenings, when I would meet up there with a gang of half a dozen or more lads from work. Even for those of my workmates who had regular girlfriends, Friday night was 'boys night out'. We would sit at two tables pulled together, throwing pints of beer down our necks whilst the cabaret artistes performed. During the interval none of the lads would get up on the dance floor, they would spend the time weighing-up the girls, who would be dancing together in pairs. After the main act had finished and the dancing started again, the lads would split up in pairs, each pair intending to nuzzle in on two young ladies dancing together. The idea behind the lads nuzzling-in would be to get the young ladies to dance with them, then when the record finished they'd ask them if they fancied a drink and, if the answer was 'Yes', they'd join the young ladies at their table.

       Even though my workmates were older than me, they tolerated my company. I didn't put away as much beer as them but I always stood my round when it was my turn to get the beers in. But It wasn't all that often that one of them would invite me to attempt the nuzzling-in manoeuvre, it would only be the times when there was one lad left on his own with me after the rest of our mates had copped off. On the occasions when I was invited to try, and the nuzzling-in worked, I would invariable find myself dancing with a young lady much older than me, who wouldn't really be interested in a lad of my age. It would be my workmate who would cop off with her friend and take her behind the club or into Chorlton Park at the end of the evening for some heavy snogging, or a shag. To hear their talk at the Monday morning tea-breaks, most of them had copped for a Friday night shag, while I would finish up walking my young lady to the all-night bus stop where, if I was lucky, I'd get a hug and a quick kiss before she boarded her bus.

        It was through nuzzling-in at the Princess club that I met Angie - and it was there, on my 21^st birthday, that something happened that was to...well, it's a long story.

CHORLTON

Chapter One: Golf

        The best thing about working on a golf course was that for the majority of the time I would be working on my own, unsupervised. My job title was junior greenkeeper.

       Junior - that was a laugh! I was 19 years of age, a few months short of my 20th birthday when I started working at Withington Golf Club. I had been married to Angie for almost a year at the time and we were the proud parents of a 6 month old son, David. But that was the score at that particular golf club, you were a junior greenkeeper until you reached your 21st birthday, and then you became an assistant greenkeeper and were awarded the rise in pay that the new job title merited.

       The odd thing about the club was that it wasn't actually in Withington. The course was situated in a pocket of land on the banks of the Mersey in the outer-city suburbs of South Manchester, surrounded on all sides by the districts of Didsbury and Northenden. In fact, some parts of the course were just a sliced drive across the Mersey from the Didsbury and Northenden golf courses.

     
     As a junior greenkeeper my morning duties consisted of walking the course, raking smooth the sand in the bunkers, dispersing the dew and sweeping the fallen leaves off the greens with a long bamboo switch as I made my way around the 18 holes. Most afternoons I'd be mowing the tees, the approaches to the greens and their surrounds.

       I had to catch two buses to get to there, which meant that I had to be out of our house in Whalley Range no later than 7 o'clock if I were to arrive before the 8 o'clock starting time. The pay wasn't all that good but Angie and I could just about manage on it. I was earning an extra few shillings a week, which covered my bus fares, by selling the golf balls I found in the rough and the drainage ditches to the club professional. He gave me a shilling for the good as new balls and thrupence for the slightly scuffed ones, and then he sold them on to the golfers at a much inflated price.

       
        I'd acquired the job via the Manchester labour exchange at Aytoun Street in the early Spring of 1965. It was one of those jobs where previous experience was not necessarily necessary. The head greenkeeper would accompany you on your duties for the first couple of days and, if he thought you were up to the job, he'd leave you to it. If not, you'd be wending your way back to the labour exchange the following morning.

      There were plenty of employment vacancies for young people in those days. But for someone like myself, who had left school at 15 years of age without any kind of educational qualifications, most of the so-called job opportunities on offer at the labour exchange were crap jobs with equally crap pay.

      
     Besides myself there were two other guys on the greenkeeping staff, both of whom were in their late 50s and had been employed at the club for donkeys' years.

       Alf, the head greenkeeper, was a short, tubby guy, who wore a flat cap, the type of cap a racehorse trainer would wear out on the gallops, which he never took off throughout the time I was working there. I often found myself wondering if the cap had been surgically attached to the top of his head. He lived in a semi-posh part of Stockport and drove to work in a lime-green station wagon. Alf's main job was mowing the fairways, driving a tractor with a set of gang-mowers trailing behind it all day long.

      Alf's assistant, Nobby, was tall and thin and had a permanent sullen expression on his face. His main job was mowing the 18 greens, and once a week he would move the flag-holes to a different part of each green to save wear and tear on the grass. Nobby was a thoroughbred pleb like myself. He rode to work from where he lived in Longsight on his 'sit-up-and-beg' type bicycle. He arrived at work each morning wearing an army greatcoat, which he hung up as soon as he entered the hut and then donned a working jacket so old that the amount of dirt encrusted on it made it was impossible to tell what colour it had been when new. Nobby's wife had died a few years earlier, which was possibly the reason behind the permanent sour expression on his face and his caustic sense of humour.

      Although Alf and Nobby seemed to get on all right when we took our tea and lunch breaks in the greenkeepers' hut, you could scarcely call them the best of friends. When I was alone with either one of them they would be constantly bemoaning the other's shortcomings.

       When there was a two-man job on the day's menu, like scything down some of the rough, or raking the rubbish out of the drainage ditches, I preferred to work with Nobby. Nobby took a very cynical view of Alf. He would scoff at his pretentiousness, was constantly cursing him for being a 'tight-fisted git' and took great delight in describing the colour of Alf's station wagon as 'snot green'.

       Like myself, Nobby was in the habit of having a small punt on the horses each day. At 1 o'clock we would together cross the bridge over the Mersey, heading for the nearby bookie's shop in Northenden. After putting our bets on, we'd call in at the chip shop next door to the bookie's to buy our lunch of meat and potato pie and chips, which we'd take back to the greenkeepers' hut, where Alf would have mugs of tea waiting for us. Alf never bought anything from the chip shop. He brought a packed lunch to work each day, but he was always cadging chips from Nobby and myself to put on his sandwiches. Nobby was forever reminding me, 'He likes chips, but he doesn't like paying for them.'

        
       The worst aspect of the job by far was that Saturday mornings were part of our working week. Weekends were a very busy time on the course. During the Summer months some of the club members would be teeing off as early as 6 o'clock in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays, but we still stuck to our 8 o'clock start. We would take 6 holes each, raking the bunkers and swishing the greens. Nobby and myself would walk the course, but Alf would zip between his allotted 6 holes in his 'snot green' station wagon. Most weeks we'd be done and away for 11 o'clock, but the bugbear for me would be having to get there for 8 o'clock after my Friday nights out on the beer.

        Fridays were very boozy days for me. At 3 o'clock each Friday, Alf would lock-up the greenkeepers' hut and the three of us would troop over to the clubhouse to pick up our wages at the club secretary's office. Then we would go into the clubhouse bar where Alf would get a round of drinks in, mild for me and bitter for him and Tommy, which we would drink outside, sitting on the beer crates in the back courtyard. We would get a round in apiece, and then set off home around 4 o'clock, an hour earlier than our normal finishing time, which was very handy as it gave me more time to digest my tea before having a bath and getting ready for a night out on the beer.

     Friday night was the one night of the week that Angie and me could get out together. Angie's 16 year-old sister, Sally, used to babysit for us. Sally would sleep-over on the settee in the living room, but she would usually still be awake downstairs when we rolled home in the early hours of the morning after an evening at the Princess Club.

      
       During the week we would get a number of theatrical folk playing the course, well-known faces from stage and television, who were currently appearing at one of the Manchester theatres. One of the theatricals who enjoyed a regular round of golf at the course was Eric Sykes, who at that time was a very popular stage and TV comedian. At weekends the course was reserved for club members, most of whom were posh folk.

       At that time I was of the opinion that there was something intrinsically false about posh people. Their mannerisms and the way they talked seemed a million miles away from folk of my own social environment. Bereft of the rough edges of the plebs, self-assured to the point of arrogance, they appeared to relish their place in the farmyard pecking order of humanity, their heads in permanent residence up their own backsides.

      On alternate Wednesdays during the Summer months, inter-club matches would take place on the course. All the golf clubs on the banks of the Mersey in and around Manchester were in a competitive league, and at the end of the Summer a trophy, the Mersey Shield, would be awarded to the top team. On days when inter-club matches were in play, Nobby and myself would stroll around the course, replacing divots and raking the bunkers, whilst Alf would spend the day doing maintenance work on the tractor. It was during one of the inter-club matches that I first met Mr Cookson.

     
        I would have most likely stayed at the club until I attained assistant greenkeeper status. I might even have decided to make a career of it and eventually become head greenkeeper there, if it hadn't been for Mr Cookson.

        
        I'd suspected that Mr Cookson was homosexually inclined the first time I clapped eyes on him. Dressed in a pale pink sweater and a pair of Rupert the Bear checked trousers with his hair stacked up on his head bouffant style, he was mincing down the fairway towards where I was standing at the side of a bunker as though his underpants were stuck right up his bum-crack. Whilst his opponent was searching for his ball in the rough, he sidled over to me, pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his trolley and offered me one. After we'd lighted up, he began asking me questions about my job. He asked if I enjoyed greenkeeping and enquired as to how long I'd been working at the club. I thought he was just passing the time with a bit of idle chit-chat whilst his opponent was faffing about in the long grass on the other side of the fairway, but he then went on to tell me that there was a vacant assistant greenkeeper position at his own club. When I explained that I was only a junior greenkeeper and wouldn't be qualified as an assistant until my 21^st birthday the following August, he assured me that Harry Anderson, the head greenkeeper at Chorlton Golf Club, valued experience above age, and went on to say that if I fancied the job I should mention his name when I applied for it.

         'Cookson,' he said. 'Mister Cookson.'

      

        Throughout the rest of that day my mind kept returning to what Mr Cookson had said. I was thinking that with Chorlton Golf Club being nearer to our house, I'd only need to catch one bus to get there. And I knew I'd be getting a better weekly wage if I were an assistant greenkeeper. After talking the matter over with Angie that evening, we decided I'd have nothing to lose by enquiring over the job.

        On the Friday I ducked out of the afternoon beer session with Alf and Nobby and, after picking up my wages, went straight over to Chorlton Golf Club, where I found Harry Anderson hosing down the tractor outside the greenkeepers' hut. I took him to be in his late 40s, a muscular bloke of average height, with a heavy crop of black hair above his craggy, sun-tanned face. I introduced myself, and told him that Mr Cookson had suggested that I apply for the assistant greenkeeper vacancy.

      'Ooooh, so you know Chookie Cookie, eh?' Was the first thing he said to me, shimmying his shoulders as he did so, and I immediately knew I was going to like the guy.

       He went on to ask me a few general questions about greenkeeping and, being satisfied with my answers, told me the job was mine.  Although I tried to appear nonchalant about it, I couldn't stop the smile appearing on my face when Harry told me the wage I'd be on as an assistant greenkeeper, £3 a week more than I was earning at Withington.

        When I explained that I'd have to give a week's notice at my current club, Harry told me to be there at the greenkeepers' hut with my P45 at 8 o'clock a week on Monday.

Chapter Two: Chorlton Golf Club

        It was handy that I had only one bus to catch in the mornings, it meant that I could spend an extra 20 minutes in bed, but I was up and out of the house at the usual time on my first day. I arrived at the greenkeepers' hut just after 7.45. Unlike at Withington, where the greenkeepers' hut was hidden amongst the trees, a fair distance from the clubhouse, the greenkeepers' hut at Chorlton was at the side of the clubhouse, Barlow Hall.

      Barlow Hall was the ancestral home of the martyred Catholic priest Ambrose Barlow, who was hung, drawn and quartered, boiled in oil and had his head stuck on a pole over some or other doctrinal dispute in the year of Our Lord 1641.

        When the hall was built, back in the 13^th century, it had had a moat around it and, although the moat had been filled in a long time ago, you could still discern its circular course at the front of the hall.

     I had to wait outside the hut for 10 minutes or so before the other assistant greenkeeper, Jimbo, arrived on his bike.

       Jimbo was a big, beefy bloke with a chubby face and thinning brown hair, which he'd swept back and plastered flat to his skull with Brylcreem or some other such gunk. I was quite surprised when Harry told me sometime later that Jimbo was 35 years old, I'd initially thought he was much older.

        Harry, who also cycled to work from his home in Fallowfield, arrived shortly after 8 o'clock, by which time Jimbo had lit the hut's coke stove and put the kettle on top ready for a brew. We all sat down and had a cup of tea before we went out on the course to begin our day's work.

      Jimbo drove the tractor up and down the fairways, Harry mowed the greens and I had the same duties as at my previous club, swishing the greens, raking the bunkers, mowing the tees, approaches and surrounds. But on my first day, and every Monday thereafter, Harry had me scouring the rough, the drainage ditches and the two small ponds on the course for the golf balls lost by the weekend golfers.

    We used to pool the golf balls that we collected during the week, and once a month, on a Friday morning, Harry would cycle off with a rucksack full of them on his back. Although Harry never did disclose where he took the balls, he was getting top whack for them. He got two shillings for the newies and sixpence for the scuffers. We did well on the golf balls. On a good month we were pocketing up to £4 each from them.  Once I'd slotted into their routine, I got on very well with both Harry and Jimbo.

       Harry was a confirmed bachelor. From what I could gather he used to spend most of his evenings playing cards and dominoes at his local pub. He had cultivated a lot of useful contacts at the club over the years. Whatever local sporting occasion you may have cared to name, Harry could get you tickets for it, at face value too for folk whom he wanted to keep sweet, and he also had another handy little sideline selling duty-free rolling tobacco. Although Harry never seemed to bother with women, he harboured many sexual fantasies, which he would often share with me and Jimbo when we took our breaks in the greenkeepers' hut. Harry had one particular obsession that always made me smile whenever he brought it up. He wanted to shag Cilla Black.

     Cilla Black was a Liverpudlian songstress who had jumped aboard the Merseybeat bandwagon, which was all the rage with the record buying public during the 1960s. When Merseybeat went into decline and her time as a chart-topping pop star was grinding to a halt, she had had the nous to reconstruct herself as a professional scouser. Her 'Eee, chuck, I'm as common as muck' bonhomie propelled her into a highly lucrative career as a television personality throughout the next few decades.

         Jimbo was an easy-going kind of person for a guy of his height and bulk. I never once saw him lose his rag over anything. Harry was to confide to me that Jimbo had been involved in a serious accident during his youth. When he was a teenager he had inhaled some toxic fumes after a fire had broken out at an electrical wholesale warehouse where he worked. He had been hospitalised for a long time and, according to Harry, it had left him of a nervous disposition. Jimbo was an avid reader. At our morning tea breaks and lunchtimes he would usually have his head buried in a book. He lived with his parents at their house in Stretford. He had a girlfriend, who was several years younger than himself and, from what I gathered from Harry about her, she too was of a nervous disposition.

       I never regarded Jimbo as anything less than a full shilling, but he did have a number of unconventional ideas that he would occasionally share with me. He took a keen interest in cosmology and was well up to the mark on current theories relating to the universe. At times he would ramble on about things like hidden dimensions and parallel universes. Not that I had much knowledge of the such things, but I thought parallel universes were strictly "Twilight Zone" stuff and had no basis in reality. I didn't express my scepticism openly in front of Jimbo, as I had no wish to demean his sincerely held beliefs, plus I found a lot of what he had to say about time and space to be quite interesting and occasionally informative. I would often try to pump more information out of him regarding some of his notions that caught my fancy.

      Jimbo seemed to have a very strong affinity with dogs, one dog in particular. Every morning after our 10 o'clock tea break, when he set out to continue gang-mowing the fairways, Jimbo would be joined by a dog who would run alongside the tractor. At lunchtimes the dog would run off towards Barlow Wood, but he would be back waiting outside the hut for Jimbo as soon as our lunch break was over. Rex's coat was jet black all over, he looked like he was a cross breed between a German Shepherd and a much larger dog. Jimbo reckoned that somewhere along the line of evolution Rex's ancestors had had wolf blood coursing through their veins. By no means a feral dog, his coat always looked well groomed, but he didn't appear to be a domesticated dog either. He didn't wear a collar with a name tag on it, but Jimbo was convinced his name was Rex and, fair enough, the dog would always respond to the name when he called out to him.

        Jimbo didn't bet on the horses, he thought it was a mug's game, but Harry would have an occasional punt and, unlike myself, seemed to find more than his fair share of winners. We soon had a daily lunchtime routine sorted out. At 1 o'clock I would borrow Harry's bike and cycle to the nearest bookies, which was about half a mile away on the Merseybank Estate, while Jimbo would cycle to the chip shop for meat and potato pie and chips for the three of us, and Harry would get the tea brewed, ready for our return.

