Spirit Of The Ages

August 1990, North Norfolk, England

Unseen forces were operating high above the flat North Norfolk skies.

The long summer holidays became too bright, too windy,

Too many large billowy clouds creating a post cold war menace.

Too many fighter jets flying around from the nearby RAF base.

I was about 15 years old then.

Me and my friends decided to go and pick strawberries for money at a local fruit

farm. The sun was too hot for my skin, I burned even with suncream. Eastern European refugee immigrant workers had talk of distant wars. The local train from Norwich to Cromer passed by on the raised bank and stopped at the old empirical Gunton Station every hour or so.

During the picking duties, I spent most of the time speaking to my friends about the latest belle of the school or the latest budget sci fi desert 90s post apocalyptic film, or how tall, old or short film stars of the time were meant to be. Some of my friends managed to work hard and earn a “good” amount of money for the time.

I found it boring and in those nights I dreamed without intention of strawberries the horrific sweet smell would not go away even after a bath.

One particularly long day, I think it was day 6, I cycled home on my mountain bike.

The menacing billowing flatland clouds and wind tried to push me back to the farm.

I managed to get back home. A wonderful parcel wrapped in brown paper had arrived, dropped onto the terracotta tiles in the back kitchen of the old cottage where I lived.

It had a black rubber stamp on it – “ Multiverse Games, Post Mail Order”

I opened the package, a game…

I had ordered “SimCity” by Infogrames. My anticipation of making cities at least that day were destroyed.

It was the WRONG game.

However this game in the box was called “Spirit of The Age!” by Hawkwind labs. Was this a band? I think I had seen some of their albums in the CD rental stalls in the library. There was of course no Youtube in those old times to quickly find out. Was there now a computer game about them?

“ I am a clone I am not alone”

It was 3pm, and my parents were at work. I played the game for 6 hours on my AtariST.

By 9pm, I had played out the game and it resonated with the book Dangerous Visions by Harllan Ellison I had read on the school sports field before term finished in the sun, imagining I was in California not a Norfolk backwater.

I went for a walk, on my own around the path called “two gate lane”.

The moon was full so that would help me run away from the big black dog that roamed these lands.

The moon framed large billowing clouds over the north sea over the hill like black plate glass. To the west something strange a 10 degrees off the horizon,

One bead of light, then another and another.

The UFO books when I was 10 said they were ball lights.

Perhaps?

The summer rolled by, and I put the “Spirit of the Age Game” into a drawer along with the rapidly outdated AtariST.

Perhaps it was real or perhaps it was some weird fabricated dream from some future technology rewriting the past with false images.

Perhaps I had really had SimCity sent to me and this was all just a dream. We are all made of dreams…

September would come soon, the colder nights, the burning stubble fields and the promise of parties and first experience of alcohol. This moment in time would fade away and it would soon be time for kids, me and my friends to leave and study in the universities….

Meanwhile strange objects drifted across the sky and technology from the future planted false memories into us…..

I have no intention of picking strawberries again but I like them with cream sometimes and meringue these days.