h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

there're quite a few things in this thread i don't remember
or know about...
oh well...
^. .^
= ' =

Wanting to play a game on the computer and having to insert the tape, press play, and wait 5-10 minutes for the game to load...

does any one play with boardgames with the kids?

monopoly - stratego - or any other boardgame.

Daleks.

I had a conversation five years or so ago involving myself, a friend about my age, and another friend who was about eight - one of those kids who is quite able to hold his own in a conversation with adults except when context lets him down. I described someone or something as "gliding around the place like a Dalek", and he said "what's a Dalek?". Myself and other mate then looked at each other as a bucket of cold water labelled "you're incredibly old" washed over us both.

On similar subjects: having "your" Dr. Who.
Being a Tiswas kid or a Swapshop kid.
Being a Blue Peter kid or a Magpie kid.
Raleigh choppers.
Public informations films on the telly designed to scare the s**t out of you.
That clock thing before the programmes for schools.
No television until lunchtime, and closedown just before/after midnight.
Policemen who didn't carry an array of visible weaponry.
Cars with a manual choke.
Train doors you could open as the train approached the station and leap out into a run along the platform before it had stopped moving.
Having to go to a small, specialist shop if you needed some screws, wood or a drill or something.
Pubs which sold bitter and mild and one type of lager if you were lucky, all on draught, and the only thing in bottles was coke and fruit juice and possibly, just possibly, brown ale.
---------------------------------
And now to take the subject line completely literally...

Infertility.

H.

Daleks.

I had a conversation five years or so ago involving myself, a friend about my age, and another friend who was about eight - one of those kids who is quite able to hold his own in a conversation with adults except when context lets him down. I described someone or something as "gliding around the place like a Dalek", and he said "what's a Dalek?". Myself and other mate then looked at each other as a bucket of cold water labelled "you're incredibly old" washed over us both.

On similar subjects: having "your" Dr. Who.
Being a Tiswas kid or a Swapshop kid.
Being a Blue Peter kid or a Magpie kid.
Raleigh choppers.
Public informations films on the telly designed to scare the s**t out of you.
That clock thing before the programmes for schools.
No television until lunchtime, and closedown just before/after midnight.
Policemen who didn't carry an array of visible weaponry.
Cars with a manual choke.
Train doors you could open as the train approached the station and leap out into a run along the platform before it had stopped moving.
Having to go to a small, specialist shop if you needed some screws, wood or a drill or something.
Pubs which sold bitter and mild and one type of lager if you were lucky, all on draught, and the only thing in bottles was coke and fruit juice and possibly, just possibly, brown ale.
---------------------------------
And now to take the subject line completely literally...

Infertility.

H.

I had a similarly bizzare conversation with a 13 year old a while back. He was intelligent, self-posessed, and had ambitions and goals, but I had to stop myself asking things like 'are you planning on going back to the US again later this year' because, at 13, his parents called the shots.

In fact that was the thing I hated most about being a child. Having other people, some of whom were destinctly less competent than me, calling the shots on my life.

Glad to be an adult, really.

Ben
Who's Dr Whos were Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker

(Tiswas, Jon Pertwee, Magpie)

Some more stuff that I had but my kids don't-

Better, more diverse Lego, where you had to create your own robot/car/monster instead of modern lego which is specifically designed to make a particular item.

More freedom. Even if my kids did go out on their own, there are no other kids out there to play with.

Lower expectations in terms of film special effects. I was fully prepared to accept that a close-up lizard was a dinosaur, but modern children are far to sophisticated to be impressed by the likes of 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth'.

A fighting chance of a day off school due to a power cut.

>> And, as my father found out when he was in Canada and reminisced about his wartime travels there: no one knew where Fort William was any more. <<

First let me say how curious I find it that this thread has pretty much stuck to electronic technological innovation and has not had much to say about other scientific 'progress'. And hardly anyone has mentioned changes in social mores or behaviour such as the loss of manners and social graces that fell victim to the final conquest of Victorian rigidity in the sixties. Even Ben's reference to 'not' having a knee trembler was in the context of technological impact. A negative impact to be sure, but perhaps not the only reason .

Life has changed in so many ways. I'm sure we will all be shocked to see just how much if we expand the topic to include many other contributing factors in fields outside electronics, including for starters:

medicine (the Pill, innoculations, ultra-sound, etc);

merchandising (McDonalds, DIY, Superstores and parking lots, etc);

popular music (rock and roll, disco, rap, etc);

films (colour, language, nudity, bigger boxes of popcorn);

religion (what religion?);

plastics (someone mentioned plastic bags, but there are thousands of other products which have replaced our tactile experience of wood, rubber, ceramics and other textiles and changed the face of manufacturing, plumbing and take-away foods)

politics (apathy, corruption, the disappearance of the Left);

highway safety (seat belts were mentioned but what about crush impact zones, multi-lane freeways, the price of gasoline);

psychology/psychiatry (closing of the asylums, medicating the crazies and setting them out to the streets, tolerance and indifference)

democracy (why wait for elections; let's conduct a poll NOW and base all decisions on the responses of the first 1000 randomly selected commuters willing to stop and give an opinion to a stranger with a notepad )



