With time to kill in Leeds, we decided to look for the closed down Woolworths to photograph for the collection. The trouble is we did not know where to start. My geographical knowledge of Leeds is not the best. If we strayed too far we would be in trouble. Emily suggested we ask someone where it is. I did not want to ask in case we looked idiotic.

Then we got on to our favourite subject, time travel. We came up with the idea of arriving here on Sunday 19th July 2009 from the past, without being aware of the death of Woollies. Imagine that.

I have learned valuable lessons about care of your time machine. Always remember that plutonium was hard to come by in 1955, petrol in 1885 even harder. So imagine if you decided to power your time machine on Pick N’ Mix sweets? There will always be Woolworths, what could possibly go wrong?

NB- I know you can buy Pick N’ Mix anywhere now

So anyway, we came up with the time machine running on Pick N’ Mix and needed to test this out on the Sunday morning Leeds public. 

Every time someone walked past us, we had a “What are we going to do Dad?” “Don’t worry, we’ll soon get back to our own time” type exchange.

Then we hit pure comedy gold. Comedy gold considering we were tired and travel weary.

We approached a woman.

Me: Excuse me; I wondered if you could direct us to Woolworths please?
Her: Woolworths?
Me: Yes, please. We are in a hurry.
Her: The only one I know of has closed down. (The only one she knows of. Obviously not a finger on pulse of current affairs type)
Me: You are joking! Our time machine runs on Pick N’ Mix and we need it to get back to our time!
Her: without batting an eyelid at our time machine situation. It’s all right; you can but it from WHSmiths now. If you go down this road… 
Me: Thanks very much, we’ll head to WHSmith then.

We told her we had a time machine!

How did she not walk away, or tell us to piss off? Or say “Time machine? Do I look stupid?” No, she accepted that we had a time machine that ran on the popular confectionary of a defunct shop.

Maybe everyone in Leeds has a time machine?