Going back to old days isn’t much of a future

“IT’S a shame about plastic being so bad for us,” my mother says, “because it’s really useful.”

She’s catching herself having to think hard before she uses one of those nice Ikea bags I’ve brought.

“So much progress in the past 70 years,” she sighs. She comes from a generation who knows how to wrap up a sandwich in the greaseproof paper from the batch loaf wrapping.

She began life in a single room with a box bed for her and her sister.

She fell asleep listening to Radio Luxembourg, the heat from the range keeping her warm. Returning to such radically reduced consumption might not be a seismic shift of the sort that formed continents 200 million years ago. But it doesn’t really sound like much of a future either.