| The last day of the past. "2000" was printed on too many party
hats for it to mean anything, 2001 has always been more of a dramatic
science-fiction cliché than a proper year - 2002 will be the
real future, whether or not the world changed forever a couple of
months ago. Driving along a bypass, electric lights dotting
lines around a floodlit Lewes castle, I feel myself as vague
figure in the imaginations of the dead, and for the first time I am
genuinely, powerfully aware of myself as a person from The Future.
And funny clothes and electronic gewgaws aside, it's all just guilt,
a horrible, yawning, apologetic guilt towards everyone whose footprints
we're crossing, whose predictions we're stepping through. I feel the
slight weight of those reading these words tomorrow or next week or
next December, and wonder dimly what we'll have done to the world by
then.
And I'm off to drink things. Have a new year, everyone.
| 
