David Worboys – Never Again

As we evolve in certain respects, it seems unlikely that any human will again be broken on the wheel (Damiens) or hung, drawn and quartered (William Wallace). Our homes may have said goodbye to outside lavatories and paraffin lamps, and Boris Johnson may never be Prime Minister again. However, there are many more pleasant things we shall never see or experience again, which deeply saddens me.

When I was a child in the forties there were no mobile phones, no desktop computers and no television. Childhood pleasures were unsophisticated and very simple. Long before the mobile phone we would play with Dinky toys, read comics, collect stamps and go roller skating. There was pleasure in mounting colourful new stamps in an album and excitement in awaiting the next weekly edition of “Sunny Stories” or “Beano”. And we played games with each other.

In the fifties we listened to situation comedies on the wireless, such as “Ray´s a laugh” and “Life with the Lyons”. For that innocent period they were amusing, but this was simple humour long before “Monty Python” and the golden age of comedy. On Saturday mornings the cinemas showed a programme of films for children, selected for entertainment and education.

More important, as teenagers, we grew up communicating (and competing) with friends rather than machines. We had progressed from marbles to table tennis and then chess. Local social clubs with dance bands provided ballroom dancing as a means of meeting future dates, rather than through the internet. The advent of online entertainment, text messaging and virtual interaction has now taken priority over social gatherings.

My home town Aylesbury had character with its cobbled streets, cattle markets, and two sixteenth-century inns (now demolished) on its picturesque market square,. It has lost all its charm. It will never be the same again. Many traditional village pubs are now continental-style bars, often with a “gastro” restaurant attached. The social setting has been sacrificed for better food.

In the days of Butlins and Pontins, before international travel was widely enjoyed, the experience of hitch-hiking in France or drinking Chianti with pasta in an Italian beachside restaurant was an exotic adventure.

Popular music has likewise moved on. The voices of Ella Fitzgerald and Nat “King” Cole belong to a less cynical, less intolerant and less violent age. There was a time when small-town crime was handled by the bobby on his bicycle. The bank manager knew his customers and the milkman delivered the daily pint-a.

When I was eleven my father put me on a train at Waterloo and I travelled alone to be met by his aunt at Bournemouth. This was normal because it was safe. There was a reassuring sense of ease which has since disappeared.

It´s not just that I shall never see this way of life again. It´s that it will never exist again – for anyone.