A day in history

Today, I discovered, is the day of Britland's biggest blog. No, not something that's difficult to flush down the toilet, rather an attempt to record the events of an average day in British history, in blog form, for future generations (who can then no doubt jump in their time machines and come back to experience it for themselves, thus screwing up the proper timeline and destroying the very future they've come from - I'VE SEEN BACK TO THE FUTURE, I KNOW HOW THIS WORKS!).

*Ahem*

Anyway, putting aside plans to go down the gym (any ol' excuse these days), I've decided to detail a full day in the life of Sparky, as it unfolded on October 16th 2006, for my rocket-boot wearing, Mars colonising, genetically-engineered descendents.

-----

Dear people of the future,

I found out today about this great idea to encourage loads of people to document the events of their day for future generations to read and hopefully gain a bit of insight into the lives of their early 21st century ancesters, and I thought "WOO-HOO! I'll give that a go." So here it is - October 16th 2006 from my point of view.

I woke up this morning at 6:30am. It was still dark outside, so I hit the snooze button on my alarm clock, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

I woke up again at 7:05am, and although it was still darkish, I decided I should probably get up. I went into my bathroom, had a wash and brushed my teeth. Then I got dressed - jeans, t-shirt, and trainers (because I can dress casually at work), grabbed my stuff, and jumped in my car (not literally - I had to unlock it and get in the door, truth be told). The journey into work - from Shepperton to Hammersmith - takes about 40 minutes on a good day, although as there's some road closures in the Twickenham area it's taking a bit longer at the moment. There's also talk that the mayor of London is fiddling with the traffic lights to cause congestion in the west to justify his congestion charge extension zone. I don't want to dwell on politics, but between you and me it wouldn't surprise me. I hope politicians aren't as deceitful and swarmy in the future.

Oh, and Sir Richard Attenborough drove past me in the opposite direction, which was a bit surreal because it was like seeing Father Christmas driving past.

Anyway, I got into work, made a cup of tea, ate a bowl of cereal (Sainsbury's triple chocolate crunch - it's basically oats and rice and chocolate, but the oaty aspect at least makes me think I'm being healthy), and looked at some pages on the internet.

After a while, I did some work (I edit some Star Trek magazines for the UK and Japan), sporadically stopping to check my email, answer phone calls from people trying to get us to take on staff we don't need, and chat to some colleagues, mainly about what was on the telly last night. To be honest though, I'm having a bit of difficulty chatting to people at the moment because I've got a build-up of wax in my ears, and there's such a long waiting list to get them syringed that I'll be hard of hearing until December; despite this, our politicians tell us that the NHS has "never been better!" although I'm pretty sure a lot of people disagree with this, especially the doctors and nurses who work all the hours they can and get paid very little.

Oops, there I was talking politics again.

Where was I? Oh, yes... So about 12:30 I took my lunchtime and wandered down to Hammersmith. I go down their pretty much every lunchtime to get a coffee from Starbucks; mostly I go for the walk - it's nice to just get out of the office and clear your head for a while. I listen to my iPod on the walk down - today I listened to a mixture of songs, including David Bowie, The Killers, Foo Fighters, and The Rolling Stones (are they still touring in the future?).

I got to Starbucks to find it was really busy. Apparently it's one of the top 25 fastest growing branches in the UK. Blimey! In fact, it was so busy that I had to sit outside with my coffee, although that was OK because it's quite warm, which is unusual for mid-October.

The afternoon was spent doing basically the same as the morning - checking emails and editing some text.

Around 4:30pm I left work, got in my car, and drove round to my parent's house. I moved out last year, but still go round to see them a few times each week. And after a lovely dinner (chicken and chips), I came home, checked my email, looked at some of my favourite websites, and wrote an entry on my blog.

As for the rest of the day... well, I'm going to watch a programme on TV about the world's first face transplant in about half an hour, then I'll probably read my book, and go to bed about 11:30pm. Exciting, huh?

Anyway, I hope the future is exciting for you, and you all have rocket boots and flying (non-poluting) cars; sorry if my generation left the world in a bit of a state - although I hope we tidied it up a bit before we went (rude if we didn't). And if you've got a time machine, why not pop back and say "Hi!" I'll be in Starbucks on Hammersmith Road tomorrow at about 1pm-ish! Alternately, you could try re-animating me in the future, because I'd love to see how things are going. But don't re-animate me if I'm going to turn out like some weird zombie; however much fun the future is, I don't want to experience it as a weird zombie.

So that was my day. Pretty average, actually!

Good bye, future people!

Tim

-----

There. I hope that proves insightful for future generations.

Something that amused me today was all this talk by some scientificy people who reckon that future humans will have evolved so that they all stand about seven feet tall, all the women have pert boobs, and all the men have big tinkies. And, they reckon that there'll also be a stunted troglodyte worker class who'll just be a bunch of munters with saggy boobs and tiny tinkies.

I'll let you know if I'm confronted by a seven-foot tall big-boobed visitor from the 31st century tomorrow.

(Unless she abducts me to the fuuuuuuuuuture!)