Pop Tarts: Omnibus Edition by Brian Lovestar Page B

a still tearful Holly, Cherry noticed
Rhino was missing and went looking for him.
    She stopped
when she saw him behind the tree with the mystery blonde scrubber
and became instantaneously suspicious.

Chapter 18.
(Time Warp)

    Nothing’s Gonna
Stop Us Now by Starship was spending its 2 nd week at
number 1, Margaret Thatcher had just been elected as Prime Minister
for the 3 rd time and the world’s population had just
reached 5 billion.
    “So 5 billion
and 1 then,” Felix cursed as he threw the newspaper down, still in
complete and utter disbelief.
    He was back in
1987. He didn’t know how he got there. And scariest of all his own
actual 1987 self believed he was his father!
    “Just as well
‘real Daddy’ had been off irking his responsibilities for a few
years and wouldn’t be back till the early 90s,” Felix thought.
    But he wasn’t
ready to be his own ‘Daddy’. This was way too much responsibility
for someone 49 going on 15.
    What the hell
was he going to do?
    He turned on
the small Mr Sheen polished wooden boxed TV set - only to find
Pebble Mill at One - so he decided to go out for some old fashioned
retail therapy instead.
    He marvelled at
the cars again and then the fashions on the high street. On the
shop mannequins and on the people themselves.
    There were
girls in oversized shoulder padded blouses, wearing pedal pushers
or ra ra skirts, with fingerless gloves, luminous jelly shoes and
matching psychedelic leg warmers.
    He’d dressed
the part himself, borrowing some of younger Felix’s wardrobe: skin
tight stonewashed denim jeans that looked like they were painted on
and pulled right up and over his belly button. And a jumper he was
sure his mother had actually knitted in 1985. Not to mention the
teal tassel loafers!
    Those were the
days!
    “And now they
actually are again,” he chuckled to himself, as he went into
Woolworths to check out the 7” vinyl chart displayed on the wall
behind the counter.
    La Isla Bonita
by Madonna, Shattered Dreams by Johnny Hates Jazz, and Wishing I
Was Lucky by Wet Wet Wet were all riding high in the pop
charts.
    He marvelled at
the toys section: the big yellow teapot, the Mr Microphone, the Mr
Frosty he had always wanted for Christmas but never got.
    Then he bought
a Marathon and some Opal Fruits and continued en route.
    He kind of
liked being back in 1987.
    Lethal Weapon
and Dirty Dancing were showing at the mere 2 screen cinema.
    He wandered
some more and stopped outside Rumbelows electrical store and gasped
in amazement at the technology or as he knew it now, somewhat lack
of.
    Tube TV’s with
tiny rounded screens playing the monochrome changing freeze frame
at the end of an episode of Sons & Daughters in unison, and Hi
Fi stereo record players with oversized speakers that would take up
half the size of your living room.
    Felix was in
awe, or had he died and gone to heaven? He couldn’t quite
decide.
    When he got
home, he heard bouncing bed springs, pig-like grunts and squeals
coming from the bedroom.
    He peered
through the crack in the door (which had been left ajar) and saw
his younger self’s peachier bottom thrusting around on top of who
he assumed was a brazen floozy - as Mrs Mangel would say - even
though it was a year or so before she even existed.
    It was a
feeling so surreal he couldn’t quite put his finger on it and
wasn’t sure he wanted to. It was like reliving his youth, but in an
out of the body experience.
    Ejaculations
were simultaneously reached or so he gathered when the grunts and
squeals withered into exhausted gasps and sighs.
    Felix Senior,
as we’ll call him, had since retired to the polished wooden casing
TV set and was flicking through teletext reading the latest
news.
    With no Wi-Fi
or internet how else was he to know that they had just begun work
on building the Channel Tunnel linking England to France; or what
President Ronald Reagan was up to?
    Suddenly Holly
Wood walked into the room half naked and squealed again, quickly
making a