A LONG journey by car, plane, or train can be quite exhausting, but just imagine how tired and strained you’d feel if your trip took centuries instead of hours?

Semi-professional paranormal investigator Johnny Turnip doesn’t have to imagine it. He’s been there, brought the t-shirt, and lived to tell the tale.

“What they never get right in the books or movies about time-traveling is how much it takes out of you!” Explained Turnip.

“They’re always eager to bang on about time paradoxes and all that other academic crap, but they don’t mention how hurtling unnaturally through the time/space continuum can leave you feeling like you’ve just picked up a bad dose of flu!”

Turnip clarified, “For example, in ‘Back To The Future’ Marty McFly’s biggest problem was accidentally making out with his mother, but in reality, he wouldn’t have been able to do much for at least a month where he landed in the 1950s because he’d have been bed-bound with time travel sickness.”

Turnip added, “Take my word for it. When I got back from the future, I could barely function. It was like I was detoxing from reality. It was touch and go for weeks if I’d ever be a normal and productive member of society ever again.

“But after a punishing regime that involved lying in bed for 30 days and nights, drinking Stella, eating takeaways, and bingeing on Netflix, I was finally able to gather my senses and process what exactly had happened to me and the boys.”

Turnip told the Chronicle that during their flight back to Penpergwm from Salt Lake City, their private jet had somehow travelled through time into a Monmouthshire of the future where there were UFOS and, bizarrely enough, also dragons.

“It sounds weird, doesn’t it?” Said Turnip. “One minute, nothing but grey slate skies and a vague sense of indifference to absolutely everything and everyone, and the next minute the world was alive with flying saucers doing battle with dragons. “There were laser beams and fireballs everywhere. It certainly wasn’t the Abergavenny I was used to I can tell you.

“You could see them in the distance fighting above what used to be the Town Hall clock, but which was now a giant bronze statue of what looked like it could have been Clark Kent, that is if Superman had been a suspicious-looking civil servant who was on more than one register and a fair few lists.

“Puerto Rico Paul asked, ‘Who built the statue of Keir Starmer?’ And I could see his point. It did boast a strong resemblance to the Prime Minister.

“As we studied the stone tyrant from the cockpit of the private jet where we had now all gathered for safety, its head somehow moved in our direction.

“It was a bit like that moment in Jason and the Argonauts when the statue of Talos comes to life, but a lot less Greek.

“Things took a turn for the surreal when its eyes suddenly flashed crimson red and in a booming voice that penetrated the plane and sounded like a Dalek who had taken a crash course in how to be even more psychopathic than your most pitiless peers, began repeating, ‘Deny, accuse, and triumph. Control is power. Extremists will be executed.’”

Turnip told the Chronicle, “Although admittedly, me and the boys always like to take things to the extreme, we don’t like being called extremists. This big stone bastard may have thought he was all that, but he was definitely rubbing us up the wrong way.

“‘Oi! Who are you calling an extremist, dickhead!’ Yelled Puerto Rico Paul as he gave the stone idiot the tosser sign. ‘You’re made of stone with a voice like a Dalek. What do you know about anything!’ I yelled.”

Turnip added, “As we all got into the spirit of things and started jumping up and down and roaring, ‘Who are you!’ It suddenly dawned on us that the pilot was screaming something about the plane.

“‘What about the plane?’ Asked Big Tony.

“‘It’s not moving!’ Said the pilot, whose name I think Tyke had said was George, but for some reason we had started referring to as Silly the Pilot. Don’t ask!

“‘What do you mean it’s not moving!’ Screamed Paul like he was in some sort of lame Stephen King adaptation.

“‘We’re being held in mid-air by some sort of weird gravitational power.’ Said Silly. ‘We can’t move up, down, forward, or back.’

“‘Can plans move back?’ I mused. ‘That’s a bit Top Gun.’ But then again, I suppose we were in one of Tom Cruise’s private jets, so it was always going to be a little fancy.

“Nevertheless, Silly had a point. We were frozen in time and space, and by the looks of it, the statue built to honour some future fascist god or another was to blame.

“Pacing the cockpit like Captain Kirk does on the Starship Enterprise when he’s planning something ingenious, I pointed at the statue with its red eyes and striking resemblance to Keir Starmer and said, ‘That thing is to blame for our lack of momentum and feeling of insidious dread that has slowly crept upon us and threatens to weaken our resolve.

“We have somehow travelled to a future where aliens have invaded, and the dragons are fighting for our freedom. This stone tyrant knows that if we somehow manage to return to our own time, we can warn others of what we have seen here today. It seeks to trap, enslave, and brainwash us in its magnetic field.

“‘How the hell do you know all of this, JT?’ Asked Big Tony?’

“I simply looked at Tony and said, ’The answer is blowing in the wind my friend.’

“As I let that sink in. I said, ‘The only way to return to our own time is to make the stone psycho blow us up with a thunderbolt or something.’

“‘But we’ll die!” Said Puerto Rico Paul. ‘In the future and in a private jet at the hands of a huge statue. That’s no way for a man to go out.’

“’Trust me Paul!’ I urged. ‘It ain't no big thing. We won’t die, and here’s why!”

To be continued…