Waiting in expectation of a wondrous Y3K

By PETER CALDER

So that's that. This is it. Here we are. At last. How does it feel?

Don't say it's like any other morning - or even any other New Year's Day. Feigned indifference is one of the more odious forms of pretentiousness. To paraphrase that cool Debbie Harry song: "Here comes the 21st century. Things are gonna be much better for a boy like me."

You may think such a sentiment is a little wet behind the ears. There's no compelling reason to believe things are going to change dramatically just because the numbers have ticked over on the great odometer of time. As the bloke who coins those pithy bumper stickers would say if he were writing for a family newspaper: same stuff, different millennium.

But it is a new year and New Year is the time for resolutions. Now, I'm particularly hostile to the idea of New Year resolutions. In my experience it takes only a couple of days for the fragility of my resolve to be exposed for all to see. But under the circumstances it seems appropriate to express a few forlorn hopes for the third millennium. The second, after all, was a time of fertile invention. We got Chopin, HJ Holdens and that little lint razor with which you can take the furballs off your pullover as long as you've got a couple of evenings to spare.

But the world is not perfect yet. So much to do and - if the scientists are to be believed - only about four billion years before the sun incinerates us completely. Best get started. Never mind my New Year's resolutions; here's what other people need to do to make the world a better place: In a brighter future, all supermarkets will have, in the greengrocery section, right next to the lettuces, a supply of plastic bags large enough to accommodate a lettuce without peeling away 40 per cent of its leaves.

There will be only one kind of toilet paper. This will bring to an end existential crises in the "bathroom tissue" aisle. None of it will be whitened with dioxin. This will allow us to avoid environmental crises in the eco-system. And none of it will be scented, on the grounds that the number of people who sniff toilet paper do not add up to a viable market.

Nobody will buy a stereo without supplying all neighbours within earshot of Smoke On The Water (or indeed Nessun dorma) with remote control units powerful enough to turn it down.

Some boffin will invent cigarettes - and big, fat, Romeo y Julieta cigars, too - that don't cause cancer. They will cost five cents.

Cellphones will have to have a ring that rings - like a phone. Not one that plays She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain or Till There Was You.

The sensors on automatic doors will not be programmed to assume that human beings walk in time to the Blue Danube Waltz looking like giant tortoises on Valium. Human beings will stop banging their noses on automatic doors.

The oaths sworn by politicians when they enter Parliament will include a solemn undertaking to resign if they ever use the phrases "at the end of the day," "the reality is" and the word that appears most frequently in the Congressional Record, America's Hansard, for 1999 "inappropriate."

Golfers playing friendly games won't say they shot five on the last hole when everyone knows they shot eight.

Shop assistants will not pounce on you the instant you walk in the door and examine something. Neither will they disappear three-quarters of a second before you do need to ask them something.

When you stand at the counter in McDonald's and say, "I want a Big Mac, just a Big Mac, I don't want anything else, that's it, just a Big Mac," the staff won't ask whether you want fries with that. (Hint: I have it on good authority that if you finish your sentence with the words "... and that's all, thanks," they have been programmed to know what you mean.)

The service station attendant will not wait until you have pumped $36 worth of gas into your own car and cleaned your own windscreen before laying aside his magazine and asking whether you are "all right there, mate?"

Cellulite and middle-aged spread will become indispensable fashion accessories. As a result, my wife and I will become sex symbols.

Automated switchboard announcements will be examined by a Sincerity Commission. As a result, they will not say "your call is important to us." Rather they will say "your call is not important enough for us to have somebody answer the phone. Here are the phone numbers of our principal competitors."

People who park so they occupy half of each of two parking places will have their cars confiscated. For life. If they're lucky.

Welcome to the brave new world.