The Olden Days

So today is the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe day. The day that the Allies celebrated Germany accepting defeat in the Second World War. I could be thinking about my grandfather, who was a career officer in the Indian British Army (for whom the war would not be over for a number of months yet) or my husband’s grandfather who was a cavalry soldier in the same. Or my late, dear mum-in-law who was evacuated as a child during the war and would tell me how they used to boil up rationed sugar and make sweets that would last them longer (she always had a very sweet tooth and it was mostly down to being such a treat in her childhood). But in fact I’m thinking yet again about how good the world was when we were less technologically connected and more emotionally connected.

Back in the olden days, when I was at university, we had something called phonecards. They were how you called your mum once a week to let her know that you were alive and eating okay and not getting into trouble. If anyone did have a mobile phone, it was way too expensive to run so most students made do with phonecards that you could use in phone boxes. BT (and other companies) decided it would be fun to theme them in the way that you do with stamps. I still have a few of my old phonecards from university days. The ones in the photo commemorate the 50th anniversary of VE Day. Thirty years ago the images on those cards would have barely registered as that was not what was important about them. It was that I could call the very handsome man I was dating with them or my parents or my best friend at another uni. They were connections in your pocket, but not heavy ones. No notifications. No pings. Just a walk down to the outside of the main university block to the phone box that accepted cards instead of coins. Sometimes a wait in the rain as another student or member of the public used the phone box. They rarely smelled of piss in those days as they were actually used for their main function of communication.

Can you imagine the degree of freedom we felt as young adults when parents could only call a main phone on each floor of university accommodation to check up on us? And you could always get a friend to say you were having a shower if they called late enough that you should have been back at the block. I’m not sure my mother ever believed my friends, but there was no way to track where we were through apps. We were free-range youngsters and I feel bad for the electronically leased and tagged young people nowadays.

So that’s my harking back to ye olde days for now. I am grateful to, and proud of, our grandparents for fighting fascism and disappointed in the jingoistic nonsense done and said in their names nowadays. Let’s hope some of their spirit of joy and celebration on this day 80 years ago filters through the ages to us today. Blessed be.