Does Time Travel Really Exist?

For many years now scientists have been baffling themselves over the possibilities and likelihood of 'time travel'. Some practitioners may even claim to have experienced this elusive phenomenon but they have yet to prove that they have done so.

Which brings us back to the ever far-reaching and elusive question: "Does time travel really exist?"

Well, I for one would never hazard a guess at this, just as much as I could never rule out the faintest of possibilities, especially when there are so many self-styled 'experts' around ready to ridicule and scoff even the slightest positive — or negative — approach by such lesser mortals as myself... even more so if they get to read the theory that I am about to put forward on the subject!

For, you see, I can really claim to have time travelled. Indeed, I managed this 'elusive' feat every working day of my life between 1994 and 2009. I have even time travelled when I went on holiday! You should either now be intrigued or totally baffled, so please let me explain further.

First off, I believe that one or two of my fellow Cray Wanderers supporters know that I worked in France between those years I have mentioned above. I commuted each day via Le Shuttle through the 'hole in the ground' known more famously as the Channel Tunnel. When I used to leave the UK side at, say, 06:51 for an early shift I arrived in France not at 07:30ish — bearing in mind that the crossing takes approximately 40 minutes platform-to-platform — but at around 08:30ish. Why?

Well, it is simple to deduce when you think about it. France — and, for that matter, most of Western Europe — is one hour ahead of the UK. So, when I left the UK, there was one hour 'lost' during the crossing and, conversely, the return journey saw me 'gain' one hour. And that, I will always claim, was most definitely time travel.

Okay, yes, I know that this is stretching the point somewhat, so now I'll go on to explain how I managed to time travel on certain holidays that I occasionally indulged in. My wife comes from the Philippines, in South-East Asia. It's about 7,000 miles away from Heathrow Airport as the crow or Jumbo Jet flies. During the flights which, back when we used to travel there, took up to 20 hours one way, we passed over many countries with differing time zones. By the time we reached Manila, not only had the flight taken 18 to 20 hours but, we found that the time difference between the Philippines and the UK is around 7 or 8 hours, depending on the time of year that we travelled, with the UK being that amount of time behind its Asian counterpart.

Again, the return leg 'righted' itself timewise, but nevertheless we had time travelled — and no manner of heated arguments can deny this.

All right, so it's perhaps not the kind of time travelling that the boffins readily accept in the true meaning of the phrase, in other words we had not leapt forward a hundred years or so, nor had we returned to the Victorian days of our ancestors but, the proof of the pudding is still there for all to see and judge for yourselves. 

Time travel is happening every day on this planet, albiet in a slightly different manner to which we have been advised it should (if it could) happen and, certainly far removed from the 'space-time continuum' theories that such films as 'Back To The Future' and 'The Philadelphia Experiment' — and TV programmes like 'Goodnight Sweetheart' and 'Quantum Leap' — would have us believe.

Having written this account, I'd like to ask the question again, "Does time travel really exist?" Please ask yourselves, not the boffins.