Let’s Time-Travel the Recession Away!
“I did not have sex with that woman…..yet.”
It strikes me that in this time of doom and gloom, extreme measures are needed. I will outline my plans in this post.
After a disappointment in a project I am working on, my agent said, “If this were 2006, we’d be laughing”. She would be right, for things were doing fine in the publishing world. However, that aside I don’t think I’d like to go back to 2006. I don’t want Bush or Blair back in power. And I was off work sick for 8 weeks that year. It wasn’t exactly brilliant.
That considered, my agent got me thinking. Question 1: What would be the best year to go back to? And Question 2: How can we get there?
It is possible that I have to answer question 2 before we even let the answer to Question 1 cross my mind. But I’m a cart before horse kind of person, as those who know me will happily testify.
First off, which years are definitely out:
1936- You don’t really need me to tell you why. Good year for Hitler, sucked for everyone else. And there was no internet, rock music and mobile phones, so, rubbish all round.
1979- Punk was over, Thatcher was in, Bee Gees were gearing up for world domination. Effectively the next six years are out completely. Unless you are Olivia Newton John, in which case, off you go, love.
2001- The nightmare begins. You could go back to this year, but only to sprinkle a whole tub of high powered laxative in the curry of 19 guys with an early wake-up call for a flight they were catching the next day. Otherwise, it’s not a good year for anyone but George W Bush and his daddy..
Me? I’m plumping for 1997. This was the first year of my marriage. But that’s not the reason, Meeester is still here, with genetic accoutrements (Indy and Junior). No, this was the year when everyone thought everything was going to be OK.**
1. Clinton hadn’t dropped his trews too much and we thought he was a cool guy.
2. John Major was sent back to the circus and we didn’t realise what a shower we’d elected, we just thought they were shiny and smiley. Not lizards.
3. There was no XFactor and Pop Idol, and music seemed to be made by real folk with actual talent. Except the Spice Girls. But they don’t fit in with my argument, so I’m ignoring them. Much the same as I did in the actual year itself.
4. Banks weren’t cold calling folk straight out of the telephone directory offering them 40 times their annual salary if they could confidently sign their name with an X, even if it was with a pencil in their mouth.
5. Dolly the sheep made us all feel sciencey. Surely hover cars and Mars colonisation were only months away!
6. The UK won the Eurovision Song Contest! With an American and a shit song, but we didn’t care! Go us!
7. Scotland gets its own parliament. And we’re quite chuffed. Of course, then we didn’t realise that the blighters were going to make booze insanely expensive. We thought it was going to be running down the streets freely available to anyone with an empty cup handy.*
8. Some NASA stuff happened that made us go “Woooh!” and when we finally removed our fingers from our eyes, it didn’t blow up, making us go “Awwww”. Nasa can’t even afford to have their Christmas party this year.
9. Radiohead release OK Computer.
10. My wisdom teeth hadn’t come through yet.
Now, onto the mechanics of the thing. Right, who’s got a copy of Back to the Future. Doc says something about a flux capacitor…will get one of those at B&Q, will be in the Hardware aisle and I’m sure I’ve got some plutonium left over in the shed….hang on… it’s here somewhere!…..
Will get back to you on my progress…..
*There’s a team of people scouring campaign leaflets from that year trying to prove this was one of Alex Salmond’s election promises. Just you wait Alec, we’ve got you, I just know it!
**OK, things were not OK for Princess Di and Gianni Versace, but ah well….good looking corpse and all that…ho hum, them’s the breaks!
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