        As well as Saturday mornings still being part of my working week, another bogey about the job was the club secretary, who had taken an instant dislike to me. Harry told me the secretary had been touting his nephew for the assistant greenkeeper vacancy, but he had turned the lad down, telling the secretary that he wanted someone with previous experience. Harry also confided to me that he didn't want the lad reporting to his uncle on the sidelines he was running.

      The secretary was a ferret-faced little man with a white, bristly moustache.  He had been in the army during the 2nd world war, and had tenaciously clung on to his military rank long after his return to Civvy Street. His name was emblazoned in gold lettering on his office door. Colonel Browne. He expected everyone on the greenkeeping and clubhouse staff to address him as 'Colonel'. And most of them did, but I'd be beggared if I was going to address him as such. To me he was just a pen-pushing secretary, a club employee like myself. I kept out of his way as much as possible and, if I had to speak to him at all, he'd get little more than a few grunts out of me.

      The secretary was constantly reporting me to Harry over some or other trivial matter, like spotting me cycling off to the bookies a few minutes early at lunchtime, or catching me listening to the early racing results on the radio in the hut when I should have been out working on the course. On the occasions that Harry had had the secretary down his ear over some minor misdemeanour on my part, he would afterwards draw me aside and, with a half-hearted, angry expression on his face, he'd say: 'Look, I know as well as you that he's a fuckin' arsehole, but try to keep out of his way in future. And for fuck's sake don't let him see you doing anything else that he can come to me moaning about.' Harry didn't like mither, taking it nor dishing it out, 'keep it sweet' was his outlook on life.

        Although we didn't get many show business personalities having a round of golf, we did get a lot of footballers from the local clubs, and I also saw a lot of Mr Cookson, who played the course two or three times a week. He occasionally played in a foursome, but most of the time it would be him and his regular partner, Bill Cartwright, going around the course in the early afternoon. Cartwright was a tall, thin, weasel-like chap. He had a spiv type moustache that looked like a thin black line had been painted above his top lip, and an odd-looking circle of deep pockmarks on one side of his face. I'd recognised Cartwright from his photo in the local newspaper. He had been involved in some kind of investment scheme, which had lost a lot of people a lot of money, but he had somehow managed to wriggle out of being charged by the police. Knowing how crooked Cartwright was, It set me wondering what Mr Cookson did for a living. When I asked Harry, he winked and tapped his nose as he told me, 'He's a man of means and a gentleman of leisure.'

        My suspicions about Mr Cookson's sexual preference were soon to be confirmed when he tried to chat me up on a couple of occasions.  Much to his credit, after I told him in a firm, yet slightly coquettish, manner that I wasn't interested in that sort of thing he gave up on trying to seduce me, but he would still stop for a short chat and offer me a cigarette whenever our paths crossed out on the course.

      As Autumn passed into Winter there was less and less for us to do out on the course. The grass needed less and less mowing by the end of November and once the first frosts arrived our regular daily routine was more or less just sweeping and bagging the leaves from the greens, replacing the divots and tidying up the course in general. The secretary was always on the lookout for jobs to keep us occupied, like painting the outside of the professional's shop, sweeping the car park or moving furniture around in the clubhouse, anything to keep us doing things where he would be able to keep tabs on us.

        Despite The secretary's efforts to keep us otherwise occupied, we were still able to spend a considerable amount of our time in the hut, doing maintenance work on the machinery and other necessary wintertime jobs. It was nice and warm in the hut, especially so when there was a heavy frost on the course and a cold East wind blowing across it, as we would keep the coke stove well fed all day. I spent many a Winter's morning happily listening to Jimbo rambling on about science-related subjects whilst we were honing the mower blades, or attending to other tasks inside the hut.

Chapter Three: Winter

     The golf course was covered in a layer of frost. Edwin and Jimbo were in the greenkeepers' hut, giving the tee marker blocks a fresh coating of white paint. An hour earlier, directly after their tea break, Harry had cycled off to cash-in a month's accumulation of golf balls. To alleviate the tedium of their repetitive task Edwin had been attempting to engage Jimbo in conversation, but Jimbo had seemed reluctant to talk, as though he were deep in thought and wanted to stay that way. On the verge of giving up, Edwin played his last card.

       'Do you think time-travel will ever be possible?'

       Jimbo looked up from the tee marker he had just finished painting.

       'We're time-travelling at the moment.'

       'What d'yer mean?'

       'Look at the second hand on your watch.'

      'No, I didn't mean it like that. What I meant was, do you think people will ever be able to go back to the past or forward to the future?'

      'No one will ever be able to go back to the past. The past has gone forever and can never be retrieved - and besides, there would be too many paradoxes involved. As to going forward to the future: astrophysicists will tell you that it goes against all the laws of physics. The most they'll grant you is that if you could travel at the speed of light, time would stand still for you.'

       'But what if you could travel faster than the speed of light?'

    'Astrophysicists will tell that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light because light is the only thing in the universe that has no mass. Do you know the astrophysicists' main problem?'

        'No.  What is their main problem?'

        'They have no imagination.  Their highly educated brains are far too preoccupied with mathematical equations – and there's only one thing their precious equations will lead them to.'

        And what's that?'

       'Entropy.'

    'Right lads, divi up.' Harry clapped his hands as he entered the hut, having returned with the money from the golf balls. 'Fuck's sake Eddie, you're supposed to be painting the tee markers, not your fuckin' jeans.'

        'S'not my fault, this paint's too runny.'

      'You shouldn't have used as much turps to thin it down Harry.' Jimbo shook his head as he lifted his brush to show how the most of the paint ran off it back into the tin.'

       'Yes, but I didn't want to have to open the other tin, I've got a buyer for it.'

       'How much did you get for the golf balls?' Edwin asked.

      'Six pounds and three shillings.  I'll keep the three shillings for wear and tear on my bike - makes it two pounds apiece. Have either of you got change of a fiver?'

       Edwin and Jimbo shook their heads in unison.

       'Right, I'll go and see if the colonel can change it out of the petty cash.'

       'So what's entropy when it's at home then?'  Edwin asked when Harry left the hut.

       'The heat death of the universe. The end of everything!'

       Edwin gasped.

Chapter Four: Trouble With The Secretary

      We had a long spell of cold weather as Christmas approached. I was finding it increasingly difficult to drag myself out of bed in the mornings. There were several days when I turned up late for work, albeit only 10 minutes or so, but on one occasion it was gone 9 o'clock before I arrived and, as Sod's Law for Plebs would have it, the secretary copped me strolling up the club's gravel driveway. He reported me to Harry, of course. Afterwards Harry told me that he had told the secretary that Angie had flu and I'd been run off my feet at home, but he went on to make it quite clear that he couldn't keep covering for me. He ended up saying, 'From now on you'll have to pull your socks up.'

           New Year's Eve fell on a Friday that year. Angie and I had arranged to go out to the Princess Club with her brother Len and his wife Norma. My mum and dad were having David for the night, so we would be free to stay out drinking and dancing at the Princess Club until the early hours of the morning.

         The trouble started when I got back from the bookies at lunchtime. Harry had just returned from the secretary's office, where he'd been to collect his wages.

        'The colonel wants us in tomorrow morning,' were the first words that he greeted us with.

         'But it's New Year's Day tomorrow!' I said.

        'They're playing the members' Winter tournament that was postponed two weeks back. He wants the greens sweeping, and the markers moved to the back of the tees.'

        'Fuck that!' I said. 'Me and Angie are going out tonight. I'll be in no fit state to come to work tomorrow morning.'

       'Well, you'd better tell the colonel yourself then,' Harry replied, holding his arms outstretched with his palms facing outwards. 'I'm just telling you what he told me.'

         I immediately went to the secretary's office to sign for my wages.

       

       'Has Harry told you we need you in in the morning?' The secretary asked, as he handed me my pay packet.

        'I'm not working tomorrow,' I said. 'It's New Year's Day.'

        'As far as the club is concerned tomorrow is an ordinary working day.'

        'Well, as far as I'm concerned it's a bank holiday.'

      'The official bank holiday is on Monday. Saturday morning is part of your paid working week. If you don't turn in tomorrow you will have to accept the consequences.'

        'What do you mean by that?' I asked.

      'If you are unwilling to comply with my instructions then you know what you can do. You would be no loss to the club, I assure you.'

        By that time a red mist was forming in front of my eyes.

     'Too right I know what I can do. You can stick your job up your arse, Colonel Shithouse!'   With that I turned around and stormed out of his office, giving the door one almighty slam behind me.

        When I got back to the hut and told Harry and Jimbo what had transpired, Harry said that I had acted too hastily and asked me to reconsider what I had done.  He told me he'd be able to square it with the secretary if I turned in for work next day.  But I told him I wasn't going to change my mind.

      'No smarmy bastard who thinks he's still in the fuckin' army is going to spoil my New Year's Eve.'

       Just before we said our last goodbyes Jimbo gave me a ten shilling note, telling me 'You and your missus have a drink on me tonight'.  He also gave me a book, a tattered old book with no author's name on it, just “Chorlton – An Occult History” written on a plain green cover.

       'You can keep that,' he said. 'It'll open your eyes to a few things you didn't know about Chorlton.'

      New Year's Day 1966, I was unemployed and Angie, having missed her period, was worried that she could be pregnant again.

Chapter Five: Snyder's Dog

        Friday 10th July 2009, three days before my 39^th birthday.

     The novel I had been writing on and off for the past couple of months appeared have come to a full stop. The telephone rang. I closed the file, rose from my desk and walked across the room to the phone. It was my friend Miriam Winston, editor of the South West Manchester Reporter, on the other end. After exchanging a couple of pleasantries Miriam cut to the chase: Tom Horrocks was down with a stomach bug, would I be an absolute darling and do her a great favour?   I was about to put my hand over the mouthpiece and let out a deep sigh, but then thought, Well, it'll take my mind off the novel that's going nowhere.

       'And what would this great favour be?' I asked.

       'How about we meet for lunch, and I'll explain in full?'

       'A pub lunch?'

     'Although I won't be able to pay you a fee this time, I think I'll be able to stretch expenses to a meal at Panicos.'

       'With a couple of pints in the Royal Oak beforehand?'

       'Oh, you drive a hard bargain Michael.'

       'Life is hard, and so am I.'

       I heard a stifled laugh on the other end of the phone.

       'Royal Oak, 12.45, bye,' she said, and the phone went dead.

      Who'd be a provincial newspaper reporter?  None but the brave and the foolhardy. The South West Manchester Reporter had a paid staff of three: Miriam, who wrote the news items and the obits, as well as being the paper's photographer; Tom Horrocks, whose brief covered everything from homily features through to reviews of musical entertainment and theatrical events taking place in Chorlton and surrounding districts; and Corin Webster, whose sole charge was that of touting for advertising.

     On various occasions when Tom Horrocks had been sick or on holiday I had written the music reviews for the paper under the by-line Nick McGuinness to keep the DHSS off my case. I didn't always get paid for the reviews, but I got free entrance to the 'pay at the door' gigs - and got to know many of the local musicians, which had led to lots of late-night, post-gig drinking sessions, with and without my reporter's hat on. But on the debit side, Miriam had also sent me on assignments where I was completely out of my depth; like when I had acquiesced to review the Chorlton Amateur Dramatic Society's performance of what was billed as a 'Jacobean Revenger's Tragedy', the title of which I have long forgotten and shall never again bring to mind. It was about two ancient, warring postal delivery services, like the Pony Express although there were no horses present in the production. The cast spoke in such archaic language that I could hardly understand a word of it. I wrote the shortest review that ever appeared in the South West Manchester Reporter: 'Perhaps very profound, but definitely short on laughs'.

       I had a wash and shave, applied some spicy aftershave, and put on a clean shirt - the jeans and desert boots I had on were good enough for Panicos.

I was in the Royal Oak at just gone I2.30, and had almost finished my first pint of Guinness when Miriam arrived at 12.50. She spotted me straight away, sitting in the little alcove for two, opposite the jukebox on the far side of the dance floor.
      'We'll be a bit cramped for room in there,' she said, 'Why don't we sit in the lounge?'

      'I thought it would be more romantic sitting here - c'mon, park your bum,' I replied, patting the seat.

     Miriam sat down, nudging me further along the seat with her knee. When she had herself settled she opened her purse and extracted a £10 note, which she placed on the table next to my near-empty glass.

      'Get yourself another drink. I'll have a bottle of Old Speckled Hen, please.'

      'You've had your hair done,' I said, returning with the drinks, noticing Miriam's hair was shorter than she usually kept it, and there were several blonde highlights amongst her light-brown locks.

      'Yes, I felt like a change. Do you like it?'

     'Yeah, cool, really suits you. I don't know how you manage it, but you look more gorgeous every time I see you.'

      'How's your novel going?'   Miriam asked.  'The last time we spoke you had a touch of writer's block.'

     'It's not going, it's almost gone. I'm on the verge of pulling the plug on it.  My vainglorious dream of earning a living from writing is rapidly fading and, to tell you the truth, money's getting so tight I've been thinking about getting myself a proper job.   Anyway, what's this favour you're wanting of me?'

       'What do you know about quantum physics?'

       'Mmmm...quantum physics...it's a scientific theory concerning little things.'

       'Sub-atomic particles, according to Tom.'

       'Yeah, little things. Why do you ask?'

      'James Snyder is giving a lecture on the subject tonight at the Masonic Hall on High Lane. It starts at 8 o'clock. I'd very much appreciate it if you would cover it for the Reporter.'

        'James Snyder, who's he?'

    'He's one of the new breed of popular scientists. Apparently he takes complex concepts and makes them easily understandable to lay persons. Tom reckons he's a bit of a maverick, says he takes an heretical stance against the current consensus amongst quantum physicists.'

     'Good for him, but why would the South West Manchester Reporter's readership be interested in some dry as dust scientific theory? You'd be better off filling the space with a review of tonight's Minnie and the Ne'er Do Wells gig at the Lloyds.'

      'Michael!' She gasped. 'The cardinal rule of responsible journalism is that you should never underestimate your readers' intelligence and thirst for knowledge!'

      I knew Miriam was right. Although she looked much younger than her actual age - Miriam was in her late 40s - she had been editor of the Reporter for 20 years or more; and, though she had as much reason, if not more, to feel as cynical about the profession as the punters who buy the newspapers, she had stuck steadfastly to the old school of journalistic principles throughout her working life.

       'OK, I'll do it,' I said, holding up my hands. 'Are you coming along to take photos? We could go for a drink afterwards, catch Minnie and The Ne'er Do Wells second set.'

        'I'd love to, but I've got a date tonight.'

        'Oh..anyone I know?'

        'No, it's someone new.'

        'Ah, hence the new hair style. Someone interesting?'

        'He's a poet.'

        'No one of interest then.'

        'Oh Michael, you're awful!'

        'Well, it's better than being full of awe.'

       I arrived at the Masonic Hall just after 7.20, forty minutes before the lecture was due to start. I always made a point of sussing out a gaff before writing a report on the proceedings taking place therein. There was no one on the door, so I didn't need to flash Tom Horrocks' press pass that Miriam had lent me. I walked past the door to the bar and went into the auditorium, where there were 40 or so chairs arranged in three semi-circles, the front one being some 15 foot distance from the altar, or whatever the masons call the table at which their worshipful master sits, leaving enough room on the chessboard squared flooring between to enable a performance of a Jacobean Revenger's Tragedy to take place thereupon. All the chairs were unoccupied, so I walked back towards the entrance hall and entered the bar.

       I ordered a pint of Guinness and looked around the room. There was an elderly guy reading a newspaper at a table by the window. Besides him and the barman, the only other people in the room were a couple of guys standing at the far end of the bar, who appeared to be sharing a joke, as they were chuckling away merrily. They looked an oddly matched pair. One was a tall, thick-set guy, dressed in a black dinner suit, white shirt, black bow-tie and shiny, patent leather shoes; he had a severe combed-back hairstyle, flattened down with gel; his overall appearance gave me the impression that he could well handle himself if he got drawn into bother. The other guy was a good 6 inches shorter than his companion; his blond hair was piled up on his head Marie Antoinette style and he was wearing a pink sweater, a pair of gaudy, black and yellow checked trousers and black and white two-tone shoes.

    The two odd-bods were leaving the bar as I ordered another pint of Guinness. As they passed on their way to the door the smaller guy winked at me - although it might not have been a wink, it could have been a nervous tic, or he might have had something in his eye. Whatever, I nodded my head in acknowledgement, just in case it had happened to be a friendly gesture on his part.

