My dearest wee boy: a letter from the future

My dearest wee boy,

You’ll laugh when you read that! You’re way taller than your gran now, but I’m so minded of those days long past. So minded. And I am so proud of you and all that you have achieved in this new, amazing industry. But you’ve always loved vehicles, and space and time. Right from yon day Papa lifted you up in his arms and showed you the model of the "Austin Traveller" on the mantelpiece. ‘Why is that car broken, Papa? Can you fix it?’ And all your cars lined up, together, ready to race across the kitchen floor. Fire engines, bull dozers, nee naw bikes, mobile NASA rocket launchers. Name the vehicle, you loved it!

And you loved clocks, the biggest clock in the world, on our sitting room wall. And your great gran’s clock, chiming the hours, and the half hours. All that time, measured out.

Before the lockdown, before things changed, our really special times always included a bus or two or even three. ‘Tell mummy which buses we went on today.’ ‘The 12 and the 26 and the 31!’

The 31, all the way along Princes Street, up the Bridges and then to Bookbugs.

The wheels on the bus go round and round.

Zoom, zoom zoom, we’re going to the moon.

Your favourite books had vehicles, and space…Thomas, Paw Patrol, The Little Red Engine, 'Papa, can you get me the Moon, Dr Xargle’s Book of Earthlets'. And time, of course! And time.

Anyway…and then we’d go to the Zeum! Chambers Street Museum had been part of my childhood, Papa’s too. Of course, back then, there was a big pool of fishes in the atrium. That was long gone when you and I went there. And they’d changed the name. The National Museum of Scotland now.

How you adored that place! Into the glass lift, you’d press the 5 and up we’d go to the top floor. A giggle at how a cow pat provides just what a growing fly needs, a wee look to see what the ants were eating that day, and then downstairs to your very special gallery: Science and Technology. The planes, the trains, the cars, Freddy the Robot.

Papa and I always say that we knew that you’d grow up to be a scientist or an engineer, but my, this job that you’re doing is something else!

And now, here we are. Twenty years after the first lockdown. In a world changed. I don’t think I ever told you that, back in the old days, long, long before the first shift, I’d been a science student. Back in the early 70s, I’d read and embraced A Blueprint For Survival, published in a magazine called The Ecologist. The central theme was the absolute need for change. If we wanted this planet to survive and to thrive, we had to make changes. Huge changes. It was very radical. Thanks to the internet, you can still read about it, of course. When it was published, I really believed that the people in charge, the governments, the politicians, the industries, the money men would take heed of its messages. How naïve I was. How naïve. But there were truths there, and hopes.

After the first lockdown, the first shift, folk began to realise that we didn’t need to go back to some of the ways it had been before: the commutes, the face to face meetings, the pollution in the air and in the water. All of that. But, we needed to reach out to our pals, we needed to hug our loved ones. Ocht, we had missed them so much. And while there were some folk that absolutely believed that we would go back to "normal", I think that most of us knew that it wouldn’t happen. The scales had fallen from the eyes of too many. But it was a hard row, with the dark money men still trying to force us back to global capitalism, to the past.

What was needed was a gap, a lacuna, that we could slip through, and make things different. I’m astonished that, with the help of you young people, and your amazing machines, we’ve been able to achieve that. Who would have given credence to the prospect of time machines then? That was for Dr Who, for science fiction! But you, and your wonderful industry, have made it possible. You have made it possible for us to learn from the past, and to fix our past, to fix our planet. And reach out and touch our pals from the past, to hug our loved ones. That is some power to have, my dear lad. Some power. But I know that you’ll use it well. Of course you will.

With all of our love,

Papa and Gran xxx