'Saara Cantrell'? That was my soulmate's designated stage name when she was a member of Equity back in the day (true story). 'Iris'? We almost called our daughter that, after Iris Murdoch of course - but then we had a better idea.
This story's 1,500 words long, so will likely take 5 to 10 minutes to read.
Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind:
The New Adventures of Vashti Bunyan, Holiday Rep.
Dear Postwar Consensus Tours,
We’ve booked an excursion with you to
Richmond and environs during the later 1960s this fall. Please could you arrange
for Vashti Bunyan, Jerry Cornelius and friends to show us all the cool places?
Yours sincerely,
D.S. Ketelby & Saara Cantrell
Dear D.S. & Saara,
We look forward to welcoming you on our No Satisfaction tour which, we
can confirm, will be going ahead despite recent controversy. We will keep this
under review, subject to Time Ministry advice.
We can confirm that Vashti is looking forward to welcoming you and other aficionados
of 1960s counterculture. Though you have travelled with us before, please read the
enclosed guidelines (updated). We particularly draw your attention to the need
to take only clothing and products that our Orientation Team supply, to remain
in character throughout, and to rendezvous promptly at the return point. The
porting of modern artefacts and/or holding of anachronistic conversations
remains a statutory offence; any need to send a Retrieval Team will incur extra
charges and may invalidate your insurance.
We remind you that while Vashti Bunyan is a real personage and our
representative, Jerry Cornelius is a fictional character created by Michael
Moorcock, featuring in stories written by Moorcock and others. You will recall making
a similar error when booking our 1976 IMF Crisis Weekend Break last year. To
recap: while Elaine Paige, Leonard Rossiter and Siouxsie Sioux are real, Jerry
Cornelius, The Saint and Ted Heath are all just pretend.
Please do not use ‘this fall’ for ‘this autumn’; neither you nor we are
Americans.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Adonis,
Customer Liaison
Officer,
Postwar Consensus Tours
Dear Andrew,
We’re greatly looking forward to
meeting Vashti and the rest of team. We will, of course, remain in character
throughout and have, in fact, been method acting during the last fortnight in
order to ‘tune in’ – as the phrase is – to the late-1960s ‘vibe’. This has gone
largely unnoticed in Glastonbury but has raised eyebrows in Street – even more
so, Shepton Mallet!!
One aspect of your letter puzzles us:
we, in fact, met Jerry Cornelius in a Woolwich branch of Radio Rentals during
last fall’s IMF Crisis Tour. He seemed real enough. Nice chap, in fact.
Yours sincerely,
D.S. & Saara.
Dear D.S. & Saara,
One controversial aspect of time travel vacationing is that some
travellers have met real people who are close analogues of fictional
characters; this may have been your experience, also the experience of others
in your party who fraternised with individuals resembling Wolfie Smith and
other Tooting Popular Front personnel. At this time, scientists have determined
the apparent instantiation of close likenesses of fictional people to be a
harmless side effect rather than anything which warrants concern.
We remind you that you and others of your party have signed
non-disclosure agreements preventing you discussing with others your apparent
meetings with individuals who resembled but were not Jerry Cornelius, Wolfie
Smith et al. We would further underline the need to avoid porting, still less
showing, anachronistic artefacts. Members of your party showed Wolfie Smith
political literature; we only dropped charges in tandem with our overall
non-disclosure settlement. Our Research Department advises that deliberate
anachronism could, if uncontained, change our present due to so-called Bradbury
Effects. These could, for example, eject Britain from the EU, elect Donald
Trump as President of the United States, even cause the ‘Information
Superhighway’ to become wildly popular rather than the expensive plaything of
scientists in research laboratories, with all the unforeseeable disruptions and
distractions that this would entail (I think that I just foresaw them there for
a moment; I shuddered). I do not mean to frighten you by positing such dystopian
outcomes, merely to impress upon you the importance of following legislation
and guidance during your holiday.
We look forward to welcoming you to your Postwar Consensus Excursion, but
please continue to follow media coverage, particularly our CEEFAX page. Please
do not use ‘last fall’ for ‘last autumn’; neither you nor we are Americans.
Yours sincerely,
Oona King,
Customer Liaison
Manager,
Postwar Consensus
Tours.
Dear Oona,
We’d very much like
to enjoy our tour next week; we’re also wondering about booking the Prices And
Incomes (January 1979) Experience for ourselves and our children, Jack and
Iris, this Christmas.
