Tom Slemen's Haunted Wirral column: Two timeslip enigmas

THE subject of the paranormal was the furthest thing from a West Kirby man's mind that sunny afternoon in April 2022.

Jon, 35, had just been to Well Lane down in Heswall to pick up a job lot he’d bought on eBay and now, on his way home, as he was travelling up Village Road, intending to call on a friend in the Black Horse pub, when a policeman stepped into the road and thrust his palm out, gesturing for Jon to stop.

He came round the side of the car and Jon wound down the window.

'What’s this thing you’re driving, eh?' the policeman asked, and Jon was confused by the question and said, ‘A car,’ to which the copper narrowed his eyes and said, ‘I gathered that much; what make is it?’

‘A Ford – a Ford Focus,’ said Jon, starting to wonder if this policeman was some joker. It was early April – so was it a late April Fool?

‘Anyway, that aside,’ said the policeman, ‘where’s your tax disc?’

Now Jon knew the copper was a prankster in a cop costume. ‘Er, well, officer, if you knew the law, you’d know that they’ve been abolished, like,’ was Jon’s reply, and he revved the engine, ready to dart from this cringeworthy joker.

The alleged police officer leaned in a little closer, knocking his helmet badge against the top of the car. ‘Oh I do know the law sir, and you see, Part 3 of the Road Vehicles – Registration and Licensing Regulations – 1971, is quite specific on where the tax disc should be; and as you have failed to display your disc in accordance with the said regulations, it will mean you will be facing a fine of ten pounds and you may need to pay back tax. An excise license -’

‘Is someone filming this?’ Jon asked, interrupting the alleged lawman’s words, and his eyes swung left then right, looking for the practical joker’s accomplice. He then noticed that every car parked up on Village Road was vintage; they all looked as if they belonged to the late 1960s or 1970s, and yet the penny still didn’t drop in Jon’s mind.

‘Your name and address sir...’ said the purported policeman, reaching for his left breast pocket, but Jon swore and said, ‘This is getting boring now, mate – bye bye!’

And he peeled rubber. The Ford Focus tore off and Jon watched the bogus policeman shrinking in the rear view mirror.

When Jon called in at the Black Horse – just up the road from the silly cosplay copper - he saw his friend Danny, and he told him about the irritating bogus policeman and the banter about the tax disc, and Danny said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t go back in time?’

He then said he’d heard a few stories about timeslips in that area around Village Road, where people had seen the neighbourhood as it had been in the past with out of date motor vehicles and people dressed in the fashion of yesteryear.

This jogged Jon’s memory of the ‘vintage’ cars he had seen parked up on the road as the ridiculous tax disc joke was unfolding.

A couple in their fifties then approached Jon and Steve and the man said he couldn’t help overhearing the mention of timeslips.

He said that he had seen the old garage on Village Road as it had been in the 1970s, and how he had ventured into a shop and seen a man watching a cricket test match at Lords, and the players mentioned in the broadcast (John Snow and Sunil Gavaskar) had been active in the 1970s.

The man then said that everything had gradually returned to the present day. Jon and Steve were so intrigued by the account of the timeslip, they went to Village Road, where Jon had been pulled up for not having a tax disc, and all of the cars parked there now were modern.

Not one of them resembled the vintage ones Jon had seen. With a shudder, Jon came to believe he had probably somehow driven back into the 1970s.

Nearby is a timeslip hotspot, and this is a 333 feet long cul-de-sac Raby Close, where I have heard of so many slippages in time, but why time plays tricks there I do not know.

Regular readers of this column will know that some alleged timeslips can show a glimpse of the future and even allow a person to access the future, and this seems to have been the case with a man in his forties named David.

In 2008 he left his home in Wallasey to browse around at the Flying Dutchman stores on the corner of Sandfield Road and Seabank Road, literally just around the corner from David’s home, but when he got there, the Flying Dutchman Stores – a popular hardware shop - was not at that location.

Instead there was a bistro named Rockwood there. The Flying Dutcman Stores had been there yesterday but in less than 24 hours a bistro had appeared in the hardware shop’s location – clearly an impossibility.

David asked a man outside the bistro where the stores had gone and was told, ‘I’m not from around here but I think that’s it next door,’ and the man pointed to the Flying Dutchman store.

Thinking he was losing his marbles, David browsed around the shop then went home.

Two days later he went to Seabank Road with his brother-in-law Mike, and now the Flying Dutchman Stores were back on the corner where the bistro had been, and the other Flying Dutchman Store was there next door too – but – on the following day,

David hammered on the door of Mike’s home on Rake Lane and told him that the hardware shop had vanished from the corner again, and in its place was a weird salon called Saving Face which had a sign saying it was for “affordable plastic surgery and cosmetic augmentation”.

Mike was sceptical of his brother-in-law’s claim and thought he was winding him up, so he went and accompanied David to the salon – and there indeed was a futuristic-looking controversial clinic which advertised a service where clients could have their face changed to look like anybody, be it movie stars or sporting celebrities – within an hour.

The clinic was closed, and so Mike couldn’t go in to make enquiries, but he told his younger sister, who was always visiting beauty salons, but when she went to look at Saving Face on the following day she saw no such salon there – only the hardware store, the Flying Dutchman.

Years after this, the bistro David had seen in 2008 opened up on the corner of Sandfield Road and Seabank Road, at the exact place where the hardware store had been.

One wonders if a plastic surgery clinic will similarly appear there in the not too distant future...

*All of Tom Slemen’s books and audiobooks are on Amazon.