On social media, my eye is often drawn to old black and white images of familiar places, prompting a sense of nostalgia, often for a time before I was born. City streets uncluttered by cars and buildings that looked as the architects intended, with no white double glazing like gleaming Hollywood smiles set in aged faces. I sometimes click a ‘follow’ so I can look at more historic photos and perhaps learn something about them.
Then I look down into the comments and my heart sinks as, rather than information and colourful anecdotes, I encounter grumbling. Those places aren’t like that any more, they moan. ‘Kids today’ couldn’t or wouldn’t do something or other ‘nowadays’, they deride. They were ‘simpler times’ gone forever, more’s the pity. Everything was better in the old days. My mum (1916-2008) would have been likely to say that the authors of such comments obviously never scrubbed a doorstep, polished the brasses or braved the early morning cold to build a fire - strongly suspecting that their mums used to do it. I doubt that anyone fondly recalls winter trips to the outside toilet.
It is difficult not to compare today’s public transport vehicles unfavourably with those of the past. No current locomotive can be anything but disappointing against the drama of a great steam engine like the Flying Scotsman or the Union of South Africa (below). But to those who say with flimsy authority, “Aye, and it would get you there a damn sight quicker an’ all.” It wouldn’t. For all their drama, the trains were slower in ‘the olden days’ - often by hours. [London to Glasgow. ABC Railway Guide 1958, 10:00-18:45. Trainline, 2024 - 10:30-15:00.].
I miss being able to hop on and off Routemaster buses on the streets of London. Because they carried conductors they were faster and I loved the growl of their engines. I do not however miss gagging on petrol fumes, as I did when I used to walk along Essex Road to Angel tube each morning in the 1990s. Also, it seems reasonable to me that people with reduced mobility should expect access to all public transport in a civilised country.
I briefly interrupted writing this to pointedly close the window on a young woman wandering back and forth outside my flat yelling into her mobile phone. Once she’d have been compelled to go and find a telephone box. But I may have had to use that telephone box too, and probably queue for the privilege of pumping coins into it, while having a rushed conversation steeped in the aromas of sweat, halitosis and urine. I’m sure she’ll be finished shortly so I can open the window again.
As one gets older, being a curmudgeon is an easy trap to fall into. In feeling nostalgic for childhood, it seems logical to believe that things must not be as good as they used to be. Everything wasn’t better in the old days - I think we are mourning the loss of our own youth.
Saturday lunchtime my mum would bring me double egg and chips - I didn’t have to buy the stuff, peel the potatoes, cook the food, pay for it or wash up after it - my only role was to thank her, liberally apply ketchup and eat it. And the chips were deep fried in lard too so… who wouldn’t miss that kind of service? When we are children we may have felt like prisoners, but in fact we were fed, dressed and entertained like privileged little lords and ladies.
I shall be writing mainly about the past because that is what I prefer, but I will try and recreate it as I believe it was, so there will be no ‘yesteryear’, no ‘bygone times’, no ‘days of yore’.
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