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…