When Time Went Crazy

The Jenkins were not the sort of people to party all night, right through to breakfast. In their youth maybe, but not these days.  Nevertheless, there they were, eating brunch and wondering where the night had gone.

“Did we finish the wine last night?”

“I don’t think so. We didn’t play Scrabble either.” 

It was a real puzzle. The last either could remember before they started breakfast was that they hadn’t quite finished their dessert from the evening before. 

Something must have happened, though, because they were wearing different clothes now.  

“It’s really funny,” he said. “That lemon sorbet was making me quite full but I’m starving now. What’s going on?”

“It’s weird about the photos as well,” she replied. 

They carried on looking at the shots of Gibraltar on his phone. They weren’t due to go there until the next day. 

As the plane landed he shook his head. “I was looking forward to my beach day on Sunday. Now I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”

A short while later they were lying on the sun beds at the beach.

“I think I must be dreaming,” he said. 

“Well, so am I then.  But don’t you think it’s funny that we’re both having the same dream?” 

“Hmm.”

“Anyway, don’t forget the photos.” She picked up his iPhone and started searching. “Oh my. It looks as if our Sandra will marry Tony after all.” 

She handed him the phone. There was their daughter in a flowing white dress and Tony smarter than they’d ever seen him before. Judging by the colour of the leaves on the trees it was already autumn,  but was tat this year or another one?




          

Weather Behaving Badly

They talked about El Niño and La Niña. So we had quite a few years of proper summer unfortunately accompanied by drought. Then we had several years of miserable weather.  They talked of Global Warming and then renamed it Climate Change because the Warming was actually making it cooler for the posh people. But we hadn’t seen anything yet. 

They made a film about a new ice age arriving suddenly. It seemed melodramatic. Then came Katrina and the film seemed more reasonable. After Sandy it began to look tame.        

The stream winds started moving in the wrong direction. We got snow on snow followed by rain on rain and floods, followed by temperatures going up overnight. Two feet of snow fell and disappeared within twenty-four hours. 

Yet, one morning soon after, there was thick ice on the windscreen and cars sliding round the S bend though the temperature gauge said it was six degrees Celsius. Later, after the sun had shone all day and the gauge now said seven, there was, once more, ice on the car.

What’s going on?