Posted
1:24 pm
by Ken
Decades
Some mercifully lost diary records my excitement at the first decade rollover I was old enough to be aware of, in 1969. I remember being excited about it, because I'd read enough science fiction set in or referring to the 1970s to think of the 1970s as the beginning of the scientifictional future. I wondered where I'd be in 1979: maybe fighting for king and country against China? (Why king? Possibly because some near-future political novel by Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond -
The Smile on the Face of the Tiger?
Scotch on the Rocks? - had Elizabeth making a graceful handover to Charles. Why China? Well, that was probably in the novel too, but it was also in the geopolitical wisdom of the age, which saw the big war to come as pitting an alliance of the US/UK, Europe and Russia against China and its allies in the Third World.)
Within a couple of years, of course, Nixon went to China and Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
In 1979, the war with Eurasia had just turned hot in a cold place. My new girlfriend, Carol, rather aptly impressed my family by winning a game of Risk, though that wasn't why they took her to their hearts.
My recollections of late 1989 include watching the BBC news from Romania in the cafteria of a shopping centre with Carol and our children, just before or just after Christmas. I quit smoking on Christmas day, had one cigarette at Hogmanay, and then none for a couple of months. Some time in February or March I took our daughter on a Woodcraft Folk weekend. Woodcraft Folk kids tend to be free range. By the time the adults had some time on their own on the first evening I was cadging roll-ups.
In 1999 we all went into Edinburgh for the big century rollover. I had flu and was a bit feverish, but it still felt joyful. We'd made it out of the twentieth century alive! Firework residue and drops of sprayed beer fell on happy upturned faces. I had an elated hope that the new century might develop unencumbered by the ideologies that had dominated the old. Hah!
Here in the last day of 2009, I have absolutely no idea what the world will be like in 2019, or what we can expect in the ten years ahead. All I know is that 2019 seems a lot farther in the future than 2009 seemed in 1999.
Labels: history, writing
I have it on good authority that there isn't actually going to be 'ten years ahead':
http://www.treelobsters.com/2009/11/102-calendar.html
By Bunty, at Thursday, December 31, 2009 4:28:00 pm