What clothes did they wear in the olden days?
LINK TO ALL THE OTHER CHAPTERS:
Standing on the path, he looked down at his clothes. T-shirt and jeans were very ordinary for 2022 but a hundred and fifty years earlier they would draw a lot of attention. Maybe a sneaky recce at night would be the way to go.
Shuffling around in the shadows wasn’t something he looked forward to, mostly because of how it would look if he got caught shuffling around in the shadows, but he wasn’t up to anything dodgy so that was OK right? He didn’t really think it was OK but as a first step it seemed logical.
If it was Star Trek, they’d do a quick sweep of the area from orbit, get an outfit from stores and slip in unnoticed. Just give Spock a woolly hat to cover up his ears and bish, bash, bosh, getting up to mischief. This wasn’t Star Trek though. There were no jump cuts for comic effect, he would have to do the legwork himself.
Cut to later that night and he was crouched down behind a hedge, watching a small gang of men. The moonlight was bright enough that he thought he could get a reasonable photo. He lifted up his phone and hit the big button. Shit he’d left the flash on. The men looked confused at first but then started moving in his direction. Luckily, he’d taken to his heels straight away and was now lying deep in the shadow of another hedge on the opposite side of the field.
They looked around where the flash had come from, holding up lit matches. One of them lifted his high in the air and tried peering across the field. Arwyn’s heart felt like it was punching him in the chest. He tried to keep his breathing as quiet as possible which only made his heart beat faster. He lay there gasping, his mouth as wide as possible, trying to suck in air.
He turned to look at them. The one holding the match up high, looked directly back at him and stared. Arwyn realized he’d stopped breathing. This made it even more difficult for him to take his next breath quietly. The man with the match took a few paces towards him and burnt his fingers. He flung the match and became a vague shape against the sky. He kept moving forward until he reached the hedge Arwyn was hiding beneath. He lit another match.
Arwyn calmed his breathing and started making plans for a quick exit. Luckily the match only illuminated about five or six feet in any direction and threw more and darker shadows than the moon. The man’s friends called to him and he abandoned the hunt. Arwyn lay there until their voices faded to nothing and very carefully made his way back to his house.
At home, he studied the photo. All the men seemed to be dressed exactly the same. Three-piece suits and weird bowler hats but not the smart ones, city gents used to wear in 1960s films about city gents. These were softer; dented. Looking online it was pretty easy to find the period. They basically looked like men from when the house was built. Round about the 1870s. Before he blew his money on a set of vintage clothes he thought he’d better go out for another recce.
The following night he got further into town. It was incredible. Keeping to the shadows he could see groups of people gathering. Unless this was some sort of re-enactment festival, which on top of everything else would be really weird, then he was in the actual past. He recognised nothing of the town. So much so, he got worried he might not be able to find his way back. Panicking he got out Google maps. He could see where his house was but not where he was. “Damn”.
He waited until the coast was clear and stepped out into the street, to see if he could identify any landmarks. He turned round and saw the weirdly familiar shape of Swansea. All the hills were in the right place but there were only a couple of buildings he recognised. Luckily, they were enough for him to establish where he was.