Readers of a certain age may recall the Yellow Pages TV
commercial, first broadcast in 1983, featuring Norman Lumsden playing fictional
author J R Hartley searching for a copy of his out of print book, Fly Fishing. After he has traipsed round
an assortment of bookshops without success, his daughter presents him with a
copy of Yellow Pages whereupon the old fellow is able to locate a copy of his
precious book after just a few hours of frustrating phone calls. Nowadays he, or
more likely a more tech savvy member of his family, would have been able to
find his book in about a minute using Google, Amazon and eBay.
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| "My name? It's J. R. Hartley..." |
Another author by the name of Hartley, a real one this time,
that is to say L P Hartley, wrote “The past is a foreign country; they do
things differently there," and the internet, being perhaps the most
visible and obvious of changes that have happened in the last thirty years or
so, is a indicator of how things were different, how foreign the past is.
Ironically the internet has provided us with new ways to access the past by
sharing our memories and photographs in a way we could not have years ago.
The changes that I have seen in my life time is something
that I frequently mull over, especially when I see photographs posted on
Facebook of how my home town has changed over that period. Equally interesting
are the comments that some people post about the photos and how the town has
changed because there are regular suggestions that things were better in the
old days. It is easy to look at the past through rose tinted spectacles and
edit out the unpleasant bits; equally it is not difficult to look at the
present day, see the convenience and relative luxury that we have compared with
days gone by and believe that everything is better now. As ever, the truth lies
somewhere between these extremes.
I recently went to an event at our local library organised
by Film London [1],
whose project, London: A Bigger Picture,
aims to collect and digitise film footage, professional and homemade,
documenting life in the outer London boroughs over the years. Sadly there seems
to be little film of Romford about, but one which we did see was Romford
Traffic Problem (1963), in which Councillor Pat Ridley showed the horrendous
traffic congestion in the town centre and the ring road and one way system
proposed to alleviate matters. Now this is interesting because ring roads and
other schemes that require the demolition of old buildings and the like do
exercise a lot of people, yet looking at the film it is obvious that without
the road schemes that have taken place there would be gridlock morning, noon
and night not just in Romford but in many other towns.
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| Traffic in 1960's Romford before pedestrian precincts and the ring road. |
Romford Market is a prime example of how the town has
changed. The market has been operating since 1247 (it was originally a sheep
market) and is protected by a royal charter granted by King Henry III under
which no other market is permitted to set up within a day's sheep drive (six
and two-thirds miles). The livestock element of the market closed half a
century ago and traffic no longer edges between the shoppers and the stalls and
through the middle of the market place, but the market carries on...just. It is
an indicator of the way shopping habits have changed that the market survives
rather than thrives.
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| Romford Market then... |
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| ...and now. |
Then there is the milkman. When I was a child no one bought
milk from anywhere else, but imagine now having to wait for your pint to be
delivered each morning rather than picking some up at the supermarket. Yes,
jobs have been lost (how often do you see a milkman these days) but no one has
to wait for the milkman to turn up so they can make a cup of tea or have their
cornflakes each morning. When I first married we had milk delivered; it was the
norm and we did so because it was what our parents had done. As demand fell and
milkmen lost their jobs, those who remained found their rounds increased. We
would frequently not have our milk delivered till lunchtime, sometimes we came
home to find birds had pecked through the lids, we even came home to find that
our milk had been stolen from our doorstep. We once waited until late in the
afternoon for the milkman to come one Saturday so we could pay him. Eventually
we gave up and bought our milk from the supermarket. I still see a milk float
around our area occasionally, but it is rather forlorn. Even rarer is the
coalman. I'm sure you can still get coal delivered to your home, but whereas in
1960 it was commonplace, today I would be surprised if any of you reading this
have coal delivered or even know anyone who does.
People may look at quaint old cottages that have stood for
hundreds of years and be outraged when they are demolished to make way for something
more modern but have little or no understanding of the inconvenience of living
in such a property. A property which may have no heating or double glazing and,
until recently perhaps, no inside toilet. Believe it or not, just thirty years
ago I lived in a house that had neither central heating nor double glazing and
in winter it was so cold that each morning ice would have formed on the inside
of the windows in my bedroom. When I
exhaled I could see my breath condensing:
wearing a hat in bed was the norm in January and February.
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| This was a common sight for me when I woke up on a winter's morning just thirty years ago. |
It is understandable and quite normal that as we get older
we become less tolerant of change, keener to see things stay as they are,
although strangely enough I seem to have actually become far less resistant to
change as I have got older. My mother is now over 80 years old and some things
that have changed bewilder her; the internet is a mystery to her for example,
but I hope that when I get to her age I will want to continue to embrace new
technologies. The internet has become so all pervasive that living without it
is, if not impossible, certainly inconvenient at times and the day will come
when not having access to it is going to make life difficult. For that reason
it is important to look at changes, at innovations, at new ideas and products
and make an informed choice about whether you will integrate them into your
life or not, and if the latter, how you will compensate.
The J R Hartley ad was about introducing something
innovative into someone's life, saying don't trudge around loads of different
shops, stay at home and use the Yellow Pages and your phone to trace what it is
you want. Today that ad would be about getting someone onto a computer and
searching and shopping online. Today we may think the Yellow Pages ad quaint,
in years to come our children may be saying the same about Google.
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