         I finished my second pint of Guinness just before 8 o'clock, and made my way back into the auditorium. Less than half the chairs were occupied, folk young and old sitting in twos and threes, spaced out more or less evenly amongst the three rows. I sat down on the end seat at the left-hand side of the middle row and had jut got myself settled when a man entered stage right, walked centre-stage and turned to address the audience.

         Oh no, Dick Crenshaw!   I inwardly groaned.

      
      Crenshaw was a local businessman; his main line was licensed money lending but he was also rumoured to be mixed up in a lot of even shadier stuff. He was as bent as they come - he was so bent rumour had it that when he died, instead of burying him they were going to screw him into the ground. Miriam and Tom had been on Crenshaw's case a couple of times regarding the methods he'd employed to get his money back from his clients. He'd made the front page of the Reporter on both occasions, causing him maximum embarrassment for a time; but it hadn't led to criminal charges being brought against him, and it didn't do any long-term damage to his business operations either. Crenshaw was ultra hard-faced; his pock-scarred face was so hard you could chop bacon on it. Tom Horrocks had heard from one of his sources on the council that Crenshaw was part of the consortium that wanted to drill for some kind of underground gas in the area below Hardy Farm; he and Miriam were currently doing some serious investigation on the issue. Tom had been after Crenshaw for many years and was convinced that it was only a matter of time before he nailed him good and proper. Although Crenshaw had friends in high places who could help cover his tracks, Tom told me you only get three calls on The Brotherhood, and then you're paddling your own canoe.

      'Good evening ladies and gentlemen,' he began.  'Welcome to the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Masonic Hall. For those of you who have not visited our historic, listed building before, please feel welcome to have a look around the hall after tonight's lecture has ended. Contrary to the beliefs of certain sections of the media, the Freemasons are not a secret society - but like most of you good people in tonight's audience,' (at this point Crenshaw raised his arm and, with his index finger pointing outwards, he executed a wide sweep from right to left), 'we do have our secrets. So mote it be! However, it is now time for me to introduce this evening's guest speaker, Professor James Snyder from the...' (Crenshaw read out the rest of the introduction from a piece of paper he withdrew from his inside jacket pocket.) '..Institute for the Advancement of the Popular Understanding of Science. Will you please extend a warm Chorlton-cum-Hardy welcome to Professor Snyder.'

         Crenshaw sat down on one of the front row chairs as Snyder entered, stage left, to muted applause. It was the guy from the bar, the one in the dinner suit.

        
         'Firstly, I would like to ask you all a question,' he started off. 'What does the term Quantum Physics mean to you?'

       No one answered.  A silence descended on the hall for 10 seconds or more. Snyder's eyes flashed hither and thither around the audience in a manner suggesting that he wasn't going to carry on until someone spoke up.

          'Little things,' I blurted out as his eyes fixed on me.

       Crenshaw looked around to see who had spoken.  I cast a threatening glare at him.  He quickly turned his ugly head back to the speaker.

       'Ah, I see we have a scholar in our midst,' Snyder said, and a ripple of laughter spread throughout the auditorium. 'Your words have the subject encapsulated in a nutshell sir - your name please.'

          'Michael.'

    'Yes, Michael, little things, or sub-atomic particles as we of the scientific community call them. Little things that are so minuscule and move so fast they cannot be seen even with the most powerful of electromagnetic microscopes; little things whose very existence can only be assumed by the trails they leave behind and, of course, by mathematical equation.

        'But first I want to speak of speed, mass and energy, and my refutation of the current consensus of theoretical physics that binds them together.

       'Theoretical physicists are in total agreement that the speed of light is a constant 186,282 miles per second – and I have no argument with them on that score. Where I do clash horns with them is when they continue to assert that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

       'For something to move, be it a sub-atomic particle, a tennis racket or motor car, it requires a certain amount of energy to be expended, with the amount of energy needed increasing in direct ratio to the mass of the object and the speed at which it is travelling.

       'Physicists will tell you that light, being a wave and not a physical object, has less mass than anything else in this universe of ours, and therefore requires next to no energy expenditure to travel as far as the outer limits of our universe in every direction at once and, by their mathematical reckoning, it would be physically impossible for anything to travel any faster.

      'Theoretical physicists will tell you that certain sub-atomic particles do not behave in the same way as things that can be observed through a microscope or via the medium of our everyday perception. Then they will go on to tell you that some particles are capable of being in more than one place at the same time.

     'But if you were to ask the same theoretical physicists  “Does this not nullify every known theory of physics from Einstein's General Law of Relativity to the highly dubious String Theory that is currently being hawked around in theoretical physics circles?”,  they all would merely shrug their shoulders and walk away.

     'So, our theoretical physicists appear to be suggesting that there is no universal law of physics; either that or they are implying that certain things are "above the law". But how could a universe exist for billions of years without a universal law to govern it? You may well ask!

     'Well, it may be a blow to their collective egos but I'm afraid the theoretical physicists are wrong. There is a universal law of physics that governs not only our own universe but every universe that has ever existed and every universe that is yet to come into existence.

    'The greatest mistake the theoretical physicists ever made was their assumption that sub-atomic particles behave differently to bigger things, like milk bottles, biscuits tins and micro-wave ovens. The fact is that, in the right circumstances, with the right amount of the right energy focused upon it, every physical object has the propensity to be here and somewhere else at the same time.

       'When I say the right energy, I do not refer to the energy contained in the battery that keeps your mobile phone working, nor the energy generated by nuclear power stations. I'm talking about the dark energy that is continually regenerating itself and is pushing all the observable matter in this universe of ours further and further apart. An energy that when harvested and applied to an object in a controlled environment can make the speed of light seem as slow as the slugs that crawl across your kitchen floor while you sleep.

      'And without further ado, I am going to prove my point by carrying out, before your very eyes, an experiment. An experiment that you will most likely have heard about through various offices which, no doubt, will have drawn many of you here tonight to witness. The experiment that has come to be known, without my approval I should add, as "Snyder's Dog".   Mr Boysen, the cabinets, s'il vous plait.'

       The other guy from the bar, the one with the fairy godmother hairstyle - only now he was wearing a white overall coat - came on pushing a glass box with castors affixed to the bottom. The box was at least 7 foot tall, and about 3 foot square. He wheeled the box past Snyder, leaving it about three foot away from his colleague on his right-hand side. He then returned to the wings, and a few seconds later came back pushing an identical box which he positioned a similar distance away from Snyder on his left-hand side.

      'And now let me introduce the protagonist in our experiment. C'mon Rex, here boy.' Snyder clicked his fingers and a large black dog, came bounding in stage left.

       'In you go my friend,' Snyder said, opening a door of the box on his right-hand side.

       The dog trotted into the box and sat down on its haunches facing the audience, its front legs holding it in a steady, stationary position, where he remained as he was for a good 30 seconds.  After the initial silence that had fallen when the dog entered the box, impatient murmurs could now be heard coming from several sections of the audience. Then, all of a sudden, the dog started to change colour. He slowly became pinky looking; not just his coat, but his eyes too. Then faster and faster his colour became brighter until he was a pillar box red. The audience, who had hardly raised a murmur up until that point, let out a collective gasp as in the other box an identical dog appeared, but this one was coloured a light shade of blue. My eyes moving from box to box, I discerned a slight colour change in both dogs: the blue dog appeared to be getting brighter, whilst the red dog's colour appeared to be getting paler. This process quickened: the brighter the blue dog became, the red dog's colour faded in more or less equal proportion, until they reached a point where their colours were going through the full cycle of lightening and fading so quickly that I was beginning to feel rather disorientated.

       'Point made, I think!' Snyder declared, as the blue dog turned black and the red dog disappeared completely.

         'What did you make of that?' He asked, looking directly at me.

         
        I thought the guy was obviously a fraudster. A well-worked trick, I'd grant him - as a showman I had to admit he had quite a neat act, even though he probably was just a one-trick pony - but I reckoned he had some brass neck on him trying to pass off a stage-managed illusion as a scientific experiment.

         
         'Smoke and mirrors.' I replied.

       'You think so - Michael, the scholar, isn't it? Well, Michael, perhaps you would like to participate in my experiment, and convince the audience that it is merely a matter of smoke and mirrors as you say?'

         I had no intention of aiding him in his deception; but Snyder started goading me by raising his eyebrows and looking around the audience with a benign smile on his face, as if to imply that it was me who was the charlatan.

        'He's certainly not as brave as you Rex – is he?' Snyder said, opening the glass box on his left-hand side and summoning out the dog.

         'OK,' I said, rising from my chair. 'What do you want me to do?'

       'Ah, a change of heart.  It seems I have underestimated your resolve sir. Come join me,' he replied, beckoning me towards him.

         Snyder opened the door of the glass box on his right-hand side.

         'Step inside,' he said as I approached him, 'and face the audience.'

        I became somewhat hesitant.  I didn't like the way he was trying to hasten me into the box.

         'Trust me,' he whispered in my ear.  'I'm a quantum mechanic.'

         I had no reason at all to trust him but, against my better judgement, I went inside the box, and Snyder closed the door behind me. Looking out at the audience I noted that most of them were smiling in anticipation of what was going to happen. Crenshaw on the front row had a smug grin on his face, no doubt looking forward to me being made to look an idiot whatever happened.

        Nothing happened for 30 seconds or so, and then the glass all around me turned opaque.

       I must have been standing there for a couple of minutes, waiting for the glass to become transparent again, all the while planning how I was going to write my review, “Investigative reporter exposes fake scientist”, headline. My only regret at that point was that Miriam wasn't there with her camera; a couple of pics to go with the copy, it would have been a front page job.

      The box was soundproof, I couldn't hear a thing from outside; and once I'd fully worked out what I was going to say to Snyder and the audience I started to become impatient to get out of there. I rapped my knuckles on the box's door to elicit Snyder's attention - but drew no response. Getting fed up with the whole thing, I finally pushed open the door and stepped outside.

      
       To my total amazement, I found myself in what appeared to be a gents' toilet. I was facing the urinals, an old style three man piss-stone with a sloping trough at the bottom. I turned around; the glass box had gone. I found myself looking into a mirror above a washbasin. But it wasn't me staring back from the mirror: it was a kid, a young man, dressed up like a dog's dinner. On closer inspection he did bear a slight resemblance to myself when I was his age but I wouldn't have been seen dead with the kind of retro hairstyle he was sporting.

        A blast of pop music from long ago, hit my ears as someone opened the door. I looked at the young guy who had entered: he was dressed similar to myself, suited-up with a thin grey tie. His suit looked of a much cheaper quality than the one I was wearing but he had an equally as archaic hairstyle as mine.

       'Is that your bird out there pal?' he asked, thumbing over his shoulder towards the door. 'Only, if it is, she's not in a very good mood.'

         I didn't answer him.   I walked to the door, opened it to the music, and stepped out into a disco / nightclub. I'd been to cheesy 80s nights discos, but this one was an even cheesier, pre-psychedelic 60s affair.

      I immediately found a young woman confronting me; a very attractive young woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, who appeared to be in the latter stages of pregnancy.

          'What the hell have you been doing?' she asked. 'I thought you'd died in there.'

          Before I had time to answer, I found myself somewhere else.

Chapter Six: Looking For Work

        Being as the Monday was a bank holiday in lieu of New Year's Day falling on the Saturday, everywhere was shut, so it was Tuesday before I could start looking for a new job.

       Quite confident of getting a job straight away, I had no intention of signing on the dole. I caught the bus to Manchester city centre and made my way to the labour exchange on Aytoun Street, where I perused the job vacancies boards for suitable employment.

       Most of the jobs on the boards were factory work. I'd had enough of inside jobs. I'd got used to, and enjoyed, working outside. I definitely didn't want to work in a factory again.

     Having done an 18 month stint at Kraft's in Trafford Park after leaving school, I'd seen enough of factory life to know that working in industry soon brings on a rapid deterioration of body and mind. In my experience of industry the vast majority of factory workers spent their working lives chasing overtime to bump up their weekly wage. It is tantamount to sacrilege for an industrial worker to spurn the opportunity of overtime working. They grab at every hour of overtime available, especially at weekends when they're paid at time and a half on Saturdays and double time on Sundays, regardless of the obvious fact that working seven days a week takes its toll on family and social life, makes people more prone to industrial accidents and, in later life, invariably leads to ill health and, in many cases, an early death. An even quicker route to the self-destruction is the three rotating shifts system - mornings, afternoons and nights - which many factory workers get sucked into due to the enhanced hourly rates of pay that shift-work offers. A year or so of that and your body clock is well and truly fucked. Then there's the production line jobs, where speed is of the essence. It's sod the quality of the work you're doing, bonuses are to be had by churning out the product as fast as possible. Imagine, just for a moment - it doesn't bear thinking about for any longer - working shifts on a production line seven days a week. No, thank you, I'd have rather be an anglepoise lamp.

        Although I was fully aware of my responsibilities as the sole bread winner, I was determined that I wasn't going to consign the rest of my life to working in a shitty factory.

       I walked up and down the boards a couple of times, looking for suitable outside work. There were a number of outside jobs for wagon and van drivers but, as I didn't have a driving licence, they were right off the menu. The van driver's assistant / lorry driver's mate vacancies were not worth a second glance. They were the kind of jobs that 15 year-old school-leavers were drawn to whilst getting their bearings in the employment market, the pay was piss poor.

      I was just about to give up on my search, when I came across a card advertising an assistant gardener / groundsman position at Southern Cemetery. I took the card off the rack and handed it to the woman behind the counter. She made a phone call, then told me to report for an interview at Southern Cemetery at 1.30 that afternoon.

     I caught the bus home, had a shave, washed my hair, put on my best shirt and caught a bus to Chorlton.

        
       I arrived at Southern Cemetery well before the time of my interview, so not having had anything to eat through rushing around all morning, I bought a meat and potato pie at the chip shop over the road from the cemetery offices, the same chip shop where Jimbo had gone for our lunch every weekday.

    Just before 1.30 I went into the cemetery offices and told the woman on the reception desk that I had an appointment with the personnel manager. She phoned through to his office. He came out to greet me, shook my hand and introduced himself as Norman Sawdon. He was a very pleasant bloke, tall and slim with a semi-crew haircut similar to mine, and was smartly dressed in a blue suit and tie. He led me into his office, where the interview didn't last all that long. He asked me a few questions about my previous employment. He seemed quite satisfied with my greenkeeping experience and, thankfully, didn't ask me why I'd packed-in my last job. He then went on to tell me the pay which, although it was hourly rate rather than a flat wage, was a little bit better than the money I'd been getting at Chorlton Golf Club. He told me it was a 5 day working week of 40 hours, and went on to say that any weekend overtime available was worked on a rota basis, so everyone had their fair share if they were willing to work. Further to that he told me that if I so wished I could go on the grave-digging rota, for which I would be paid an extra eight shillings for each grave I dug. By that time I was confident that I was going to get the job, but there was just one problem that cropped up at the end of the interview.

'You are over 21, aren't you?' He asked. 'Council regulations do not permit the cemetery to employ persons under the age of 21.'

       'Yes,'  I lied, desperate not to let the job slip from my grasp, 'I was 21 last August.'

       'Good. When would you be available to start?'

     'I can start tomorrow if you like,' I answered, eager to get the deal signed and sealed.

     'Fine,' he said, rising from his chair.  'Report to reception, with your insurance cards, at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning.'

        He stepped from behind his desk, shook my hand again, and I left.

     On the bus home I was feeling a little uneasy about having had to lie to the personnel manager, but appeased myself with the thought that I was only 7 months or so away from being 21. It wasn't until I arrived home and started telling Angie about the interview that I realised the wages office at the cemetery would know from my National Insurance cards that I was under 21. My head slumped on to my chest as the fact hit home. It would have been the ideal job for me but, once again, I was the victim of Sod's Law for Plebs.

       I was well pissed off, thinking that I'd no choice but to go back to Aytoun Street next morning and go through the whole process again. Then I remembered the conversation I'd had with Angie's brother Len on New Year's Eve.

     Len was a window cleaner. He worked a round in the West Point area, which consisted mostly of the semi-detached houses around the borders of Whalley Range and Chorlton.

        Len worked the window cleaning round off the cards, under the radar, as he had officially been on the sick for the last couple of years or so with a bad back. It wasn't actually Len's round, he was just filling in for the guy who owned the round, who was doing an 18 month stretch in Strangeways for passing off dud £5 notes.

        While Angie and I were out celebrating the New Year at the Princess Club with Len and Norma, Len had told me that he was having trouble doing the upstairs windows, as his back was playing up again and he found it painful climbing up the long ladder. Having told him earlier about packing it in at the golf club, he asked if I fancied giving him a lift. He went on to suggest that I could do the upstairs windows while he did the downstairs, and we'd split the money we earned 50 - 50. Even with a few pints inside me it had seemed a dodgy proposition. I didn't like the idea of working off the cards, and when I'd asked him how much a week I could earn, he'd been a bit evasive to say the least. But, as needs must, and the thought of trudging down to Aytoun Street again, I decided to take up Len's offer.

