How do you know you're getting old...

[stuart little]

The first time I had pneumonia I was working part time at the market. I went back to work and a sweet old lady asked if I was feeling better and said you know the best thing about pneumonia? When you get it again you'll know exactly what you've got.
Twelve months later to the week (my daughter's birthday) I got it again. I rang the GP. What can I do for you, Mr. P? I've got pneumonia, doc. What makes you think that? I've had pneumonia before. Come in right away, you've got pneumonia, he said. I told him what the old lady said, and he said unfortunately she was right.

I'm about three days into this, and if this is as bad as it gets I'll be lucky.

Get well soon, mate.

 

[Mike bryant]

I remember my father buying 4 gallons of petrol for £1 and still had change for a pack of woodbines!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I'm not that ancient, but I remember fish and chips being 11d - less than 5p for you callow youths.

 

[Jameshow]

Growing up in a time when being on the spectrum meant waiting 15 minutes for a game to load

That was fast on the Amstead CPC 464 it was 29mins!

Cannot believe my first computer funded the apprentice...!

 

[jcassidy]

My first venture into what could be called personal computers was an Acorn Atom, a precursor to the BBC computer. It came with 2 kb of memory. That's right, two kilobytes.

Mine was an '80s Atari STE with a whopping 512kb and...wait for it...

An integregated 3 1/2" floppy drive! La de dah! High tech or what?

My mum was still using it well into this century to play Zelda... then something burned out in the motherboard and altough a technician at work said it was fixable, he couldn't source the parts except from another STE, if i could find one.

 

[okeydokey]

I recall coxing a Burroughs TC500 to life complete with paper tape. Much time spent reeling it back up when it dumped itself in a pile on the floor
It predated me but was donated to our school at the end of its useful life. At that time BBC micros were the new kid on the block. *FX etc etc

Barclays Bank used TC500 when they came out to process cheques and etc that customers paid into their accounts

 

[J-G]

That was fast on the Amstead CPC 464 it was 29mins!

Cannot believe my first computer funded the apprentice...!

That would have been a different game then! The CPC 464 had a 4Mhz Full spec Z80 CPU & 64K Ram compared to the Spectrum's 3.5Mhz Cut-down Z80A CPU and generally 16K Ram.

The introduction of the 464 was a major revalation as far as reliability was concerned. We expected in excess of 20% failure rate with new Spectrums but the Amstrad cut that to < 2% . . . and no your first computer didn't fumd 'The Apprentice' Alan M. Sugar Trading was always much more than a computer company though it did do more for the personal computer than any other contender - including the BBC !

 

[cowtown_eric]

My father went from kerosene lanterns (no'lectricity) to tryin to keep his mac updated!....but his wkend I'm gonna intoduce my grandkids to a dial phone whichshould be real fun!

 

[Jameshow]

That would have been a different game then! The CPC 464 had a 4Mhz Full spec Z80 CPU & 64K Ram compared to the Spectrum's 3.5Mhz Cut-down Z80A CPU and generally 16K Ram.

The introduction of the 464 was a major revalation as far as reliability was concerned. We expected in excess of 20% failure rate with new Spectrums but the Amstrad cut that to < 2% . . . and no your first computer didn't fumd 'The Apprentice' Alan M. Sugar Trading was always much more than a computer company though it did do more for the personal computer than any other contender - including the BBC !

I don't know how long it took to load just seemed like for....ever, my brother was more into it and went into networks and security.
Finding the apprentice was a joke tbh!

 

[HDC83]

When there’s more creaks from your knees than your stairs

 

[Spectric]

When you look around and can see just how bad things are now, if you are younger then it is the norm for you and you will not remember when we had better times, fuel was £1 a gallon and twenty quid did a months shopping, there was more of a buzz in life whereas now it is flat lined and mental health is normal for many. Life was better before mobile phones, advertising went on steroids and vanity did not rule peoples lives, you know you are old because you can see all what is going wrong and how hard life is for youngsters of today, so would I want to be born in these times, no. I may be old but the memories of better times and having a proper childhood with freedom are worth the age.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The 1st class hike for the Scouts was a twenty five mile hike carrying full kit including a tent with an overnight stop on a farm. My friend and I passed it along with the whole of the rest of the 1st class qualifiers when we were twelve years old. Before we had left school we had completed a dozen or more thirty mile sponsored walks, climbed Skidaw, Striding Edge, Helvellyn, Snowdon etc. We had kayaked the river Fal from Grampound to St. Anthony and much of the North coast of Cornwall and hiked across Dartmoor several times, all in mid winter.
We left home at 8.00am for a day on the beaches when we were eleven (with enough money for a bag of chips at lunchtime) and got home as darkness fell. It wasn't unusual to snorkel 12 - 15 miles in a day. My friend's calves were so over developed he couldn't get wellington boots on. Mine were huge, but not quite that huge.
I met my friend after thirty years by which time he had three teenaged boys. He said the greatest regret of his life is that they didn't have/couldn't have had the freedoms and the fun that we had. My lad is twenty and despite living within not too many miles of some of the most beautiful beaches in the world I doubt he's been on a beach in seven or eight years ............ as his T shirt says "I went outside once. I didn't think much of the graphics."

