Machines that whir or fever dreams,

Or perhaps a portal – a hole in the wall,

However you travel, I wonder where

Is it you’ll go, given the choice?

Would you go to a childhood time,

Or just last week? Would you try

To change something big,

Or would you tiptoe carefully.

Making sure to change not a thing?

I love time travel stories and I’m reading one at the moment, This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub. Something that I love about time travel stories is the choice the writer makes as to how the time travel works.

Does the protagonist use a time machine, or do they travel through their dreams? And then once they have travelled to another time what are the rules that they must follow? Can they alter things? Can they go forwards and backwards?

In the novel I am reading now, the main character can only go back to her sixteenth birthday. She can go back as many times as she likes and she can change things so that her future is altered, but she can only go back to that one day because it is a pivotal point in her life.

It has made me start thinking about what my day would be, the day that could make the biggest changes if I had chosen differently. I guess the day that I quit college and left for London, the day I flew out to South Africa or the day I got married would be obvious choices.

It is funny how all of these days fall in my late teens and early twenties and I wonder if this is the same for everyone? Perhaps it’s time I sell up and go backpacking around the world before I get too old and boring!

Much Love

Rachel xx