        After we'd finished our tea, Angie put David in his pushchair and we had a walk round to the house Len and Norma rented on Oswald Road. Len was ready for going out to the pub when we arrived, so I left Angie and Norma to have a good chat whilst I accompanied him to the Royal Oak.

        Knowing there'd be a few of Len's drinking buddies in the pub, I got the business over during our walk there. Len was pleased I'd decided to take up his offer. He told me his back had been playing him up no end over the last couple days.

      'It was all that dancing Norma had me doing on Friday night.' he said, before telling me he had given up hope of cleaning any windows for the rest of the week. I arranged to meet him outside the Seymour Hotel at 9 o'clock next morning.

        I knew Len's boozing mates, two Irish guys, Liam and Macca.  Like Len they were four or five years older than myself. They worked on a demolition gang and more often than not were covered from head to foot in dust every time I'd seen them. They usually went to the pub straight from work, where they chucked pints of Guinness down their throats as though it was their last night on Earth.

        I didn't get into a round, as there was no way I'd have been able to keep up with them, plus I hadn't much money left after the New Year's Eve festivities at the Princess Club.

        Although I'd been drinking one pint to their two, I'd had more than enough beer by 9.30, so I left them to it. I walked back to Norma's, where David was fast asleep, and I could tell by the look on Angie's face that she was well ready for going home.

        On the walk home I told Angie what had transpired. She was pleased that at least we'd have some money coming in for the week ahead, even though we didn't know how much it would be.

Chapter Seven: Windows

        Next morning was cold but dry, there was a heavy frost on the ground when I set out. I arrived at the Seymour at 8.50. Len turned up at 9.15. Although I had put on my heavy clothes and work boots, I was fair freezing by the time he arrived. He made a half-hearted apology, telling me he had overslept, and blamed it on the steak pudding, chips and mushy peas he'd scoffed on his way home from the Royal Oak, saying it had given him indigestion which had kept him awake half the night.

       We picked up the ladders and buckets from the house where the owner let Len store them in his garage in return for Len cleaning his windows for free, and then set off for our first job. Len gave me a quick crash course in window cleaning. Simple really, wash the window panes with a chamois leather and hot water, then dry off and polish with scrim. Scrim is a muslin type fabric, which Len told me he purchased by the yard.

      As well as filling our buckets with hot water, the lady at the first house on the round offered us both a cup of tea, which was mighty welcome. In fact we were offered a cup of tea at a couple of the houses where we asked for fresh hot water. The hot tea plus the elbow grease I was putting into cleaning the windows soon had me warmed up.

       We were doing well, we'd polished off ten houses or more by 1 o'clock, when Len suggested we took a break.  

       We bought our dinner at a nearby chip shop.  Whilst eating our pie and chips on the hoof, Len seemed to be diverting us away from the house where we'd left the ladders. I soon discovered the reason why. As we approached the Seymour Hotel, Len clapped me on the back as he tossed his empty chip wrappings into the rubbish bin outside the pub.

       'Right, let's have a quick one in here.'

    
      The 'quick one' quickly turned into a four pint session. Len got the first round in whilst I was washing the grease and the vinegar smell off my hands in the gents toilets. We downed the first pint quite quickly. I had just enough money on me to pay for another round to square things off. Eager to get back to earning some money, I sunk the second pint faster than Len, and went for a pee whilst he finished his. When I got back from the gents there were two more pints on the table. Whereas I slowed down on the third pint, Len speeded up and had his finished well before me. He held his empty pot up and waved it in front of my face.

       'I've got no money left,' I said.  'Anyway, we'd better get back to work, hadn't we?'

      'That's all right. I'll get 'em in,' he replied,  'I'll take it out of your share of today's whack,' he replied, standing up and walking over to the bar before I had chance to stop him.

     We started on the window cleaning again at 3.15. We did another four houses before it became too dark to carry on. Len gave me my share of the money he'd collected during the day, less the cost of the pint of beer, the wash leather and the scrim. He told me he would collect the money from the houses where no one had been at home after he'd had his tea, and would give me my share next morning. I went home with two pounds five shillings in my pocket, with another ten shillings to come next morning which, with not paying Income Tax nor National Insurance on it, was more or less on a par with what I'd been earning at Chorlton Golf Club.

         
      Apart from Len turning up on time next morning, the day went very much the same as the previous one. We'd done a dozen or so houses, picking up two new customers on the round, which Len seemed very pleased about, before we stopped for our dinner break at 1 o'clock. We sank four pints apiece in the Seymour again before returning to the windows, finishing work for the day at 4.30. I went home with over three pounds in my pocket.

     The money was all right, and I knew that if I could get Len to cut back on the dinnertime drinking we'd be earning a few earning a few quid more a week. But he fact that I wasn't getting an insurance stamp on my cards was nagging my mind somewhat as our working week was drawing to an end, plus I didn't like spending so much time and money in the pub, but all in all things were looking OK.

        
       Friday morning was quite mild but there was more than a hint of rain in the air. Len told me that he didn't work in the rain, so we speeded up a bit in case we had to finish work early.

      The morning went smoothly, except for one incident that played on my mind on and off during the rest of the day. I was getting well ahead of Len, finishing the upstairs windows at most houses whilst he was still polishing off the downstairs ones. While Len was finishing off one house, he told me to knock at the house next door and ask for fresh hot water. I knocked on the door. When no one answered, I knocked again, a bit louder than the first time. The door finally opened slightly, and a woman looked through the gap at me. I took her to be in her early 40s, she had a very pretty face, long blonde hair and light-brown eyes.

        As soon as her eyes focused on me a startled expression appeared on her face.

      'Window cleaner, missus,'  I said, holding the buckets towards her. 'Could you give us a refill of hot water please?'

         'Michael?'

       'No, Michael's still not able to work at the moment,' I said, thinking that she was asking about the guy whose window round it was. 'Len and me are filling in for him until he gets better.'

        'You'll have to wait a minute, I'll have to shut the dogs in the lounge.'

      Looking down I saw two dogs straining to get past her and out into the front garden.

      When she'd seen to the dogs, she came back for the buckets, and when she returned with the hot water, she looked at me closely.

         'I know you, don't I?' She said.

        'I don't think so missus,'  I replied.  'I live on the other side of Whalley Range, off Withington Road.'

        I thanked her for the hot water, and then set about putting the ladders up to the window at the back of the house. When I got up to the window, the curtains were drawn back and I could see the room was like a study rather than a bedroom. Two of the walls were lined with bookshelves with dozens of books crammed on them, and at the side of the window was a wooden desk with a typewriter on it and a swivel-chair in front of it.

         I didn't see the woman again, as when Len had finished the downstairs windows he knocked-on for the money, whilst I moved on to the next house. What she said about knowing me started playing on my mind as we walked to the next section of the round, which was a bit of a trek down Brantingham Road. As we walked along I asked Len if he knew anything about the woman. All he said was that her two dogs were bloody nuisances.

        It started raining at 12.15, and by half-past the rain was coming down heavy. We finished off the house we were doing and took the ladders back to the garage, deciding to have an early dinner and go to the Royal Oak, where we'd wait a while in case the rain stopped.

      By the time we'd each bought a round of beers the rain was still rattling down. Before Len could get another round in, I told him I was going home as there seemed no further point in waiting. Len whacked out the morning's takings of under two pounds each, with a further few shillings to come when he'd done his evening collection.

       I walked home in the rain, thinking it wasn't such a good job after all. The missing insurance stamp was niggling at my mind and, once I'd given Angie the housekeeping money, I had just about enough left for our regular Friday night at the Princess Club.

       I spent a good deal of the weekend agonising with Angie about working with Len. Same as myself, Angie didn't like the idea of me working off the cards. She said she wouldn't have been as worried about it if I'd been able to get a permanent sick note from my doctor, like Len, to cover my missing National Insurance stamps, but we knew there was no chance of that happening. There was also the money aspect to take into consideration. Admittedly, on dry days I'd be earning decent money cleaning windows but, when it was raining, I'd be earning no money at all. We finally decided that it would be better if I looked for more secure employment as soon as possible.

     Monday morning was cold, but dry. We had earned just over two pounds each when it started raining just before 1 o'clock. It soon became apparent that the rain was set in for the day. We put the ladders away in the garage, but I didn't buy a chip shop dinner nor did I go to the pub with Len. As we parted I told him that if it was raining next morning I would have to go looking for a proper job because I wouldn't be able to manage without a regular income. Len didn't seem too pleased about it but, considering my family situation, he could hardly blame me and begrudgingly admitted as much.

       On the Tuesday morning it was raining again.  After breakfast I set out for Aytoun Street labour exchange. Browsing through the cards on the boards I came across a vacancy for an assistant groundsman at Turn Moss playing fields, at the Stretford end of Chorlton Meadows. The advertised wage wasn't all that good, but it was an outside job, where I'd still get paid even when it was raining. I took the card over to the woman behind the desk, who made a phone call, then told me to report for an interview at the Stretford Borough Council office in Longford Park at 10 o'clock next morning.

      I was feeling quite pleased with myself as I travelled home on the bus, thinking that with my previous experience, plus the fact that the wage on offer wasn't all that good, so they wouldn't exactly have had a cartload of applicants vying for the job. I was confident that I would sail through the interview and secure the assistant groundsman position.

Chapter Eight: The Pretty Woman With The Two Dogs

        I'd given up: given up trying to understand what was happening to me and given up hope of ever getting back to the Chorlton where I belonged. At that point my mind was resigned to the fact that it had no choice other than to go with the flow, like a pinball buffeted from bumper to bumper, thrust into and jerked out of a multitude of bodies in a plethora of Chorltons by some force totally beyond my comprehension. I'd given up; but I still remained I, me, Michael Greatrex, no matter whose body my mind was temporarily occupying.

       A mind separated from its own body, a physical impossibility in a material world. Under normal circumstances even a brain transplant would be a difficult concept to get one's head around but mind swap, that's too much for anyone to swallow. Nevertheless, it is a terrifying experience when it's actually happening.

     After the initial panic and feelings of total disorientation had diminished enough to enable me to get a grip on my thought functions; it had been difficult enough for my mind to keep adjusted to the here and now; the why and how had to be put on the back-burner.

      My original hope that I was merely having a bad dream had been quashed many moves back when I realised it was going on far too long for it to be a dream. The idea that I was under the influence of an hallucinogenic drug had crossed my mind from time to time but, because people's faces weren't melting or rabbits wearing top hats and tails weren't popping up everywhere, I had discounted that too. The only other explanation remaining open to me was that my predicament had somehow been caused by Snyder's 'experiment'. But how could that be so? Smoke and mirrors? Science? Science fiction, science fantasy; my situation was beyond any of that stuff, it was more like science lunacy.

     This time I had arrived to find myself standing on the Chorlton bank of the Mersey, outside a pub, The Prizefighter – the inn sign showed a bare-knuckled boxer adopting a rather aggressive stance.

In my Chorlton, the pub was called The Bridge Inn, and was on the Sale bank of the river at a spot known locally as Jackson's Boat; when it was first opened at the end of the 18^th century the pub was called The Greyhound.

      The Greyhound's claim to fame was that in the late 19^th century it had been the meeting place of the local radicals. My Chorlton's reputation for being a hot bed of radicalism stretches well back before Martledge. Chorlton Village and the surrounding areas around Hardy Farm and Barlow Hall were incorporated into the City of Manchester at the beginning of the 20^thcentury and became the Municipal Borough of Chorlton–cum-Hardy. Over the years my Chorlton had attracted all sorts of leftist types: Radicals, Chartists, Socialists, Republicans, Communists, Anarchists and anti-capitalists of all ilks. Even during the Thatcher Reich in the 1980s, when the yups started buying the farm labourers' cottages around the village green, offering vast sums of money that the landlords and those lucky enough to own their own cottages could not resist, many of the newcomers were left-liberal minded folk from working-class backgrounds who, within a generation, had found themselves thrust into the professional classes.

      It was a pleasant evening, the sun was slowly sinking in the West, there was a light breeze cooling down the earth and trees at the end of what must have been a hot Summer's day on the meadows. Weighing up the feeling of my host body, and looking down at the baggy, grey sweatshirt, blue denim jeans and black and red trainers, I guessed my host was in his late 20s or thereabouts. Totting up the money in the pocket of the jeans, I figured I had enough to treat myself to a few pints of Guinness, providing The Prizefighter sold Guinness and that I'd be around long enough to enjoy them.

       When I walked through the pub's front door a guy playing the fruit machine in the lobby looked up at me and raised his hand in salute.

       'Hiya. How're doin'?'

      'Fine, fine,' I answered, smiling as I passed him, continuing on my way towards the bar.

        By that time I had learned to slip into reticent mode whenever I was confronted by anyone who obviously knew my host body. Least said, soonest mended.

       I ordered a pint of Guinness and, whilst waiting for it to settle, had a good look around the room. I didn't want to get drawn into conversation with the guy playing the fruit machine and I didn't fancy sitting at the only vacant table in the far corner, as the room was full of yups, the place was echoing with yupspeak. I decided to go back outside. I picked up my pint of Guinness and left through the back door.

       I'd almost finished my pint and was pondering on whether to go back in the pub to get another one. Glancing up river as I sank the last mouthful of Guinness, I saw a dog emerge from out of the trees where the Mersey's course twisted towards Didsbury. Then a smaller dog appeared, trotting alongside its owner. It was her, the pretty woman with the two dogs.

        
         We'd met before, many moves back, when my host body felt to be that of a man much older than the others I'd occupied up until then. It had been wintertime, we were both dressed in cold-weather clothes. I was wearing a grey overcoat and had a hat on my head. She was dressed completely in black: a knee-length coat, calf-length boots, woolly hat and a pair of leather gloves. I had been about to cross the wooden bridge over the channel where Chorlton Brook flowed into the Mersey when I saw her and her two dogs approaching from the direction of Crossford Bridge. I waited there until she and the dogs had crossed the bridge. It had been her who initiated the conversation, saying something or other about the weather, smiling at me as she did so. She seemed friendly, and I found her very attractive too, so I decided to stroll alongside her in the direction she was going. I soon began to realise there was something odd about her. She chatted amiably enough, in a manner that suggested she knew me well; yet a couple of questions she asked had me thinking she wasn't sure she knew me at all. However, it was a change to be able converse in a near normal manner, rather than having to keep myself to myself as I had done wherever I'd been up to that point.

      When we reached the iron bridge across the Mersey I suggested that we should take a respite from the cold, and invited her for a drink at the Bridge Inn, which was at its normal site on the Sale bank of the river; but she told me she had to get home, back to the novel she was working on.

      'Well, we'll no doubt meet again,' she said as we were about to take leave of each other. 'Maybe I'll be able to take up your offer of a drink next time.'

      'What's your novel about?' I asked as she started to turn away.

      She turned to face me again.

    'This place,' she replied, raising her left arm to her right shoulder and flinging it forward in a panoramic sweep. 'Chorlton!'

      The next thing I knew, I was somewhere else.

     She looked exactly the same as when I'd last seen her but this time she was wearing summer attire: a blue sleeveless top, a calf-length white linen skirt and a pair of grey sandals. A smile appeared on her face as she approached me.

        'Hello. We meet again,' she said, stopping a yard or so in front of me.

        Her greeting took me by surprise.

        'You remember me?' I asked, momentarily forgetting that I had been in a different body when we'd last met.

       'Well, it was all of three weeks ago, but I can assure you that Alzheimer's hasn't set in since then.' She laughed loudly, shaking her shoulder-length fair hair, and both dogs started jumping up at her.

        I stood there with my mouth agape, my thoughts flying off on too many tangents to say anything further.

       'How are you getting along with your new novel?' She asked as she brought the dogs back under control.

       'Oh, it's going very slowly. I'm not making much progress on it at the moment.' I replied cautiously, before turning the question back on her.

        'But what about yourself, have you finished your novel?'

        Her hazel eyes widened noticeably.

    'I think you have me confused with someone else. I don't write fiction, I'm a journalist. Gina Hayles, I interviewed you for the South West Manchester Reporter...,about your “Chorlton” novel?'

       'Yes, of course, sorry,' I said hastily. 'I'm not myself today, too much on my mind. You know what fiction writers are like, spend too much of our time on Fantasy Island.'

She laughed, though not loud enough to set the dogs jumping up at her again.

        'You're a funny guy, and no mistake.'

