The Time Traveller’s Wife is a 2003 romantic novel by Audrey Niffenegger that also got turned into a film. After the success of the work, a rip-off called The Time Traveller’s Wife and Cement Mixer was written and launched by a builder angry due to the lack of cement mixer representation in Niffenegger’s original work.

This work launched in 2005, was followed by a film adaptation in 2006, and then faced considerable legal action for being a copyright infringement of Niffenegger’s work.

It’s now illegal to speak The Time Traveller’s Wife and Cement Mixer’s author’s nail in public and “it” is in prison facing a life sentence (no possibility for parole). This is the concrete tale of this dismal work of fiction.

Finding the CONCRETE Foundations of Love in The Time Traveller’s Wife and Cement Mixer

“I won’t ever cement you, even though you’re always cementing me.”

This story is about man, wife, and cement mixer. There’s Harry, a builder, who loves his cement mixer very dearly. When not using it at work, it’s at home in his living room having a beer with him and watching the footie.

His wife Claire is also there in the same home due to marriage.

Due to a genetic disorder, Harry has a habit of spontaneously time travelling on a random whim. This often leaves Claire alone and mystified by Harry’s incurable illness, with sometimes YEARS passing before he returns from some far off adventure in the future or past.

However, she takes some solace in Harry’s cement mixer. She names the equipment Cementy and the two bond during Harry’s various absences and escapades.

As the novel’s narrative unfolds, it emerges Claire has feelings for Cementy and the two are, indeed, very much in love. One occasion when Harry is busy time travelling, stuck in June 1348 and battling off the Black Death in London, Claire decides to divorce Harry due to his unavailable demeanour.

Claire and Cementy get married in a private ceremony.

Upon returning to the present, having barely survived the Black Death experience, Harry is dumbfounded to discover his best friend and wife have eloped together and begun a new life.

Distraught and furious, the novel ends with Harry going on a bender at his local Old Man Pub. He drinks 11 pints and heads to the Co-Op where he gets a steal with half a dozen pork pies on offer in the reduced to clear section. Back home, he eats the pies and orders a new cement mixer online at a very reasonable price indeed.

And… that’s the plot!

Contemporary critics savaged the work and the construction industry distanced itself from it, the author, and time travel in general. It was cement manufacturers who went for the gullet, pressing legal action against the author.

In 2015 the author was finally convicted, jailed, and all cement mixers must be kept a minimum of a 15 mile radius away 24/7, 364 days of the year.

On the one allowed day, it’s believed the author is allowed to stand at a one mile radius distance from a lone cement mixer. It’s believed the individual sheds a tear and asks for a pork pie. His request is always denied…

Film Adaptation of The Time Traveller’s Wife and Cement Mixer

In 2006 the film was planned to have a major screen adaptation, with Brad Pitt expected to play the time travelling wife’s husband. Arnold Schwarzenegger was planned to be the cement mixer, with Sigourney Weaver the wife Claire.

However, the expected budget of $300 million deterred investors and, once the author of the novel was jailed for crimes against literature, the project fell over like a cement mixer losing its wheel (a simile used over 100 times in the book, which was criticised by stuffy literary critics).

The status of the author is unknown. Other than that he resides in a maximum security prison in London where he lives off a diet of gruel, bitter resentment, and tinnitus due to hanging around too many loud cement mixers.