We are here

ISBN-13: 9781481079600 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 490 str.

MR Mark S. L. Reed; Mark S. L. Reed

Opis

Will anyone know we actually lived here in the UK or USA or Europe in 1000 years time? Who remembers anything about the average citizen who lived in the UK 1000 years ago? 1000 years ago was approximately the time of the Battle of Hastings, 1066, most schoolchildren and adults in the Western World know of this date. The unfortunate King Harold Godwinson of England, who was an Anglo - Saxon, fought Duke William, later King William 1st of Normandy on the bloody Hill of Senlac Wood near Battle in Sussex and sadly lost his life and his kingdom to the French speaking Norman conquerors . So, let us say that out of 100 people about 70 would know of this fact and know the names of King Harold and King William. There was a famous tapestry known as the Bayeux Tapestry which told the famous story of the battle on the tapestry, practically cartoon like, as the graphics of the 11th century were not very advanced, no photo shop, no desk top publishing in those days. However who has remembered the local free peasant farmers, such as Sigrid Beowulfsson of the small hamlet of Wynchsea near Hastings. He had a pregnant wife, Berta to worry about, the price of corn had fallen again due to bumper crops that summer. Vikings had raided the coast the previous year and caused havoc with the foreign merchants who would now not be willing to buy his surplus corn at Hastings market. All these troubles were causing him lack of sleep and constant worry and were a big problem for him and his worried wife, Berta. No one remembers Sigrid's problems because, firstly he was probably illiterate and couldn't read or write, only the village priest could read and write, and probably then only some poor Latin and maybe old English. Secondly even if he could write very few people, apart from monks and priests would bother to write a diary of their daily lives, until much later, possibly not until the 13th or 14th centuries and even then it was mostly nobles, priests, monks and royal scribes writing things down. Most of what we know of life in the dim and distant 11th century was from the Doomsday Book, commissioned by King William 1st as a list of all the property, cattle, sheep, foodstuffs and all the contents of England. It was produced so that King William could tax the poor conquered English and he could pour the riches of England into his royal coffers. My idea for this book, or rather two books is that firstly this book studies the minutiae of life in the UK ( as I live in the UK ), however it could relate to anywhere in the Western World today and the idea is that this book will be published now and copies made in a form of printed metal sheets on Titanium ( or similar long lasting metal or a long lasting carbon plastic ) and the two books will be put into a time capsule under one of the lions in Trafalgar Square, in Central London, or as near as I can get it buried with Boris Johnson's ( the current Mayor of London ) blessing. The time capsule would not be opened until the year 3,012 so that the citizens of Novus Londinium (the name for London in 1000 years time) would be able to know how we savages and barbarians lived out our little lives back here in the petrol soaked haze of the 21st Century. This book would be the 21st Century version of a sort of Samual Pepys Diary discussing all the tiniest items that make up our lives in the 21st Century. I have tried to include some wit and humour into this book to make it amusing and more readable. I have compared life in our century to life in Roman, Medieval, Georgian and modern times. I have also written a sister book called, "Diary of a 21st Century Proletariat " which is an ongoing day by day diary of my life and all its little trials and tribulations . I have also included day by day news updates to show what was happening in the wider world at the same time as what was happening in my little world. A website www.wearehereworld.com has also been created to go with this series of books