        'Would you like a drink?' I asked, showing her my empty glass. 'I was just about to get myself a refill.'

       'All right, yes, I am quite thirsty.  I'll have a lager, a pint if you don't mind. We'll have to drink out here, they don't allow dogs inside.'

         'Yeah, fine,' I said, 'Won't be two ticks.'

         I was aware that time was of the essence as I walked towards the back door of the pub. I'd seldom remained anywhere for long. Sometimes I'd be in a place for couple of hours, but more often than not it would be a matter of minutes before I was hoiked off to somewhere else.

     I had a strong suspicion that she knew more about me, the real me, than she wanted me to think. There was definitely something odd about her. I needed to probe behind her façade and was hoping I'd be around long enough to do so.

       I got as far as the bar, ordered a pint of Guinness and a pint of lager - and next thing I found myself sitting at a table outside the Royal Oak with a near-empty pint glass of Guinness in front of me, and a rather inebriated Irish chap sitting opposite, spivving me a horse in the 3.15 at Ascot.

       I sank the remaining Guinness in one go, and plonked the empty glass down on the table.

     'I've got to see a man about a dog,' I said. as I got up to make my way across Barlow Moor Road. 'Catch you later.'

      'Oi!' From behind me a voice called out as I stepped off the curb into the roadway. 'It's your feckin' round!'

Chapter Nine: Peace

     August 1st 1876 had been a slow, warm day in the village and out on the meadows. Throughout the day there had been much activity on the ley line that runs North through Barlow Hall to West Point.

      The animals, always first to notice the warning signs, had been behaving oddly since early afternoon. The horses at Barlow Hall Farm had refused to eat-up when brought in from the fields, and rumours were circulating throughout the village that The Dog had been seen in Barlow Wood.

       
     A full moon, the skies were clear, the stars could be seen twinkling far into the Milky Way. Since dusk a heavy mist had been forming on the Mersey flood plain; out on the meadows the will-o'-the-wisps were barely visible. By 11pm the mist was moving eastwards up Chorlton Brook towards Hough End Hall, and to the North it travelled up the streams, across the Isles and over the pond below Red Gates Farm.

     Despite his two terms of imprisonment for burglaries committed in the Manchester area, Charles Peace was back in town. He had travelled over the Pennines from Sheffield, with the tools of his trade and his trusty pistol secreted about his person.

     At 11.55 pm Peace was lurking in the small copse at the top end of Trafford Lane, his eyes firmly fixed upon his target, the Greatrex house. On the stroke of midnight he made his move. Across Manchester Road, over the wall and in to the garden.

    Charlie be nimble, Charlie be quick; but Peace's stealth had not gone unnoticed. Whilst patrolling Manchester Road, Police Constables Thomas Beanland and Nicholas Cock had seen a man entering the grounds of the Greatrex house and hastened to investigate. With a leg-up from Cock, Beanland, the senior of the pair, climbed over the wall, and shone the light from his bullseye around the garden.

      Peace ducked low behind a laburnum bush and, as the policeman walked nearer to the house, made his way back to the garden wall. He climbed the wall and dropped on to the other side, to find himself confronted by P. C. Cock standing less than five yards from where he had landed. As the policeman moved towards him, Peace pulled out his pistol and told Cock to stand fast. Cock drew out his truncheon, and held it at chest height. Peace pointed his pistol to Cock's left, and fired a warning shot. Undeterred, Cock strode towards him, his truncheon held high with a view to bringing the full force of the law down upon Peace's head. Peace called out another warning, but Cock again paid no heed. From a distance of two yards Peace shot the young Police Constable directly in the chest.

     On hearing the gunshots from where he was casting the light from his bullseye around the garden at the back of the house, Beanland had run back to the front wall. By the time he had clambered over the wall, to find his colleague lying on the pavement, his lifeblood oozing out of him, the only other visible being in the vicinity was a large black dog running down Manchester Road in the direction of Chorlton Village.

       At around about 7 o'clock, after we'd had our tea and Angie had put David to bed, I put down the book about Chorlton that Jimbo had given me and got up from the armchair to answer a knock on the front door.

Opening the door and peering out into the darkness, I could just make out the figure of a man standing alongside a bicycle, his hands gripping both handlebars.

       'Fuck's sake Eddie, why don't you get yourself a fuckin' phone?'

       'Harry! What..'

       'Aren't you going to invite me in then?' He asked before I could get the rest of my words out. 'It's fuckin' cold out here.'

      I held the door wide open for him so that he could wheel his bike into the lobby, where he leaned it against the wall next to the coat rack, then led him into the living room, where I introduced him to Angie.

      She pointed to the armchair, my armchair, and invited him to sit down.

      'Would you like a cup of tea Harry?' Angie asked. 'I've just put the kettle on to boil.'

     'I wouldn't mind one luv. It's bloomin' cold out there, and I've been peddling against the wind all the way here.'

        Angie went to the kitchen, and I sat down on the sofa facing Harry.

     'I'll make this short and sweet,' he said. 'I've lost enough of my leisure time already.   Do you want your job back?'

        I was momentarily stunned.

        'What's up? Have you got another job already?' he asked.

        'Well, yes, I have, in a way.'

        'And what does “in a way”mean?'

       'I've got an interview for an assistant groundsman job at Turn Moss playing fields tomorrow morning.'

     'Right, we're clear on that score then - you haven't got another job. I'll ask you again. Do you want your job back?'

        'I don't see how...I mean, how can I go back after what I said to the secretary?'

      'That's all been rectified. Tom Cookson was very upset when he heard what had happened.'

        'Cookson? What's Mr Cookson got to do with it?'

     'Mr Cookson's influence over matters like your gainful employment is not to be underestimated.'

       'I don't understand.'

      'You don't need to understand Eddie. Some things are the way there are because they are the way they are, and that's the way it is,' he said. 'If you keep your nose clean in future you'll have no more trouble with the colonel. So, do you want your fuckin' job back?'

       'Well, seeing as you put it like that. Yes, I want my job back.'

Chapter Ten: A Little Clarity In Chorlton Library

       I strode out across the road, knowing the Irish chap was too full of beer to be able to chase after me, though he was still cursing me until I was out of earshot.

        
        It was the Irish who kept Chorlton flourishing during the second half of the 19^th century. The rapid industrialisation of the North West had drawn most of Chorlton's farm labourers to Manchester and beyond, in search of better paying jobs in the dark satanic mills and factories that were springing up like poisonous toadstools. It was Irish folk fleeing from the potato blight who, with their farm-working and horse-handling expertise, turned out to be more than adequate replacements. Many arrived via the Bridgewater Canal, on the pig barges from Liverpool, docking at Porkhampton, or Black Pudding Junction, as the residents of neighbouring areas called the township of Stretford. Some walked on to Manchester; others, those who had no love of cities, most likely looked out over the meadows towards Chorlton and thought, This'll do!

       I could have been back in my own Chorlton, except that the Sedge Lynn pub next to funeral parlour was now called The Isles.

I walked further down past Chorlton Library, crossed Longford Road, which was now named Pondside Lane, and went into the newsagent shop next to the ladies hairdressers on the corner, where I bought a copy of the South West Manchester Reporter. I noted the dateline: 7^th July 2009 - 3 days before I was ripped out of my Chorlton, where the Reporter was in the shops on Tuesdays.  I asked the newsagent the date as I paid for the newspaper.

        'It's the 8th,' he replied as he gave me my change.

      I decided to go in the library where, hopefully, I could sit and peruse the Reporter in seclusion. I entered the library and located an empty table. There was a big splash on the Reporter's front page about a company called Sporting Trust Investments who were planning to build floodlight football pitches on the meadows, and the nature-trailers and dog walkers were kicking up a stink over it. I was about to turn the page when my attention was drawn to the photo of the Sports Trust Investments' chairman. The name under the photo was John Wrenfield, but staring out of the page at me was Dick Crenshaw. It appeared that Old Buckshot's tentacles were stretching out in this Chorlton too. I had a quick scan through the rest of the paper. Neither Nick McGuinness, Miriam Winston nor Tom Horrocks' names were among the bylines, nor was the mysterious Gina Hayles. In the listings section I noted that the Ne'er Do Wells (sans Minnie?) had a gig at the Lloyds Hotel on Friday night. Then I saw it: my host's body shuddered as I read the advert for an event on the same night at the Masonic Hall. Doctor William Gysin from the Institute of Applied Science was delivering a lecture on 'The use and application of quantum mechanics in everyday life', 8pm, admission free.

    Suddenly my thoughts on my situation were beginning to clarify somewhat. Snyder's experiment hadn't been smoke and mirrors after all, his box thing must have actually worked – or, more likely, had worked but had somehow gone wrong.

      
      It came as some relief to have gotten a slight grip on what was happening to my mind; but it was at that point that I started to worry about what had been happening to my physical body whilst my mind had been bouncing in and out of more Chorltons than you could shake a stick at. Was my body still leading a life in my Chorlton with another and another and yet another person's mind operating it for minutes or hours at a time? It worried me to think that my body could be at the mercy of some smarmy yup or thickie yob's mind: people like that could sabotage my burgeoning, albeit mostly unpaid, career as occasional cultural correspondent for the South West Manchester Reporter - and leave me bereft of any credibility whatsoever.

      Even though I desperately wanted to return to my own Chorlton, I dreaded to think what state my body might be in if my mind were ever to get re-united with it. I imagined that a lot of people who found themselves in control of another person's body, and aware that it would be for a short time only, would almost certainly exploit the situation, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't have to suffer the consequences of their actions – a scary thought, to say the least.

       It had become glaringly obvious to me that the only way I might possibly be able to remedy my situation would be to go back through the process that had got me into it in the first place. I had to get in contact with the Gysin guy. With it being Wednesday I knew there was no chance of me being able to hang around until Gysin was due to deliver his lecture, but I had to do something.  Even though I might just be pissing against the wind, I had to at least make an attempt to regain control of my own fate.  I walked around the library until I found the shelf on which the telephone directories were kept. I plucked out the local phone directory and found the number of the Masonic Hall. I held it firmly in place in my mind as I left the building in search of a telephone box.

     There was a phone booth outside the library. Fishing a 50p coin out of my trouser pocket I dropped it in the slot and dialled the number. A man answered.

       'Chorlton Masonic.'

       'Nick McGuinness of the South West Manchester Reporter.  We're doing a feature article on Doctor William Gysin, who is lecturing at your hall on Friday. Do you have a contact number where I can reach him?'

      'Are you on the square?' He asked.

      'No,' I replied. 'I'm outside Chorlton Library at the moment.'

   'I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to divulge personal information about our guest speakers,' he said – and put the phone down on me.

  
      I needed a drink and time to think. I made my way to The Isles. The beer garden at the front and the inside of the place was the same as the Sedge Lynn I knew so well: still done out in art deco style, with the canopies of lights that had previously illuminated the tables when the place had been a temperance billiard hall.  I had a good look around the spacious room as I walked towards the bar, but didn't recognise any of the drinkers in there.

     'Pint of extra cold Guinness?' The young lady behind the bar asked before I had chance to open my mouth, smiling at me as she did so.

    'Yes please, Sharon,' I replied, reading her name from the badge pinned on her blouse.

    Sharon was still smiling when she returned with my pint. She obviously knew my host. Having nothing to lose by it, I reckoned I had a good chance of chatting her up.

     'I must say you are looking very attractive today Sharon,' I said as I handed her a £5 note. 'What're you doing after work?'

      Before she could answer, I found myself somewhere else.

Chapter Eleven: Spring

      Spring had arrived. The trees were leafing, the grass was growing faster day by day and the golf course was in full swing once again. Rex was back; he was sitting on his haunches alongside the tractor outside the hut while the greenkeepers took their mid-morning tea break.

      'I wonder where Rex goes in wintertime?' Edwin pondered aloud, as he opened his newspaper at the horse racing pages. 

     'He goes to the same place that all the flies go.' Harry said, looking up from his own newspaper.

      'Where's that then?"

     'Hyde. They goes to Hyde.'  The words were barely out of Harry mouth before he burst out laughing.

     'Fuck's sake Harry, I was asking a serious question. I mean, Rex spends all Spring, Summer and Autumn running alongside the tractor and then come Winter he just disappears until the next Spring.'

    'You're wrong there,' Harry said, pointing a finger at Edwin. 'He's not here all Summer. He doesn't turn up when Jimbo takes his holidays.'

      'What?'

      'When Jimbo takes his two weeks holiday in June, Rex doesn't bother turning up.'

      'Is that right Jimbo?'

      'What?  Is what right?' Jimbo said, looking up from the book he had been reading.

      'Harry said that Rex doesn't turn up when you're on holiday, is that true?'

      'How would I know whether he turns up or not if I'm on holiday?'

      'But Harry said..'

      'Take no notice of what Harry says. He's just winding you up.'

      'Fuck's sake Harry,' Edwin groaned, looking over at him to see the sly grin on his face. 'All I was asking was where Rex goes in the Winter,' he continued, looking back at Jimbo. 'Where do you reckon he goes?'

     'He probably spends all his time running alongside cars up and down Barlow Moor Road,' Harry said before Jimbo could answer.`

Jimbo shook his head wearily and went back to reading his book.

    'I wonder where he lives?  He comes and goes through Barlow Wood – do you think he lives in there?'

     'Sod the dog!' Harry cut Edwin short. 'There are more important things to discuss. What do you fancy for the Champion Hurdle this afternoon?'

      'I've not had a proper look yet.'

    'I was talking with Tom Cookson earlier on, before he went in to the committee meeting. He's had a whisper about Salmon Spray, reckons it's nailed on.'

      'What price is it?'

      'It's 9/2 in the paper, might get 5/1 at the bookie's.'

      'You won't get rich at that price.'

      'Never the less, I'm having a bluey on it.'

      'A Fiver! Fuck's sake Harry, you must have money to burn.'

      'Chorlton Green Cemetery,' Jimbo exclaimed as he snapped shut his book.

      'What?' Edwin asked.

      'Rex. That's where you'll find him when he's not here on the course.'

Chapter Twelve: Incident Atop The Mersey Field

     The furthest section of the golf course from the clubhouse was known as the Mersey Field. The field contained three greens, the remotest being the 13th, which was situated in the far corner of the field next to the grassy embankment of the Mersey.

     On the mornings when I was working in the Mersey Field, I would take my newspaper along with me and ensure that I'd be at the 13th green at around about 11 o'clock, which was the time the pubs opened for business. I would then park the mower in the nearby copse, climb the grassy embankment and walk along the path towards the footbridge to the Bridge Inn on the Sale side of the river.

      Ensconced in the vault with a pint of mild, I would study the day's horse racing cards. I'd only have the one pint, I didn't want to push my luck. I guessed that Harry was well aware that I was going AWOL on a regular basis, even though he never mentioned it, but I always made sure none of the golfers saw me sloping off.

      It was a sunny day, clear blue skies with a fresh breeze in the air, very pleasant indeed for the last week in March. I'd finished mowing the approach and surrounds to the 13^th green for just gone 11 o'clock. I took the mower into the copse behind them green and climbed the grassy embankment. When I reached the top I looked down at the Mersey. It was running low, we hadn't had any rain for a week or so. As I turned to walk towards the pub I saw a woman coming down the path towards me, two dogs running free in front of her. As the larger of the dogs approached where I was standing it slowed down to a stop and turned its head back towards the woman. The smaller dog, turned and ran back to her as I walked down the path towards them with the larger dog walking alongside me.

       'Hello there,' the woman said as she drew near to me.

      Her greeting me like I were an old friend threw me out of kilter for a moment.

    'Shouldn't you be cleaning windows on a lovely day like today?  Are you on holiday, or just bunking off?'

       I realised that it was the woman from Len's window cleaning round.

      'I'm not a window cleaner any more. I was only doing it temporarily. I'm working on the golf course now,' I said thumbing over my shoulder towards the 13th green.'

       'What's your name?'

       'Eddie.'

       'Edward?'

       'Edwin.'

       'I'm Kate, Kate Harrington.'

      I felt a little embarrassed, lost for words, not being used to chatting with attractive women of her age.

      'Are you a writer?' I asked, being the only thing I could think of saying to break the uncomfortable silence.

       'Oh yes – you should well know that by now.   My, you're so young - and cute with it.'

      I didn't know what she was going on about. Noticing the consternation showing on my face, she let out a little laugh.

      'I'd better leave you to get on with whatever you're doing, for now - but we'll meet again, no doubt about that.'

      She set off walking in the direction of the road bridge at Princess Parkway, the two dogs trotting in front of her.

    Sitting in the vault of the Bridge Inn, with a pint of mild at my side and the newspaper open at the racing pages in front of me, I couldn't concentrate my mind on the horses, I was totally preoccupied with thoughts of Kate.

