Ahead of his Time by Adrian Cousins (children's books read aloud .txt) 📕

This era’s lack of diversity and inclusion had initially shocked me when I landed five months ago. Domestic violence appeared to be treated as a domestic incident rather than a criminal act. The ‘Rule of Thumb’ was very much still relevant in this era. I’d struggled over the past few months with constantly hearing racist, sexist and homophobic comments.

I often challenged my pupils on their unacceptable language. However, I knew it was just a matter of education. I alone couldn’t change society, especially when there were programmes like ‘Till Death Us Do Part’ with millions of viewers each week, even though Alf was a happy hammer – no, an unhappy hammer. I knew the program makers were not racist, and the program was poking fun at society and its attitudes. However, so many in this era agreed with the characters views and found it funny – I didn’t.

Every evening after performing the kids-to-bed routine, which now included my recital of the book ‘George the Talking Rabbit’ to Christopher, Jen and I settled down to our evening of memory capture as we called it. This involved Jenny capturing my memories in our new ‘Year Book’, a yellow school exercise book, where Jenny recorded all my memories under each year heading. What was clear was my knowledge of world events from the age of twenty-two to thirty-two was poor, and the pages with headings from 2000 to 2010 were very lean of content. I could only assume that my youthful interest in politics and world events had disappeared, favouring partying and drinking at that time.

There were lots of ‘No Way!’ moments from Jen during these sessions, like when I talked about the break-up of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin wall, Chernobyl, the HIV epidemic, Barack Obama, and John Lennon’s death. The last on this list she found particularly upsetting considering her love of The Beatles. She pushed me on the details of his murder. However, all I could come up with was it happened in 1980 in New York, but as for the actual date and further details, I had no idea. This revelation led us back down the route of Peter Sutcliffe and Tom Pryce. As the meeting with the police at school on Monday proved, bending time to alter events you are not directly involved with was very difficult to do.

Jenny played ‘Let It Be’ on our retro turntable to soothe her upset. She was now starting to realise the weight of responsibility and the difficulty that having future knowledge presented. As a die-hard Beatles nut, she started her mourning for John Lennon three years before anyone else.

Martin had settled into the caretaker routine, and from what I could see, was not causing any time-travel disasters. A couple of my colleagues asked how I knew him as they thought he was a little odd and used strange words. Jayne asked why Martin kept saying, lol. Although smitten and clearly affected by his male magnetism, Miss Colman didn’t understand why, when Martin described things, he prefixed it with the word Uber. Apart from that, he seemed to be behaving himself.

On Thursday evening, we took the kids up to see Don. It was becoming a weekly ritual we all looked forward to. Don was their paternal grandfather they didn’t have, as both were already dead. Arthur Apsley died in 1968, other Jason’s father, who I assume was a fine fellow. And Neil Apsley died twice, 1984 and 1976, who was definitely a super splendid fellow.

Jenny cooked supper whilst Don and I entertained Christopher. Beth, as usual, slept through the whole affair. Beth rarely woke during the night or had screaming fits. She was a calm, contented little girl. It was difficult to see that baby growing up to be the Beth I knew, who could be brash, wild, loud, and often the centre of attention. Perhaps it was the nature over nurture argument kicking into play. Both of us, especially Jenny, poured vast amounts of love on that girl, something she didn’t have in her previous life. Was nurture changing her personality even from this young age?

Don was clearly delighted to see his surrogate family back in a harmonious state. Jenny and I went overboard on delivering this non-verbal impression so he stopped asking awkward questions about you-know-who next door. Although we loved Don and felt guilty leaving him out of the time-travellers-believer-club, we knew that the initiation he’d have to go through to join would be too much for him to believe.

Don said earlier that day he’d told a couple of young lads to move on as they were loitering outside his house. He’d recognised one of them as the youngest Colney lad and thought that was very strange, especially as the Bowthorpe Estate was the other side of town from the Broxworth. Uncharacteristically Don seemed concerned about it, but I said he was probably just playing with a friend from school who lived this way.

Jen produced an enormous toad-in-the-hole; Don's favourite. She ensured he got the biggest helping and, as he tucked into his supper, he looked like the cat that got the cream. After we’d cleaned up the kitchen, Jen and Don played cribbage, a game I didn’t understand. Although I remember my grandmother playing it with Stephen. Don allowed Christopher to move the matchsticks on the Cribbage board, which he found extremely exciting as he carefully counted along the holes.

Leaving them to it, I nipped next door to say hello to Martin. Although we did see each other every day, I was acutely aware of how lonely he must be feeling. He’d gone from having a plethora of friends – and many female ones I was discovering – to nothing. Now he didn’t even have Facebook or Pornhub to amuse himself with.

The back door was unlocked. I let myself in and nipped through the hall towards the lounge where I expected to find Martin