As I said to my friend D over Sunday brunch this morning (and we got the whole Advertiser Crossquiz filled in, too, unless you count the one we sort of made up for the name of some Irish legend's father, whom we dubbed Usribagh, pronounced 'Dave, mate'), D, I said, I fear the future. I have seen the future and it is unutterably horrible. Bird flu, crazed terrorists, relations with every single country to our immediate north-north-west comprehensively stuffed, halfwits and warmongers running the world, and we as late Boomers (as it were) despised by the coming generation who have said frankly that they blame us for everything and expect us to hand over our houses and jobs but they're not then going to look after us when we're jobless and homeless and our joints don't work.
Our joints don't work now, she said.
I was reminded by this conversation of the sleepy lizard I saw the other day in my back yard (and not only because his, her or its joints weren't looking too flash either; that's just how lizards walk). I was on the phone about some work thing or other when out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement outside on the pavers through the screen door.
It was the lizard I know lives out there but usually keeps its distance and its head well down. However, there she, he or it was in full view, stumping along in the sun over the hot pavers and heading purposefully straight for the back door.
And for a moment I saw it through an ant's-eye lens. This gigantic prehistoric alien was about to come blundering into my house, knocking things over, thoughtlessly eating me and the cats, and generally wreaking destruction and havoc like T Rex.
My pragmatic sisters would say that if this was a sign, then it was a sign that the back yard needs mowing and the chooks next door had better look to their eggs. But I know better. I think it was a vision of the future.
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