time travel

And still the train keeps going

Moleskine entry: April 16th, 2011

Growing up on the relatively small land mass known as the British Isles, I guess the longest single train ride you could take would be London to Edinburgh [8hrs, in December snow]. As such, you can’t really get your head around being on a train for four or five days.

It still blows my mind.

Wooden shacks and settlements pass slowly by as our track meanders around the northern border of Kazakhstan. Having been led through tree-soaked hills and over ancient oxbow lakes, the landscape is now quite barren – we are approaching Mongolia.

I slept for about ten hours last night, maybe twelve. We’re easily way ahead of Moscow time now and drinking ’til dawn is a pleasant experience. It’s 13:30 at the time of writing. The gentle clack-clack clack clack of the tracks below make an oddly comfortable sleeping companion and rest has come easy.

We’re living in two time zones.

Outside it’s 13:37.
Inside it’s 17:37.

It still blows my mind.

Moleskine entry: April 14th, 2011

Within the train, we’re on Moscow time. The timetables, dining schedule and bar opening hours are all on Moscow time.

When we get off the train however (at various stations and stops along the way), we’re suddenly on local time, which could be anything upwards of +2/3/4hrs more.

Time travel.

The question is, who’s she talking to?

YouTube - Chaplins Time Traveler

This has hit me twice on Google Reader this morning, shared from two different people quoting two different sources, both of which refer to the same video that’s embedded below.

Basically, on the extras disc on Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 film ‘The Circus‘, there’s some footage from the premiere which clearly* shows a person of some description yabbering away on their mobile phone.

Yes, that’s right, their mobile phone…. in 1928!

George Clarke, the chap who discovered this finding, is desperately searching for some kind of explanation because, at the moment, all he can surmise is that this woman** is a massive Chaplin fan from the future who fancied spending her holidays in 1928.

I’m certain there’s a reasonable explanation for this, besides the fact that you would hope that by the time time travel is possible, we’d have advanced mobile technology so far that holding it up to our ears would be a thing of the past?! No?

Take a look for yourself, the final bit where she turns at glances up while still talking is the thing that got me.

*about as clear as anything can be in old non-HD black & white
**is it a woman? George raises the issue of her apparent manliness and her overly large feet – perhaps in the future we’ll all be dressed in drag?

What do you think?!