Noughtied

Everywhere I look there are retrospectives on what is alternatively the decade from hell or a bright shiny interregnum before the inevitable collapse of the West in the face of the burgeoning might of the dragon and tiger.

Then there's climate change; the soothsayers, the deniers, and the zealots.

I'm afraid that the decade that is about to expire is a bit of a blur for me. What I do remember, and still sometimes think about, is the response to 9/11 in this country. I was in Perth, ensconced in a pub (blurred), when a plane hit a tower. Nobody could deal with it, it was as if a video game had suddenly usurped the rolling news. Then the second plane hit and there was a dumbfounded silence. That's us I thought, they're us.

The rest of it? The net, the pods, the vacuous celebrity, the music, the films, the wars. I couldn't really give a toss. A low dishonest decade, and we're living with the consequences.

I can't believe I'll be living in the 10's. I'm a 50's man, and would me much more at home cruising around in a Jaguar XK150 roadster with a boot full of malt whisky and a floosie in a silk headscarf elegantly tipping cigarette ash into the slipstream.

One can but dream.

Facebook (Facetwat) and Twitter (Twatter) have no appeal whatsoever. Txting destroyed literacy, Gawd know what the latter will do. I'm not Linkedin and I am not a 123 Person. If anyone accuses me of being either I will come round to their house and force them to read poetry at gunpoint.

I might even force them to have sex with Carol Ann Duffy. That should be enough to put anybody off their porridge, unless they fancy a 3 way with Andrew Motion, Carol, and Ted Hughes (deceased).

Perhaps this will be the next big thing for the 10's. Group sex with poets. It'll be less 'Oh baby yes!' and more 'If I should meet you after long years, how should I greet thee, with silence or tears'. Let's face it, the latter is long enough for a multiple.

Multiplication was never my strong point, and I was useless at long division.