However, we’re worried by what we’ve been reading in
the Manchester Guardian at the weekend and by Monday’s World in Action special–
particularly allegations of a four-cornered pitched battle between mods,
rockers, punks and emos in Brighton over Easter. If time destabilisation isn’t
real, how can this happen – and if the time tourism industry isn’t in crisis,
why is the Government preparing nationalisation plans while ‘hushing up’ such
incidents? Also, Saara found in our local Goodwill Outlet a ‘compact disc’
offering five hundred hours of ‘free internet access’ by a company called ‘A.O.L.’
Neither of us know what this means, but it has us worried despite reassurances.
Is it too late to request a refund, so we can visit
the Three Cliffs Bay campsite near Swansea instead? Anything for a quiet life!!
Yours sincerely,
D.S. & Saara
Dear D.S. &
Saara,
Thank you for your continuing interest in further holidays, despite recent difficulties. We would advise,
however, that the 1979 Prices And Incomes Excursion – previously the How Close
to the Precipice, Mr Healey? Tour – is not one of our designated family
experiences. You may wish to consider, instead, the 1951 Festival of Britain
Tour, or for older/ less sensitive children, The Suez Crisis (brochures
enclosed).
We are sending you, to
express goodwill, a voucher entitling you to a 20% discount against any
excursion during our 2025-8 seasons; the Department for Trade and Industry
assures us that we will be able to honour these vouchers subject to our
nationalisation agreement, updated terms of reference and of course any Time
Ministry advisements in force at the time.
We cannot discuss the
alleged Brighton incident, as any discussion could prejudice evidence which we
(and competitors) later submit to a public inquiry.
Speaking more generally,
it appears that some problems encountered during recent days were caused by the
successful attempt to neutralise a ‘history hack’. During the course of this ‘hack’,
well-meaning progressives attempted to change history by visiting President
Clinton in December 1996, Ghost of Christmas Future style, and persuading him
to keep his anatomy in his pants thenceforth, excepting the marital bed,
bathroom visits, hygiene etc. (‘Pants’ meaning pants, please note, not trousers).
The aim was to leverage a narrow victory for Gore in the 2000 Presidential
Election, thereby preventing the Iraq War and so on and so forth. An investigative
team reporting directly to the COBRA Committee determined that this ‘hack’, if
successful, would have caused further unplanned changes, including the
worsening of the 2008-9 financial crisis and consequent rise to power as Prime
Minister of former telejournalist Jeremy Kyle, his newly formed Common Sense
Party achieving a parliamentary majority of ninety. Unfortunately the
successful neutralisation of the ‘hack’ caused collateral damage, leading to outcomes
which have destabilised our industry and, indeed, the world.
In these circumstances
and following yesterday’s Commons announcement, we need to remind you that
heretofore we have been constituted as a membership organisation rather than
simply a leisure provider. This makes various emergency provisions available to
us; as these are now in force, we require members to assist with the evacuation
of Company Personnel from affected areas. The late-1960s are amongst the worst
of these, with self-designated black bloc anarchists continuing their
occupation of not merely Warwick and UEA campuses but also much of Coventry and
Norfolk – also France’s Charles De Gaulle currently in talks with Rudi Dutschke,
Tariq Ali and others, with hopes of ending the civil war in that troubled
country. Vashti Bunyan, a valued company asset, has let us know that she now
wishes to embrace a simpler lifestyle, away from history(ies) and closer to the
rhythms of Mother Earth.
Our Membership Liaison
Database indicates that, as you live cheek-by-jowl with smelly hippies anyway,
you would be the most suitable household to receive Ms Bunyan and her companion.
We have acquired land near Somerton for your resettlement next weekend; in the
meantime, company personnel will visit in order to disconnect water,
electrical, phone and wi-fi connections in order that Ms Bunyan and her
companion can begin to accustom themselves to a more agrarian mode of life. If you
do not yet know what “wi-fi” means, please account yourselves fortunate to live
one of those areas that has remained relatively safe from destabilisation hitherto.
As you will cease to
have access to a telephone and as stamps will become difficult to obtain (except
when bartered for produce during infrequent journeys into town), we suggest you
communicate with us henceforth by carrier pigeon, or by telepathy which Ms
Bunyan’s companion states that he can teach, having learned it from a lama in
dreams – not a llama, please note, but a lama, a Tibetan holy man.
We hope that you will
be able to view this as an opportunity rather than an imposition; think of it
as the chance to experience, if you’ll forgive me, a new England in the fall.
Yours sincerely,
Lembit Opik,
Chief Executive
Officer,
Postwar Consensus
Tours.
Dear Lembit,
Oh.
Sincerely,
D.S. & Saara.
Endnote: This story is intended as an
affectionate though belated seventieth birthday tribute to Michael and Mary,
the best parents in this or any other timeline, who've lived the post-WWII
years one at a time and mostly in the right order.
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