GO BACK IN TIME with Ringo11: story of the century!!
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BUMP
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Oh my god
I haven't been on here in months, but I've come back and it's finished! I wasn't expecting that 
Gutted.. Good though 
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bump
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Ringo11:
Hi Ringo11
Great to see you here! Hope you are well. Let us know what you're doing with this fabulous story Really I think I'll read it again 
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I think it's about time I left a comment on here after all these years... I first discovered this story when I was about 14 or 15 and it wasn't anywhere near completion back then... I'm 23 this year and am pleasantly surprised to see the story still exists and has been completed! I just had to print it out! I finished reading it the other day with tears in me eyes... can't believe it's all over
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Go back in time to 1973...
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I'm lost. Again. The smell of diesel, the fading afternoon light and the cobbled street trigger a sense of de ja vu, but it's hard to put my finger on it. Where am I, and when have I been here before? A bus rattles past and it suddenly dawns on me. I have been here before--ages before--in a different time and a different life. Liverpool. But this can't be 1959 again, I know enough history to recognise more modern cars, a more modern bus shelter. Stunned, I stand in the street and gape for what feels like ages. Trying to remember what I did last time, trying to figure out what to do now. Finally I pull myself together. I'm older and wiser than I was back then; I've travelled; I've learned how to use a semi-colon. Surely I can look after myself this time! Ok, plan. First, find out when I am. Liverpool I can handle--I've been here before in 2006 (does that count as "before"?) and I know I can read a map and work out a bus timetable. Money. Finding a place to stay could be way more difficult this time. If I'm right and this is later than 1959, The Beatles are probably long gone from this neck of the woods. The thought of it is making me feel both worried and prematurely hungry. Am I going to end up a homeless person, starving on the streets? No. Must stay optimistic. So many questions! A thought occurs to me: if I go back to Allerton will there still be anyone there who recognises me? My thoughts are interrupted when a bus screeches to a halt right in front of me and opens its doors. The driver peers at me inquisitively and I realise he's wondering if I'm going to hurry up and get on. I shake my head and he seems annoyed. The doors hiss closed and the bus pulls away with a roar. What I hadn't noticed was that the back doors had opened and let some people off, but now as the disembarkers disperse I happen to catch the glinting eye of one last passenger before he makes to turn away.
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I think I need to start on page 1 and read this thread!
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Nancy R:
I think I need to start on page 1 and read this thread!
Happy travels
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Flearah:
I finished reading it the other day with tears in me eyes... can't believe it's all over
Nothing's over till it's over
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He doesn't turn away. His eyes lock with mine and we stand staring for a long, confused second. Suddenly a look of uncertain recognition crosses his face and he approaches with a friendly smile. "Hi there, don't I know you from somewhere?" he asks. The irony does not escape me of how often he's been asked the same. Stunned, I try to muster a not-crazy-person answer. I fail. "Paul," is all I can manage. For a moment he just stares, the practiced smile mostly still in place. I can see there's a spark of recognition, but he's seen so many people since. Everyone knows Paul McCartney. Gathering my wits, I help him out. "It's been a long, long time," I manage. "1959. Remember the fire?" "Oh my god," he says, the smile replaced with something like shock. "It's you!" I nod. My turn to smile. Another long pause while we take each other in for the first time in thirteen years. I've seen plenty of him, of course. Seen him married, divorced, married again. Seen images of tour after tour, read the regular email newsletter. Listened to his voice, newly polished sawdust, on Giles Martin's Pepper. But we haven't seen one another for over a decade. Everything has happened and yet... There's no mistaking what year it is now. A quick bit of mental arithmetic tells me 1973. He looks just the part, of course. His dark hair swept back from his face, long in the back. Not unlike the first time we met, in fact. "Visiting an aunt?" I ask, knowing he occasionally rode... rides the bus in his home town when visiting family. An attempt at lightheartedness. He snaps out of it with a barely-reconisable double-take. "Yeah, just popped up from London for the day. What brings you here then?" he enquires, as though it's natural to just bump into someone who vanished into thin air when you were only 17. I decide to go for the honest approach. "I have no idea." The initial shock over, I once again realise what a predicament I'm in. This may be my only chance to survive--there's no telling when or how I might get back to 2017, if ever. I have no way to find work or a home. Pressure. He gives me a quizzical look. "You visiting family around here or...?" "No, not exactly. I just... I'm really not sure what I'm doing. Aimless travel I guess. Getting away from it all--you know how it is," I reply, trying for a smile but managing only a weak wobble of the mouth. "Oh," he says, clearly not having a clue what I'm talking about. "Well, want to travel with us for a bit then? If you don't have other plans, that is." "Sure," I say, relief flooding through me while I try to appear to have made a flippant, spur-of-the-moment decision. Us. Linda. Wings. 1973.
