LOOKING back on things, I’ve never been a big fan of the future. Too many questions, too few answers for starters.
I mean, it’s not that difficult to take a good long stare at man’s inhumanity to man as it stands right before our sorry eyes.
Take fashion. Normal jeans that haven’t been refluxed by the hungry lovechild of a Bengal tiger and the queen moth and don’t need three shoehorns, two tins of WD40 and David Blain to writhe into are already hard enough to track down, either
up the town or on the computer.
It might get worse before it gets better too. With Brexit snarling and frothing like a big black dog around the next bend, we’ll all be sailing up a check-pointed sh1t creek without a single wireless paddle to our names before we can mumble ‘any odds, boss?’ outside a local virtual offy while wearing zero denim whatsoever – ferally mauled or otherwise.
I hope I’m not over-thinking this and you see where I’m coming from and heading to here. If not, never worry your settled head. There’s always VAR and Hawkeye to sort it all out for you.
Anyway, Dodgy’s apocalyptic anxiety dreams aside, there may yet be hope in a loveless place, as denim-free Rihanna probably re-mixed en route to the New Lodge flats from a fairly prudish Bangor wheat field back in the day when, ironically, the cost of living and clothes was pretty reasonable for most humans.
According to a report released this week by a mobile tech company – whose name sounds suspiciously like something the All-Ireland senior football trophy itself might do/have done after beating the Dubs single-handedly in a futuristic All-Ireland final – our lives 50 years from now mightn’t be all that bad...
Sky Sports bot: “Well, Sam Maguire, you must be delighted at finally lifting yourself after skelping Dublin there?”
Sam: “Listen, it’s just another game, the Dubs were hard to beat. I have to trust the process now, get myself ready to throw this banquet-for-one into the microwave tonight, have a singsong then focus on the O’Byrne Cup next weekend.”
Everything, of course, will largely depend on our 3D-printed replacement organs still being connected to a patchy 8G network.
And while it’s unclear if the likes of your Manchester Uniteds will be able to use the same technology to, say, print off new managers, eager suitors for Alexis Sanchez-types, one-way rocket ships to the moon for Luke Shaw- and Chris Smalling-types and maybe the odd inter-planetary trophy or two, the possibilities are seemingly endless.
All-inclusive space holidays (not Santa Ponsa), underwater motorways (not the Westlink), flying buses (not planes) and self-cleaning homes (I’m all ears) could all be part of daily life in about 50 years’ time, according to some predictions in this study from Samsung’s highly-paid, fertile-brained futurologists published a few rotations of the earth (days) ago.
These digital revolutionaries are also teasing us with the prospect of state-of-the-art leisure pursuits such as a Quidditch-style sport played on hoverboards in mid-air, taking our minds off the increasing predictability of the sports we currently watch.
Hopefully we’ll all have decent wings retro-fitted between our fat backs and arthritic hip flexors before all those adult-only final stubs go on sale to members up at the club.
The game itself, mind you, sounds like serious oul’ craic in fairness – imagine the short kick-out strategies while everyone’s pushing up past the 40 on lightning fast skateboards with no wheels. Fookeen deadly, as they say on the Hill.
No doubt there’ll still be plenty to give off about during the week in
the, er, newspapers and whatever Twitter’s grandson has been christened by 2069.
Whether the Quidditch-Style Games Association [QSGA] can sort out their club and county fixtures list before the solar system then eats itself from the inside out, though, remains anyone’s guess at this juncture.
The North Dubs and the South Dubs having faster hoverboards and much more Bitcoin than everyone else inside their Apple wallet en route to their historic sixth Harry Potter Cup on the trot in the sky blue skies high above Croker is the only surefire cert.
One man who definitely won’t be caught out by all this tricky business like the future and stuff is Ricky Hatton, who has been busy road-testing typical 2069 restaurant bills.
The former four-time world boxing champion, was happy to part with some serious dough – in what he described eloquently a ‘f****** expensive’ holiday – while scranning with his girlfriend Charlie [surname not available] on the Greek island
of Mykonos.
He told Twitter how he woke up in a “puddle of f****** tears” when he discovered his restaurant bill from the night before. The charge of £1,750 for a meal-for-two included an £820 (Kobe) ribeye steak, a £450 bottle of champers, a £120 bottle of prosecco and a £9 glass of orange juice.
“I didn’t even look... That’s what
you get for being a fat greedy little s***,” he concluded philosophically.
I’ll tell you this for nothing. If Dodgy finds himself paying nine pounds, euros or Bitcoins for a glass of orange juice anywhere in 2069, he’ll be on the first hoverboard or jet-pad out of there, mark my words... even if Jim Gavin’s Antrim have managed to win their maiden All-Ireland ‘B’ Senior Quidditch-style Championship in the dark clouds hanging high over AIG Casement Park.