    
     What the heck was she going on about? Cute? Does she fancy me? Was she trying to chat me up, or was it something to do with some writing she's working on, some story or other?

     She was the first writer I'd ever met, and I suspected that maybe her quirkiness had been par for the course. I have to admit that I wouldn't have minded shagging her (I was a young man, not yet 21, and like most young men of my age my dick tended to rule my brain at times. Not all the time, but quite a lot of the time) but that wasn't the totality of it. She both fascinated and disturbed me in equal measure, causing a strange, uneasy feeling to permeate my whole being.

    I finished my pint, snapped out of my trance-like state and looked at my watch. 11.35. I hadn't managed to sort out the horses, had barely glanced at the racing pages, but it was time to get back to work.

   
   Walking back towards the Mersey Field I couldn't help thinking there was something missing in my life, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

Chapter Thirteen: The Time-traveller And His Dog

Vienna

   I've just got back from Vienna, February 1867. Went to the first public airing of Johann Strauss' "On The Beautiful Blue Danube" at the Vienna Men's Choral Association.

  Young Strauss' musical career was going nowhere fast at the time, so the dog sent me over there to give him a nudge in the right direction.

  The great composer was none too pleased with the evening's performance; his grief weighed heavy upon his shoulders. He was in an inconsolable mood with friends and family; so I escorted him to a nearby tavern, where he could drown his sorrows with a few beers.

   He was still in morose mode after putting a couple of steins of the amber nectar down his throat.

   'Look,' says I, 'all this brooding is doing you no good. You should be looking at the positives of the performance.'

   'There were no positives,' says he.

  'So the coda was a bit duff and the choral stuff didn't really work, but the waltz you've got in there has mega-hit written all over it.'

   'The Devil take the waltz!' says he.

   I got another round of beers in, and set about steering him away from such negative thinking.

   'Look, your problem is that you want to be known as a better composer than your old man, and at the moment you're not making too good a fist of it, right?'

    'You have a very blunt manner about you sir!'

   'Blunt or not,' says I. 'What I'm trying to tell you is that if you want to be top dog on the music scene, you are going to have to change your attitude towards the waltz.'

    'Pah!'

   'You can poo-pah all you like, but the fact is that the choral stuff is well past its sell-by date, the punters aren't buying it any more.'

   'So, I should give up composing music - and pursue a career in merchant banking?' says he.

   'There you go, grabbing the wrong end of the baton again,' says I. 'What I'm trying to get into that thick skull of yours is that your claim to immortal fame will not be brought about by the number of bums your music puts on seats, it'll be determined by the number of feet that it gets on the dance floors. Believe me, you've got the basis of a classic dance number in that “Blue Danube” piece of yours. If you were to drop the choral stuff and fine-tune the waltz aspect, I'll guarantee that it'll get more bods up a-dancing than “Dancing Queen” on a Saturday night. It'll be a sure fire dance floor filler – and that's what will keep your name to the forefront of the punters' minds.'

    'Well, I must admit,' says he after taking a short pause to reflect, 'what you say does have a ring of sense to it.'

   'And it makes good commercial sense too. It'll put plenty coinage in your pocket, as well as putting your name up in lights throughout the civilised world for centuries to come.'

   'I'm getting rather peckish now,' says he. 'Perhaps we could continue our conversation over supper?'

    We dined on oysters and lobster, with cheese pancakes for dessert. By the time our meal was over, I had successfully talked him into putting my suggestion into operation.

   Mission accomplished! But as you are no doubt aware, time-travelling on a full stomach is a big no-no, it plays havoc with the digestive system; so I had to stay in Vienna overnight.

    When I got back, the dog was fair starving. To make it up to him, I promised to take him back to Crufts 1971, where there's a lady cocker spaniel on show, on whom he'd like to work his magic again. I'll fit it in sometime over the weekend.

   I've got a very heavy schedule this week: Sidney Street, London 1911; the dog wants me to get his old comrade Peter the Painter out of a spot of bother. Then I've a bit of business to do on the Mary Celeste, mid-Atlantic 1872. Plus the dog wants me to re-visit Roswell 1947; he reckons he's devised a way of getting me into Area 51 this time. I've had a lot of mail on the last one. Latest update for you: I spent quite a bit of time hanging out in the Roswell bars, ear-wigging the gossip. The local wiseheads reckon it's just another cock-up on the part of the military – but the dog seems to think otherwise.

Mike Crellin

       I was quite enjoying being Mike Crellin - it felt good having the body of a fit, young man in his early 20s for a change. Mike and his partner Linda had a nice apartment in the village, in a block of flats overlooking the Bowling Green Hotel.   Linda, a cuddly young lady with short blonde hair was very nice indeed. From what I could gather from our near on one-sided conversation before she left for work, she was a school teacher.

     I'd arrived during the previous night, at the orgasmic end of a romantic interlude, which almost blew my host's head off - and I had been fortunate enough to enjoy a follow up session when we awoke in the morning.

`   Although I didn't expect to be there for long - I'd considered myself very lucky still being there for the early morning leg over – I was totally incensed when I opened the brown A4 envelope that arrived with the morning mail to find Mike's story inside, along with the accompanying rejection letter:

Dear Mr Crellin,

thank you for submitting your story, “The Time-traveller and His Dog”, to Chorlton Arts Review. Unfortunately, I am afraid it is not suitable for our magazine. To be brutally frank, the story was poorly written, the premise was verging on the ridiculous and overall it was far from the required literary standard expected of our contributors.

` I wish you well in getting your story placed elsewhere, and draw your attention to our current subscriptions offer: four issues of Chorlton Arts Review, starting with our Summer edition, for £16, a saving of £1 on each issue. I enclose subscription form along with the return of your story.

Yours faithfully,

Robin Fellows, Editor

     Fucking yup!  Was the first thought that came to mind. It wasn't a bad little story; I might have written it myself, had I been on drugs at the time. OK, it might have been a bit weird but you've got to give Mike credit for imagination.

    It turned out to be as I'd originally thought: when I found a copy of the Chorlton Arts Review on the shelf under the television everything in it screamed self-promotional, South Manchester literary elite; pretentious yup tripe written by and aimed at middle-class fakes.

      I looked up the address of the publication - it shared the same address and telephone number as the South West Manchester Reporter, I guessed It must have been a sister publication. I picked up the telephone and punched in the magazine's number, meaning to give Christopher Robin an earful of abuse on behalf of Mike. I asked the woman who answered to put me through to the Chorlton Arts Review.

    'Hello, South West Manchester Reporter, Heather Johnson speaking.'

    No it isn't! I'd recognise that voice anywhere - it's Miriam Winston.

    'Hold the front page, I'll be right over.'

    It took me less than 10 minutes to reach the South West Manchester Reporter's office. Walking up Beech Road, there were the same abundance of yup bars and restaurants, organic grocers and confectioners as in my Chorlton, only the names of the places were different.

   The Reporter's office was on the opposite side of Barlow Moor Road to where it used to be; it was now housed in the old Palais de Luxe cinema building on the block next to the bus terminus. Reading the brass nameplates on the wall outside Cookson House as it was now called, I noted the building was shared by eight different companies; apart from the Reporter and the Chorlton Arts Review the others were solicitors, financial advisers and insurance companies.

      There was a young lady at the reception desk inside the foyer.

      'Can I help you?' She asked.

    'Yes, I would like to see Heather Johnson of the South West Manchester Reporter.'

    'I'm afraid Ms Johnson is busy at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?'

    'It's urgent, very urgent.  Where is her office?' I said, making as if I were going to walk towards the offices.

    'If you hang on a minute, I'll phone through. Who shall I say wants to see her?' She asked as she picked up the phone.

      'Nick McGuinness.'

      'Heather. I've got a Mr McGuinness out here.  He wants to see you, says it's a matter of urgency.'

     After 10 seconds or so, the young lady put the phone down and came out from behind the desk.

    'Ms Johnson will see you but she's only got five minutes, she's due at an important meeting.'

     The young lady led me into the main part of the building. There was a broad corridor with offices either side of it. She stopped at the door of the third office on the left hand side, knocked, opened the door and popped her head around.

     'Mr McGuinness.'

     'OK, Michelle, show him in.'

    It was her, Miriam Winston; she looked almost the same as when I'd last seen her in the Royal Oak, except her hair was copper-coloured and much shorter than she used to keep it.

     'Are you the person who phoned? The “Hold the front page!” guy? I thought it might be someone messing about. Have you got a story for me? You'll have to make it quick. I've got a meeting in ten minutes.'

      'I've got a story for you all right! It's me, Michael.'

      She looked startled.

      'Am I supposed I know you?' She asked.

      Before I could reply the office door opened and a guy walked in.

      'Are you ready yet Heather? We ought to get in there before he arrives.'

      'OK Robin, just give me a minute.'

     It was him, Robin Fellows, the scumbag who'd rejected Mike's story. A little ginger-haired guy, looked to be in his late 20s, dressed up to the nines in yup gear: designer jeans and sweater, replete with tennis shoes.

      'What the hell are you doing here?' he asked,  looking at me with a none too pleased expression on his face.

      'If you don't mind, we're having a private conversation.' I replied. 'But if you would be kind enough to wait outside til we're finished I would like to have a few words with you too.'

      'Do you two know each other?'  Miriam asked.

    'I know him.' Fellows snarled. 'Mike Crellin, he hangs out with a bunch of layabouts in the Bowling Green. He fancies himself as science fiction writer. I rejected his latest submission to the Review, a preposterous story about a time-travelling dog.'

   'Oh, aren't you the paragon of literary propriety!' I said, prodding his shoulder with my forefinger. 'You didn't even read the story because, if you had, you'd have known it wasn't the dog who was the time-traveller.'

      'Call security, Heather.'

      'But he's got a story for me.'

     'He's a nutcase. If you don't phone security, I will,' he said, moving towards her desk. 'I want him out of here before Mr Sumner arrives.'

     The phone rang. Miriam picked it up.

     'Thanks Michelle,' she said as she put the phone down. 'He's here now!'

     'Fucking hell, we don't want him seeing this clown.'

     'I'd be grateful if you would leave quietly,'  Miriam said, looking over at me.    'Phone me for an appointment, next Monday would be best, when all the dust has settled.'

    'I won't be around next Monday. I've not much time left anyway...luckily for you, Cock Robin,' I said, glaring over at him.

     'Just go!' He said.

     I went.

    As I walked back down the corridor a man entered from the foyer. It was Dick Crenshaw.

  Enough was enough, I felt an almighty rage building inside me. I walked purposely towards the advancing Crenshaw and was just about to throw a right-hander at him, when I found myself sitting at a table in Chorlton Library with an open book in front of me.

Chapter Fourteen: Summer

    The first week in July. The sun shone down on Chorlton golf course; the fairways and greens were at their greenest after a weekend of intermittent showers.

     Harry was taking his two weeks Summer holiday leave; Colonel Browne was away for the week too. Edwin and Jimbo, who was temporarily in charge for the fortnight, were in no rush to bring their morning tea break to an end.

   'Did you ever read that book I gave you after you'd had the row with the colonel?' Jimbo asked as he brewed himself a second cup of tea.

    'Is there enough water in there for another brew for me?' Edwin asked.

   'Yes, there's plenty,' Jimbo replied, placing the kettle down on the top of the coke stove.

    Edwin stood up, walked to the door and swished the remaining tea out of his mug. Rex, who was lying prone on the grass, looked up at Edwin for a second, then rested his head down again between his outstretched front legs.

  'That weird history of Chorlton?' Edwin finally answered as he poured the steaming hot water out of the kettle into his mug. 'I got about halfway through but then gave up on it - it was getting too far-fetched. Fuck's sake, a man turning into a dog! And to cap it all, the guy had the same surname as me. I wonder if we're related?'

   'It's possible, there's been many Greatrex families in Chorlton over the last 200 years or so. Samuel Greatrex, well, who knows what really happened to him? I've read a couple of other books on the history of Chorlton and, although neither author made such a dramatic claim about what happened to him, both agreed that his suddenly disappearance was something of a mystery. He was a market gardener, had a smallholding on Beech Road and was a regular drinker at the Bridge Inn – in fact, the last that was seen of him was when he left the Bridge at closing time on a wet and windy winter's night in February 1848. The Bridge Inn in those days was a right rogues' retreat, if accounts are to be believed; a meeting place for political malcontents, Irish republicans and their English counterparts. Folk at the time assumed that Samuel Greatrex had had too much to drink and had fallen in the Mersey on his way home, and drowned – but his body was never found.'

     'He probably got washed out to sea, if the Mersey was in flood, and his body was picked to the bone by man-eating sea creatures. Do you want the book back?'

    'No, you hang onto it,' Jimbo replied, heaving himself up off his chair and taking a long swig of his tea.

    Edwin sensed that Jimbo was ready to head out back on the course; he himself was nowhere near ready. Jimbo might have had an asbestos-lined throat but Edwin's tea was not sufficiently cool for him to gulp down in a couple of mouthfuls.

     'Another odd thing about that book, apart from the stories in it, there was no writer's name on the cover.'

    'Yes, that's right,' Jimbo replied, sitting back down on his chair. 'It was most likely a private printing, possibly a one-off copy, for the writer to keep for their own satisfaction.'

    'Where'd you buy it from, anyway? The junk shop on Beech Road?'

    'I didn't buy it – I rescued it.'

    Edwin bit his tongue to hold back the laughter welling in his chest.

    'Last Autumn,' Jimbo continued, 'I was bagging up the leaves that'd blown on to the car park when Tom Cookson drove up in his Bentley. He called out to me as he was unlocking the boot. There was a big cardboard box in there, full of papers. “When you've got a minute, drop this lot in the incinerator, and put a light to it.” I told him I'd burn his stuff along with the leaves. So when I went to empty the leaves in the incinerator I had a rummage through what he'd wanted burning. There were a couple of dozen copies of the Reporter, all the same edition, and amongst them was the book. I couldn't burn it, burning books brings bad luck, so I rescued it.'

    Realising that the conversation was rapidly running out of steam,  Edwin tried a last desperate effort at prolonging the tea break.

   'Remember that parallel universe thingy you were telling me about, the multiverse or whatever it is? I've been meaning to ask you – do proper qualified scientists actually believe it?'

    'Some do, some don't – and some believe you create a new universe every time you make a decision. But we've not got time to talk about that just now,' Jimbo replied, standing up and casting the dregs from his mug on the bottom of the coke stove, causing a hiss and cloud of steam to rise up the stove's body. 'We'll get the work's back broken before the gentlemen of leisure start turning up, then we can have an easy afternoon.'

    Edwin knew when he was beat. He stood up and swished his half-full mug of tea onto the coke stove, causing an even louder hiss and bigger cloud of steam.

   'And don't bother with the Mersey Field this morning,' Jimbo said in a slightly more serious tone of voice. 'I don't want you bobbing off to The Bridge.'

Chapter Fifteen: Stuck

      Sitting at a table in Chorlton Library, looking down at an open book, I was unable to move. It felt as though my host body were a stone statue. I couldn't move my eyes but my peripheral vision enabled me to see that other people in the library were in the same position as myself, as though frozen in a snapshot of time.

      My eyes were focus on three words in the middle of a line:

                                                    'it's the dog'

     The rest of the surrounding words on the page were just a blur. I don't know how long I was in the frozen state, but it came as a great relief when myself and all the other people around me started moving again. The strange thing was, nobody other than me seemed to have been aware of what had just occurred; there were no expression of puzzlement on any of the other people's faces; they just carried on with what they had been doing.

    I folded shut the book - which was more of a pamphlet than a book - and looked at the title on the cover: “Bull and Badger Baiting on Chorlton Green in the 18^th Century”. It was a local history booklet written by someone called Jane Robson, about dogs fighting bulls and badgers. I turned the booklet over, there was a photo on the back cover.

     The pretty woman with the two dogs!

   The blurb beneath the photo said that Jane Robson had written several books on the history of Chorlton and was also the editor of the South West Manchester Reporter.

      I glanced at the watch my host body was wearing, which was not unlike my own watch back in my own Chorlton, except that whereas my watch was a Seiko with a gold wristband, this one was an Eecko with a silver wristband. 2.30. I reckoned that Ms Robson would possible be in her office at the Reporter at that time. I went over to the directory shelf and looked up the Reporter's number. I scribbled it down on the back of my hand with a biro I found in my inside jacket pocket and left the library in search of a phone box.

     It was a bright, sunny day, it felt like high Summer out on the streets. There was a phone box to the right of the library entrance. I entered the box, put a 50p coin in the slot and dialled the number on my hand.

     'South West Manchester Reporter,' a woman's voice announced.

