A contribution for Sunday Scribblings

Dear Past Me.

Now listen up, Past Me, because I have some valuable advice for you which will change your whole future. You really don’t want to end up homeless at fifty-six years old, and with a whole truckload of money stashed away that you can’t touch, do you? But that’s exactly what’s going to happen unless you take note.

I know you’re only sixteen, and girls of your age never do take much notice of anything they haven’t read in a magazine and checked out with one of their oh-so-worldy-wise friends, but I’m going to try.

Alright, are you ready? Listen carefully.

I’m you. I’m from the future - and yes, I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true.

You probably think I’m the result of that bottle and a half of rough vodka you and Stella got through this evening, but I’m not. Just try to open that narrow little mind of yours, because I have this one opportunity to put something straight and save my sorry self from the gutter, and I’m going to make you listen if I have to keep you awake all night, and I know you don’t want that. You’ve arranged to meet Will Brodie tomorrow, haven’t you? And you won’t want to be doing that with dark circles under your eyes and a head full of soggy cotton wool.

But you’re still not convinced?

OK, remember that party you went to last year? You had no idea where it was, because you were taken there by some friends on the spur of the moment. Marilyn said she’d heard that Lou’s parents were away, and suddenly everyone piled into cars and off you all went. You had no idea where you were going, how you were going to get back, or even who was driving. You didn’t even know Lou. You just went.

Oh, yes, you remember it well.

When you got there, Pink Floyd were playing on an old Dansette and you arrived just in time to hear someone say ‘Careful with that axe, Eugene’ followed by a scream. That made quite an impression, didn’t it? And not altogether pleasant - oh, I know. Coming out of the dark like that, it made you quite uneasy. Later, you were all sitting in a big circle on the floor wreathed in pot fumes, which was another first for you. You refused to smoke it, but you didn’t realise until much later that there was so much in the air of that stuffy little room that you were inhaling it anyway. And when a knock came at the door and someone peeked out and hissed ‘It’s the police!!’ you all tried to get up and fell over each other and giggled.

Oh, how naive you were. See, I know you were scared inside, but you didn’t want to show it. It was quite touching how relieved you were when all they said was that they’d had some complaints from the neighbours and could you please turn the noise down. You’d had a glimpse into a possible future, and it frightened you. You could have ended up in court, got into that ‘bad crowd’ they were always warning you about, failed your ‘A’ levels. You see where I’m going with this?

Here’s the thing. At the end of this summer term, you must decide whether to go back to school in September, or leave and move on. You’ll have seven good ‘O’ levels, but you’ll want to go for those all-important ‘A’s. You don’t know it now, of course, but they’re about to change the whole exam system and in a decade or so, employers will start to mistrust the whole thing. It’s all just bits of paper anyway, and no-one will ever look at them once you’ve left school.

Do you see what I’m saying? There is no need to go back for your ‘A’ levels! You’re not planning to go to University, so why does it matter?

Marilyn has plans, but you’re a bit leery, aren’t you? You think she’s a ‘bad influence’, because that’s what Mum has been telling you, and after that party you have a sneaking suspicion she’s right. But she’s not. She’s not! Marilyn is vibrant and adventurous and she’s just what you need. She’s going to go to Europe and get a job teaching English as a second language and she’s going to use that as a springboard and do really, really well. And, my dear Past Me, she’s going to ask you to go with her. And if do, you can get in on the ground floor of a very lucrative project indeed, and you’ll be made for life.

But I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m doing OK anyway, right? I did get those ‘A’ levels and do it all properly, and surely there must be a way to get my hands on that money and get myself off the streets, but trust me, I’m not ‘doing OK’, and no, there’s nothing I can do about getting that money.

Yes, I stayed at school, and Marilyn went to France on her own, but she and I kept in touch and grew quite close over the years. I’m not going to tell you exactly what I did or didn’t do, but I can tell you this: I missed a hundred and one great opportunities through being over-cautious. Through behaving exactly as Mum and Dad taught me to behave, and being ‘good’. Through not taking risks as Marilyn did, and through never gambling on a venture. And in the end, all my qualifications helped me not at all, and I didn’t even find a good man, because Mum taught us not to settle for second best, didn’t she? And Mr Perfect just never seemed to turn up.

Sure, I got myself a good, steady job, but now, after the collapse of the insurance company that held my pension fund, I’m approaching retirement with absolutely nothing to look forward to but the pittance the state will hand out. All of my savings went into that pension - and the rest of my cash went on holidays and good living. I wasted a lot of it, to be honest. And now, I’m probably going to end my days in a crappy, down-at-heel retirement home which smells of urine and cabbage and I’ll be lucky if the staff remember to give me the right pills or change my sheets once a month.

So, what about that money, and why am I homeless? Well, I’m not actually homeless just yet, but it’s around the corner, trust me, because my half a million is tied up in probate and it’s likely to take years before it’s released. Marilyn left her entire estate to me, you see, but her family is contesting the will and they have a damn good case. So much money .. and Marilyn wanted me to have it … but I doubt I’ll see a penny of it.

However, if you go to Europe with Marilyn now, you’ll become her business partner and there’ll be joint cheque books and no problem. No problem at all.

Dear Future Me.

So. I went back to try to sort things out with that daft girl I used to be back in the sixties, and either she didn’t do what I asked her to do, or she did it all wrong. I thought that once I’d got her to leave school and put her on the right track, things would work out just as I wanted them to, but apparently it doesn’t work like that.

I didn’t expect all my family to be dead in this version of my present, or to find myself living with fifteen cats. I didn’t consider that I myself might be different, either, and it’s going to take quite some time to come to terms with being so thin! I always thought I’d love to be built like a supermodel, but the bones sticking out all over just remind me of my own mortality and I barely have the strength to lift a jug of milk. What’s more, my diamond earrings are gone and I can’t find that early Beryl Cook painting that I loved so much. I thought I was pretty badly off before, but now I have no possessions worth selling at all, and I don’t even live in a half-decent house - it’s falling to pieces and it stinks of cat’s pee.

So what I’d like to say to you is this: Please, whatever you do, don’t be tempted to come back into the past to sort things out. You might make things even worse than they are already, and they’re pretty darned bad. Well, you’ll know that, of course. Yeah, you’ll know that.

So, no meddling, Future Me. Just leave well alone. Really, it’s for the best.

Unless …

Unless, of course, you could perhaps go back to Friday 19th June, 1968 and tell sixteen-year-old Past Me not to listen to a single word that fifty-six-year-old Past Me says to her? Tell her it’s all a horrible hallucination brought on by acute alcohol poisoning from that cheap vodka. She’ll probably believe you. We were very gullible at that age.

We thought we could fix everything, then, too …