Remember that time I went to the future?

It’s catch-up time again, so a quick reminder of a post from last September (figuratively speaking) to fill a space where otherwise nothing would be. Not that there would be anything in the space if nothing was here, but in this vast (and now altered) Universe, there’s always something…

I woke up this morning, and looked out of my window. I never realised that Aqua Mansion was hundreds of stories high. Neither have I realised that I live on the coast, but apparently I do. Or I did this morning.

Everything was different. The sky was a shade of blue so vibrant, it wasn’t Sky Blue at all… it was more of a Postcard Blue – you know, where anything that is blue on a postcard is exactly the same shade of blue regardless of what it is.

My bedroom was so much larger than it was when I went to bed last night. I got myself out of bed, and was about to step onto the floor when a white, round, metal disc hovered and attached itself to my foot. Another one then appeared and did the same to my right foot. Before I knew it, I was being taken, by my feet – well, by these disc things – to the bathroom. I think they were to save me from walking, but not having the luxury of being upright, I was dragged to the bathroom, with my head banging on the floor every second or so. That pounding feeling is still with me. Ooh me head…

After doing the bathroom things – apart from switching the light on, running a bath, brushing my teeth and taming my seriously out of control hair, which were all automated – I went to get dressed. Luckily by now, I’d managed to regain my super standing upright ability, as the discs attached themselves again, and took me through a couple of sliding doors (that I had never seen in my life) and into my glide-in wardrobe.

Metal arms shot out at me from all angles, thrusting shirts and trousers, jeans and shoes, t-shirts, cardigans, ruffs (ruffs!), rings, necklaces, socks and boxers, and a variety of other garments out to me, before snatching them back to present me with another choice. Who’d have thought the decisions behind choosing what to wear would be fraught with so many choices – and the dangers of possibly losing an eye or two.

I survived getting dressed, and the discs took me across the landing, passed the old faithful clock that is always in another time zone, and into the breakfast room.

“Good Morning, Tom” boomed an automated voice from out of nowhere. Only it wasn’t from nowhere. It was from the box of cornflakes. An automated, speaking, box of cornflakes! It was also in mid flow, pouring a large mound into a large bowl. Once finished, a clanking sound accompanied a tube that extended from the fridge, and milk poured over the cornflakes. As it finished, a siren wailed, and another voice, a computer sounding voice this time, said “Fresh milk order completed.” I must have used the last of the milk.

I was about to reach for the bowl of cornflakes when another disc appeared, a red one this time, and slipped itself beneath the bowl. It then lifted the bowl and hovered passed me, out of the breakfast room and across the landing, and down to the living room. I didn’t have time to catch it as it went by, but a second later my discs carried me to the same room. It’s a very eerie feeling walking without doing the walking.

The discs lowered me onto my favourite chair – at least something is still the same! – and the red disc brought me my cornflakes. The TV automatically came on, although the TV was now on the wall opposite me. In fact, the whole wall was the TV, which took me back a bit. The Digital On-screen Graphic told me I was watching BBC88. They were repeating Cash in the Attic.

I finished my cornflakes, and the split second after my spoon was in the bowl the red disc came and snatched it away from me. I last saw it flying out of the door in the direction of the kitchen.

Breakfast done, and I had to watch the end of the programme. I’d missed the beginning, but these daytime shows sometimes have a knack of keeping you hooked. After the show had finished – the woman had raised £305.00 from some old niknaks she bought back in 2874 and had never used them, by the way – one of those dreadful shows started where people air their dirty laundry in public and argue about it. I watched that show too, and then decided I had to work out where exactly I was.

I was in Aqua Mansion, I know that much. Aqua Mansion sometime after 2874 to boot. That explains the disc things, the automated toilet flushing facilities, and the speaking cornflakes. I’m surprised my favourite chair had survived, and Cash in the Attic for that matter, perhaps even more surprised than I should have been for those, considering I had woken up some eight-hundred and some years in the future.

As my head was still throbbing from being carted across the bedroom floor at a rate of fifty thuds a second (or so it seemed), I decided to have another quick nap before I went out for the day. Although where I was going to go, and how I would actually get there was beyond me, considering the mansion was now surrounded by water as the tide had come in. I hovered back to the bedroom, and lay back down onto my bed, and dozed off.

I woke up again in 2011. I had to walk to the bathroom.

And I hadn’t even checked to see if Betelgeuse was still there after 2874. Some mornings… you just don’t think, do you?