© Evan Woods 2026
A warm London day in early September. The scene, a large flat just off the King’s Road in Chelsea – it was one of those parties that popped up out of nowhere without invites or foreknowledge, a happening that just sort of happened. The Yardbirds record Over Under Sideways Down was playing on the radiogram in the large reception room.
Jill looked very cool in her bobbed dark hair, wearing a yellow André Courrèges dress with orange Mary Janes shoes, legs crossed and right arm stretching up to the lintel, leaning seductively against a door frame in the large reception room. Most people guessed her age at twenty-two which was sweet and far more flattering than anyone would believe if they were to know the time-defying truth. Her brainiac father would roar with laughter if he heard about that. Unfortunately he’d gone away to help mediate in some sort of far distant skirmish, mysteriously disappeared on his way back and had been missing for years. She was on her own, however with her eternally elfin looks she did well in her normal line of work modelling for fashion adverts. The day’s session was over and walking through Soho Square she wound up being accidentally photographed by a staffer, probably one of the magazine photographers. By the time Jill appeared it had become an impromptu photoshoot, lots of girls and boys drifted into the shots. She’d got bored after a while and headed down to the King’s Road for kicks. She found a party just beginning and of course, simply walked in. By the time Tony arrived she was on her second Pimms, listening to the music and trying to avoid talking to the other ‘guests’ until the drinks kicked in.
Tony couldn’t look cooler, blond hair, sea-green Hardy Amies, Paisley shirt, imported Florsheims. He was a graduate of St Martin’s and only just needed to work thanks to family money, so while living in his weekday home just off the King’s Road he freelanced a few hours here and there in the role of ad hoc creative for ad agency Cramer Saatchi. This day however, in need of some medicinal insobriety, he’d spent the past hour at The Speakeasy in Margaret Street. Keith Moon and some of his mates were supposed to be on stage but there’d been some sort of mix-up and he wasn’t even on the premises. So much for this evening. Instead, he’d been cornered by a badly-dressed loon who insisted he was a Doctor. He pronounced it with a capital D like there weren’t any others and wouldn’t stop blathering on about Descartés Res Extensa, the intellectual concept of matter occupying space or time and how it was vitally important for Tony to remember what he was being told in order to “Find The One”, along with other damn quackeries of an unknown ilk. He kept holding Tony’s head so he could stare into his eyes while yakking. All Tony wanted to do after ten minutes of that was cruise for a scene.
Nevertheless, after escaping the loon and hailing a taxi, the quackery lurked like an octopus in Tony’s mind all the way back to the King’s Road, which was where he could reasonably expect to find a party. Ten bob that taxi, shame he couldn’t drive his Jensen Interceptor but he knew he was going to be drinking and didn’t want to risk the car.
He paid off the taxi driver and wandered past Fanny’s Restaurant, on past Woolworth’s and – there’s the noise, he smiled looking up at a glowing window and only a street away from his place! Just walk right in why don’t you, thanks I will. Everyone just assumes whomever walks in to a scene is supposed to be there. He and Jill saw each other as soon as he arrived. He smiled, she smiled. Tony noticed the girl was drinking Pimms and poured two glasses at the counter by the door.
As he sidled over to Jill the Descartés stuff splurted from the back of his mind straight to the front – introducing himself to this girl was going to be a tad different to the usual patter. Somewhat misunderstanding everything the loon had been on about and stitching it willy-nilly into his own fabrication, he began with the confidence of the handsome and cool.
“Hello, you’re drinking Pimms I see – here, I poured one for you. Name’s Tony…”
“Jill. I’m guessing you found this place by accident same as me?”
“Bang on, strolling along the jolly old KR and here I am. Here we are.”
Someone replaced the Yardbirds with Simon Dupree’s Kites on the radiogram. Stereo made psychedelia great.
“Hey, would you like to hear something groovy? I got it earlier from a weird guru-type nutter, no Maharishi or whatever, called himself a Doctor but he definitely had the kink.” Tony knew he was about to talk rubbish connected to the loon’s lecture in The Speak but who knows, this stunner might not hate him for it.
“It goes something like this: if a clock says 21:00 and you have to be at work by 09:00, that’s 12 hours right? Wrong, it’s 11 hours – you’ve just fallen into the space between man-made invented time and the real time of the real universe, a universe where the golden creatures live and you’re now lost in the crack between the 11th and 12th hours. Lay 12 objects out side by side and count them. Now count the space inbetween those objects – it’s 11, right?”
