It so happened that in Gritshire, in the little seaside town of Shingle Regis, there was a tiny museum stuck on the end of the pier. It was really for the tourists, and was full of things like genuine mermaids’ earrings, famous lifebelts, full-rigged ships in bottles,* and other rare and curious objects washed up by the sea.

  The museum was run by a young man called Horace Breezeforth. One day he was in the museum counting the bubbles on a piece of unusual seaweed when a young woman came in and plonked a large fossil on his desk.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘It’s a genuine example of the extinct Rotundus snail. We could do with one of those.’

  The woman said her name was Jane Throckmorton and she was a geology student at Blackbury University.

  ‘I found this in the cliffs down the coast,’ she said. ‘It’s jolly interesting – you can hear the sea if you put it to your ear!’

  And Horace could. But it wasn’t the sea today – it sounded like the sea must have sounded millions of years ago. There was something very strange about it. And he could hear reptilian squawks and grunts, such as dinosaurs might make while paddling. He gasped in amazement.

  ‘You wait,’ said Jane grimly. ‘You just listen!’

  And Horace heard someone singing. It was a cheerful voice only just heard above the sound of the surf. It sounded familiar.

  It went: ‘OOOOOO, IIIIIII do like to be beside the seaside, O I do like to be beside the sea.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ cried Horace, almost dropping the shell. ‘There wasn’t anyone alive in those days. Will you show me where you found this?’

  Half an hour later, he and Jane scrambled down into a quiet rocky inlet just north of the town, and Horace saw the hole where she had chipped the shell out with her special geology hammer. There were quite a few fossils in the rocks.

  ‘I’m jolly well going to get to the bottom of this,’ he muttered, picking up a spare hammer and striding towards the rocks.

  They’d worked away for twenty minutes or so, when Horace began to uncover what looked like the bones of some very odd creature. After a while he realized what it was. It was a fossilized deckchair.

  And Jane had started to unearth the remains of a small lizard. She dropped her hammer.

  ‘Oh, those fossils are quite common round here,’ said Horace airily.

  ‘Only this one’s got a newspaper in its mouth,’ mumbled Jane. She held it out.

  It was of course quite flat and had been turned into a sort of slate. But it was still just about readable.

  Horace read out loud: ‘The Blackbury Chronicle and West Gritshire Times. I can’t quite make out the date. Oh, yes, I— oh. Oh dear. It’s today’s.’

  Before long the beach was crowded. Policemen put up big screens round the rocks, and behind them Horace, Jane and several important men from Blackbury University were examining the fossils.

  They were not really convinced until one of them happened to chip away a piece of a stone and found . . . a fossilized radio. It had been squashed flat by the tons of rocks on top of it over millions of years, but it was a radio all right.

  ‘Well,’ said Horace. ‘Either dinosaurs were a lot brighter than we thought or something very strange has been going on.’

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ said Jane. ‘I think there must be someone round here with a time machine who spends his holidays in the past, and is rather careless.’

  They left the professors examining the strange fossils and wandered up the cliff path to the heathery fields above. It was very hot, but there was a nice cool breeze off the sea. There was only one house to be seen. It was an old fisherman’s cottage, snuggled down behind a couple of trees that had been so bent by the wind they were almost flat. There was a little garden full of fuchsias and cabbages, and in a little paddock at one side a goat tethered to a pole had eaten a big circle in the grass. There were a couple of beehives too.

  ‘Who lives there?’ asked Jane.

  ‘An old boy called Dr Golightly,’ said Horace. ‘He’s the world’s foremost lepip— lepida— He is very good at collecting butterflies.’

  ‘Ugh,’ said Jane. ‘I don’t like that. I always feel sorry for the poor things.’

  ‘I understand he keeps them alive in a sort of big cage and breeds them,’ said Horace. And as they walked past, they could see several giant wire-netting cages at the back of the house.

  Just then, a butterfly shot past. It was blue and green, with gorgeous yellow specks.

  And it was slightly larger than an eagle.

  A moment later a small fat man came pounding through the bushes, waving an enormous butterfly net. He was dressed in a big sunhat, a pair of faded shorts, and had a long white beard.

