When you let your partner pick your holiday hotel.
When your wish for a pony comes true at last.
Which is your garden – rewilding or OCD?
When you wonder if it was a good idea to have coffee at the garden centre.
Artist denies paintings were actually done by his toddler.
Scientist close to bringing back extinct species…
Here we are, standing shivering, wondering why we have been woken up before sunrise. TV cameras intruding just to please breakfast television, then the reporter has the cheek to say
‘Of course these chaps don’t feel the cold, they come from the Antarctic.’
I come from Bristol and my feet are frozen.
Yup, same with us. There they are in their Alpine designer outdoor wear talking about our fur coats keeping us warm in the Gobi desert. They don’t even keep us warm in English snow, let alone the Gobi, not that I have ever seen an actual desert.
Don’t know why they were so surprised we had a baby, we’ve known for ages, chose a name weeks ago. Now they have the cheek to announce a competition to name OUR baby.
She’s right, taking away our dignity and identity, trying to disconnect us from thousands of years of family tradition, the proud name of our clan. They have no fashion sense then laugh at our stripes. Then the ultimate insult, what name do they give us? ZEBRAS! How ridiculous a name is that.
It could be worse, what about me. Miss know-it-all reporter is telling everyone I’m going to give birth to a mammoth. I thought they had laws against offensive remarks. There is nothing more insulting you can call us than Mammoth. There is a very good reason those hairy idiots died out millennia ago.
What if I had stayed? I felt guilty just having that thought after what I have put my family through. I feel no guilt about my brief stay in 2099, that was beyond my control and I would never have chosen to leave my home and family to venture into the unknown future.
As I sat down for another attempt at writing my official report I felt a surprising emotional pull to those few weeks in that very different world. The memories were coming back to me more vividly as the weeks passed and the initial shock and trauma began to wear off. The quiet life in our ‘safe house’, a magnificent country mansion, was making my real life in a 2023 London suburb ever more remote.
The clear skies, wonderfully fresh air and sheer abundance of nature were what many urbanites dream of, though probably not the primitive, dangerous life of The Hunters in 2099. I couldn’t help yearning a little for the comforting scent of roasting spits and the simple life they led, completely at one with their environment, the only life they knew.
I wanted to explain this in my report, I had not typed a single word yet. By 2099 London and presumably the rest of planet Earth, had returned to nature and yet it was not as it should be. Human interference in every part of life for more than a century had resulted in nature recreating itself into a form that terrified the Bunker People, who cowered in the remains of subterranean London.
My status as the mythical Lauren of London meant that I was protected from the dangers that lay outside The Hunter’s large camp. I had persuaded them once to let me go out with the women, children and old men gathering wild fruits. That wasn’t sexist, there were women hunters as well, the tough ones, though every woman was pretty tough. I surmised that anyone with a family predisposition to poor health had not survived the catastrophic breakdown of society. Truly survival of the fittest, these hunters had survived against the odds, plunged back into a prehistoric life without the generations of folk lore to guide them.
The computer screen remained blank and I could hear my boys fighting just outside the library window, I wondered where their father was. I hadn’t got my old life back yet, but after much negotiating my family had been allowed to come and stay here during the school holidays. My poor husband was subject to counselling and scrutiny, sworn to secrecy and his phone confiscated, but the last thing he wanted was to talk to the press after they had treated him as a murder suspect when I was missing. The staff here had persuaded him to listen properly to what I had to say, but he was not totally convinced. He promised to support me if I wanted to admit I was a part of some terrible hoax.
Our sons believed me. When you are five and seven everything in the world is new and amazing. For youngsters obsessed with dinosaurs and fantasy in films and books, it was easy to believe their mother had been transported to the future and back again. They were mainly interested in the strange creatures that grazed and hunted over the grasslands and woods that had spread out from natural parklands and gardens. Amazing creatures have always inhabited the earth and even in our own time if you met an elephant for the first time you would be terrified. Now add in the selective breeding that had gone on for centuries and the more recent legal and illegal tampering with DNA; even a non-scientist like me could guess what had gone wrong when infrastructure broke down and animals made a bid for freedom from farms, zoos, safari parks and laboratories.
