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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to be sad I'll never travel back in time?

82 replies

JammyGem · 14/09/2015 18:27

An odd thing to be sad about I know.

It hits me every now and then that I'll never travel back in time - I was reading a book about a local biscuit maker the other day (riveting, I know) and they listed a few of the old biscuits that they stopped making after the war, and commented how we'll probably never know what they tasted like - my immediate thought was 'ooh when I go back I'll have to try some of these, they sound interesting'. Then the obvious fact that that's never going to happen hit me and I felt a bit glum Sad

It happens for loads of random things, I think 'when I travel back to Roman times I'm going to ask Catullus x' or 'I'm going to go see Aristophanes' Frogs when he first puts it on' or 'I'm going to visit the singing statue of Memnon when it still sang' etc...

Completely barmy I know, but AIBU?

OP posts:
hattyhatter · 14/09/2015 21:10

Oh me too. But I think about the wrinkles gaping great holes that I'd make in the time space continuum if I went blundering around in time and then I feel a bit better.

Snoozebox · 14/09/2015 21:38

Oh I am jealous Permets! I would love to find out mor about my maternal line. It feels so wrong to have my mitochondrial DNA mutation codes and many branches mapped out and yet not even have a photo, verified story nor artefact older than 70 years old :(

HappyGirlNow · 14/09/2015 21:40

Me too! I'd love to go back In time, so many periods I'd like to see.. How unfair we can't..

DioneTheDiabolist · 14/09/2015 21:43

Sounds like a plan Brie. DS has told me he's going to Oxford. Maybe they can meet up there in 10 years and work on making Jammy's dream come true.Grin

Shockers · 14/09/2015 21:52

I used to switch off all the lights in the evenings, then light the fire and candles in our old, Victorian house so that I could pretend to be from that age.

I made the kids play cards instead of watching TV too. We had a great time, but I suspect the reality would have been much less entertaining.

I did have dreams that I stepped outside and was back in 1896, having just moved into my newly built house, surrounded by old cottages and farmland, rather than the 1950s estate which had sprung up around it before we moved in.

I loved that house, it had a really lovely feel to it. The lady that lives there now feels the same and is researching its history.

LumpySpaceCow · 14/09/2015 21:55

I'll say something even more mental. I'm convinced I have gone back in time or I'm remembering some other life. Several extremely realistic dreams, that weren't like normal dreams-really difficult to explain and barmy I know!

InQuiteAPickle · 14/09/2015 21:59

YANBU and I'm also very sad that I won't get to see what the world is like in a hundred years. I suppose reincarnation is possible, if you believe in that sort of thing, so in a hundred years from now there could be a version of "me" who gets to the the world but it won't be the same!

PermetsTu · 14/09/2015 22:07

Snooze, I am very, very lucky. My family live to a ripe old age in general (my great, great aunt was in the guinness world records for a while as the oldest living woman), so my great grandma who was born in 1889 was a big part of my life as I grew up. Obviously, she had not only the oral tales of (at least) her own great grandmother/grandmother and mother to pass down but she had an absolute obsession with photographs and letters/postcards. She had album after album of photographs (all clearly labeled) and every postcard or letter she ever received. She was one of 14 children and just the communication between her siblings is vast. I have photographs of her parents, their wills, court documents, war records and on and on and on. Her sister died in 1902 and her lock of hair and portrait are in the locket round my neck right now for example. I feels such a connection to these women I've heard about, yet were born in a very different time to me.

BestZebbie · 14/09/2015 22:58

If you want to have an immersive experience of being in a different time, try doing re-enactment. Or why stop there, do LARP and meet elves too!

featherandblack · 14/09/2015 22:59

Lumpy This could easily be a side effect of medication.

IrenetheQuaint · 14/09/2015 23:02

When I was younger I used to get really upset that I would never see Tudor England.

Actually I still do Blush

Devilishpyjamas · 14/09/2015 23:06

Oh my. I've found my people. Dark ages for me.....

