In one essay, Will Self, of all people, writes in Why Read (Grove Press, 2022) how the self is a “temporary persona”, an ongoing performance in the moment, a rendition to mask the multiple selves and tenses we carry. Our nowness a veneer, English is too cumbersome to embrace our everywhen below.

Hereness and thereness are words used by Kaliane Bradley in her debut novel, the heady time-travel romance The Ministry of Time (Hachette, 2024), where an Arctic explorer fished from the past is both in the room as much as roaming his ice cap. Just as we can’t shed the anxieties of living in 2024, walking the dog with bulletin flashbacks of war in our thoughts, of ice caps and rising grocery prices, and what it all spells for tomorrow.

Despite that, we perform who we are, awash in various tenses. We fill the kettle, daydreaming another time, drowning in visions of back there or not here yet, or never to arrive, or each of those things at once. Until the steam shrills, its plume rising, and we resurface to recognise the room we are in.

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