F**k The Millennium

The Future Never Happened I: Fuck The Millennium

"We were brought up on the Space-Race and now they expect you to clean
toilets."
'Glory Days' Pulp 1999

"It was meant to be great but it's horrible"
King Mob flyer, mid seventies

Once I used to love the future. I used to look forward over the years
and wait for them to come.

"Things can only get better."

Like fuck they can.

One.

Just for a second, as the sky lit up and all the people smiled at each
other and threw open their arms and, just for a moment everything
stopped, it seemed that it had finally happened&;#8230;

I suppose we all believed it in a way, we might say we didn't but we
did. Deep down, we knew nothing would change, but we al hoped that it
would.

On the telly it all looked spectacular, fireworks and streamers and
everyone dancing and hugging, covered in light, happy breaths hanging
around them in clouds. Looking at it, it felt like maybe, just maybe,
this year out of all the other years, something might change. We should
have known better, so soon after the last great let down, after the
last brave new world smiled at us then kicked us in the stomach, that
this one would be no different, but, like last time, we hoped. We
hoped, from our stomachs upward, a great grasping yearning, that this
would be the turning point. We hoped because that's all we had left us,
the only real power we had, the power to wish and dream that finally
the future would come to us.

It shouldn't have been a surprise that out here the year two thousand
never happened, but it was. Not an electric moment of realisation, an
ecstatic flash of insight, but a tiny, nagging feeling that somewhere,
somehow, in some way, we'd all been cheated. Something should have
happened, a little bit of magic somewhere, some miracle or other to
mark the end of an era, but nothing special did. And how could all of
the dreamers not feel letdown and all of the salvaged marriages not
feel disappointed? Looking into his eyes, lined and red-rimmed, and
telling him, no matter what had happened, the future was here now so
the past didn't matter, how could you not feel cheated when the next
day everything was the same?

That was my parents, that. My Mam had moved out, got herself a little
flat, met a few blokes for drinks, started going down the Bigg Market
again. My Dad just sat in the house, smoking tab after tab, the
curtains drawn, fag ash like tiny stars on the carpet. He'd had himself
a woman on the side once too, years back. I remember when I was about
twelve I was sat upstairs playing on the Spectrum with Neil from down
the street when my Dad came in form work. Instead of going into the
living room and turning on the telly, he went straight into the kitchen
and made My Mam a cup of coffee, then came upstairs. I didn't look
round as he came through the bedroom door, but cigarette smoke filled
the room as he sighed and cleared his throat. He said hallo to Neil
than stepped up behind me and rubbed the top of my head, like he used
to when I was little and said I should go down and sit with my Mam. I
paused the game and turned round to look at him and he was just stood
there, arms hanging at his sides, coat still on. He looked so anxious
and shifty, like a kid who'd just broken a vase, that I really wanted
to laugh. He looked down at me, his mouth a thin line underneath his
moustache, forehead like old tree bark, knotted and lined, and said he
was going to put a bet on. I said right.

He didn't come back for three months. It was snowing when he did, the
sky purple, the lines of things soft with snow. I remember vividly the
tiny plastic tree overloaded with all of the decorations and tinsel
that would have usually fitted on the big, proper tree that my Dad
would bring home on the twelfth. I can still see the cheap card sat on
the sideboard with the words 'to Tony, Merry Christmas, dad and Sandra'
written in it in a handwriting that wasn't my Dads. My Mam sat there,
lips pinched around her cigarette, padded slippers in the shape of
pig's faces on the end of her black tighted legs, eyes fixed on the
telly as my dad banged at the door. As soon as he started I got up out
of my chair to go and let him in but my Mam stopped me.

"You just stay where you fuckin' are. He can bloody freeze out there
for all I care." A cold in her voice almost knocked me back into my
chair. We hadn't really talked about my Dad going, but I think I knew
it was pointless. Talking about it would only have upset her, so I left
it. It had always been me and her anyway, at least she talked to me,
not like my Dad. He just sat there, eating his tea and smoking his
tabs. It didn't really seem a problem to me to admit to myself that I
didn't really miss him. Still though, I felt bad sat down in our living
room with my Dad shouting through the letterbox and my Mam lighting tab
after tab. Deep down I had a sense that maybe this wasn't how it was
meant to be, that somehow this didn't tally with families I saw on
telly, or read about at school.

If I remember correctly we sat through an entire episode of Eastenders,
tight lipped in silence, as my dad pleaded and pleaded to be let in,
hollering undying love through the black draft excluders, pausing
occasionally to shout back at a passer-by or to tell a neighbour to
fuck off and mind their own business.

