Parallels

What have I discovered this morning?

About an online Christmas wishlist-
A script that won a place on a talent showcase-
A merchant ship sunk in the South Atlantic by the Admiral Graf Spee.


I'm following @RealTimeWWII on Twitter, a six year project by Alwyn Collinson which updates the events of the Second World War in as close to real-time as you can get.  The tweets run from the chipper British public reaction to a failed Lufwaffe bombing run, to the disappearance of patriotic scouts in Poland - you don't know what to expect, but you know it's not going to get any better for a long time.

And because I follow lots of different people, @RealTimeWWII sits alongside tweets about people's 21st century news, plans, loves, hates.  It's strange and fascinating to see these glimpses into the past in this context, and I get the feeling this is how Penny experiences her life as a time traveller, desperate to keep her skill a secret in Hidden Daughter.

And on a slightly less fantastic scale, it's how we all live our lives - parallel strands of existence from horrific to wondrous to humdrum, all mixed up to make us who we are.  Our challenge, like Penny's, is to make sense of it all.  For me, like Penny's continuing story, it's a work in progress.