A random nostalgic flashback caused me to consider the kinds of things we took for granted when I was, say, 10 years old (in 1987) but are now utterly outlandish
In 1987 the only way to get seven day TV listings was to buy the Radio Times or TV Times. The publication of seven day listings in newspapers was the result of work we did at the OFT in the late 1980s. As an anecdote on smoking, we went into a local cinema in the early 1980s (when there were local cinemas rather than multiplexes) and asked “Is there a no smoking section?” “No love, you can smoke wherever you like “ was the response.
Both enjoyable and thought-provoking. I’m somewhat older (born 1957) but a lot of the changes you describe still resonate with me. Take smoking: I remember when one of the pubs in Lancaster made one room non-smoking and I organised a meet of our climbing club there. Cue furious protests from a couple of people about ‘taking away our freedom of choice’. And blank looks when I said ‘what about the freedom of choice for the rest of us?’
A parallel sort of memory; a few years ago I produced a book called ‘Lancaster Through Time’. A familiar concept, pairing old photos of the place with contemporary shots of the same spot. I discovered a great archive of photos from the 1970s, when I’d been at school in the town, and was amazed how unfamiliar much of it looked. How shabby and run-down those ‘good old days’ actually were.
I’m the same age of you so found this really fascinating. In the 1980s ny local town’s “cafe” would make coffee, but it would be a spoonful of Nescafé, into a cup, then this brilliant steaming milk frothier and made an amazing noise. That’s all anyone wanted.
For me the big thing in the 80s that is so very different to today is the digital thing… back then people weren't stressed by an overflowing inbox of emails. Sending letters was still the thing, to someone at an address in a road in a town in a country. But in the 80s academics and businesses began to harnessed the nascent computer networks to communicate with each other differently. A genie was let out of the bottle. I remember, almost to the day, when students at the institution that I worked at realised what they had been given, an email address that ment they could so easily send a message to another student, not just about course work (the vain pedagogic hope of their lecturers) but also about where and when they were going for lunch, what was going on where, what was happening later, and on and on. Students were sending emails to other students sitting at the next terminal asking them to parties… the volume of email traffic seriously downgraded the mainframe computer's performance!
Now of course, most of us have an email address or two and we spend time sorting through our inbox deleting junk mail and scam mail looking for the important ones. And email is just the tip of an iceberg - WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and others this 74 year old hasn't heard of. But what I like to think when kids roll their eyes at my faux pas when I fail to understand the latest TicTok trend or whatever, is that my generation invented the whole thing…
I used to regularly go with a group of friends to pub quiz evenings (which are themselves disappearing now, due to the advent of the mobile phone - which facilitates cheating). When I came home afterwards, my clothes stank of tobacco smoke.
Yes and no. The Laws in Wales Act 1535 included it in the "Country or Dominion of Wales", but the Laws in Wales Act 1542 enumerated 12 counties which did not include Monmouthshire, which was under the jurisdiction of Westminster rather than the Court of Great Sessions in Wales. It was represented by two knights of the shire like an English county rather than one, like the counties of Wales. In the mid-17th century it became part of the Oxford circuit of assizes. Acts of Parliament tended to regard it by default as part of England, unless the formula “Wales and Monmouthshire” was used.
Fascinating and taking me to the lovely blurry territory of the mid 80s. Some of it I remember like yesterday but some is more hazy. Completely agree on the massive shift in the place of smoking in popular culture - fascinating to remember ashtrays and smoking carriages on the trains at this point and even smoking areas in restaurants when I was doing my undergrad at St A. I’d forgotten about Rover being government owned back in the day.
I left St Andrews a couple of years before the smoking ban and I remember going back to visit once it had come into force, and thinking “Oh, so that’s what this place actually smelled like”.
In 1987 the only way to get seven day TV listings was to buy the Radio Times or TV Times. The publication of seven day listings in newspapers was the result of work we did at the OFT in the late 1980s. As an anecdote on smoking, we went into a local cinema in the early 1980s (when there were local cinemas rather than multiplexes) and asked “Is there a no smoking section?” “No love, you can smoke wherever you like “ was the response.
Both enjoyable and thought-provoking. I’m somewhat older (born 1957) but a lot of the changes you describe still resonate with me. Take smoking: I remember when one of the pubs in Lancaster made one room non-smoking and I organised a meet of our climbing club there. Cue furious protests from a couple of people about ‘taking away our freedom of choice’. And blank looks when I said ‘what about the freedom of choice for the rest of us?’
A parallel sort of memory; a few years ago I produced a book called ‘Lancaster Through Time’. A familiar concept, pairing old photos of the place with contemporary shots of the same spot. I discovered a great archive of photos from the 1970s, when I’d been at school in the town, and was amazed how unfamiliar much of it looked. How shabby and run-down those ‘good old days’ actually were.
I’m the same age of you so found this really fascinating. In the 1980s ny local town’s “cafe” would make coffee, but it would be a spoonful of Nescafé, into a cup, then this brilliant steaming milk frothier and made an amazing noise. That’s all anyone wanted.
For me the big thing in the 80s that is so very different to today is the digital thing… back then people weren't stressed by an overflowing inbox of emails. Sending letters was still the thing, to someone at an address in a road in a town in a country. But in the 80s academics and businesses began to harnessed the nascent computer networks to communicate with each other differently. A genie was let out of the bottle. I remember, almost to the day, when students at the institution that I worked at realised what they had been given, an email address that ment they could so easily send a message to another student, not just about course work (the vain pedagogic hope of their lecturers) but also about where and when they were going for lunch, what was going on where, what was happening later, and on and on. Students were sending emails to other students sitting at the next terminal asking them to parties… the volume of email traffic seriously downgraded the mainframe computer's performance!
Now of course, most of us have an email address or two and we spend time sorting through our inbox deleting junk mail and scam mail looking for the important ones. And email is just the tip of an iceberg - WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and others this 74 year old hasn't heard of. But what I like to think when kids roll their eyes at my faux pas when I fail to understand the latest TicTok trend or whatever, is that my generation invented the whole thing…
I used to regularly go with a group of friends to pub quiz evenings (which are themselves disappearing now, due to the advent of the mobile phone - which facilitates cheating). When I came home afterwards, my clothes stank of tobacco smoke.
"...... but they were prohibited from opening at all in Wales and Monmouthshire."
Isn't Monmouthshire in Wales?
Yes and no. The Laws in Wales Act 1535 included it in the "Country or Dominion of Wales", but the Laws in Wales Act 1542 enumerated 12 counties which did not include Monmouthshire, which was under the jurisdiction of Westminster rather than the Court of Great Sessions in Wales. It was represented by two knights of the shire like an English county rather than one, like the counties of Wales. In the mid-17th century it became part of the Oxford circuit of assizes. Acts of Parliament tended to regard it by default as part of England, unless the formula “Wales and Monmouthshire” was used.
Fascinating and taking me to the lovely blurry territory of the mid 80s. Some of it I remember like yesterday but some is more hazy. Completely agree on the massive shift in the place of smoking in popular culture - fascinating to remember ashtrays and smoking carriages on the trains at this point and even smoking areas in restaurants when I was doing my undergrad at St A. I’d forgotten about Rover being government owned back in the day.
I left St Andrews a couple of years before the smoking ban and I remember going back to visit once it had come into force, and thinking “Oh, so that’s what this place actually smelled like”.
The Cellar Bar! There were times you could barely even see the bar for smoke.
Sometimes that was no bad thing.