Tempus Frangit

For those British readers who recognise the title from somewhere in your youth, welcome friend. Hail the mighty Eagle!

The inspiration for this tale came from a short story called "Time Out" written a long time ago by my favourite author John Wyndham. It was John Wyndham's works that opened my eyes to the written word when I was but a child. Very soon after I found my first tale of his, I was reading anything and everything he had written that I could lay my hands on, under various pen names.

The beginning of my tale here lifts some of John Wyndham's "Time Out" plot and plot devices; but is much longer and ends somewhat differently. Where "Time Out" was a short story, "Tempus Frangit" is more of a novella. Maybe I should also point out, although the setting for the yarn's start is way back in the 1980s, the story it is being related to the reader many years later.

Clarification:- Jacksie = a persons bottom. Curtilage = the area of land attached to a house and forming one enclosure with it. Pleb = member of the lower social classes.

In southern England, the "English Channel" or "Le Manche" (as our French neighbours prefer to refer to it) is generally referred to simply as "The Channel". The "Bristol Channel" divides the South-Western Peninsula of England from Wales.