Jill, who had been admiring Tony’s handsome face, looked down at his drink wondering if there was a tab floating in it. Oh no, please not another weirdo like some of dad’s old friends. But he had piqued her interest. There might be something in this and he’s so attractive!
Tony, a man of some sensitivity and not unaware of the Female Signalling System©, realised he might have stumbled slightly.
“Okay Jill, it sounds like bullshit but what else have you got to do at the moment? Same as me I bet, nothing more interesting. Listen, I’ve got it up here,” he tapped his head, “it’s all starting to flow, let me blow your mind!”
Jill made up her un-blown mind. “Oh well, my dad is big on wierd science, go ahead then –” this Tony was obviously on the pull which she didn’t mind in this instance and if he’s got some crazy story to tell, at least it’s inventive so far. She beamed a grin at him; “– I’m all ears!”
Funny, that loony said something about finding the one, this is a damn fine coincidence I reckon! “Fantastic, here’s what the feller was saying. The smallest space of time, which is incomprehensibly and immeasurably smaller than a nano-second at the end of any unit of time is the end space before the beginning of the next unit of time, which can only exist beyond the human universe. It’s beyond human science and understanding. Our arrogance – that the universe works the way we say it does – doesn’t allow for the fact that we know absolutely nothing. Everything we think we know is an invention, based on our observations which are nothing more, mathematically, than a combination of invented numbers designed and used by humans to explain our smugly desired certainties of how we describe the cosmos.”
“Now, why is that? How do we know our astronomers, physicists, our theoretical sciences, our absolute sciences, are correct just because a system of numbers and theoretical assumptions invented by humans which are less than an infinitisimal speck of nothingness in this universe says so?”
Tony was blowing his own mind. Bloody hell, where was this coming from! Jill was agape, “whatever you’re on is working well.” she said.
Kites finished, the drive of Tin Soldier took over and lent itself to Tony’s discourse.
“I’ve had a couple of drinks, that’s all. You see Jill, it’s all cobblers. The universe functions in a way no human can ever conceive of. With our constantly-changing explanations, we know nothing beyond our narrow, flat perception of what we observe and our deliberate belief in the fiction of ‘this is the only way we can understand it, therefore this is how it works’ is meaningless. Again cobblers, our greatest minds are nothing. They use the complete fiction of the arrogant, human-invented meaningless rules of numbers and laws of physics to explain what can’t ever be explained by humans to produce their theories – and that’s exactly what they are – theories, not one single conclusion because conclusions can not exist.
“But the cracks in between any known measurement of time do exist. Because we live by the invention of time, those cracks are meaningless to just about all human concepts of reality, but are there nonetheless. It takes the right kind of person to find them. So then, how can a human speck of nothing slip through? Quite easily, if that person discards the mistaken postulates of human physical sciences, ignores the lies, frees their mind from its mental shackles, slips through to another dimension and the true nature of the universe will be revealed!”
Jill was utterly gobsmacked and rather excited, not just because she fancied him – actually more now than when he walked in – but because this stuff reminded her of her dad’s tuition long ago. Tony’s magnificent tale sent her to a new place and she was ready to roll with it. Dad would love this, wherever he is.
Tony was on a roll himself but he’d run out of whatever the hell he was waffling. He finished up quite well though. “The true pioneers and explorers are the ones who know the fallacy of time and space as we have been told it and accept that they are going to become inextant in our universe as they burst through to the true reality beyond everything we’ve been told to think and believe. So grab hold of your mind baby, let’s find out if we can burst through. Let’s be pioneers. Let’s split this scene for my country pad, my Jensen is in the next street and it’s very fast.”
“I must find that loony Doctor some day and thank him”, thought Tony, feeling just a little bit ragged.
Jill, who knew more than she was letting on, thought “At last, looks like I’ll get a chance to thank dad for this.” She took the initiative, saying “if you know the direction I can make the path!” And taking Tony by the hand with the chirpy strains of Norma Tanega’s Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog wafting around them, Jill brought a dimensional crack in space into existence inside the doorframe and folded them both through it.
Standing in a corner of the room Keith Moon, who was just beginning to understand that he was geographically misaligned – “this dump don’t look like The Speakeasy” – watched as Jill led a surprised Tony through the glowing vertical groove in the doorframe, saw it seal itself behind the couple and asked “who were they? Who?” but couldn’t get an answer because he wasn’t there.
Evan Woods 