ThisFenceIsComfy · 14/09/2015 23:09

I'm not so bothered about going back in time but it is a real kick in the teeth that I will never get to see another planet up close with my own eyes. Sigh.

NorahBone · 14/09/2015 23:54

I was thinking the other day that I'd love to go back in time, but I'm not so sure about going forward. I suppose this means I'm quite unadventurous, the kind of person who likes British food when abroad. While we're on the subject, wonder if this Biscuit is what a biscuit of the future tastes like...

MrsFrancisUnderwear · 14/09/2015 23:58

I'd love to go back in time so that I could remember what manners were like. My granda used to lift his hat to whoever he met. I don't expect that nowadays but basic manners would be great.

SimonIsAnArsehole · 15/09/2015 00:11

Almost every time I read about the lives of women in times gone by, I am incredibly grateful to live here and now. The past is interesting, but I have no interest whatsoever in living there.

PlummyBrummy · 15/09/2015 05:13

I think spending any length of time in bye past would cure us all of our longings for it. My GHDs are what evolution is all about.

But since we're on the subject, it's Tudor England for me...

PlummyBrummy · 15/09/2015 05:14

the past. THE

Prole · 15/09/2015 05:22

I'd absolutely love to go back to medieval England. No industry, no pollution, no potatoes and wolves still running around. But there'd be no fags or running hot water - Also think I'd have to keep my gob shut or be executed as a heretic!

FaceFullOfFilleronthe45 · 15/09/2015 05:34

I have a real yen for experiencing life in 1950s America. I know it was awful for lots of reasons, but I would love to know how it felt to be a teenager living the life of the kids in Grease and Happy Days. Sad It all looked like such exciting, innocent fun. Plus I love their clothes, their cars, their kitchens and the fact that cooking food involved a lot of stuff with Jell-o. Grin

morningtoncrescent62 · 15/09/2015 05:44

OP, I share your pain. I grew up with Timeslip (and later Come Back Lucy) on the TV, The Amazing Mr Blunden at the cinema, and Charlotte Sometimes and A Traveller in Time as reading material. I was convinced if I only wanted it enough that time travel would happen to me. Adolescence was a hard time of realising it wasn't going to! I would go back to a 1930s girls' boarding school for starters (Chalet School, anyone?) and then have a tour of pre-blitz London and Vienna, before a quick whizz back to the medieval Polish empire and then maybe the Bronze Age, with of course something like Dr Who's facility to understand and be understood in the language of the time and place.

goblinhat · 15/09/2015 05:49

No I wouldn't like it.
Throughout most of history in much of the world women have been oppressed - even 1950's America.
I was a child in the 196os, looking back I can see how tough things weres- especially for women.
I am very glad to be living now.

NinjaLeprechaun · 15/09/2015 06:06

"I would love to go back in time but think I'd probably end up interfering and messing it all up."
You can't change history though, because it's already happened. Which means that if you interfere you've already done it, and you're probably the reason it turned out the way it did.

hackmum · 15/09/2015 07:19

I love the fact, OP, that you want to go back to Roman times and talk to Catullus. That's a classy bit of time travel.

I get this sometimes, not perhaps as much as you, but I do feel a sense of regret that I will never be able to go go the past and see things I've read about. I also feel very sharply the sadness of not being able to go back to my own childhood and see my parents again but I think that's perhaps a whole different thing.

GoEasyPudding · 15/09/2015 07:47

I have very detailed day dreams about my time travel plans. I usually pop to the 1930's and do lots of walking around in London.

Then it gets more complicated as I think about the practical implications. What everyday diseases could I catch? TB? How to I avoid this?

How do I transport back in time money so I can buy stuff? (I buy gold here, take it back and convert it to cash.) What stuff can I buy and bring back and make a profit from?

How do I live? Could I get a 1930's cooker to work? Or would I just live on Frys chocolate?

Lastly how to I get to Hollywood and seduce James Cagney?

Finally what do I say when Dr Who comes to get his Tardis back?

Stephen King has an excellent time travel book about 1950's and 60's America called 11.22.63
Lots of practical problems and issues covered in there.

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