A Scottish Storyteller

I found myself telling someone about this piece of writing recently. Perhaps it was offshore, or perhaps it was Fudge that told me? So I just raked it out of one of the books piled up behind my bed. The aeroplanes I guess the author could easily have imagined... but the Channel Tunnel and phone lines accross the Atlantic! Coooo. Anyway, I want you all to guess where it's from! i.e. When was it written? And by Whom? (Who? Whom. I dinna ken. We couldn't afford grammar when I were a lass) IN A THOUSAND YEARS Yes, in a thousand years people will fly on the wings of steam through the air, over the ocean! The young inhabitants of America will become visitors of old Europe. They will come over to see the monuments and the great cities, which will then be in ruins, just as we in our time make pilgrimages to the mouldering splendours of Southern Asia. In a thousand years they will come! The Thames, the Danube, and the Rhine still roll their course, Mont Blanc stand...

I told my story, Little Nickolai, at GAS last night. But it's awfy long. (The real version... not the red bull fuelled version I told last night!) So here's why I wrote it. I wanted to know what terrible thing he'd done to deserve it... It's by Neil Gaiman. Nicholas Was Nicholas was older than sin and his beard could grow no whiter.. He wanted to die The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories. Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves’ invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen in time. He envied Promethus and Loki, Sisyophus and Judas. His punishment was harsher. Ho Ho. Ho.