The Old Days

I had been thinking, as you do, of ‘the old days’.

Now, that’s a loaded phrase really, as it means different things to different people and what’s old to one, is really, REALLY old to another (although at my age, living witnesses to that much older are thin on the ground)… But also, not all THAT old to yet another. It’s the nature of things.

For instance, when I see the likes of The Old Grey Whistle Test repeated on the telly… that looks so dated and so long ago, and then Top of The Pops repeating stuff from… the 90s… what? That’s not long ago? I don’t even KNOW that stuff! Hah! And yet that generation look on it as 'history' already. Funny how music does play such a role.

Things in the world are definitely different to when I was a kid though. I only just make the cut and can’t say, in wee quivery old granny voice, ‘there were no tellies when I was wee’… but only just. The one we had was the iconic giant wooden box with small screen.

I remember too when we got an ‘automatic’ washing machine that superseded the washhouse. It was a weird-looking thing, noisy and a bit of a stood-in-the-way item. We used a clothes pulley to dry the washing too, which is quite the chic item to have nowadays, great to hang dried flowers on for instance… haha, the very idea. I still would rather like one for clothes to be fair. Funny thinking of it hanging over our heads in the kitchen.

It’s more in my adult life though, that I notice the huge changes in the world. Of course, things always change, but when you think of videotape players not even being around when your kids were small, the mind boggles. We were the first in our neighbourhood to have one, and this huge thing would be handed around, house to house, for others to have a go on it. Imagine! A Walkman… man, it was so small compared to the huge cassette player I had bought him ten years previously and which was lugged around faithfully just the same. Then DVD players… and those minidisc things… home computers for goodness sakes… we bought them all early, for a fortune every time. It’s all on our phones now, and more, and it all costs less!

How things are done changes too of course. I know the world is a different place, but my ‘hen night’ was a boozy mistake of a party. One night ending in a pile of puke, shortly before my wedding day, and I know all my friends did the same. Now, it’s weekends in Prague, or a week on Ibiza! I couldn’t have contemplated that. ‘Newly weds’ are often late 30s… older… with whole lives behind them and they have already lived together for years or have kids, perhaps even together, before marriage is even mentioned. Even younger ones wouldn’t dream of moving into a house without having, well, everything, first. Some things are better right enough.

Music changes too. I remember as a teenager, the phrase ‘it’ll never take the place of music’ being said about a favourite ‘album’ of ours, by ‘the older generation’. How we laughed. Look now… I cannot get my head around some of the stuff they call ‘music’ now and it will never take the place of music! It’s like, what goes around, comes around. But our music was the best. Said our parents.

I can appreciate loads of music from before my generation I just often find myself unable to follow new stuff at all, and yet kids belt it out… you see them at filmed concerts, and the new ‘stars’ of today have just as huge followings as the stars did when we were kids. The musicians of my generation (yes, I hear myself saying it, bah) are still great musicians though. I just cannot imagine anyone getting nostalgic for techno though! Mind you, I can’t differentiate one track from another, nor one ‘producer’ from the other, and I know people can.

Nostalgia eh? We’ve managed to see most of our ‘heroes’ live in concert, if not at the time we first knew them, then at silver, hell, golden anniversary tours, and they were (are) still great although I prefer it if the likes of Jagger doesn’t jump around as he used to... really too old. But I still hear myself say ‘these new fly-by-nights will never be having reunion tours’… followed by headline news of ‘Take That’ already doing similar (for instance, and they were my kids’ generation). It won’t happen with the new, new ones though! Will it?

I honestly think, if the dead could come back (never mind The Rapture, just plain old visiting) they would run back to wherever they came from. Everything gets faster, louder, crasser, cheaper, madder, ruder… All. The. Time. And doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. Despite lockdowns and viruses. Will there be a limit? Or will it all go ‘retro’ at some point?

I do try to keep up. I’m not in my box yet. And yet, there seems to come a point when you just turn into the old person that says ‘remember when…’ all the time. This all may or may not have to do with me researching things on genealogy sites and ‘finding’ evidence of direct family from way back, who couldn’t have imagined the world of today in their wildest dreams. Even my parents were around long before regular flights abroad were ‘normal’ (never mind even considered for hen nights!).

So hold on to your hats you young things. It’s going to be a wild ride… assuming us lot leave enough of the planet around for you to ride on.