*Taken from Steven Briers’
monograph, The World in the Twenty First
Century (Bitterne University Press, 1978). Though, to be honest, it’s all a
bit like that Tomorrow’s World, isn’t
it? I mean, they were predicting protein pills and jetpacks, weren’t they? Not
once did they say we’d all have smart phones and tiny skinny tellys and no
money. It’s a hilarious book, you really ought to read it. If you can find it,
that is. I couldn’t find it in the library, and inter-library loans were no
use. I mean, who do you have to sleep with to get one of those? I’m serious.
You tell me who exactly it is who needs that particular blowjob and I’ll be on
my knees with my mouth gaped in a heartbeat. I tried getting it from Amazon. No
joy. Ebay: similar. In the end I tracked it down in a book warehouse which
smelt worse than the Vice Chancellor’s armpit juice. But, no, it’s really
funny. He makes all these predictions about the economy, and they’re all based
on unions and the three day week. To him, Thatcher was just a funny woman who
liked ice cream. He knew nothing. But he had one useful quote, and I stuck it
in here because my supervisor told me I should consult the book, and she
probably hasn’t read it since it was published. She looks back, through
gin-tinted glasses, to a time when she was thrusting and energetic and studying
everything she could find, then going out on the beers and having a
knee-trembler round the back of the union. It’s all tied up in her mind: dirty,
panting, back-alley orgasms and Steven
Briers’ masterpiece. Still, if it gets me through this bloody thesis, that’s
good enough for me. So, yeah, this was taken from a 40 year old book by a man
writing about his future – our present – who managed to get almost everything exactly
wrong. And yet, here it is. Welcome to bloody academia. Where’s my jetpack?
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