Time travel English-style

Are we alone in the universe? I certainly hope so, but it's always a shock when I see an e-mail that ends with "Sent from my Galaxy". Luckily, it's the name of the mobile phone, not an alien trying to contact us.

Doctor Who, for example, the hero of a BBC science-fiction series, gets a signal on his mobile from every part of space and time he visits. He clearly pays his provider more than I do. But why is he always so cheerful whenever he returns to earth, only to find that everything has changed for the worse?

It ought to come as a disappointment to him, like the one I recently experienced on my way to the Isle of Wight, a lovely island off the south coast of England with a stunning coastline and mild climate. The island gets lots of sunshine - except for the first time I ever went there.

Many years ago, I arrived there on the ferry with my parents, in the middle of a rainstorm. To stay dry, we got on a bus for a round-the-island tour, but all we could see was the condensation on the inside of the windows.

On my latest trip, though, the weather was wonderful, and a man on the ferry was pointing things out to his children. He had obviously moved away from the area long ago. (Perhaps his employers had sent him to their galaxy.) "In a minute, you're going to see a really big power station," he told them. "No, you're not," said the other passengers under their breath. That was the disappointment: the station had closed down. People got up early one Sunday to watch the chimney being blown up, but it was raining hard that day, so all they saw was the condensation on the inside of their glasses.

When aliens do finally communicate with us, I don't suppose they'll use mobile phones. Or even blackboards, which is where the artist Joseph Beuys recorded his thoughts on a visit to London in 1972. They're now an artwork owned by the Tate Modern gallery.

Today, blackboards usually just list the daily specials in pubs and restaurants and are definitely less complicated than the notes and diagrams made by Beuys - or those on Professor Stephen Hawking's blackboard, which includes the jokes his colleagues wrote at a conference in 1980. That one now belongs to the Science Museum - and it's touring the country!

Hawking once threw a party for time travellers, but didn't send out his invitations until after the party had ended. Did he send them from his galaxy? Was he disappointed that not even Doctor Who went to his party? Probably not, since he doubted that time travel was possible.

If it were possible, I would travel in time to get away from disappointments. The Isle of Wight may well be a good place to give it a try. It's an old joke, but even now, people sometimes say that a trip there is like going back in time. I wonder if that's a compliment or a criticism.