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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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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

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:

Snoozebox · 15/09/2015 08:36

I'd love to taste the food and breathe the air of the time before the Industrial Revolution. Or better yet, before widespread agriculture, when there were more trees. I bet the meat all tasted like the world's richest beef stew and the air would be just incredibly fresh.

morningtoncrescent62 · 15/09/2015 09:12

Trouble is, Snoozebox, you would probably have been a peasant subsisting on root vegetables, and not enough of those towards the end of winter.

MrsJorahMormont · 15/09/2015 09:19

You all want it for quite worthy historical reasons. I would go back to shag one particular bloke's brains out and then drop him like a stone :o

MyIronLung · 15/09/2015 09:21

I'd definitely go back to the early period of Henry VIII reign, and leave soon after he hurt his leg. The latter part was a bit hairy especially if you liked your head where it was

LoseLooseLucy · 15/09/2015 09:26

You sound barking, OP, but I know exactly what you mean.

I'd pick time travel to the past over the future any day, and it does make me sad I'll never get to.

morningtoncrescent62 · 15/09/2015 09:28

GoEasy, my 1930s daydreams also involve walking around in London and other European cities (I'll wave to you next time I'm there), and continue with a bike ride into the country lanes of Buckinghamshire where there's not a car to be seen. Then it's home to help the maid-of-all-work prepare for my dinner party whose attendees include Agatha Christie, Elinor Brent-Dyer, David Niven, Clement Atlee, Cole Porter, Margaret Rutherford, Pearl Buck, Vita Sackville-West, the Gershwin brothers, Dorothy Sayers and a host of others. Seriously, though, I do have fits of sadness that I'll never see London before the Blitz or cycle through the Chilterns when they were deepest countryside.

Original poster

JammyGem · 15/09/2015 09:35

hackmum Thank you Classy time traveller me... Also because I'm a classicist so that's the period I think most about

I agree with those saying about meeting family back in Victorian times or whenever - my great grandmother had a really interesting life - worked as a servant, had an affair with the master of the house, became pregnant and gave birth to my grandmother in a workhouse. Then the two of them travelled to London together working as a servant/teacher duo. My grandmother died before I was born, and my great grandmother before my DDad was born, so we don't know anything about her personality but I'd love to have a chat with her over those old Huntley & Palmers biscuits

I often think of more modern times too. DP and I met at work, but I was with someone else for his first year there. Sometimes I think I'm going to go back and pay closer attention to him and tell past me 'oi, watch this nice fella, you won't believe now but he'll end up the love of your life.'

OP posts:

Original poster

JammyGem · 15/09/2015 09:51

I've got a plan for when DP and I go back to Rome. We're going to open up a tavern and DP is going to wow them with his hygiene and preservation techniques, as well as all the lovely food he's going to make (chef). I'm going to wow them with simple inventions like the codex book and glasses etc., then we're going to become renowned and get invited to dinner parties where I can meet all my literary heroes like Catullus, Martial, Ovid, Petronius and Pliny.

That's my plan, anyway

OP posts:

GoEasyPudding · 15/09/2015 10:41

morningtoncrescent see you there in London! I'll be the one getting flustered and struggling with the currency in Libertys and then sitting in the cinema (choking on the fag smoke)
So far I've only planned London and the home counties. I'm looking into steamer passage to New York and then the Train to Hollywood. I haven't even thought about Paris! There's so much to do!

So OP, I don't feel sad that I will never time travel, I'm just doing the planning just in case I do!

Meanwhile I love the bit near the end in Back to the Future 2 when Doc disappears in the car leaving Marty alone and then a car rolls up and a lawyer gets out and hands him a letter from Doc from the past. I am waiting for a a similar letter!

Also guys, The Back to the Future (2) date is coming up very soon October the 21st 2015!

Snoozebox · 15/09/2015 10:43

It's weird but I knew DH vaguely from sight several years before I met him properly, and I remember a lot of those times when I saw him fleetingly. He had the most intriguing eyes. I thought several times 'I must introduce myself at some point'. So sorry DH, but you're not on my time-travel list

This is properly woo, but I'm drawn to hearths and fascinated by iron kettles and so on. I can only think that generations of women toiling by the fire in their tiny kitchen-cum-living rooms in tiny terraced houses have somehow left a genetic impression in me :S I'd like to spend an afternoon with an ancestor just having toast and tea with them. They'd probably only have t'appenin's at t'mill t'talk abowt though.

Snoozebox · 15/09/2015 10:45

I've started reading the St Mary Chronicles. Amazing!!! Thanks so much for recommending them

Rhine · 15/09/2015 11:10

I've always been fascinated by and very drawn towards the second world war. I'd love to go back there and see what it was really like, did they really have that wonderful strong spirit and morale that people seemed to have even in the darkest days?