The hunters could not understand this evolution, they just knew what to hunt for food and which creatures to escape from and scare off with their burning torches and thunderous drums.
My sons suddenly came rushing up to the desk.
‘Mummy, Mummy tell us about the wild cat again and the giant bison and the huge ram that ran you all over and why did you have to go and lose your phone so you couldn’t take any pictures?’
‘A tabby cat bigger than a lion, with teeth like a sabre toothed tiger attacked me. The hunter on a strong stallion rescued me and we galloped safely away, but I dropped my handbag…’
That was as close as I could get to describing the most terrifying moment of my life, I did not want to give them nightmares, but during the day they lapped up the stories.
‘And what happened when you were picking fruit?’
‘We all stayed close together, the hunters on horseback circled around us all the time with their flaming torches and loud drums, the fierce camp guard dogs warned them as soon as they caught a scent of dangerous animals, even before they came into sight. The dogs started barking in a frenzy and suddenly a ram bigger than a bull came charging towards us. He was not interested in attacking people, he had just seen another ram trying to round up his sheep, like we saw on that farm visit, but these sheep were as big as cows.’
‘What did the ram look like Mummy?’
‘He had curling horns as large as roller coasters and he wanted to attack the other ram, we just happened to be in the way. We crowded together, the fruit gatherers knew what to do and pulled me with them down into a dip, hiding in a prickly thicket. The hunters circled us out of the way and the ram thundered past, trampling a dog and knocking a hunter off his horse.’
‘Was the hunter okay?’
‘Yes’ I lied, shuddering at the memory.
‘Why didn’t they kill the ram?’
‘The spears they had found in the ruins of the Tower of London would never penetrate his mega thick fleece.’
I wasn’t sure where the hunters got their weapons from, passed down from their fathers they said, so this seemed a likely explanation. As I looked at the mixture of fear and delight on the boys faces I was so thankful I had survived to come back to them. No, I would not have wanted to stay.
When Findlay Cummings cycled up the long driveway of the country mansion on his latest visit to interview Doctor Chowdry, he was astonished to see the usually restrained doctor up an old oak tree. Circling round the trunk in great excitement was the head gardener’s loveable ten month old Labrador. Grabbing hold of his collar wasn’t as easy as Fin expected, the dog thought it was part of the game, while the doctor appeared in fear of his life.
‘Have you got a gun? Fetch help, I think I’m going to fall.’
‘No, no, it’s okay, Ptolemy is just a big old softy.’
Despite loving dogs Findlay was still glad to see Ptolemy’s owner hove into view, he did not want to have to explain to the boss that their precious visitor from the future had broken his neck falling out of a tree.
A sharp whistle from the head gardener and the dog retreated; Ptolemy knew who the pack leader was.
The gardener marched off, not wishing to get involved with the strange guests and visitors to the normally peaceful mansion, but Findlay raced after him to ask if he had a ladder.
‘Thanks Mr. Cummings, that’s the last time I venture outside’ said Doctor Chowdry, as the woman who seemed to be responsible for medical checks bathed a few cuts and scratches.
‘I presumed it was the first time you had ever climbed a tree and I remembered, from when I used to play with my big brothers in the woods, that climbing down is often harder than climbing up. But honestly there is no danger in the grounds.’
‘All animals are dangerous, especially ones with teeth and I have read in the newspapers that dogs kill people.’
‘Oh em, well not often and not that sort of dog.’
‘And cows.’
‘What?’
‘Your cows kill people.’
‘No, they just wander round fields eating grass…’
‘Come with me to the library and I will show you my reading and studies, why I haven’t had time to do more interviews, go exploring outside. I wanted to gather evidence to explain my theories, to myself as much as to world leaders.’
