The only time that time became misplaced for me happened when I was working as a maid in a place called Dunraven Castle in South Wales. There were three of us in the servery just after Saturday luncheon--Hans, the odd-job boy, Renate, the senior maid, and me. The floor of the room was a terra-cotta orange colour. I saw Renate pick up a jug, a white jug, of chocolate sauce. As she turned to hand it to Hans, she dropped it. It smashed, and the pastel-brown sauce formed a very definite pattern on the floor, something like the diagram of an amoeba as shown in a school biology textbook.

As I looked the whole scene melted and, like a loop of film, started again. It was terrifying! I remember shouting to Renate, as she picked up the jug, not to touch it, and screaming in horror as I watched the sauce make its predestined shape on that orange floor. I tried to explain to them how I had watched the scene take place a couple of seconds before it had--and, of course, they said that if I hadn't shouted the whole thing wouldn't have happened.

SOURCE: J.B. Priestley, Man and Time, 1964, pp 207. 'Chocolate Spill' and 'Anonymous #8' added as search aids; original passage untitled and correspondent's name withheld. She was one of over a thousand to respond to a BBC appeal for experiences that might shed light on the nature of time. Illustration is mine, not #8's.--Chris Wayan

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