Artifact 1433: Hand written note, Birmingham Area

Note found in house in Solihull area of Birmingham

To whoever may find this,

I’m writing this cos I am leaving. I’m hoping to get to Cornwall, I used to have an aunt there. Maybe I still do. I want to try and find her, I liked her. If she still exists, she’s my only relative. It sounds silly, but I want what’s left of my family. I’ve left the address stuck on the fridge if you’re interested.

I know it’s probably hopeless. But it has been weeks since I have seen anyone and I can’t cope with the silence. The army used to drive around a lot, and there was always sirens going off from somewhere. But that was months ago. Then I was just left with the distant sounds of looting and death. Now each morning I wake up to the sound of nothing. Still, silence. I live in a city, there should never be silence. I don’t venture out much, just to get food. But I’m running out of local shops to grab food from. Plus, I would rather die trying to do something than sitting around here and slowly starving to death.

I don’t think I’ll get it, the disease. I would have by now. Mum, Dad and Jenny all did and I’m convinced the cat did too. That’s something to do with the word ‘mutation’ I think, that it can go from animals to people. I dunno, I never did pay much attention in science. History on the other hand I loved. We were doing ‘the plague of 1665’ and all that stuff. I think irony comes into that somewhere. We did about a village called Eyam (wherever that is). It was the first place to get the plague outside of London, thanks to some flees in some cloth. They isolated and village to try to prevent the spread, and they nearly all died. There was one woman apparently who buried her husband and children. I feel like her. I didn’t have to bury them, I could have given them up to be burnt by the army, but I didn’t. Perhaps I should have done, don’t they say that you can’t dig up plague pits in case you can still catch it? Maybe that’s what happened.

You’d have thought, really, that in those hundreds of years between then and now, we might have been able to cope a bit better with something like this. All we need is for the soldiers to start shouting ‘bring out your dead’ and it would be just the same. I’ve even seen people mark their doors.

It sounds weird, but I miss school. I miss life, all of it. Everyone and everything. I can’t complain cos everyone is in the same position.

I thought I would write this in case anyone was to come here in the future. Like some sort of ‘time capsule’ thing. So they would know whose house they were in, whose bed they were sleeping in and not to dig up the garden. It was my house. Me – Andy, aged 14, Jenny, age 9, Mum – Margret, Dad – Phil (I can never remember how old they are) and the cat – Bobby. I think I will head off now, I’ve got a long way to walk. Hopefully, if she’s alive, aunt Jane will have a car.

Here goes nothing. Bye