    'Hello. Nick McGuinness, features editor of the Manchester Evening News here. Could I speak to Jane Robson please?”

     'Michael?'

     I was dumbstruck for a moment.

     'Are you still there?'

     I quickly regained my bearings, and my wits.

     'Is that Jane Robson speaking?'

     'It is.'

   'We are considering doing a human interest piece on your book about dog fighting in Chorlton. We were wondering if you have a dog of your own?'

    'Well, you couldn't have read my book thoroughly – and let's face it, it's only a short read – or else you would have known that I have two dogs. How much exactly did you read of it: a page, a paragraph, a sentence?'

     '“It's the dog”.'

    'It certainly is! And I think it's time you bought me that pint of lager. Spread Eagle beer garden, I'll be there in ten minutes.'

     'Where's the Spread Eagle?'

     'You'll find it,' she said before putting the phone down.

     The thing about occupying someone else's body is that you're always aware that it doesn't properly fit; it feels somewhat like you're wearing a suit several sizes too large or too small; but this time I felt the suit to be quite a good fit. I walked back past the library, looking for clues as to where the Spread Eagle was situated.

    The Sedge Lynn was now called The Lake. There were several drinkers in the beer garden at the front of the pub. I asked a guy at the nearest table if he could tell me how to get to the Spread Eagle.

     'Go up to the lights,' he replied, pointing in the direction of the four banks. 'Turn right - the Spread Eagle is about 100 yards down on the same side.'

    I stopped outside the undertakers next door to the pub and viewed my reflection in the window. My host looked not unlike my real self, but the grey suit, white shirt and black tie certainly wasn't me.

     The Royal Oak was the same as it ever was and so was the Corals' betting shop next door. Looking over at the other bookie shop as I turned on to Wilbraham Road I noticed that it was now called Brundretts. The rest of the shops on both sides of the road were more or less as the shops in my Chorlton, except what had been Woolworths was now a cheapjack store. The Lloyds was The Lloyds: the tables outside, the steps up to the front door, the wheelchair ramp at the side, the board advertising the week's music.                                                         
                                      Thursday:The Bourbon Street Preachers.

                                      Friday: Badly Behaved Boy.

                                      Saturday: Bobby and the Ne'er Do Wells.

      It seemed Minnie had been shunted out of the Ne'er Do Wells' picture in this Chorlton too.

      I was half expecting to be somewhere else before I reached the Spread Eagle, but reach it I did.  It was the Commercial Hotel, converted into a pub. The short flight of steps to the balcony and entrance door was as it was in my Chorlton, but there was a broad strip of grass at ground level, where there were three bench type tables with sunshade umbrellas towering over them.

There was no one in the beer garden. I climbed the steps and went into the pub, where I ordered a pint of Guinness for myself and a pint of lager for Jane Robson or whoever she was.

        By the time I got back to the beer garden with the drinks, she was sitting at the nearest table, waiting for me; her two dogs were running around the garden.

       She looked exactly the same as on the other occasions I'd met her; same age, same shoulder-length fair hair, same hazel eyes, same smile. She was wearing a blue tee-shirt with 'Save The Meadows' emblazoned across the chest, blue denim jeans and black open-toed, low-heeled shoes.

      'Your lager ma'am.' I said as I placed the pint glass on the table and sat down opposite her. 'Now perhaps you'd be good enough to tell me what's happening to me – and I'd appreciate it if you make it quick, I might not be here much longer.'

       'What's the matter with you Michael - don't you like it here?'

      'Where exactly is “here”?' I asked, looking her directly in the eyes. 'And don't say “Chorlton”, there's hundreds of them.'

    'Millions, billions, trillions actually - and there are more being created by the minute, never-ending spirals of Chorltons reaching towards infinity and beyond.' She smiled and flashed her eyes at me as she spoke. 'I must say, it's taken me longer than I thought it would to reel you in – you've certainly been putting yourself about a bit, haven't you?'

       'You don't think that's been of my own doing, do you?' I gasped.

       'Of your own doing or not, you're here now – and here you'll stay until you tell me what I want to know.'

        'Whoa – hold on a minute.' I said. 'Who the bloody hell are you?'

       'As you are already aware Michael, like yourself I'm in many places at the same time, existing under a multitude of different names - but, to all intents and purposes, this is my home base.'

         'Are you an alien?'

      'We're all aliens Michael,' she said in a matter of fact tone. 'We're not here by choice, it's only through chance that we exist at all - and we have no alternative other than try to make the best of it.'

         I shook my head wearily.

       'Now,' she continued 'I just need information from you about a particular event, and then I'll let you whizz off back to whatever you were doing.'

       I didn't know what she was going on about but, guessing I wouldn't be getting any straight answers from her, I reluctantly decided to play it her way.'

        'What is it you want to know?

        'Who killed Mary Moore?'

Chapter Sixteen: Mary Moore / Mary Moore

      Mary Moore was 49 years of age when she was brutally murdered. She was a respectable married woman, a total stranger to impropriety, savagely beaten. left for dead in a water-filled ditch and lain to rest in Chorlton Green cemetery.

     Mary lived with her husband, Joseph Moore, in a farm labourer's cottage on Chorlton Row. To supplement Joseph's meagre income, over the years of their marriage Mary had taken on various jobs in and around the village. During the Spring and Summer months of the year she worked for John Chorlton at Dog House Farm. Three days a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, she would take the farm's fruit and vegetable produce to sell at Smithfield Market in Manchester.

    
     Two days short of the Summer Solstice, the sun rose early in a clear azure sky on the morning of Tuesday, 19^th June, 1838. The sun was still shining on Chorlton Village when Mary rose and dressed at 6am; but by the time she was ready to leave for Dog House Farm there were clouds in the morning sky, mostly white but some an ominous grey. Fearing it might rain, Mary decided to put her umbrella in her hand basket.

     The Dog was waiting at her gate that morning as she left her home at 6.30. He trotted alongside her down Chorlton Row, over Lane's End and on to Moss Lane on her way to Dog House Farm. 
    The Dog left her at the path down to the farmhouse. Thomas Hooley, who was the regular cart driver on market days, was waiting for her in the cobble-stoned farmyard. Together they loaded the cart with the farm's fruit and vegetable yields; amongst which there were several baskets of gooseberries, the first batch of the new season.

     They left for Smithfield Market at 7.15, travelling down Trafford Lane and on to the old Roman road that led directly into Manchester.

It was a good day at the market; the rain had held off and the populace of Manchester were out in numbers. Mary had sold all the gooseberries and a good half of the vegetable produce by 11.45, when she sent for the merchant's men to take away the remaining stock. Agreeing to meet up at Brook Street, Thomas set off with the cart to get a load of night soil to take back to Dog House Farm, while Mary went to the merchant's office to collect payment for the vegetables.

    As most of the farmers, having sold the majority of their fruit and vegetables, wanted to get away before the roads out of the city became too congested, it was a busy time for the merchant's men - they had much work to do assessing the value of all the unsold produce. Whilst waiting alongside the other market traders Mary struck up a conversation with an old acquaintance, James Mee, who managed Moss Hall Farm. Mr Mee suggested that instead of waiting in line, they should repair to the Wheatsheaf Inn for lunch, and return to collect their money afterwards.

      After a lunch of pie, mash, peas and gravy at the Wheatsheaf, they returned to the merchant's office at 1 o'clock. When Mary had collected the money from the merchant her total day's takings added up to three pounds, four shillings and sixpence.

     Before she made her way down to Brook Street, Mary offered James Mee a ride home on the Dog House Farm cart; but he told her it was too warm an afternoon to be sitting on a cart laden with dung; stating that was the reason he had sent his own cart driver back on his own; and that he intended to walk back through Hulme to Moss Hall Farm.

When she arrived at Brook Street Mary discovered that Thomas Hooley had already left for Dog House Farm. She turned and, hastening her stride, soon caught up with James Mee.

     As they walked through Hulme and on to Moss Lane they chatted about market prices and the prospects for the coming Summer season. They parted company at 1.45, when James Mee took the path across the field to Moss Hall Farm, leaving Mary to continue down Moss Lane towards Dog House Farm.

    Less than ten minutes later Mary had departed this mortal coil. Walking down the path to the farmhouse, she was bludgeoned to death by two blows to the back of her head. The last thing she saw before the first blow was struck was The Dog running towards her.

      'Edwin!'

      I shut the book and went upstairs to see what Angie wanted.

     'What do you want, my little baby machine?' I asked.

    'Oh, piss off Edwin,'  she replied, her hands clasping her belly.   'You can have the next one, and experience the joys of childbirth first hand. Either that else there'll be no next one.'

     'Right, I'll have a think about that. What were you calling me for?'

     'Are you planning on wearing your suit tomorrow night?'

   'Yes. I've got to look sharp tomorrow. 21^st birthdays only come once in a lifetime.'

   'Then I'd better iron the trousers, they've been hanging in the wardrobe since New Year. Right, that's all I wanted to know. You can go back to what you were doing. But give us a kiss before you go.'

  
     By the time I'd got back downstairs I was in no mind for reading any more of the book, my 'coming of age' completely occupied my thoughts.

Chapter Seventeen: Bringing It All Back Home

    Now what kind of question is that? I was thinking to myself. As far as I could recall I'd never even known a Mary Moore, let alone who killed her.

     'I've absolutely no idea whatsoever. Never heard of her.'

    She stared at me for a good 10 seconds or so, whilst I sank what remained of my Guinness, waiting for what was coming next.

     'You weren't there when she was murdered?'

     'What are you getting at?   Are you trying to fit me up for something?'

     'No, certainly not – exactly the opposite - you were going to her aid when...'

    'Not me.' I cut her short. 'It might have been someone who looked like me, but it wasn't me I can assure you.'

     'Are there any other Michaels in your family?'

     'We're a large family, more like a clan if you take into account marriages and partnerships, but I don't know of any other Michael Greatrex.'

     'If it's not you,' she spoke in a slow, increasingly softer voice, 'then it must be the window cleaner.'

     'What window cleaner? What are you talking about?'

     'My, my, it seems he's a cutie in more ways than one,' she continued talking to herself as though I wasn't there.

    'What the fuck are you going on about?' I snapped.

   My annoyance quickly brought her out of her reverie, causing her to stare over at me with her mouth slightly agape.

    'Just tell me what you are,' I implored, 'and why all this stuff is happening to me?'

   'Look upon me as an avenging angel - a cosmic equaliser, if you like,' she answered.

    'Oh, that explains everything, doesn't it!'

    'That's all you need to know.'

   'Well, what about me continually moving about from here to who knows where?  Why is this happening to me?'

    'Transmigration. It's in your DNA, the building blocks of life itself. The gene pool, rogue chromosomes swimming around – the more you have of them, the further you can stretch yourself.  It's all in the mind Michael.'

     'Do you mean none of this is really happening to me – I'm just imagining it?'

    'I didn't say that – though I wouldn't blame you for entertaining that belief, but you'd be barking up the wrong tree if you let yourself get drawn into solipsism.   Now, I'm sorry but you won't be getting any more answers from me. You'll have to buy the book – or better still, write it yourself.  From what I've learned about you, I'm sure you're capable of doing that.'

     I felt my shoulders droop, and let out a deep sigh.  My mind was spinning, my beer glass was empty, I needed another drink.

    'Don't look so dejected. I'm more than grateful to you for eliminating yourself from my enquiries, you're now free to go.'

    'Right, thank you very much. So I can just fuck off somewhere else; my mind in a permanent state of paranoia, perpetually drifting in and out of fuck knows how many Chorltons.'

   'Stop swearing Michael – it's most unbecoming of you,' she said when I'd finished my rant. 'Whatever do you take me for? Do you think I would abandoned you to such an existence as you describe?'

     I just stared blankly at her.

    'Despite your haplessness, I like you Michael. You're amusing and certainly not devoid of intelligence – but there's something missing in your life, isn't there?'

    'Yes, well thanks for your character assessment, but what I really need at the moment is another drink.'

    'Forget the drink, you won't be here long enough to finish it. But I won't send you on your way without suitable recompense for all you've been through.'

    'You are able to send me somewhere else?'

    'Of course. I brought you here, eventually, didn't I?'

    'Can you send me back to my own Chorlton?'

   'Yes, in the flash of an eye - but hang fire for a moment. Back in your own Chorlton you're a writer, aren't you?'

   'Sort of,' I replied. 'I write the occasional newspaper article - for the South West Manchester Reporter, believe it or not.'

     'Oh, I believe it!'

    'And I was also working on a novel, but was on the verge of pulling the plug on it.'

    'Writer's block?'

    'Lost my way.'

    'What you need is a muse.'

    'A muse?'

    'A guiding spirit who would spur you on when you're at your lowest ebb.'

    'Yeah, and where would I get one of those from?'

   'Oh, I think I'd be able to do the job, on a part-time basis of course. You wouldn't actually see me, but I'd be there whenever you needed me. I'll be...let's see...Thalia!  Yes, I think that would be perfect for you. You like?'

     I liked – or would have liked if she was for real - but I didn't answer.

     'I'll take that as a 'yes' then.   Right, look into my eyes.'

    She kissed the tip of her forefinger, leaned towards me and placed it on my forehead.  I felt as though I'd been struck by a bolt of lightening.

     'What's the matter with you Michael?'

    Is this real? I thought.   At that point I was lost as to what was real and what wasn't real – and what real was really supposed to mean.

    I was still staring into a pair of hazel eyes, but now they were the eyes of Miriam Winston.

     I took a mouthful of Guinness.

    'Nothing, nothing's wrong. I was merely lost in space for a mo,'  I eventually replied. 'Quantum physics...it's a scientific theory concerning little things.'

     'Sub-atomic particles, according to Tom.'

     'Yeah, little things.  Why do you ask?'

    'James Snyder is giving a lecture on the subject tonight at the Masonic Hall on High Lane. It starts at 8 o'clock. I'd very much appreciate it if you would cover it for the Reporter.'

   'Oh, I would if I could but I can't. I've got a date tonight, Thalia and me are going to the Minnie and the Ne'er Do Wells gig at the Lloyds. Why can't you cover it yourself?'

     'I've got a date too, and I can't cancel, it's a first date.'

     'Ah, hence the new hair-do, which looks cool for cats by the way.'

   'Yes..well, you know – new guy, first impressions. So, who's this Thalia? Should I know her?'

    'You might know her..but I'm not sure,' I answered cautiously. 'She's a time-traveller, or so she'd have me believe.   Is the free lunch still on?'

Chapter Eighteen: Key To The Door

      My 21^st Birthday fell on a Saturday. I did well for presents. My parents bought me an upmarket pair of blues suede shoes, Angie bought me the Beatles' “Revolver” album, her mum gave me £10, and at work Jimbo gave me £1 and Harry gave me a fiver.

      I got another fiver from Mr Cookson when our paths crossed out on the course that morning. He told me he had heard it was my 21^st, shook my hand and wished me all the best. He also gave me a little plastic bag with a purple tablet in it.

       'I expect you'll be going out celebrating tonight,' he said as he handed it to me.

       When I told him Angie and I were going to the Princess Club, he went on to say that when I started to flag later in the evening I should take the tablet, as it would keep me 'on the up' until the early hours of the morning. I had no intention of using the tablet, but I thanked him for it, along with the fiver, all the same.

      We had arranged to meet up with Norma and Len at the Princess Club at 7 o'clock. Angie was only a couple of weeks from the date she was given for the baby's arrival, so we didn't intend staying out too long. We went to the club in a taxi. Norma and Len were already in when we arrived, they'd saved seats for us at a table next to the dance floor. I had taken Mr Cookson's tablet along with me, as I thought there was a chance that Len might know what it was.

    We watched the early acts, and then when the disco started Len got up to go to the gents toilet. I didn't want a pee myself but I went with him, to show him the tablet. He said he knew what it was straight away, he told me it was a purple heart. When I asked him what the tablet would do, he told me it speeded you up. I didn't fancy being 'speeded up' and was going to throw it in the urinal when Len said, 'If you don't want it, I'll have it.', so I gave it him. He put it in his mouth as he stood at the washbasin, and swallowed it down with a handful of water.

      Half an hour later Len didn't look like he was speeded up, in fact he looked just the opposite. He was staring at his beer glass with his mouth wide open.

By that time I'd already drank three pints of mild, and was ready for a pee. I was passing by the alcove at the end of the bar counter, a small dark corner where couples often went for a snog, when I heard someone say 'Michael' in a voice not much louder than a whisper. When I looked in the direction it came from there was a woman standing in the shadows. I moved a couple of paces nearer so I could see who it was. It was Kate, the writer, the woman with the two dogs.

       'A word in your ear cutie-pie,' she said, beckoning me closer to her.

       'I'll be back in a sec,' I said. 'I'm just going to the gents.'