 

[thetyreman]

When you look around and can see just how bad things are now, if you are younger then it is the norm for you and you will not remember when we had better times, fuel was £1 a gallon and twenty quid did a months shopping, there was more of a buzz in life whereas now it is flat lined and mental health is normal for many. Life was better before mobile phones, advertising went on steroids and vanity did not rule peoples lives, you know you are old because you can see all what is going wrong and how hard life is for youngsters of today, so would I want to be born in these times, no. I may be old but the memories of better times and having a proper childhood with freedom are worth the age.

I'm 36 and can definitely see the change especially pre internet, pre social media and pre mobile phone, the world was a very different much friendlier place, I'm not saying this to be a debbie downer or miserable git, it's the truth.

 

[Bodgers]

When you look around and can see just how bad things are now, if you are younger then it is the norm for you and you will not remember when we had better times, fuel was £1 a gallon and twenty quid did a months shopping, there was more of a buzz in life whereas now it is flat lined and mental health is normal for many. Life was better before mobile phones, advertising went on steroids and vanity did not rule peoples lives, you know you are old because you can see all what is going wrong and how hard life is for youngsters of today, so would I want to be born in these times, no. I may be old but the memories of better times and having a proper childhood with freedom are worth the age.

Is there an element of rose tinted specs here?

There is a guy on YouTube interviewing Russians on the streets of Moscow, and one of the questions asked was "was it better in Communist Russia in the 80s or now?"

A lot of older ones were actually pining for the simpler Soviet days. Which given the queues for bread and general levels of poverty, not to mention the political situation seems like a very optimistic take...

 

[Spectric]

Is there an element of rose tinted specs here?

Not at all, we earned a great deal less but it brought an awful lot more and work was plentiful most of the time, leave a job Friday and start a new one Monday.

Thinking back we had no Amazon or online shopping but could always get what we wanted because we had a thriving retail sector in our towns and people were less materialistic, more happy with there lot. Now a lot of people want to be something else, girls walk around with paintbrushes for eyebrows and sink plungers for lips and they think there are more than two sexes, believing what they wish for can become reality. No times were better because people had there feet on the ground and no one took offence to jokes and no one had to think about what was being said and the only Wokies were living in Wokingham.

 

[Thingybob]

Not at all, we earned a great deal less but it brought an awful lot more and work was plentiful most of the time, leave a job Friday and start a new one Monday.

Thinking back we had no Amazon or online shopping but could always get what we wanted because we had a thriving retail sector in our towns and people were less materialistic, more happy with there lot. Now a lot of people want to be something else, girls walk around with paintbrushes for eyebrows and sink plungers for lips and they think there are more than two sexes, believing what they wish for can become reality. No times were better because people had there feet on the ground and no one took offence to jokes and no one had to think about what was being said and the only Wokies were living in Wokingham.

Totaly agree not only thriving retail sector but Exchange and Mart like ebay and Wish but in paper form and in Manchester electrical army surplus stores could get all components for amateur radio building gave me a good grounding

 

[D_W]

Is there an element of rose tinted specs here?

There is a guy on YouTube interviewing Russians on the streets of Moscow, and one of the questions asked was "was it better in Communist Russia in the 80s or now?"

A lot of older ones were actually pining for the simpler Soviet days. Which given the queues for bread and general levels of poverty, not to mention the political situation seems like a very optimistic take...

I listened to a girl who escaped from north korea, made it to china, got sold as a ___ slave (fill in the blank, I just don't like typing it) underage by the rules in this country and made it through mongolia to escape china and eventually made it to South Korea (if she'd have gotten caught, she'd have been sent back to N. Korea and killed).

She said in N. Korea, nobody has a clue that they have choices or what the concept of love or anything like that is. When she got to S. Korea and was confronted with freedom and having to think, it would cause her to be exhausted. She would think for 15 minutes or so and then retreat to a dark room or somewhere that she could take a break.

She eventually ended up in the united states and graduated from Columbia in NY (not by any means and easy university).

My point being that a lot of these folks would've been in the middle of life when things changed a lot and if you're 45 or 50, changes are much harder. Learning new things and being mentally flexible is much harder -we work on managing experience to make decisions, not processing new information. I'd bet the change from the soviet days has been taxing and stressful, but in a different way than being soviet was stressful.

 

[artie]

Totaly agree not only thriving retail sector but Exchange and Mart like ebay and Wish but in paper form

I was relating to my son recently, how things used to be.
Cycle six miles to town on Sat, bring home exchange and mart peruse for hours, pick item required. Cycle to post office on Monday, buy postal orders put everything in an envelope affix a stamp, go home and wait for ever.

Now we press a button and it's here next morning.

 

[Sandyn]

and in Manchester electrical army surplus stores could get all components for amateur radio building gave me a good grounding

was that an intentional pun??

 

[Sandyn]

When you die, your relatives have three options what to do with your body, cremation, burial or recycled at the scrap yard.