Of course there was no internet, no social media, no smartphones pinging with the latest news alerts. What was external rarely intruded. We mostly lived in our own local realities. Where was New York City anyway and did we really care?
Sometimes we waited at our village phone box to receive or make calls involving friends or sweethearts from other villages. It was hard to use the house phone because somebody else would surely be listening in.
Apart from word of mouth, there were no reviews of items or services we planned to buy. To a large extent, you simply had to dive in and hope for the best. This was true of lots of things from books to holidays and from new music to forthcoming television shows.
Nobody found boyfriends or girlfriends online because "online" meant on the washing line where underwear and football shirts fluttered in the breeze like flags. To acquire a new sweetheart you tended to use the grapevine along which secret messages were passed or you might visit a dance at local village halls and try to catch the eye of someone you fancied. It was like fishing for an elusive rainbow trout.
It's not that "Then" was better, it was just different and arguably more innocent, less exposed to the big wide world. The Media was in its kennel and generally obeyed honourable rules of engagement. Besides, it didn't matter all that much to us for we could generally hold it at arm's length.
And we didn't travel very much. Ordinary folk never rode upon aeroplanes or took foreign holidays. Many had never even been to London. And we were not in the habit of eating out anywhere. Pubs were for adults and rarely offered food menus. There were no Indian or Chinese takeaways. The best we could hope for, once in a while, was fish and chips doused with vinegar and swiftly wrapped in sheets of newspaper.
That was then but this is now.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/Btk25aJ