I remember the place better than I remember the exact time. I know it was only a little while after the start of the Iraq war in 2003 and people seemed settled into the idea that, “this is how the world is now.” The only thing to do was to stagger the streets of Camden, Belsize park and the back roads around Hampstead Heath and South End Green, through boozy days and nights and kick up a fuss at everything you could. At the time the thoughts and the writing were chaotic  and I’d have it no other way but that didn’t stop me coming up with this. It was a snapshot of where I feel we’d gone wrong and how different things could have been.

Lying in bed trying to sleep and this very coherent vision of a different twenty first century comes to mind and I wanted, needed, to impart to someone. It’s 2000 and Al Gore is elected President. Either 911 never happened or in response the US does not declare war on Afghanistan. They certainly don’t invade Iraq without reason or provocation. As a result we do not prolong a feeling of social, political and economic dread. Democratic led America, that was so polarised in the 2000 election, with the backing and sympathy of the world and UN actually comfortably wins the 2004 election. America and the world seems less divided and not at war. People do not feel the need to break off into their small communities for a sense of false security. As a result, bullshit pc ideas don’t have much weight in a better mixed society. Comedians and activists don’t find the social and political scene so tragically funny and concentrate on more experimental humour and issues that are bigger than taking pot shots at an ineffective and corrupt government. We move on to more important issues. Led by the US, governments actually become more proactive on the environment issue. Many writers and creative types don’t seem to be so stymied by a culture and business world that is living in fear. Better ideas are readily available and viscous shallow thinking never becomes cool. People are subtly hit with better things to think of. A sense of freedom prevails, and I can go to sleep without having to think of all this.

I’m loathed to explain much about it and the strongest temptation is to let it stand as how I saw things at that time and leave it alone. But now I wonder how foreign these thoughts might seem. From a 2025 point of view I can understand why anyone might see a negativity. I’m pointing out how wrong things had got. We were spoiled by the 90s and, albeit somewhat retrospectively, we thought we were living in a golden age of freedom. By the time the twenty first century rolled around I had a sense of hanging around after the party. I felt like I was still a dreamer, still kicking around, and those words were from a me at a time when the world was taking a change of course. I felt like we were living a last hurrah to all that had gone before.

There was something hopeful in thinking that it didn’t have to be like this, that this was not inevitable and if there was a way we could have gone but didn’t then there could be other paths, not necessarily back to where we were, but onward to something else. I also cannot deny that there was some thrill of watching the chaos, being part of my own chaos. For those born after 2000 I can’t ever accurately explain the feeling of bursting through that number, only to find that nothing had really changed. Years before I had written this:

“All the anticipation of the end of the world is over at midnight and the world as we know it can start over again. It is nothing special. Are decades dead? I can’t imagine the next decade will be consequentially different. Will every decade that follows be like this one? The Sixties, Seventies and Eighties all had a distinctive shape, all very different to the last one. I can’t see what will be different about the next decade. I can see that numbers will become meaningless after Two thousand. The countdown will reach fever pitch, the Millennium will climax, and nothing will happen after that. Everyone will go back to work, and people won’t be so keen on counting anymore.”

The dream was perpetual Nineteen Ninties. Or was it just perpetual youth? Either way, perpetual Nineties never happened. 9/11 changed the world. But those early years of the twenty first century, imagining how things could have been, seeing a world of a different shape, kicking at the edges, hoping you could help shape it, bend it your way, one little bit at a time, could never be described as returning to the same old thing.

By the time we found a new normal, accepted that you’d never go to a concert, sports event or on to a flight without going through various stages of security, it had settled down to morally and culturally have more in common with the Nineteen Eighties. I’d often say, “Perpetual Eighties without the good music.” I don’t think that’s true. I didn’t realise it at the time but there was a backdrop of music in the early 2000s that sustained me. And there was plenty of good in this new age.

What can I do with these memories now, some twenty years later? Maybe if enough of us sit down and write how differently things could have gone since 2010 we can work out where we went wrong and change course appropriately, or at least start leaning in the right direction, if only in hope we knock the ship of its current course. Failing that, you’ll create your own fantasy world, your own version of how things could be, and imagine living there.