Life in the Year 2000 by Jennifer aged 7

Recently I've been sorting through my paperwork and I came across some of my old school work. Among it was a piece from primary school that I vividly remember writing - my thoughts about what my life would be like in the year 2000. Back in 1987, that seemed a very long way in the future!

In the year 2000 I hope I will be a baby sitter. I also hope that I will have children of my own. I hope nobody will be poor or have no home. I hope that there will be more buses to help people get from one place to another. I hope everybody will be able to afford things like food and drink. I hope I will be able to go to university. I hope also that I will be able to buy a house and go on holiday to the seaside. Then I would be able to take my children and make sand boats for them. I hope I will marry somebody and live in Horsham. I hope people will be able to buy a lot of things and I hope I could win a lot of colouring competitions and get prizes. 

In the year 2000 I hope people will be able to buy cars and learn to drive. I hope I will go shopping like my Mummy does now and buy a cat called Poppy. I hope I will have three children called Jennifer, Anna and Thomas. I hope I will be able to buy toys and that they will invent some kind of toy called a wiggly woggly which is a toy which wiggles and talks. I hope all the little children will be able to go to school and learn things. I hope I will have a tabby cat called Pippy and a dog called Tinker. I hope people will be able to buy food to eat and drink to drink. I hope that for my birthday I will get some ribbon and materials to make cards. I hope I will get a gerbil to call Pineapple and a rabbit called Fruit and I hope that people will buy lots of air and helmets to go to the moon in. 

I hope that when the grass needs cutting somebody will cut it for me. I hope that if we want to be invisible we can. I hope that people will suddenly find you can live on the moon. I hope they will build houses there. I also hope they will build machines that when you press a button chocolate comes out. I hope that every garden in the world would look nice.

I'm pleased to say that some of this did come true, although not quite by the time I was 20. In retrospect going to university as well as having a husband, house and three children by then would have been quite ambitious. I'm also not sure that I could have kept up with all that as well as look after two cats, a dog, a gerbil and a rabbit. I'm pleased to say that I do have someone that will cut the grass for me, and I have taken my children to the seaside and made them sand boats. But I'm still waiting for the technology to make myself invisible, and obviously the world has a way to go yet when it comes to making sure that everyone has enough to eat and drink.

I read this out to the children (they loved it, particularly my long list of hoped for pets) and it inspired Mia, who is now the same age, to write her own version. Here are her hopes for the future:

When I'm older I want a boy and a girl. I want the boy to be called James. And the girl to be called Sophie. I want everyone to recycle. I want everyone to recycle more and have showers. I want a big house with lots of stuff. 

I love how unoriginal we both are when it comes to thinking of names - the names that I chose for my children are the names of me and my siblings and Mia has chosen the name of the boy who came for a play date the day she wrote this, along with her own middle name! Also my minimalist tendencies are clearly not rubbing off on Mia!

I'm really pleased that my teacher set this piece of work for us all those years ago, I wonder if any of my class mates still have theirs!