I spent a few moments gazing out of the window this morning. It's something I often do, but this morning it occurred to me to imagine what the street outside might look like a thousand years from now. What will it look like on June 3rd 3021?
Looking at it another way, a thousand years ago on June 3rd 1021 the street would certainly have been different in that it would not have been there at all. The whole town was probably no more that one or two cottages and a few farms - if that. It was centuries before coal was discovered and serious building began.
Nobody in 1021 could have foreseen how things would change over the next thousand years and 3021 is just as impenetrable to us now. All we have is our imagination, so in my imagination the whole street has disappeared by 3021. Houses, road, everything all gone. Nothing left for estate agents to do. There are a few trees, bushes and brambles but no sign whatever of our street. Not even a few foundations sticking up through the undergrowth.
No familiar landmarks either and the lie of the land is far more difficult to make out because of the trees. Taking these musings a little further, I imagined myself meandering through the trees towards what in 2021 was Sainsbury’s. I can just about make out where it must have been.
Nobody in 1021 could have foreseen how things would change over the next thousand years and 3021 is just as impenetrable to us now. All we have is our imagination, so in my imagination the whole street has disappeared by 3021. Houses, road, everything all gone. Nothing left for estate agents to do. There are a few trees, bushes and brambles but no sign whatever of our street. Not even a few foundations sticking up through the undergrowth.
No familiar landmarks either and the lie of the land is far more difficult to make out because of the trees. Taking these musings a little further, I imagined myself meandering through the trees towards what in 2021 was Sainsbury’s. I can just about make out where it must have been.
Now there is nothing but a log cabin in a clearing. A thread of smoke from a stone chimney winds itself into still air. A dog barks and animal pelts are drying in the sun. Yet in spite of the sunshine it is quite chilly for June.
Why a log cabin? Maybe in a thousand years from now, large areas of the UK are virtually uninhabited apart from a few hardy types who prefer to scratch a primitive life in what is now a wilderness. Not because of some catastrophe but because over the centuries the global population declined and people left for more congenial areas of the world. They migrated to areas where natural resources are still plentiful and vast automated farms more feasible.
Aha – I’ve just noticed. The sky hereabouts in 3021 is blue with no visible vapour trails from aircraft. Apart from the birds it is almost silent - an almost deserted land. I quite like it but a few flakes of snow are falling. It certainly is cold – colder that I expected. Global cooling has set in perhaps. Another reason why people left.
Why a log cabin? Maybe in a thousand years from now, large areas of the UK are virtually uninhabited apart from a few hardy types who prefer to scratch a primitive life in what is now a wilderness. Not because of some catastrophe but because over the centuries the global population declined and people left for more congenial areas of the world. They migrated to areas where natural resources are still plentiful and vast automated farms more feasible.
Aha – I’ve just noticed. The sky hereabouts in 3021 is blue with no visible vapour trails from aircraft. Apart from the birds it is almost silent - an almost deserted land. I quite like it but a few flakes of snow are falling. It certainly is cold – colder that I expected. Global cooling has set in perhaps. Another reason why people left.
4 comments:
Wasn't global cooling being mooted by the Guardian as a means to frighten us, a few years before global warming became fashionable?
Are they snowflakes or fallout?
After the global nuclear disaster of 2024, no humans were left (except the few 'leaders' sheltering in their bunkers until their supplies ran out, then they too all died).
You are seeing the trees through the eyes of the new dominant species as you scuttle about in the undergrowth!
(The problem with writing this sort of crap is that some political moron will use it as a template rather than a warning, as they have with 1984.)
Alternatively imagine a low technology agricultural England of 1,250,000 people (as 1,000 years ago) but with ubiquitous digital communications and delivery of high tech devices from AmazonEV3000.
How ya gonna keep them down on the farm?
"How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'
How ya gonna keep 'em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin' the town
How ya gonna keep 'em away from harm, that's a mystery
They'll never want to see a rake or plow
And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow?
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'"
Sam - it was. I sometimes wonder how many versions there will be in future decades.
Ed - yes that's the problem with anything which can be used as a template, it simplifies whatever is built on it politically.
DJ - I once read a science fiction story set in the future where the ideal lifestyle had finally been achieved. It turned out to be a kind of rustic self-sufficiency.
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