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Linda, Wings, 1973. The weather is mild, even at a bus stop in Liverpool. I'm starting to form a picture of what's going on. It's not Africa, so we're earlier in the year. It's not... hell. What a geek. Never mind exactly what month we're in! Backwards traveller I may be, but this is the time to live in the moment. "Pub first though," he says with a grin, in his grittiest Scouse. He takes off, marching down the road in his wide lapel check suit. I march after him, trying my best to keep up. How does he always have so much energy? Skuttling along, I finally manage to make it back to his side. "You've met some of me folks," he says, "so come'n meet some more." After about a block and a half he suddenly swerves into a doorway. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust. "Half?" he asks, making a beeline for the bar. Two lagers and lime and two lagers and lime, I think to myself. "Pint of bitter, thanks," I reply, putting all thoughts of a tiger out of my mind. I don't suppose they have any nice, new-world, hoppy IPA. He whirls round and I get a cheeky wink before he continues to the bar and gets the pints in. He hands me a room-temperature pint glass, the kind with the bump. "Never had you for a girly drinker," he says, demolishing the first inch of his own pint. He nods over to a table and we go and sit down. Looking around, I find myself in a typical English pub (not the theme pub kind, the real kind), with plastic table tops and worn, patterned carpet. The carpet must have soaked up the majority of crimes, since the smell of stale beer subtly pervades the familiar tang of stale cigarette smoke. To make amends for this, Paul lights a fresh one. It's been so long since I saw anybody smoking indoors that I do a double take. Oh yeah. 1973. I try to suppress an involuntary cough by taking another sip of my beer. Warm, flat, creamy, malty, lovely bitter. I find it easy to suck in an inch-worth of my own. Nothing really beats a hand-pulled bitter on a crisp afternoon. He looks over, apparently amused at my enjoyment. I catch his eye and catch another cheeky wink. "Ginny'll be here in a minute. You've met the old man," he says. Right on time, an older lady in dark aqua blue coat and old fashioned hat comes in. The light from the briefly open doorway ruins my pub-vision for a second. "Gin! Grab yerself a half luv," instructs Paul. She heads to the bar and comes back with a dark little beer. Milk stout, I guess from my limited Coro' Street-related experience of old lady drinking. She seems to enjoy it, anyway. Some brief, coded exchanges pass me by as the lad and his aunt greet each other in the local parlance. "Have you met my friend?" he asks, indicating me while I suppress a blush. "She's foreign." "Pleased to meet you," I mumble in my best foreign. I receive a polite smile in return, and Aunty Gin returns to her half of milk stout. We sit in silence for a few minutes, revelling in the beer-o'clock still of the afternoon. I always knew I'd eventually find my place in the world. Suddenly the bright rectangle appears again where the door is. I squint in that direction, to no avail. The door swings closed and the rectangle of purple fades from my vision. In its place stands an older man, his spectacles with a thick rim on top and not much rim around the bottom sit high on his slim nose. I instantly recognise the glint in his eye. "You!" he exclaims with genuine surprise. "Hi Mr McCartney," I reply with a warm smile. If it weren't for the kind acceptance of this man for a young, vagrant stranger in his home nearly fifteen years ago, I don't know where I'd be today. Who am I kidding? I don't know where I am today anyway!
