Hey mum. It’s me, Marty. I’m back from 2015.

Yeah, it’s nice. Not at all what I expected though. No flying skateboards. No hover cars. Not even a new version of the space shuttle. Lots of people still wearing jeans and t-shirts. I mean, they had 30 years, but no polyester jump suits to be seen except, hmm, hold on – cyclists. You have regular people and then you have cyclists. Now *they* look like proper future people. They wear tights and on top of their head is a replica of that face-sucker thing in Alien. These people thought (think, will think, may think – time travel tenses really need to get sorted out) that this is a fashion statement:

Tinkoff Saxo cycling team

Tinkoff Saxo by Morebyless cc licensed.

It’s not even fashionable here in 1985. And that’s saying something.

Also, their phones. Ye gods. There’s not a phone box to be seen anywhere. Instead they all have these portable phones that fit in their pockets. Well, to call them “phones” is being generous, because I rarely saw (will see, may see) them being used to call anyone. A better name for them would be “tickle devices”. People spend their days pawing them, jabbing them, swiping the them and thumbing them for goodness knows what reason. I think it might be a sexual thing. And possibly something to do with cats.

Tickle, tickle.

Swipe, by Jeremy Keith. cc licensed.

They use these tickle devices to “google” things. You see, in the future, whole armies of people will be employed to answer questions. You type in a question and someone reads it, opens up an encyclopaedia and gives them a list of possible answers to the question. The researchers at the other end are a bit thick though, because most of the answers they give are wrong. I don’t think they are getting paid enough. My heart goes out to all those people whose job it is to give directions to drivers. I mean, it must be a hell of a boring job just calling people up to tell them they need to turn right at the next roundabout.

Can't you see we're eating?

And it’s all about coffee these days (those days, those will be the days). Maxwell House or Nescafe instant granules is not good enough for these people. You can’t even ask for a coffee at these places. You say to them “can I have a coffee” and they just look at you as if you’re stupid. There’s a whole vocabulary now. It has to be an Americano (black coffee) or a Latte (coffee with milk) or a Frappuccino (yep, people in 2015 will pay to drink cold coffee). The same goes for chocolate and tea and milk and bread and breakfast cereals. And it’s low fat and gluten free and l. casei immunitas. To go shopping in the future, you need a masters degree in nutrition, otherwise you’ll probably starve to death.

So I’m glad to say the world hasn’t (isn’t going to have, may not have) ended in nuclear holocaust and that most people seem pretty normal, if it’s all a bit West Coast and healthy and sporty and image conscious. The future is to be welcomed, even if we’ll all need to take the scenic route to get there. But the cycling outfits. Man, that’s going to take some getting used to.