fiat_knox | Dec. 20th, 2012

I received an email this year, which was six years in the making.

I posted something to Futureme.org this time, around six years ago. It dropped into my inbox this morning. I'd forgotten all about it - I didn't even think the page even still existed.

Here you go.

Dear FutureMe,

Here's hoping that you and yours are well.

As I write this, it's late December, just coming up to Christmas 2006. I will have just bookmarked the FutureMe website URL onto my My Yahoo! bookmarks list, and I'll be heading off into the kitchen of 15 Bell Court for some noodles soon.

It's Wednesday, 20 December 2006, and Torchwood will be on BBC2 tonight at 21:00. The boring episode, with the plane from 1953 landing in Cardiff over half a century late.

I've got an ear infection in my left ear, going down now by the feel of it. Yesterday it was bad, but today ... not so much.

Today, I spent the afternoon with Mum, heading off into town to get the Xmas shopping done. She got me the cordless mouse; I got Sam his DVD, Dad his notebook and myself that little Inca ocarina for £4 in The Works.

I also spent 2 hours in the Wrexham library posting stuff about the Awakened of Mage: the Awakening, while also working on my novel and doing research into both historical fashions and the shapes of faces, so I can describe both with a degree of authenticity.

In all, this was one busy day, and I write this email to you today to remind you of what it was like back at the end of 2006, on this cold wintery day.

I don't know what you'll be doing in 2012. You'll be 49. Alive, I sincerely hope, because you'll be responsible if I'm not. Well, I hope, because I'm responsible if you're not.

If all goes well, Mum and Dad are still alive - and you know how I will have grieved if they are not. Sam and Jessica will be alive, and both turned 18, so they'll both be of legal age and independent. By the grace of God, they'll both also still be alive, as will everybody I know and love today.

I just want you to know, from all the way back here, that I'm going to be doing my very best for you, all the way over there in the future. Well, six years in the future. I don't want to write further than that, because oh God I'm going to be old, and you know that some time in my future I'm going to be alone, no Mum, no Dad, and back here, I find that thought unbearable. I hope you'll be stronger, and sane enough to pass for normal still. Just to give me something to look forward to being when I am your age.

All my love,

The past me, back in 2006, who is alive now but who will be a shadow of your memory when you are 49.

You have my permission to weep freely now.

Alex
aka Fiat Knox
aka The Plainclothes Clown
aka Libra
(if I'm still using these nicknames in six years' time, I hope you smile to think of how it was for me that I needed to use them).