No Planet B - Part Eight
or, The History of the World Backwards
July 2006
The Anti-Social Movement
A gathering swell of anti-sociability breaks over Britian from the late 1800’s to the early 1700’s and beyond.
Everybody blames each other for the rise in illness, the shorter lives and why it all went wrong. People leave the cities after arguing with neighbours and go and live in isolated cottages.
But most representative of the AntiSocial Movement is that people are now deliberately affecting or inventing an unintelligible local dialect, so as to discourage conversation and enquiry. Not only do people in different areas have different accents but in the same street.
‘Peter, old man, what’s going on? You didn’t talk like this yesterday.’
‘’Appen I did, ‘appen I’s dusna. Ret recky tae ken. Bahoobe! And I’ll thank ‘ee to caw me Gallamumphrey for now on.’
Crime
‘Why are we still devoting huge amounts of resources to ID theft and computer fraud,’ asks a Constable Of the Peace, ‘when nowadays the crimes people are really concerned about are cony-catchers, bully-cocks and flimpers? They are worried by organised crime on the coaches in the form of bung-nippers rolling the leer, not to mention queer-bit makers with their fletches, queer-cole and fleet notes. It’s all a result of technology die-off. What were once high-street spy-cameras are now maypoles.
Samuel Johnson laments decline of the English language
Sir, the English language is in decline. Allow me to quote you a transcript of a conversation from the twenty-first century. People then would think nothing of using as many as twenty similies in a single sentence:
‘I was like getting off the bus and he was like on the pavement and I was like ‘is he blanking me?’ cos if he is that’s like ‘oh my days!’
1764 Opera
Mozart gives a press conference at which he declares that his new opera will stay true to the key operatic principles: nostalgia for British rock acts of the 1980s! The grand opening of Mozart’s new opera is held at La Scala, Milan. In 1764 the curtain rises for the first time on Don Giovanni or Rip It Up And Start Again - Featuring the Music of Orange Juice.
LIGHTS: THEATRICAL
IL COMMENDATORE:
Don Giovanni, a cenar teco
M’invitasti, e son venuto!
DON GIOVANNI:
When I first saw you, something stirred within me,
You were standing sultry in the rain.
If I could have hed you I would have held you,
Rip it up and start again!
Rip it up and start again!
Rip it up and start again!