BACON ROLLS

The year is 2021.

It’s a fantastic year in many respects and a terrible one in others. A global pandemic; the likes of which you only used to see in sci-films, witnessed from behind a blanket with a bowl of popcorn; has swept across the planet and brought many new terms into our day-to-day vocabulary.

Thankfully they’ve got a vaccine now, so people are no longer hoarding toilet paper and learning how to bake bread from Youtube videos or doing yoga with their cats. No, 2021 is the year of hope. Life is slowly getting back to normal. People are starting to go on holiday again. Others are finally having the weddings they’d postponed. And then there are others who aren’t quite sure how they’re going to fill the void in their soul now that they can no longer criticise others for their management of the pandemic/inability to follow the rules/ *insert other criticism here* via capitalised updates on their Facebook pages, as the world is now ever so slowly moving on.

I’m not a history teacher by any stretch of the imagination, but let me fill you in on the past 100 years or so, just in case books become extinct and then the internet crashes and everyone who could ever remember the important stuff all die off at the same time. I mean, you never know.

Since 1920 we’ve had a World War, walked on the moon and realised that smoking is bad for our lungs. Women can now vote, go to work and use contraceptives. We (as in, people) can explore the world by means of the aeroplane (looks like a large robotic bird, hopefully they still have them in some transport museum or another if you want to look it up) and men and women can choose to be a different sex to the one they were born as, if they want. It is no longer a criminal offense to prefer the gender(s) that one is inclined to prefer. Gay marriage is legal in many countries and states, although, unfortunately, not everywhere.

Now let us now move on to the current year (not your current year, obviously, but mine!); 2021.

Starbucks, Costa and McDonalds are slowly taking over the world one new store at a time. Seagulls are getting bigger and bigger and I fear that one day they, too, may take over the world. Many people’s favourite pastimes include watching ‘reality TV’ shows where you get to consume other people’s drama and forget that you have none or too much of your own, ‘going out’ (this means consuming alcoholic beverages with friends in a pub) and going on social media. Social media is where you go to stop feeling inadequate by posting photos and over-sharing in a way which makes other people feel inadequate.

Social media is also probably why your thumbs look different from ours. Thanks to evolution, they have likely developed thus to make the act of ‘scrolling’ less taxing on the limbs.

Over the chapters to come, I will attempt to take you on a journey which will encompass many of the things which are most pertinent to our generation. I may elaborate on some of the points already covered in this prologue. I hope that by the end of this book you will have a clearer picture of the year 2021 - particularly of life in the UK, from where this book is being penned - and how it has shaped life as you now know it.

Salutations and best wishes from the year 2021.