the time and space train of our lives

I am a time traveller, like you. Our mode of time travel is a train called the present which goes in just one direction and, practically speaking, only stops once. All the same, I've been travelling this way for fifty-odd years, and right now you are in the same carriage. I don't know when you got on, but that's usually what happens; looking out of the window listening to your MP3 player of choice, you happen to turn your head and there in front of you is another passenger. You might talk, you might not. If you're unlucky the other person wants to talk about how precisely  Liverpool managed a 2:2 draw with Everton, or about how David Cameron has no choice but to make the people of Britain hurt a lot. If you're lucky though, the passenger opposite is an experienced time traveller.

Now, I know you may be thinking it was just as well for Kenny Dalglish that Liverpool drew, but actually more interesting is just how long this train is. Also, all your living relatives are on board, if not in this carriage then in others behind or in front. Obviously all your dead ones have got off at their station, perhaps unexpectedly or even forcibly. Some people claim the dead can be contacted by mobile or on Skype, or something akin, but as you know, mobile coverage isn't great on Exmoor, so I suspect it's nonexistent in the Valley of Death, whatever Orange or the Archbishop of Canterbury may say. I'm afraid this means that my observations are more reliable than a ouija board - or indeed, dare I say it, than Holy Writ.

The other thing is just how fast this train goes. For instance, many passengers remember when this train was pulled by steam. Now we're burning the ghosts of primordial trees, which is much more advanced, but actually no faster. And if now doesn't feel particularly fast in any case, I'm reliably informed that it will come as a surprise when they announce your station. Another thing that happened only a moment ago was the IT and telecoms we mentioned earlier. You may already live your life entirely via Facebook and Twitter, but many of us are still texting 'are you coming good'' instead of 'are you coming home'. This is not surprising as only a short distance back down the track a phone was something attached to a wall in a building. You made it ring from a distance to see if anyone was going past. Sometimes you had to enter a box like the Tardis to do this. Unlike the Tardis (I assume) it smelt of wee, and as I discovered when I tried to sleep in one in the vicinity of Carmarthen, there were fleas. The only alternatives were to send a piece of paper you had written on, or to send a photocopy of some writing by phone to a printer the size of a breeze block. You needed a similar breeze block your end for this.

Advice? You want advice on travelling on the time and space train! OK, but I don't know any more than you do. I think it's a good idea to look out of the window a) to enjoy the landscape, b) so you have some idea of where you're going. At the same time it's well worth listening to your fellow passengers and befriending them as much as possible. But don't give people credit for knowing things you don't just because they have a big beard and/or funny clothes, or they're in the government. Other than that, I suppose it's eat plenty of fruit and veg and climb trees or go skate-boarding or play football or somesuch, where possible. Another very important thing is right there in the MP3 player of your choice, or on the fold-down table in front of you: music, books, art. Oh, and flowers and birds and stuff. You may also find, sooner or later in the journey, that you have to invest in haemorrhoid cream.

As for what powers it all, now you're really asking. I don't really know, but I suspect it may be music. Next we'll be into 'What happens when the driver gets to their own station?' and 'Are we going to make our connection?' Again, I don't know. But what about you? Would you agree that Led Zepplin are the finest rock band there has ever been?

Jimi Hendrix Dizzee Rascal mash up - or bring back 'far out'

I'm thinking of becoming a hippy again, because being redundant is in some ways a bit like it was back then. In those days I didn't really want to work, whereas now at least I want to earn some dosh, but here I am all the same in the front room at nearly midday listening to Jimi Hendrix . We had a Conservative prime minister then, Edward Heath, whose fight with the unions led to the three-day-week. Now, we've got another one, even if he is propped up by the Liberal Democrats (who didn't exist until 1988). It gets weirder. Back then grandad vests were popular - and today my ensemble includes a grandad vest.

There are of course some important differences. Hair is an obvious one. Now, frankly, the skinhead look would be easier (though way the wrong message), and it's going to be tough to reproduce the classic embellished-afghan-hound look. Also, back then I had more than 30 years of teaching English language in front of me, and I only thought I knew what a verb was (and if, by the way, you are going to say it's  'a doing word', then what about 'being'? Which brings us right back to the hippies). Back then we did talk a lot - or 'rap' as we called it - about ley lines, macrobiotics, the significance of the comet Kahoutek, the Zodiac, reincarnation and so on and so on. No doubt people still talk stoned nonsense, but I wouldn't know where to get the drugs now. This may be the biggest impediment to being a hippy again: it will have to be without drugs. They would just make me cough, and set my asthma off.

Imagine me down in a certain part of town in the January rain, in my waterproof hooded walking jacket, my skull ring, and my corduroy peaked cap, trying to recall the lingo and possibly update it a bit. "Excuse me, man. Have you got any charge, by any chance? You know - shit, like red leb and that? It's cool, incidentally, I'm not fuzz." The youngster on the corner with a mobile would probably confidently agree with me about one thing though. I isn't police.

How young people speak has changed, but I'll bet they don't like oldies trying to copy them any more than we did, and the media style pundits are still on about them supposedly debasing the English language. There's nothing like ill-informed ridicule for keeping the young in their place. In our case, what we thought of as our own language was just standard English with a light dressing of black American slang, but it was hugely derided as degenerate by 'straights.' In fact, it was the straights that called us 'hippies'. We called ourselves 'heads,' or 'freaks.' As some do today, we called each other 'man,' sometimes 'brother' or  'sister' as applicable, though you had to be fairly committed for that one. Also, as today, we used 'cool', but slightly differently. "That's cool," meant "that's acceptable," rather than "that's great, neat, brill, or mint." Similarly, a cool person was one unlikely to attract unwanted attention to themselves and thus get into a hassle with the fuzz. One of ours that is still current, and was British in origin, was 'to suss something/someone out,' meaning 'to work something out, to deduce it, or come to understand a person's motives.'

My favourite though - also British I think -  has disappeared, which is a bummer. It was 'far out'. This was used adjectivally (attributively and predicatively), and as an exclamatory adjective sentence to express enthusiasm: "This is far out blow!" "The Pink Fairies are far out, man!" (remember them, playing outside the festival, on a flatbed lorry?), and just "Wow, far out!"  I can't do the hair. I don't want to do the drugs. But I'm still into (there's another one) Hendrix, and I think we should start a campaign to bring back 'far out.'

"And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually." (Jimi Hendrix, Castles Made of Sand, Axis: Bold as Love, 1967)
 
 "Yeah my attitude's mingin, but I don't really give a friggin rasclar." (Dizzee Rascal,  Money Money, Tongue N Cheek, 2009)

"That Dizzee Hendrix is far out though." (Alec Turer, Castles Made of Money, Tongue N Groove, 2011)