  ‘I say, did you see a Golightlius giganti go past?’ he panted.

  ‘It flew out to sea,’ said Horace. ‘That’s if you mean that big butterfly?’

  ‘Call that big?’ said the old man. ‘Goodness, it’s just a baby – er, excuse me. I’d better be getting back.’ He disappeared into the bushes again.

  There was a long pause. ‘That was Dr Golightly,’ Horace said.

  ‘But butterflies like that don’t exist!’ shouted Jane.

  ‘They used to,’ said Horace thoughtfully. ‘Millions of years ago insects sometimes grew to be very big, you know.’

  They both thought about the odd fossils, and the seashell which sang ‘I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside’ . . .

  Five minutes later they were knocking at the cottage door, but there was no reply. But in the cages round the back Horace saw several enormous butterflies. One or two were so big they had perches, like birds.

  They came back next day. There was still a lot of activity going on down at the beach. One of the professors had found what looked like a fossilized fishing net.

  Horace knocked at the cottage door again, and then found it was open. Feeling a bit burglarous they went inside. It was quite dark. An old clock ticked slowly in the corner, and the room was full of rather shabby but comfortable-looking furniture.

  And there was a strange buzzing noise. It seemed to be coming from a little cupboard under the stairs. Horace opened it.

  He found that he was looking out on a beach. Big ferns grew here and there, and the cliffs towered away in the distance. The sun looked big and yellow. He closed the door quickly and it looked just like an ordinary cupboard. He opened it again, and there was the beach.

  ‘Right, then,’ he said bravely, and stepped through. After a moment’s hesitation, Jane followed him, and they stood side by side on the sand. Behind them, hovering just above the ground, was a sort of picture of the inside of the cottage.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling we’ve just stepped millions of years into the past,’ said Horace. He pointed upwards. Several large butterflies skimmed over the ferns.

  ‘I wonder how he does it?’ said Jane. ‘I mean, the cottage didn’t even have electricity.’

  Horace rolled a large boulder across the sand and wedged it in the opening.

  ‘I hope that’ll do,’ he said. ‘I want to make sure we can go back again. I don’t fancy being fossilized.’

  They wandered along the beach. Occasionally some giant lizards glided overhead on leathery wings, and once they saw what Jane said was a brontosaurus. It was eating ferns, a haystack-full at a time, but stopped to peer down at them. It was about the size of a house.

  ‘They’re quite harmless,’ said Jane, patting it on the snout. ‘They’re vegetarians. Do you know that they’re so big that if you trod on its foot, it wouldn’t realize it for two days?’

  ‘Er, no,’ said Horace.

  They broke through a fern thicket and almost fell over Dr Golightly. He was sitting in a deckchair, shaking his portable radio.

  ‘Damn thing won’t go,’ he said. ‘All it picks up is a lot of nothing.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think they had a BBC in these days, unless it was the Brontosaurus Bellowing Contest,’ said Horace.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ said the doctor, peering at them. ‘Strange. Didn’t I see you the other day? What are you doing back here in the Jurassic? Would you like a cup of tea?’

  The doctor was brewing tea over a camping stove. They were all very thirsty and while they sat down in the fern thicket Horace told the doctor about how they found the strange cupboard under the stairs.

  ‘It happens every second Tuesday,’ said the doctor. ‘Blessed if I know why.’

  ‘Do you come here often, then?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Oh yes. It’s very handy. There are some splendid butterflies, you know, and of course there’s absolutely no one else around. There won’t be for millions of years.’

  ‘We heard you singing “I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside”,’ said Horace. ‘In a shell.’

  ‘My dear fellow, do I look the sort of person to sing comic songs? It must have been someone else.’

  Jane said: ‘Gosh, just think, there could be people having their holidays all through prehistoric times! How do you get back?’

  Dr Golightly held up a large alarm clock. ‘The gateway closes after seven hours,’ he said. ‘That’s why I keep this clock by me.’

  Horace looked at it, and then at his watch.

  ‘The sand’s got at it,’ he said. ‘It’s been stopped for two hours!’

