A PRESENT FOR THE FUTURE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31760, 17 August 1968, Page 12

A PRESENT FOR THE FUTURE

fßu WHIM WHAM) Living in the Past Is a popular Way of escaping the Present, More Pleasant! Or even if less pleasant, it’s nice To have the Feeling that It can’t happen twice, Not precisely in the same Way, On the identical Hour or Day, And (in Theory at least) One can select The happier Occurrences for Retrospect. But living in the Future is the Mod Thing. It isn’t altogether an odd Thing That the really With-It have to get Ahead-of-It, And as for getting Behind-It, they live in mortal Dread-of-It I know People who are so sick of 1968 They just can’t wait, They live in Spirit in a high-rise Flat Which hasn’t yet risen. Think of That! They read so Much futuristic Twaddle That their last Car but One was a 1980 Model. They can’t dig their Gardens without surmising The Extent to which the Value of the Section is rising. If they live in a City of Half a Million Souls, Making it a Million is the least of their Goals. If New York has Urban Arthritis, the faster They can go, the Better, to put THEIR City in Plaster. Their Predilections Are for statistical Projections. Their Eyes are positively glazed with Vision, What’s under their Noses being an Object of Derision. The Verb TO DEVELOP has no Subject or Predicate, Being merely That to which Developers dedicate Themselves, I suppose they do achieve SOMETHING, Sir? and that the Future in Which they believe Will be truly thankful for What It is about to receive?