Life on Mars & DW s5 "crack on the wall" plot bunny...or, a partial outline of that Teddy/Juergen fic I still really want to write but which requires that I research the layout of London in the 1950s and British policy and popular attitude towards Germans immediately following West German rearmament, which I have absolutely no time for

25-year-old amateur footballer and part-time bakery apprentice Juergen grew up in a big empty house in a small town in 1989 West Germany, with a lightning-shaped crack on his bedroom wall from which he could sometimes hear hushed conversations. He vaguely remembered the house once belonged to his parents; yet he had no recollection where they were or what had happened to them. There was also a bright yellow Beatles stalking him everywhere that nobody but he himself could see. Just when he was starting to think he finally went mad, he got into a car accident.

He woke up to find himself in 1958 London in the basement of one part-time car mechanic and part-time middle school football coach, Teddy Sheringham, and was almost certain he really did go mad this time. And he used "almost" because, well, there's always still the possibility that he was (a) badly injured in that car accident in 1989 and in a coma, or (b) back in time - not that he'd count on those odds, but still...

That said, said part-time car mechanic and part-time middle school football coach turned out to be a friendly and quite charming fellow, overall decent person, and, more importantly, someone who was, if not so exceptionally open minded as to take the whole notion of time travel in stride, at least in possession of an upper lip stiff enough to stifle an outburst of incredulity. Teddy did initally drop the car-repair gadget that he was holding and blurted out, "you are from fucking WHEN?" But that had to be perfectly understandable given the circumstances.

 (And yes, in between pondering his own sanity and thanking the God of mental health and/or time travel for having the good sense to dump him in the middle of London after West Germany's rearmament and ascendency to NATO membership, he still took note that the first man he encountered in his hallucination/time travel was reasonably good-looking; it was one of several weaknesses of his, bite him!) 

The next day, a Saturday, saw them going over and comparing notes on historical events over breakfast (rationing in all of Britain ended 4 years ago and as of 3 years ago West Germany had been a proper member of NATO; this much historical accuracy is really quite unnerving for a halluciation, oh please let this be actual time travel). That evening his English host briefly pondered and summarily dismissed the possibility that he was a East German spy ("You don't seem the sort," Teddy had said with a chuckle, his eyes warm and almost illogically trusting). Sunday started with "what do you mean, we won but didn't really won the 1966 World Cup?" which proceeded to develop into a very animated and spoiler-heavy discussion about subsequent developments in European footfall, ended with an invitation to help coach that middle school football team and the very practical question of how. 

(If he had sat a bit too close and talked a bit too much for 1950s English etiquette, well, Teddy almost certainly didn't object.)

It was not until a purportedly well-connected and warm-hearted Alan Sugar appeared with fake papers on Teddy's doorstep a week later that Juergen began to suspect that things might have been going a little bit too smoothly. 

And that was when he peeked out of the window of Teddy's attic, and spotted that bright yellow Beatles - the same bright yellow Beatles tailing him at the very moment of his car accident a week earlier (to him) and thirty-one years in the future (in linear time)- parked around the street corner.

TBC...?