Unwrapping xmas presents - a pile twenty feet high - in the Millennium
Dome, with a large crowd of people standing by expectantly. As I read out the
label on each on a cheer goes up and a round of applause, and I know I'm
supposed to read them all out but after four copies of the same book I have
nothing to say and I wonder if it's all some kind of bizarre publicity event
when I find a big squashy parcel in Santa paper from my father. Yay!!
go up the cheers, and there are my family, crowding around me, open it
open it. Inside, clear pink plastic, folded neatly. I shake it out -
they're all beaming with excitement - and it's something like a cross between
those seventies vinyl raincoats and a spacesuit, with a zip up the front and
a bubble hood. See? says Dad proudly. I did it! and I realise
that he's finally cracked his invention of the personal air transportation
device. Everyone is watching as I zip myself in: cameras and monitors throw
ripples of light on the suit, they're filming this, someone is interviewing my
sister, who is preening in a Gucci shirt, my mother is looking
embarrassed. As the zip closes, the suit inflates. Reflected in the monitors I
look like a pink shiny balloon animal, stumpy semi-transparent legs, truncated
stiff arms, bubblehead lolling at a strange angle, not quite inflated. Dad is
shouting instructions, but the hood closes off sound and before I can interpret
what he's saying I begin to float, slowly then more swiftly, upwards.
I am afraid of the beams in the roof, sharp metal edges coming into focus all
too fast. I fly, speed still increasing, through an air vent at the top of the
dome. The air whips at me, sending me spinning high across the glimmering
black-and-orange riversnake beneath. Where the hell am I going? How do I
work this? I lift my right hand, and embedded in a clear pocket on the end
of it is one of those domed glass, snow-scene paperweights. I shake it. The
snow builds, glitter specks falling and separating out, and I see inside a tiny
London, foil river, weeny plastic Dome, glowing steadily: and as I look back at
the real thing I see hundreds of other suited transparent figures, floating
towards me, waving.