  Five minutes later they scrambled through the ferns just in time to see the glowing hole disappear. The rock Horace had wedged in it was cut in half.

  There was a long, dreadful pause. Then Dr Golightly said: ‘Oh. Well. At least the weather here is always nice. And I daresay we can live on shellfish for a fortnight.’

  They spent a very uncomfortable night on top of a rock while strange creatures grunted and sneezed in the undergrowth. Jane had a bit of a cry, and decided that wasn’t much good, so she wondered how you cooked shellfish instead.

  It was a lot better in the morning. They got a fire going by focusing sunlight through Dr Golightly’s thick glasses and made a sort of mussel stew in the teapot.

  ‘This isn’t half bad,’ said Horace admiringly, and after breakfast he paddled off catching prehistoric fish in the doctor’s butterfly net. It was a lot better than sitting in the stuffy museum all day, and after a while he started singing. He stopped suddenly when he saw a large empty shell lying near him on the beach.

  ‘So, it was me we heard!’ he thought. ‘No wonder the voice sounded familiar! That’s the shell we found fossilized!’

  He ran back up the shore to find the others. They had decided to explore along the coast, and he caught sight of them just as they were rounding a heap of rocks.

  When he caught up with them, they were looking down into a small bay backed by low cliffs.

  ‘The sun’s very hot,’ said Dr Golightly. ‘I think we must be seeing things. This is undoubtedly millions of years ago, isn’t it? Well, look down there.’

  Nestling against the cliff was a small, thatched house with roses round the door, and a neat lawn in front of it – though the effect was rather spoilt by a small dinosaur who was tethered with a piece of string and was eating the roses. A sign hung outside the door.

  It said: The Old Red Sandstone Lion.

  ‘It’s a pub,’ said Horace.

  They scrambled across the rocks towards it, and it didn’t disappear.

  Inside, it was rather gloomy. There was a dartboard, and horse brasses hung on the walls. A long line of tankards hung from a beam, and, despite the hot weather, there was a fire in the grate. A small lizard was snoring in front of it.

  A door opened behind the bar and a small bald man stepped out. He was wearing a big smile and a bright red waistcoat.

  ‘Good morning!’ he said, in a squeaky voice. ‘Lovely day! When are you from?’

  ‘When?’ said Horace. ‘1973, I suppose.’

  The little man looked at them in amazement.

  ‘That’s very early! We don’t often get people from the twentieth century – not that I’m saying anything against it, mind,’ he added diplomatically.

  Horace ordered a large lemonade all round and decided to tell the man – whose name was Mr Buncombe – all about their adventure. He listened carefully.

  ‘What you got there is what we call a side-effect,’ he said at last. ‘The Temporal Express passes through on a Tuesday. It can cause these openings.’

  ‘What is the Temporal Express?’ asked Jane.

  It turned out that it was a big time machine which travelled regularly between the twenty-fifth century and various prehistoric times. They heard that in the twenty-fifth century it was quite the thing to take your holidays in the past. That was why Mr Buncombe had built The Old Red Sandstone Lion.

  ‘We get a very good class of people here,’ he said. ‘This is the off-season. I don’t say anything against the Triassic and Carboniferous Ages, though. They’re all right if you like hot steamy weather.’

  ‘Carboniferous?’ said Horace, bewildered.

  ‘That was when coal was laid down,’ said Jane. ‘Didn’t you learn anything at school? It was millions of years ago.’

  Mr Buncombe pointed to a large poster on the wall. It showed a giant dragonfly whizzing through a swampy jungle and said: ‘Come and See Coal Made! Hunt the Giant Dragonflies in the Sultry Carboniferous!’ At the bottom, in smaller lettering, it said: ‘Issued by Pre-Cambrian Timeways Ltd. Registered Office: 2455 AD.’

  Mr Buncombe looked at them thoughtfully.

  ‘There might be trouble,’ he said. ‘You see, people from the twentieth century are not really supposed to know about this. I’m not sure the Time Police will let you go back. It might cause issues.’

  ‘But there’s the fossilized newspaper,’ began Horace.

  ‘Oh, people will soon think that’s a trick of some sort,’ said Mr Buncombe. ‘Excuse me.’

