Came here all those years ago looking for a place to settle down. Milton Keynes they called it. Good vibe name – culture and money joined at the hip; something for everyone. Some London overspill, it’s true, but no problem – all that green space!

Old now and knackered. Kids gone and seldom seen. Wife died. Friends too, one by one. Practically a season ticket holder at the local crematorium. Living in Stony Stratford, that semi-detached jewel beloved of estate agents. I’m comfortable but slowly fading. In fact, almost invisible. My horizons shrunk down to a few tramline trips – Tesco’s, the doctor’s surgery, The Bull on a Sunday lunchtime – but mainly my TV, though it’s not smart enough to keep me awake for long.

Early December and the trees are now bare. Autumn’s bones have leeched into my garden leaving it lifeless. Each leaden afternoon, I doze on the sofa while the TV jabbers on unseen and the sound of traffic on the A5D reminds me of envied lives going on elsewhere. I start to dream.

It is AD60. The snow flurries sting my helmeted face. Tree branches whip and thrash under a grey shrieking sky choked with wheeling clouds. The bedlam of a nightmare.Screams and curses. Blood. Shit. Wild-eyed horses rearing up. My Roman gladius sinks into his blue-woaded face cutting to the bone and down he falls, down on this cobbled road you now call Watling Way. The Iceni are barbarians. Worse than dogs. We find Boudica north of Lactodorum (now Towcester) but she kills herself before we can crucify her. Tonight I will get drunk. This is my world: this is Pax Romana.

Then it is 1290 and I am a priest on a solemn journey, accompanying the embalmed body (less viscera) of Queen Eleanor of Castile to Westminster Abbey. We stop at a hamlet called Stony Stratford. A frosty night. A quiet little river shrouded in mist vaulted by stars too distant to grieve. Edward ‘Longshanks’ sits in tearful grief in the torchlight; his flunkies milling around helplessly. I quietly intone the evening Vespers… Deus, in adiutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. I preach that God is merciful but know he’s mostly in absentia.

The doorbell chimes. Someone trying to sell me loft insulation. I get rid and slump back on the sofa.

It is 1837 and I awake from my billet at the back of the stables at the Cock hotel. This time I’m a young jack-the-lad ostler. After feeding the horses I go out on the street.

Two toffs get off the Holyhead coach and ask for directions to the Bull. I tell them the Cock has better food. A load of cock and bull but it works. The Cock landlord gives me threepence. I go to the White Horse and buy ale.

I wake up and watch Match of the Day.