Time

 

It amazed me today when I found out how lucky the older generation are compared to those that have only just left their teens. I am 66 and would not want to change any part of my life even to make me younger.

I was sitting around a table under the gazebo when a twenty year old boy said, “Ian, I watched a program last night of how far the world of technology has moved forward in the last five years.”

I was stunned into silence while I thought about a reply, and when I asked, “Only the last five years?”

I was again stunned into silence when he answered, “Well that is far enough. How far do, you, want to go back?” It was then I realised that five years ago when he left school was most probably the start of his life.

It was then my turn to place him in stunned silence when I said. “I travelled on the Flying Scotsman steam train from London to the Scottish highlands when it broke the record for the fastest steam train. I remember the green caboose with the gold lettering of the LNER, the long green boiler with the black front. I remembered the first time that I see it pull into York station. I stood near it on the station  platform with the three drive wheels at the rear tall above my head.

I remember when there was no such thing as a tractor driver, and the ploughing was done by a man and his shire horse. I remember looking at ten to twenty men in a field cutting the corn with long handle scythes.

Others walking behind to gather it up and tie it into a sheath standing three against each other, before the horse and cart arrived to take the cut corn back to the farm.  I remember the first horse drawn corn cutter, and the thrashing machine, powered by a steam tractor.

I remember walking home from school and seeing the road men working tarring the road. They were throwing chippings on top with a shovel, followed by a great steam roller

I remember the first tractor that was running on PVO paraffin and petrol. And the first diesel tractor that was blowing out smoke darker than the chimney smoke of the steam trains.

I remember seeing aircraft flying over our house so low that you could see the propellers spinning, and some landing with one or two stopped. I was lucky enough to live near the aerodrome where the first jet engine aircraft in England was being tested. I was one of the first to see the Meteor flying over head. I was one of the first people in England to be treated with penicillin gauze for extensive first degree burns. My grandfather had been blind for ten years, and he was one of the first ten people in the country to have his cataracts operated on.”

The young man was silent listening to my every word until I said, “My life and new technology started when I was five years old in 1953."

Now I will ask the readers a question, where did your life start?

Be well Ian