Moody midday.

So we now are in lockdown officially. I should dig out my tinned foil hat. Must admit I’ve not noticed any real difference so far. The dustbin wagon turned up on time. Next doors gardener has been busy. Not much four wheeled traffic on the roads but plenty of cyclists. The mole and badger have continued to dig up the lawn. Hawklad is doing his school at home work. I’m wandering around being a muppet. So same old same old.

Well when I say nothing has changed well that’s not quite true. Shopping wise it’s a different matter. Many of the nonessential shops have closed. And food shopping has returned to being a pain in the buttocks again. As soon as lockdown is mentioned the availability of gluten free foods and Hawklad’s favourite sausages takes a nose dive. I blame it on Boris.

I also blame it on Boris that I’m clearly an old fart…..

“Dad what on earth is that?”

It’s vinyl Son. A record. It’s the first Pink Floyd album…

This produced a bemused look on number one son. A bit later….

“Say that again. You didn’t have computers when you started school.”

No. Home computing was not yet a thing. In fact calculators had just come out but my school didn’t believe in them. We were expected to do stuff in our heads or use the dreaded slide rulers.

“What on earth is a slide ruler?”

Basically an analog mechanical calculation device that looks like a big ruler. It has scales on and you have to slide the middle bit of the ruler out to read the results off the scale.

Another bemused look. A bit later….

“Can I put the hot water bottle in the microwave to warm it a bit Dad.”

Don’t need to ask. In my day I would have had to fill it with boiling hot water from the kettle.

Another one of those looks. And finally this morning….

“Dad it’s a shame that you haven’t got some videos or DVDs which you taped of some TV shows you watched as a kid. I bet there is a load that you can’t buy now on Amazon. That would be fun to watch. ”

Hawklad when I was a kid even video had not been invented. We didn’t get them until the 80s.

“So how did you record stuff?”

We couldn’t. If you missed the show on the TV that was it. You had to just hope that it was repeated in a few months time.

And a really really really big one of those looks. Definitely feeling like an old fart…

92 thoughts on “A bit later”

  3. Haha, feeling with you! BUT we survived, and we survived well. AND we had so much fun with our friends playing outside, writing letters, reading books, listening to music dedicated, …

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  4. You should get Hawklad an abacus and really freak him out. Not that I have a clue how to work one but I’ve seen them in action. It’s impressive. Tell him that in 1954 my school in London did not yet have electricity. Our teacher had to stand on a desk to ignite the gas lights..

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  6. Loved this post! I feel like the Covid/election stress has made me nostalgic for my childhood years and it’s driven more convos with my parents about their childhoods. Both were born in 1960, I think the one that amazes me is my mom not having a phone in her house until she was in high school. My dad’s family had one but it was a shared line so if a neighbor was on you could hear their convo!

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  7. I can’t even believe how much has changed since I was a kid. I would imagine, our kids kids will be blown away at how archaic their upbringing turned out to be. So, I really can’t imagine what the future holds!

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  12. I love this post! We’re not old… we’re like good cheese and fine wine, perfectly aged!

    Hawklad would love to see our first, cutting edge, Apple II home computer, with the floppy disks and the awesome graphics!🤣🤣🤣🤣

    I miss old libraries… the card catalogue, the microfiche machine. I love having answers to question right in my phone, a few taps away, but I’m loving the nostalgia too! We did use our imaginations more, IMO. Especially if you grew up poor, like I did. It wasn’t til stepdad entered the picture that we had any extras, like records, vinyl records. (With the penny on the needle head to keep it from skipping😉)

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  13. Without being told to do so, I feel I have been in lockdown for the better part of 8 months. For me it has not been overly difficult, but having kids makes it a totally different challenge.

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  14. I have sat in the office at work and the looks of complete shock when I tell them if you were running late to meet someone you couldn’t let them know … sometimes they just gave up waiting and left!

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  16. Man, the good times back then. How I miss them. So much of the reason I feel close to rewatching old commercials and adverts is because it brings me a sense of comfort, like being at a family gathering and switching on the tele. Been a bit depressed lately; support is appreciated (don’t worry, it’s not too bad). 😊

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  17. So good and so funny dredging up all those antiquated childhood memories. We were raised in a very different world…and now I feel like an old fart for saying that! Here’s a recent quote from my 17-year-old to make you smile, “Mom, you try to be one of the cool moms but you just can’t quite pull it off.” Ouch. 😕💕

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  18. OMG I was reminded of the card index at the National Library we had to search and then send for the book to be located and sent down from the stacks.. no google or internet.. Add to that going overseas and waiting on post from family or friends at Post Restant as no mobiles, computers or email..
    I learned to type at college on a portable typewriter and copies were made with carbon paper, corrections made with Tippex. The first computer was like a huge box…
    It was another world.. such a very different world..

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    1. I’d probably be called a millennial by most, but I’m an old soul and I totally agree with you! My mum and talk about that all the time. She works for an Australian manufacturing company, and with Covid19 more people want Australian made products, rather than China. What they don’t seem to understand is, is that it takes longer to make, to get the materials made. We just don’t have as many manufacturers. Despite being told this, and despite getting an email every single day, saying what stage their product is. They want it NOW.

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  24. I’ve seen vids of kids completely bewildered by payphones!! And the concept of busy signals and not knowing you missed calls horrifies them!

    When I took BASIC (now VBA) programming at University, it counted as my foreign language requirement!

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  25. My other “old” story is that my 1981 college calc class had neon(?) tube calculators. They had bern state of the art, a few years earlier, at over $2,000 each. But Casios had been invented since then.

    Hell, I think my first color printer for work was something like $10,000!!!

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