Investigating the life of things across space and time
Text and audio work; 3.46 minutes
Written for The Surround Summer Album 2017
by Sarah Gillett
This is the way I remember summer.
We are all given a free punnet of strawberries every week for eighteen weeks a year. Each punnet contains twenty-one strawberries and we are instructed to take one three times a day at mealtimes. It is always the same variety now, the White Opera supplied by Johnson & Johnson through Driscoll’s grocers. It’s important to check the label on the packaging carefully and scan the barcode to register delivery because there is a big market in bio-jacked food. If the bio-jackers intercept a truck they steal our food and replace it with old-time stock that doesn’t have the vitamins, minerals and boosters we need to survive. Our super premium food they sell onto the rich junkies for their puking parties or paradise tanks.
Since Roman times the strawberry plant has been used to treat depression. On our restricted diet it’s important for us to maintain healthy skin, bones, cells and strawberries are a great source of Vitamin C. Plus they contain loads of other vitamins and minerals that are generally agreed to be good for us.
They bred the red colour out of strawberries using genetic material from the Agriculture DNA Bank, because they didn’t want people to keep getting sick from allergies anymore. Around the same time the labs started adding the ‘summer’ experiential chemicals, coming to the rescue of the millions suffering with SAD.
It turned out that methyl bromide, a chemical introduced as a pesticide in 1932, was eating through the ozone layer. Despite a phasing-out introduced by the Canadian government in 1987 many countries, including the US, ignored these warnings and by 2017 the strawberry was at the top of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ of pesticide-contaminated produce. By 2032 our ozone layer was so damaged that the last of the icecaps melted and cities like London, New York, Beijing – cities we have read about in the library – disappeared under water – whilst other places dried up completely. A lot of things died, including people, plants, animals. We don’t have seasons anymore. It’s hot and windy in the day. It’s cold and windy at night. Alarms warn us when rain is coming.
The strawberries are grown underground, like the rest of our food. They are still harvested by hand.
I eat a strawberry. I can hear the sea shifting in my ears. I am on a beach watching the waves lick the sand. There are no unhappy summer memories. I am not unhappy. When I eat strawberries I am happy. I am happy.
Joseph reaches down and picks up a shell. He hands it to the boy, who is dragging a red plastic bucket across the sand. “Here. What about this one?”
Bill assesses the offering intently. “No Daddy,” he says firmly, “It’s broken here, see.”
It is late when I see you moving into the flat above the pub opposite. Must be past 11, because I hear the doors swinging open, hot blue noise gulping for air.