At the head of the Great Lakes, at the western-most point on Lake Superior, the original Hudson's Bay trading-post town of Fort William was absorbed about 30 years ago into the sprawl of the later, more modern city of Port Arthur. Built on a bigger harbour, better able to accomodate modern ocean going ships, Port Arthur became the main transfer point between Great Lakes shipping and the railways of western Canada. (And the northern states of the central and western USA.)
In the 50s these two towns were affectionately called 'twin cities', an unlikely comparison considering that the older Fort William was one of those Canadian towns we call 'a barracks town' (divided into one area of fine old homes on stately boulevards for the officers and merchant classes and another much larger area of narrow streets with row houses and tenaments for the other ranks) while Port Arthur, the newer city, was a thriving international trade center with a modern University, sprawling suburbs of modern single-storey middle-class bungalows and shopping malls.
The quaint idea that these two cities could be called 'twins' was reflective of Fort William's mostly British heritage. A certain amount of tradition and pride was influential in maintaining this inherently misconceived notion. From sea to shining sea the question was always asked on grade school geography tests - "Name Canada's 'twin cities'".
They were never 'identical' and just barely 'fraternal' but in the end, as a sort of compensation, both cities would, 'equally and mutually', lose their individual identity and the entire urban area is now incorporated as "Thunder Bay". This is often pronounced, by slack-jawed truckers roaring past on the Trans-Canada Highway, as 'Tunderbay'.

peace
jwf

*notes with some satisfaction that Cleo was indeed broadening the scope of our horizons while I was putting the above diatribe together*

~jwf~

Oh yes. Thinking of Hoovooloo going into a shop for a screw, I remember the little ironmongers in the High Street. The smell. You went in and it was all brown with rough wooden floors, shelves and counter. The shelves up to the ceiling with little boxes and you could get absolutely everything there.

And at the local shop you got sweets loose by the quarter and the lady behind the counter put them into a paper bag for you. Like she did lots of other things, from onions to dried beans, whatever. It's the dark brownness of these places that you can't convey to someone who hasn't been there.

And the sawdust on the floor of the butcher's. Wouldn't be allowed these days, I say it wouldn't be proper! Not hygenic y'see. But what a smell. What a feeling underfoot. It soaked up the blood y'see.

Not like the sawdust in the ice-houses, which had a wet soggy smell, like Spring.


jwf

The ironmonger smell is probably gone for ever now. What a huge loss.

Another smell that's gone missing, I've recently noticed, is the smell of wood burning that always used to be around in the Autumn, from stubble fields and garden bonfires. It used to sort of hang in the air, especially towards the evening, and mix with that damp, leafy smell that makes you think of conkers. Autumn seems different now.

And another one, which I don't miss, is the smell of hot soapy water and wet clothes, from my mother doing the washing in a twin tub. I associate it with frayed tempers and trying to keep out of the way.

TC: "Thinking of Hoovooloo going into a shop for a screw"



I don't know what kind of shops they have where YOU live...



H.

My daughter will never know Cresta (It's frothy man!), Black Jacks and Fruit Salads that were four for a penny, Curly Wurly's that were enormous and really, really chewy. Not to mention Dr Who (Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker) which had me hiding behind the sofa on a saturday after the football results. Wrestling involving the likes of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks on a saturday afternoon and my dad drinking a Watneys Party Seven while watching the rugby. Blimey I'm old!

Playing your 45s at 33 and vice versa - or even at 78.

I remember listening to Yes's Tales from Topographic Oceans at 45 (when it should have been at 33) for a more concentrated experience. Jon Anderson's voice which was weird at the best of times sounded bizarre at this speed.

at Hoovooloo's literal suggestion of infertility. We liked that post.

And of course not just the smell of washing in a Twin Tub, but Twin Tubs themsleves are slowly vanishing.

On the more social front the concept of certain areas being designated as non-smoking - thesde days it is becoming the assumption that it is non-smoking unless specifically stated.

One interesting one a few years ago which showed things go in circles, there was a news story about a school that had had the revolutionary concept of getting the little darlings to cycle to school or even walk. In my day if you didn't cycle or walk you were teased about being a softy. And now it is returning.

CH

Having a conversation in another part of the forest with Luckystar about contraception, (caps, and how much we hated them, femidoms, and how much they made us laugh, etc) made me realise how much one thing has changed during the time I was monogomously married.

When I went into marriage, so long as you were on the pill, the worst you had to worry about on a practical level was herpes, most other STDs could be dealt with using anti-biotics. As a result you could have comfortable and spontanious sex.

When I came out, that had all gone.

As I frequently say, I am glad that I am the age that I am. We had the best sex, the best drugs and the best rock and roll.

But it is sad.

Ben

*wondering if anyone else's first Doctor Who was William Hartnell*

Sindy dolls whose heads were so big it eventually parted from the body. My Mother was convinced I had chopped it off, but it happened with the second one that she finally bought me. Patch's head stayed on though.

And the Sindy doll was very expensive. I bought mine from my own money and had to save up 16/- for it.

In my teens all clothing was synthetic - but that meant nylon or similar in those days. The wonders of Crimplene! No ironing necessary. *shudders at the thought*

My Doctor Who was William Hartnell - all the others are cheap copies!