Original poster

JammyGem · 15/09/2015 11:20

Yeah, seeing if the Blitz spirit was real or just a romantic nostalgic concept would be something I'd like to do too.
My great uncle helped in Churchill's bunker - something to do with radios I believe, it's still all a bit hush hush. I'd love to go back, introduce myself, and have him sneak me in to have a nose around.

OP posts:

morningtoncrescent62 · 17/09/2015 07:08

Rhine and JammyGem, someone posted on another thread a few weeks ago - as I can't arrange transport to the Blitz, it's is the best I can do. GoEasy, you're invited to my 30s dinner parties, and if you want to nominate a guest let me know and I'll make sure you're sitting next to them. The only stipulation is they have to have been alive and grown-up during the 30s.

Allthatnonsense · 17/09/2015 22:18

I am very sad that I'll never have s Tom's Midnight Garden experience. Although I am not good with other people's body odour, so probably for the best.

Scremersford · 17/09/2015 22:29

snoozebox I'd love to taste the food and breathe the air of the time before the Industrial Revolution

I would too. I'd like to see the unspoilt countryside and all the highways and byway that have been lost. I'd also like to find out about rural and old agricultural practices that have been lost, such as putting a cobweb on a wound to stop bleeding. There must have been loads more, but I'm not aware of them (if anyone knows of any written sources?)

I remember reading that there are actually loads of English words for agricultural and rural things that have been lost because we have lost the knowledge. I also watched a tv programme about how people used to eek out a living on the steep chalk cliffs of the coastal south downs and use ponies - it was a very unique way of life and sounded like something more from Catalonia than the south of England.

Snoozebox · 17/09/2015 23:35

That's interesting! You're correct about the spider webs and just think how many words have been lost for technologies, customs, rituals and routines that we just don't use now.

A very few still exist in local dialect and place names/road names but even they are fading away.

I love looking at old Ordinance Survey maps of areas I know well and seeing how much farmland there was in centuries past. Whole towns have sprung up with the same name as what was once a 17th century country pathway. It's fascinating.

Hamiltoes · 17/09/2015 23:40

YANBU! I always feel like I should have been born in the past. Daydream about different time periods/ places all the time. Then I remember even if I'd survived childhood I would have died having DD1!

They might still do it one day, they'd just have to crack travelling faster than the speed of light.

abigamarone · 17/09/2015 23:46

Problem with time travel is that if you travelled back to tomorrow ( or whenever ) the ( orbiting) planet would be several hundred thousand miles away...

So you'd appear in space. Which would be a shock.

This is why I'd be doing my time travelling in a tardis and not just a time machine.

EarlyNewDawn · 17/09/2015 23:50

I want to stand on another planet.

Hamiltoes · 17/09/2015 23:50

I've actually just remembered one of my earliest daydreams.. I remember hearing "greensleeves" as a child and finding it quite enchanting. My mum told me it was written in HenryVIIIs time, I got an encyclopaedia and became quite obsessed with him and I always used to think I'd go back there, change a few things about, and would be the songwriter of the time by introducing them to Bryan Adams- Everything I do, hahaha. And since then it generally involves strapping men in kilts and such like

Snoozebox · 17/09/2015 23:51

I would have survived

I'd love to see my great great great grandparents' house and just watch them going about their lives. I know where it is; it still survives. A lot of my family lived on the same couple of streets and I like to think they had regular big get-togethers and had a very Victorian Sunday lunch together. About four or five nuclear families in total. there would have been bread and dripping galore!

Then I'd like to go down to my farmer branch and see them in the cottages before the industrial revolution hit.

Then I'd go further back and see my distant royal connections. Oh hai there Tudor court!

I've played that many historical computer games and read so many novels I almost feel like I've lived many times throughout history. It all gets a bit vague pre-1000AD, though.

Bloodybridget · 18/09/2015 03:29

Brilliant thread. When I visit historic houses, it's a bit like time travel for me, the nearest I'll get to it. I would love to see my neighbourhood as it was, say, 80 years ago.

Stanky · 18/09/2015 04:43

Whenever I imagine living in the past, I always come to the conclusion that it's better now. People must have stunk, with no deodorant or hot running water. Just hearing older relatives talk about their freezing bedrooms in winter, with no heating and crappy wooden windows, braving the cold dark night to have a wee in the outside toilet is enough to put me off. It makes me appreciate the little things more.

AwesomeAF · 18/09/2015 13:41

It's not all it's cracked up to be. I got bored in the future and built a time machine and spent many years traveling, having adventures. I was mucking about one day though and accidentally shot jfk on the grassy noll so visited myself last week to warn against time travel in the future.

I'm unsure whether to listen to my advice though.

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