The normally sedate and dusty library was full of newspapers and scientific magazines, in piles on the floor and spread over tables with cuttings and photos snipped out. Children killed by dogs, walkers trampled by cows…
Initially the doctor had been entranced by the wonderful old books, but then he became obsessed with fresh writing. Brought up in the bunker with only a few old books and tatty documents it was paradise for him to see freshly printed paper and glossy magazines. Intelligent articles on science and medicine were an antidote to the mindless prattle of Belinda Billington and Lauren Smith and the various persons looking after or guarding Belinda and himself.
‘Look Mr. Cummings, your citizens don’t need to be scientists, play with DNA to create new breeds. Bully dogs bred from the toughest specimens and what happened when they roamed wild? And this, introducing strange animals, calling it rewilding… your people don’t know what they are doing, if they saw the real wild lands …’
‘But plenty of countries have all sorts of wild animals, people have always co-existed…’
‘But when man started interfering with nature, changing DNA; safe in the laboratories perhaps, but when infrastructure breaks down, when all the beasts escape, mixing breeding, evolving…’
‘Okay, I understand your theories, but how did cities fall apart as you say they will?’
‘Look at today’s paper, Artificial Intelligence.
It is not me making things up. I am just beginning to understand how it all started to go wrong and we must tell everyone.’
For those of you wondering how nature had taken over by 2099, this might be a clue…
WARNING, VEGANS MIGHT BE OFFENDED BY THE FOLLOWING ITEM
I was in our local real family butcher’s buying a free range chicken. Two young men I had not seen before were serving. I also asked for half a dozen outdoor reared sausages. The chap serving me said to the other ‘Half a dozen, is that seven?’
For a moment I worried that I was behind the times in a decimal digital age and I could have just asked for six. But hang on, eggs still come in dozens and half dozens. How attached are we to twelve? Is it because there were twelve disciples, or three is a holy number that multiplies to twelve. Photographers and gardeners ‘know’ three boats in a picture or three plants in a round tub are better than two…
The origin of ten is obvious as we have ten fingers to count on… what would have happened if we had carried on using Roman numerals and never heard of any other system… Better stop thinking, no need to wear our brains out on Sunday evening.
How is your Jolly July garden rewilding going?
Tonight’s tale follows on from last week’s or you can read as a stand alone story.
The book had been locked away again; I had only read the opening lines of Door To The Future, published 2028, but enough to know the narrator shared my name and had also been propelled into the future. There must be many Lauren Smiths around, this book need not have anything to do with me, just a coincidence, though how many others of my namesake had gone through the wrong door?
How did it come to be written and if it was about me, was it reassuring proof that I returned to my own time? It was unlikely I had written it, I had no imagination, as my English teacher was always telling me. Before we had the children I worked in an office and wrote reports, dealt with finances. I liked that world of precision and writing a romantic fantasy novel would never have occurred to me. Someone else could have written it, but I knew no writers to tell my story to.
‘Lauren, Miss Smith, did you hear what I said dear, you must be tired, we must let you sleep.’
I had been so deep in thought I had lost track of what my rescuer and his mother were talking about.
‘No, I can’t sleep, I need to find out how this happened to me and how I can get back.’
‘No hurry dear, your time will stay the same, that’s what the book says.’
As they tried to explain their world I realised I could understand their past and my future better than they possibly could. I surmised Billings in the bunker had a better grasp of what had happened; my stomach churned as I wondered if she had made it safely back to the bunker or had she been eaten? I asked my rescuer what creature it was that attacked me.
‘A great cat, he wouldn’t eat you, got plenty of venison and beef out there, they just like to play with the weaker humans.’
The creature I glimpsed was a lot bigger than mythical black panthers spotted in the west country, it didn’t make sense.
As if she read my thoughts the mother spoke.
‘My mother told me strange creatures they had never seen escaped from the borytrees when everything stopped. Signtists made them from gentic earing. They mixed with other animals that went to the wild…’
It made sense, if normal society broke down the creatures we kept for our entertainment or experiment would escape, not just domestic dogs and cats, but wolf packs lovingly supervised in Scotland, animals in the zoo and wild boars that were already roaming some woodlands. I recalled Billings’ words that farm animals were much better at survival than humans, then there were large deer populations breeding happily with no natural predators.
‘How did everything stop?’
