The View from the Window

It's almost four o'clock and already getting dark. Outside, I can hear the patter of rain. For some reason, the combination of rain and looking out the window at the grey sky takes me back to the sixties and the early seventies. I've no idea why: perhaps, when I was 12 or so, I used to lie on my bed looking out of the window a lot on wet days. 

It's got me thinking about just how much things have changed -or not- in my lifetime. If you go back through different eras in history, things looked very different. Elizabethan men wore doublet and hose. Their counterparts in the 18th century wore wigs and frock coats. Victorians dressed, well, like Victorians. And so on. Me, I've lived almost two-thirds of a century and I've spent my entire adult life dressed in jeans and t-shirts (not the same ones, I hasten to add). There have been minor variations but, otherwise, things seem to have stayed very much the same. One can dress flexibly, too - people think nothing of referencing things that were in fashion 40 years ago (punk, for example) in what they wear.

Despite this, when I look back on my childhood, what I remember feels very different to the present. The huge difference, of course, is that today anyone who can afford it has decent central heating. I know there are those less privileged than myself who don't but these days I never have to climb into bed telling myself it'll warm up in a few minutes, or wake up feeling the cold air on my face and having to steel myself to get up. I've forgotten when I last had to sit on a cold toilet seat. (Years before it was even worse: I remember my mother telling me how she sometimes had to break the ice in the water jug in her bedroom). 

Then there's the technology. I remember once, in the days I've been talking about, wanting a transistor radio for Christmas. I was fascinated by radios. I didn't really want to listen to it. I wanted to take it to bits to see how it worked. I remember thinking I ought not to dismantle it too soon after Christmas - it seemed like a sure way to get into trouble. I decided I'd have to keep it a while before I did the deed. I get a sense of deja vu these days whenever I see the credits to the original Star Trek series roll. It takes me back to those days. I remember watching it back then and thinking that, somehow, the technology that went into the cathode ray tube TV and my transistor radio would morph into the technology that created the likes of the Starship Enterprise.

And I mustn't forget the food. I remember eating a pretty basic diet of 'British food' during my childhood. It wasn't so many years since rationing. I also remember how things changed: yoghourt and muesli came on the scene. At first everyone thought they were for 'cranks' but they caught on. Not for the first or last time, the 'cranks' had the right idea. I remember the fascination when my auntie cooked 'Boeuf Stroganoff'. Then came the Vesta curries: little bags of dried, exotic-sounding food - the sort of thing you imagined people eating in spaceships. In no time, all sorts of sloppy-looking food with lots of bits chopped up in a sauce started to appear. Before we knew it, our diet had become rich and varied.

I may be painting a picture of  what was a stable world in many ways, but that's only by virtue of the position I was in at the time. There were those beyond my world who wanted to change it. I grew up to find myself agreeing with them. One of my enduring childhood memories is of being told to stay in because an anti-Vietnam march was passing through our town. I remember, next day, walking to school and seeing U.S. GET OUT OF VIETNAM painted in huge letters on a brick wall by the main road. 

There seemed to be a naivete about those times in the world I inhabited. The adults I met always seemed to be saying 'you can't stop progress' in a way which suggested they wanted to but weren't going to be the ones rocking the boat. Most of them seemed to be happy living a way of life that was familiar to them. It was as if it seemed, to them,  that there was no reason to change it. I suppose most people leading a secure life in any age feel that way.  But, of course, it was about to change. It was an analogue world, in which data was still held on index-cards. Margaret Thatcher was an MP but not yet PM. Climate change and the environment had yet to hit the news. I may still wear t-shirts and jeans and the view from a bedroom window of a grey, December sky may be much the same, but the world we live in now has changed massively.

Footnote,  26/12/20

I've just been reading an interesting article about technological  innovation and cultural stagnation (eg,  in musical styles)  in the 21st century. https://thequietus.com/articles/13004-mark-fisher-ghosts-of-my-life-extract