They were called the Parrs, and they lived in Hastings, and they were all right. There was a kid called Jamie, who was six months older than me, and Jamie had a sister called Scarlett, who was twelve. And Mum liked Tina and Chris, the parents. They used to sit in this English bar, night after night, taking the piss out of English people who only went to English bars. I didn’t get it, but they thought they were funny. A few weeks after we’d come back from holiday, Mum and I went down to Hastings on the train to see them. We played miniature golf on the seafront, and ate fish and chips, and skimmed stones. I liked Hastings. It had the funfairs and the arcades and all that, but it wasn’t too tacky, and it had a little railway that went to the top of the cliffs. We never saw the Parrs again, though. We got a Christmas card from them, but Mum never got round to sending Christmas cards last year, so they sort of gave up on us after that. And Hastings was the first place I thought of when I woke up that morning, the morning after I’d come back from the future.