Eventually my mother relented with a great snort of air out of her
nostrils, and opened the door. The vodka bottle clinked as my dad half
dropped it onto the coffee table, before weaving his way to the chair
he always sat in, flopping into it with a great expulsion of
breathe.

"Hallow Da."

"Hallow Son." A fumble in his crumpled shirt pocket produced a grubby
five-pound note, offered to me with his dirty, chipped nails, two
fingers faint nicotine brown. "Me an' your Mam have to talk. So," a nod
towards the door, "Take yoursel' out for a bit, aye?"

I nodded back and went to get my coat just as my Mam came back in with
two glasses of different sizes. One said Majorca, the other Benidorm. I
used to find it funny that none of us had ever been out of the country,
yet the house was full of souvenir ashtrays and donkeys and dancing
Spanish ladies.

The last thing I saw as I walked the tiny distance from the bottom of
the stairs where my coat was hanging up, to the front door directly in
front of it, was a glimpse through the living room door of my mother,
feet up on the chair, legs crossed and pulled into her chest in front
of her like a shield. Even though she always seemed very old to me,
suddenly, for no reason, she looked very young, like photos I'd seen of
her from before I was born.

Outside the snow was fresh and the streets empty, even the police
sirens were dampened by the thick white blanket. Not knowing what else
to do I made a snowball, scraping snow from a car bonnet, and threw it
at an orange streetlamp. The sky was a light purple flecked with snow
that seemed to swirl around the windows and lights. I remember standing
there, the snow landing on my face and hair, little drops of water
running down the back of my neck, rubbing the fiver together inside my
pocket. I don't think that I was thinking anything.

The way I see it looking back the streets were completely empty of
people and cars, although I'm sure that can't really have been true. It
felt kind of magical, just being totally alone as I walked through
somewhere that was usually full of people, like I was the last person
in the world. Without really thinking about it I came up to the
shopping centre. A two level development built in the sixties, shops at
ground level and shops on top of those with a balcony that you reached
with a ramp, even this seemed different that night. Two men were
arguing in front of the Chinese, framed in the light coming from
inside. A group of kids a couple of years older than me were standing
up on the balcony, sheltering underneath the canopy which covered it.
Some of them were passing around cans and blowing aggressive smoke
rings, two were kissing, the boy with his hands down the back of the
girls leggings. As I passed the off-licence, the door made a 'whee-wa'
sound as somebody came out. Briefly I thought about spending my dads
money, but it didn't seem right, not that night.

I kept walking further into the estate, further into empty streets.
Crunching through the snow I felt like a ghost floating through some
half-finished sketch. The world looked softer somehow with all of its
detail erased. Despite the fact it was freezing, the cold air nipping
at my face and fingers, the estate seemed warmer, more welcoming. It
was like the snow had taken away all of the rough edges, made the world
softer. It almost looked pretty.

Just walked for hours that night. When I got back I went straight to
bed without turning the lights on, meticulously folding my tracksuit in
the dark, as the headboard of what was now my parents bed again banged
against the wall.

After that, the years went by for my parents. My dad lost his job, my
Mam got one. My Dad started going out and drinking because he didn't
have a job, my Mam because she did. They would knock seven bells out of
each other, pissed out of their heads, while I kept out of the way.
Things continued as they always had until I moved out, then my mother
moved out.

On the Millennium night, totally by accident, my parents ended up at
the same party and decided to get back together, for 'auld lang syne'
most probably. My Mam told me about it later. She said that my Dad came
over to her just as the countdown to the new century began, grabbing
her and shouting 'let's do this the way it was meant to be, pet, you
an' me', before clamping his lips over hers just as Big Ben started to
chime. He said 'start of a century babe, what say we give it another
go?'. He was so romantic, she said, that she couldn't refuse and they
danced together to The Pogues, then went home to the old house, my dad
singing and knocking over dustbins all the way.

"So Merry Christmas&;#8230; I love you baby&;#8230; I see a
better day, when all our dreams come true&;#8230;"

Within a week nothing was different, everything was how it had always
been. A marriage saved by a new century was a marriage saved by a great
big lie. We'd all been swindled. The future never arrived.

Why am I telling you all this? I suppose I wanted to show you that it
wasn't only people like me who fell for the dream of progress and the
romance of the future. My parents, and millions like them, did too.
Inside, a tiny, flickering spark of belief that the next century would
be better, probably left over from other days when the future seemed
worth looking forward to. Me, I was raised on the future from the
start. If anyone needed the future to happen, it was me.

Continued in 'Nostalgia For an Age Yet To Come', "The Future Never
Happened" Chapter II