       'Don't go in there.'

       'But I'm bursting for a pee.'

       'I said, don't go in there.'

      She grabbed hold of my arm, pushed me up against the wall at the back of the alcove and locked her lips on mine. It was some kiss, I'd never known anything like it, it felt like an electric current was flowing through the whole of my body. When she withdrew her lips from mine I was in double discomfort, I had a raging erection and at the same time I was bursting for a pee.'

      'Right,' she said.  'Who killed Mary Moore?'

      'How did you know..' I began to reply, before she cut me off.

    'Oh, you'd be surprised by what I know. But there is one thing that still puzzles me. Why did you deny you were Michael on the previous occasions we've met?'

     'Because I'm not Michael.   Michael's my middle name, no one ever calls me Michael.'

    'Oh, I hadn't thought of that,' she said, a smile spreading across her face. 'Right, just tell me who killed Mary Moore - and then we can arrange a little adventure, just you and me. You'd like that, wouldn't you?'

      I assumed she meant she was offering me a shag. I didn't know what to do. The effects of her kiss were still reverberating around my body. The thought of shagging her was very tempting, but the reality of actually doing it could cause a lot of problems. I just couldn't, it wouldn't be fair on Angie.

    'I'd love to have an adventure with you,' I eventually replied, 'but I'm a married man, and my wife is expecting our second child any time soon.'

      'Oh, how disappointing,' she said, as though she really meant it. 'But I can arrange something else for you. Just tell me who killed Mary Moore.'

      'I've no idea. No names were mentioned in the book.'

      'The book, what book?'

      'It's an occult history of Chorlton.'

      'That's one of my books!  Weren't you actually there?''

      'Where?'

      'At the scene.'

      'What scene?'

      'When Mary Moore was murdered.'

      'How could I have been, it was well over 100 years ago.'

    A look of undoubtedly real disappointment appeared on Kate's face. Then she looked over her shoulder towards the gents. I followed her gaze, a guy dressed in a suit similar to mine was coming out. She turned her head back to me and said, 'You're can go for your pee now. I'll be in touch.'

     When I came out of the gents Angie was waiting for me. She was in a rather agitated state, she asked what had taken me so long. When I told her that I'd been feeling a bit sick and had had to wash my face a couple of times, she told me Len had gone off his nut, the bouncers had thrown him out on the street after he had started taking his clothes off on the dance floor.

    When we got outside the club, Norma was struggling to hold Len back from going out on to the road, with his and jacket and shirt over one arm and the other grasping him firmly around his waist. I got hold of Len and held him steady with both arms. He had a grin on his face when he realised it was me who was holding him.

   'You let me down,' he said 'And I'll tell you this, because you should know this, you will never ever ever clean another window in Chorlton again as long as you live, even if you live forever.' Then he immediately burst out laughing like a madman.

   'I've never seen him like this before,' Norma said. 'Not even when he's been as pissed as a newt.'

  
    I flagged down a passing taxi cab, and between the three of us we managed to bungle Len into the back. He was talking broken biscuits throughout the short drive to Oswald Road, saying he knew who we were and what we were up to, and that we wouldn't get away with it. When we got him out of the taxi he said he was going to fly to the moon and bring a chunk of it back to eat for his supper, but we got him into their house before he could attempt to do so. From there Norma said she would deal with him. The taxi was waiting outside to take us home, so we left her to it.

   I spent the next morning pondering on what had happened the previous evening. I was convinced that it was the tablet he had taken that had caused Len to behave so strangely, and the next time I saw him he confirmed my suspicions, saying that the tablet was definitely not a purple heart pill and would more likely have been one of the kind of pills that the criminal gambling fraternity used to dope horses. But the appearance of Kate, and her electric kiss - well, I didn't know what to what to make of that.

    Over the following weeks and months the memory receded to the back of my mind but, just had she'd promised, she did eventually get in touch with me again, and a most fortuitous meeting it turned out to be.

      It was a Saturday morning in the April of the following year. I was skiving in the Mersey Field, reading the morning newspaper when she appeared with her two dogs at the top of the embankment. She beckoned me up to her. I was half hoping for another electric kiss, but I didn't get one. She asked for my newspaper, then took a pen out of her coat pocket, turned to the sports pages and marked off four horses. She then said 'Don't show them to anyone else, and use your winnings prudently. You won't be seeing me again, so make the most of it.'   With that, she turned around and walked off with her dogs towards the Jackson's Boat bridge.

     It was Grand National day, and I'd already picked my selection for the race, plus I had told Angie I'd back her selection too, I was committed to having a half-crown each-way bet on both. I couldn't not have a bet on the horses Kate had marked off but hadn't much money left to eke out over the coming week, so I had them in a two shillings win yankee bet. They all won, including the winner of the Grand National, Foinavon, at 100/1. I won just over £2,800.

     I didn't go to work the following Monday. I went to collect my winnings at the bookie's as soon as the shop opened. When I presented my betting slip to the girl behind the counter, she called the manager out of his office. He had a big smile on his face when he greeted me. He shook my hand and told me he was pleased that one of his customers had had such a big win for such a small stake, and said he was going to put a blown-up photo of my winning betting slip in the shop window, and was going to inform the local newspapers of my win. He told me it was good publicity for the shop, and promised that he would not divulge my name unless I wished it to be known. I told him I wanted my name left of it and would rather be reported as an anonymous punter. The manager went on to explain that they didn't carry that amount of money in the shop, so would have to give me a cheque for my winnings.

       Me and Angie went to the bank in the afternoon and opened a joint account with the cheque. After I'd seen Angie home I decided to go around to Kate's house to thank her and, to tell the truth, I was hoping she'd have some more horse tips for me. When I got there I found the house was empty, there were no curtains up at the windows and there wasn't even a 'For Sale' notice outside. I knocked next door and asked the old boy who answered the door if he knew where Kate had moved to. He told me he had no idea, he said she had packed up and left the previous August.

     'One day she was here, next day a removal van came and she was gone. She very rarely spoke with me and the missus, so I imagine she thought there was no reason for her to tell us she was leaving, nor where she was going. The house has never been put up for sale, so maybe she'll come back one day.'

      We used half the money as a deposit on a house on Longford Road. And I bought myself a window cleaning round in Firswood. My dad knew the guy whose round it was, and he had mentioned to Dad that he was coming up for retirement and was thinking of selling up, so I nipped in quick and bought his round and ladders. 
      The window round went even better than I expected, I gradually picked up a lot of new work and even secured a few shop front windows in Chorlton too.           When my round had picked up sufficiently I was able to give Len a couple of days work each week doing the shop windows with me, but it wasn't long before his bad back put paid to his working days completely.  Mind you, climbing up and down ladders over the years was beginning to take its toll on my knees by time my old age pension was looming on the horizon. I wasn't sorry to finish window cleaning and become a gentleman of leisure.

      I sold the round five years back in 2010, a month before my 65^th birthday, not long before the new breed of window cleaners stepped in, with the water tanks in their transit vans and their 15 foot long brushes. They can do four houses faster than it took me to do one. It's not the same though, you can't beat the old chamois leather and scrim for giving your windows a good shine.

     The odd thing is, I wouldn't even had dreamed of writing the above if I hadn't thought I'd seen Kate again a couple of months ago.

       I was walking past Chorlton Book Shop when I saw a queue lined up as far as the shop doorway.  Curious to know what was happening I asked the lady at the end of the queue what was going on. She told me a local author was doing a book signing. When I bobbed my head inside the doorway I saw a woman who was a dead ringer for Kate talking to the author whilst getting her book signed. I knew it couldn't really have been her because she looked the same age as Kate had been almost 50 years ago. 
     I waited outside the shop until she came out clutching a little plastic bag with the book in it.

      'Excuse me,' I said. ' Are you related to Kate Harrington?'

     She replied in the negative, so I apologised and told her that I thought she might have been a relative of someone I once knew as she looked very much like her.

   'No problem,' she said, smiling and flashing her light-brown eyes at me before she walked off.

                                 Epilogue

Sunday 12^th July 2009

      I still can't understand what had happened during the missing hours. It was as though I were living in a dream, except no dream takes 10 hours out of your life.

     Although the uniformed police officers who arrested me were quite friendly - I got the distinct impression that there was no love lost between them and Sumner - I knew I wouldn't get anywhere trying to explain to them what had happened; same with the plain-clothed detectives who questioned me, and the duty solicitor, at the police station.

    I thought it would be in my best interest to tell them I remembered nothing at all about what I'd done between going to bed in the early hours of Friday morning up until the officers arrived at the flat. At one point during the interview the woman detective suggested that I was 'a bit of a space cowboy'.

   'Wot, moi?' I replied, which caused much merriment - even the duty solicitor had a chuckle at that one - but I doubted any of them had believed my story when the police let me go after four hours of sitting around clicking my heels after the interview.

   The police didn't charge me; but when the sergeant on the desk told me I was free to go, he said I'd be questioned further when Mr Sumner had fully recovered and been able to make a statement.

  When I arrived home at 8 o'clock that evening I didn't even tell Linda the whole story; but when I told her about the police arresting me over me sparking-out a guy in the Cookson building without me even knowing how I'd even got to be in the place, she told me she had seen my rejection letter from the Chorlton Arts Review and accused me of flying into a rage and then going ballistic over it. I didn't bother telling her I hadn't even seen the letter until I got back home after the event, as she'd have most likely said I was still in a state of shock and / or denial after what I'd done.

Monday 13^th July 2009

   This morning I finally got around to telling Linda that I couldn't even remember waking up on Friday morning, and asked her what I'd been doing before she'd left for work. She told me I'd been acting a bit odd, was rather quiet and somewhat evasive; adding that I'd been in hornball mode when we awoke that morning: 'As if you hadn't had enough the previous night.' She again tried to lay the blame on the rejection letter, so I let the matter drop.

My mates at the Bowling Green, who found the incident highly amusing, advised me to keep schtum about the whole thing. 'Walls have ears, Mike,' as Tommo said. So I've decided to get all I remember down in writing, for my own use, in trying to fathom things out.

      It must have been 1.30 am or so, Linda and self were in bed, settling down to a bit of lovey-dovey. I'd had a few pints in the Bowling Green the previous evening but not enough to dull my appetite for the matter in hand. Then, all of a sudden, I felt like the top of my head had blown off. Next thing I heard a 'plop' sound and my head was in one piece again. I was out on a golf course, holding a wooden rake. The place was unreal: all the golfers I could see on the course looked like extras out of one of those dumb 1960s films, like “Carry On Caddying” or “No Sex Please, We're Golfers”. Four golfers were walking towards the green where I was standing. Even in his strange attire, I recognised one of them, Colin Sumner; I'd seen his ugly scarred mug on the front page of the South West Manchester Reporter a few weeks back - he was purported to be some kind of confidence trickster - but I didn't recognised any of the other three. One of the others came up to me: a short guy with an extreme Boysie hair-style, camp as a row of tents. He pulled a small plastic snap-bag out of his coat pocket; it had a little purple pill in it. When he handed me the bag, on closer inspection the pill looked like an LSD tab.

      I didn't pop the tab, I know what LSD is all about and have no intention of going down that road again. The next thing I remember was that things were going even more Loony Tunes, but what followed was definitely no acid trip.

     I was in a glass box in a small theatre, looking out at the audience, who were staring back at me, their mouths wide open as though they were looking at something horrifying. Sitting in the front row was Colin Sumner, with a nasty grin spread across his face. Then the door at the side of the box was opened by a tall, hefty guy dressed in a monkey suit, replete with a white shirt and black bow tie. Behind him stood the Boysie guy from the golf course; he still had on his golfing trousers and shoes but he now was wearing a long white coat, the kind a lab technician would wear. Before I could begin to speak, the Boysie guy strode forward, his face bristling with anger.

      'You've got the wrong man!'  He shouted at the big guy. 'Get him back in the box.'

      The big guy turned back towards me with a wide smile on his face. With a nod of his head and a wink of his eye he motioned me to get back in the box and then shut the door on me.

   The next thing I remember is that I was walking along the Mersey embankment towards the bridge at Jackson's Boat. It was raining, a mean, drizzly rain. There was a woman walking alongside me and two dogs trotting in front of us. Although I didn't know her, she apparently knew me; she asked me how I was getting on with my writing. I was trying to tell her about “The Time-traveller and His Dog” but I wasn't explaining it too well. After a minute or so she appeared to lose interest and started talking about the weather.

     Next thing I was on the golf course again, on a hot, sunny day; running on all fours alongside a tractor that was towing a bunch of grass mowers behind it - I had turned into a dog. I initially enjoyed being a dog, running free without a care in the world; but after a couple of runs up and down the long fairway I was beginning to get bored and had a raging thirst on me. I was glad when the guy driving the tractor stopped at the top end of the fairway, got off and started to make his way towards the clubhouse, which I recognised as Barlow Hall. The last I recall of that episode was the guy turning around and looking back towards me. It was the first full sight I'd had of him: he looked remarkably similar to the guy in the monkey suit.

      Next I found myself sitting at a table outside the Royal Oak. There was a pint pot, half full of Guinness, in front of me and an old guy sitting opposite. The old guy had a strong Irish accent and was talking about a horse that was going to win a particular race. I was only too glad of the chance to slake my thirst and downed the Guinness in one. I got up to leave; but before I did so the old guy gave me the name of the horse: It's The Dog.

      Then I was a dog again, on a dirt track path surrounded by a sea of fields in which wheat was growing. I saw a house in the distance. I trotted towards it. It was a big house, it had five or six chimney stacks on its roof. As I neared the house's five bar gate I saw farm machinery, a trough and a water pump in the cobblestoned yard. Shortly after I started to trot back along the path in the opposite direction. I saw a woman walking towards me; she was dressed in a fashion of long ago. She was carrying a straw basket in one hand and an umbrella in the other. As we neared each other I not only realised that it was the woman from the Mersey embankment but also saw two men approaching her from behind; they too were dressed in clothes from times gone by. One was a small guy; he wore a cap on his head and had the collar of his coat turned up, so I couldn't see his face properly; the other was tall and thin, with a bristly black beard – he had a thick stick in his hand, which he was brandishing threateningly. I ran towards them but before I reached them the guy had whacked the woman on back of her head and as she slumped to her knees he gave her another whack. I jumped up at him and sank my teeth into the side of his face.

      The next thing was real – only too real. Whatever the aforementioned had been, dream or hallucination or alien abduction, I was back in the real world, real life, real Mike Crellin, in real trouble, deep trouble.

     I was shaking my right hand furiously, the pain in my knuckles had me gritting my teeth, whilst on the floor, sparked-out in front of me, was the guy who I later found out was Colin Sumner. 
     I looked around and found I was in an office corridor. I strode over the prone body and walked quickly out of the corridor, passing though a reception area and out on to the street. I found myself on Barlow Moor Road, outside Cookson House.

     The police arrived at the flat at 1 o'clock, just as I was about to set out for the Bowling Green to join the lads for our lunchtime session. The officers who arrested me informed me that they had been told I had been acting aggressively in the South West Manchester Reporter office just before Sumner had been found unconscious on the floor in the main corridor.

Friday 17^th July 2009

       I've read through the above notes on the missing hours in my life several times during the last couple of days but still can't piece anything together; there's no rhyme nor reason to it all.  I can't even figure out why I had hit Sumner; up until I decked him our paths had never crossed. I'm putting the whole thing out of my mind for now but, who knows, I might be able to make a story out of the experience some time in the future.

      At our lunchtime session in the Bowling Green today Tommo told me that he'd heard that Colin Sumner had recently put a bid in for the company that owned the Reporter.   I didn't like the sound of that.

      

Monday 20^th July 2009

    There was a message on the answer-phone when I got back from the lunchtime session with the lads at the Bowling Green. It was from the police: they want me back at the police station tomorrow morning at 10.30. This could turn out really bad for self.

Tuesday 21^th July 2009

      Deep joy! The police are not going to charge me. When I arrived at the police station this morning, the woman detective told me that when Sumner regained consciousness he'd apparently not been able to remember what had happened, and consequently didn't want to waste police time pursuing the matter; so I didn't need to be put through another interrogation. She told me I was a very lucky guy, and advised me to keep off the drugs in future – cheeky cat!

     When I arrived home from the police station there was a letter from the Reporter waiting for me.

Dear Mike Crellin,

                      I'm sorry about having to usher you out so quickly the other Friday. I was due to meet the prospective new owner of the Reporter at the time, but there has been an unexpected development and the takeover has since fallen through.

   I am still interested in your story. Would you please phone me to make an appointment, at your convenience, so we can discuss the matter at length?

Best regards,

Heather Johnson

      My story?  I'm wondering if she means “The Time-traveller and His Dog”?