‘Pewters ran the world, then they turned off the cities.’
A simplistic explanation, but with no books and only stories passed down it must be hard for them to understand. When I worked in the office I was efficient, liked everything to be precise. If I had worked in pre computer days I would have kept immaculate ledger books and orderly filing cabinets; unless the office burnt down all that information would be safe and nothing would hold up our work. If the computers ‘went down’ in our office, or worse, the whole company’s computers were down it was a disaster, we were helpless and expected the tech people to sort it out. I Lauren Smith could not fix a computer let alone make them. If power started failing there would be no basic services or computers; society would grind to a halt.
‘But survivors, hunters… our people knew how to get food’ said my rescuer.
I would have been a bunker person, so would my friends. It was obvious who would survive, anyone who had been in the armed forces, knew how to use a gun, survive under tough conditions. Even those people we look down on who go out shooting grouse or culling deer and enjoying the stalking, they had the last laugh. Farmers, they deserved to survive, presumably they knew more about animals than the rest of us and probably had a shot gun handy and could kill a sheep or cow if need be. I knew little about life outside the city and now it seemed my lifestyle was pathetic when it came to awful disasters. But still there was a big question.
‘I don’t understand how the cities in my time could crumble, we have huge buildings everywhere, tall buildings, ancient stone buildings, where did they all go?’
‘There were wars, then the big destruction came. Weapons flew by themselves, even when the wars stopped. Weapons dropped out of the sky and flattened cities, my mother remembers even from the countryside where they had escaped they could see the fire and smoke on the far horizon. The city people who survived were hiding underground.’
In my cosy little world of the family and my teaching assistant job we watched the news, but still felt removed from all the awful events. Syria, Ukraine, it was possible for cities to be flattened under relentless attack and unmanned drones were a reality.
Even if I took the hunters and bunker people back to my time right now it was probably too late to unravel events already set in motion. I looked down at the uncomfortable rough cloth I was wrapped in and at the rough clothes of the man and his mother. Even if we could get back to 2023, who on earth would listen to us and our tale?
This could be one of the reasons ( muddy walks carrying little bags containing… ) why people who bought puppies during Lockdown are now getting fed up with them. Ironically, while shelters fill up with unwanted dogs, people who want to keep their pampered ( and expensive ) pets are having them stolen, because of the increasing demand for dogs during lockdown. If the dog thieves could be persuaded to only steal unwanted dogs…
I have not read Phillip Pullman’s trilogy ‘His Dark Materials’ but we have been watching the BBC series of His Dark Materials. Animal lovers will be entranced by the variety of pets that follow the characters around – but wait! These are not pets, they are daemons! Every human in Pullman’s world is born with a dæmon – a physical manifestation of that person’s inner self that takes the form of an animal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07s8824
Once we have grasped this important fact questions come to mind.
What would my daemon be?
How do people avoid tripping over their daemons?
What would a rugby match be like if the players all came on with their daemons? When characters argue or fight in the story, so do the daemons. Commentators would be very busy in sport if there was a parallel scrum of assorted animals or an eagle daemon grabbed the tennis ball and prevented the opponent’s winning point. As for the Tour de France, can you imagine the chaos as they speed down those winding roads with rabbits, rats and cheetahs getting tangled in the spokes?
Would we take politicians even less seriously if their daemons were monkeys telling them what to say?
Children’s daemons take different forms until they ‘settle’ during adolescence. Lyra the heroine’s daemon seems to be swift and agile, usually a white ferret and small enough to cuddle in bed like a teddy. One chap has a cougar/leopard, another an eagled perched on his shoulder, but most of the adults have small animals. A horse would be handy for transport, but nobody has a giraffe, elephant or rhino – that would be a challenge.
Phillip Pullman did not invent the name; the Ancient Greek daemon referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit. Nor is he the only one to reinvent the word; a daemon is a computer programme that runs as a background process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user. Have you got daemons lurking in your computer?
I may already have a daemon, our resident robin does follow me round when I’m gardening, like a bluebird in a Disney cartoon.
What would you choose as your daemon?
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 