  He picked up what looked like a very complicated telephone and dialled a long series of numbers. Then he held a mumbled conversation with someone.

  ‘That was time headquarters in 2500,’ he said. ‘I told them about you, and they’re stopping the Temporal Express especially for you. This is only a request stop, you see. They say you can go back but you’ll have to let them hypnotize you into forgetting all about this, or there might be trouble.’

  ‘Er,’ said Dr Golightly. ‘Would anyone object if I stayed here? It’s a nice place. I like it better than the twentieth century. Think of the butterfly collection I could make!’

  ‘Well, we could do with a relief barman,’ said Mr Buncombe. ‘I’d be glad of a little company.’

  ‘I’d like to get back to the twentieth century,’ said Horace. ‘It’s not much, perhaps, but it is my home.’

  ‘And me,’ said Jane.

  There was a kind of squashed bang outside the pub and a long silver cylinder materialized in the air. The door in its side slid back and someone said: ‘Jurassic! Jurassic! Next stop the Old Stone Age and all stations to 2700!’

  Jane and Horace said goodbye to Dr Golightly and climbed aboard.

  There was a blue flash, and they woke up sitting on the cliffs overlooking the sea. Down below was the familiar outline of the pier, and there were yachts in the bay.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Horace. ‘I feel a bit dizzy.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Jane. ‘I’m sure there was something I ought to remember. Have you ever heard of a pub called the – the – er, I don’t remember.’

  ‘Let’s try and remember over lunch,’ said Horace, helping her up.

  A couple of months later, Horace and Jane got married and settled down to live happily ever after. Although there was something that did puzzle them. Someone sent them a postcard. It must have been trick photography, because it showed several dinosaurs, grazing. The stamp was odd, too – it was a big ‘T’ on a blue background, and was postmarked ‘Jurassic Post Office’.

  The postcard said: ‘Having a lovely time. Weather forecasters say it’ll be fine here for the next two million years. Wish you were here.’

  And they never did find out who sent it.

  The Real Wild West

  This is a story of the real wild west.

  It was sheep rodeo time in the little English-Welsh border town of Llanoggie, and the streets were full of sheep, big hairy sheep farmers and small, shifty-looking, black and white dogs.

  The town’s two pubs – the Three Feathers, on the Welsh side of the street, and the Hearts of Oak on the other – were doing a roaring trade and several windows had already been broken.

  Things were even rowdier than usual because the Great Coal Rush of 1871 was in full swing, and the town was packed with grizzled coal prospectors, who had come in to stake their claims. And also to claim their steaks, since it was dinner time.

  Pianos were playing, dogs were barking, fights were breaking out and the town was settling down to make a red-hot night of it.

  So noisy was it that Mr Owen Jones, half asleep in the back room of the Llanoggie Post Office, Telegraph Office and Sweet Shop, almost missed the morse code message that came clicking along the wires from distant Hereford.

  ‘Good heavens!’ he cried, as he listened to the dots and dashes. Snatching a pencil, he hurriedly wrote down the message and limped over to the Three Feathers.

  The public bar was full of smoke.

  ‘Is Big Dai here?’ shouted Mr Jones.

  A giant of a man with a great black beard looked up from where he was playing a rough and tough game of dominoes with a gambler from Cardiff.

  ‘Look at this, Big Dai!’ said Mr Jones.

  Big Dai read the message. It said: PC MCDOUGAL ARRIVES TONIGHT LLANOGGIE STOP FAR TOO MUCH LAWLESSNESS GOING ON STOP THIS MUST STOP STOP CHIEF CONSTABLE HEREFORD.

  Big Dai, the biggest sheep-rustler, leek-runner and pony thief in the border country, laughed so much he fell off his chair. A few dominoes slid out of his sleeve.

  Soon everyone was laughing (it was safest to laugh when Big Dai laughed).

  ‘If we don’t send him packing inside a week, Llanoggie isn’t the town I thought it was, boyo,’ he said, ‘and I’ll have his helmet hanging up over my mantelpiece too!’

  An hour later a figure in blue pedalled his regulation police bike down the High Street.