Tim: [voiceover] We're all traveling through time together, every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable ride.
Tim: [voiceover] And in the end I think I've learned the final lesson from my travels in time; and I've even gone one step further than my father did. The truth is I now don't travel back at all, not even for the day. I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.
Tim: [voiceover] And so he told me his secret formula for happiness. Part one of the two-part plan was that I should just get on with ordinary life, living it day by day, like anyone else.
Tim: [voiceover] But then came part two of Dad's plan. He told me to live every day again almost exactly the same. The first time with all the tensions and worries that
stop us noticing how sweet the world can be, but the second time noticing. Okay, Dad. Let's give it a go.
Tim: [voiceover] There's a song by Baz Luhrmann called Sunscreen. He says worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind.
Mum: I am fucking furious. I am so uninterested in a life without your father.
[giving his father-of-the-bridegroom speech at Tim and Mary's wedding]
Dad: I'd only give one piece of advice to anyone marrying. We're all quite similar in the end. We all get old and tell the same tales too many times. But try and marry someone kind. And this is a kind man with a good heart. I'm not particularly proud of many things in my life, but I am very proud to be
the father of my son.
Tim: Mum, this is Mary.
Mum: Mary! Good Lord, you're pretty.
Mary: Oh, no. It's just... I've got a lot of mascara and lipstick on.
Mum: Let's have a look.
Mary: [presents her face]
Mum: Oh, yes. Good. It's very bad for a girl to be too pretty. It stops her
developing a sense of humor. Or a personality.
[talking about the opening night of his new play, in which the leading actor forgot all his lines]
Harry: It was the Titanic of play openings but with no survivors. No women, no children, not even Kate Winslet, all dead. We sat in total silence for half an hour, waiting for a moron to remember one single line.
[Tim has just learned his dad is dying of cancer]
Tim: It's just... I though with the time thing...
Dad: No, I never said we could fix things. I specifically never said that. Life's a mixed bag, no matter who you are. Look at Jesus: he was the son of a God, for God's sake and look how that turned out.
Tim: I know... You must
see I feel a bit cheated.
Dad: Don't. In fact, feel the opposite. The only people who give up work at 50 are the time travelers with cancer who want to play more table tennis with their sons.
Tim: I thought this phone was old, and suddenly it's my most valuable possession.
Mary: You really like me? Even my frock?
Tim: I love your frock.
Mary: And, um, my hair. It's not too brown?
Tim: I love brown.
Mary: My fringe is new.
Tim:
Your fringe is perfect. Fringe is the best bit.
[first lines]
Tim: [voiceover] I always knew we were a fairly odd family. First there was me. Too tall, too skinny, too orange. My mum was lovely, but not like other mums. There was something solid about her. Something rectangular, busy and unsentimental. Her fashion icon was the queen. Dad, well, he was more normal. He always seemed to have time on his hands. After giving
up teaching university students on his 50th birthday, he was eternally available for a leisurely chat or to let me win at table tennis.
Tim: [voiceover] And then there was mum's brother, Uncle Desmond. Always impeccably dressed. He spent the days just, well, being Uncle Desmond. He was the most charming and least clever man you could ever meet. His mind was on other things,
though we never found out what. And then, finally there was Catherine. Katie. Kit Kat. My sister. In a household of sensible jackets and haircuts there was this, well, what can I call her - nature thing. With her elfin eyes, her purple T-shirts and her eternally bare feet. She was then, and still is to me, about the most wonderful thing in the world.
Tim: [voiceover] All in
all it was a pretty good childhood. Full of repeated rhythms and patterns. By the time I was 21, we were still having tea on the beach every single day. Skimming stones and eating sandwiches, summer and winter, no matter what the weather.
Tim: [voiceover] And every Friday night a film, no matter what the weather. And then once a year, the dreaded New Year's Eve party...