Holidays On The Moon

I've been listening to The Specials, who used to be a favourite band back in the day (well, before I got a bit more 'exclusive' in what I listened to, i.e. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd & especially Bob Dylan. The other music just went 'underground' - I wouldn't admit to liking it, though I listened in secret.)

In my mind, they (The Specials) were a fairly recent band - well, not 'recent' but recent-ish. I did the maths & discovered to my horror that they actually split up 25 years ago. Which means that I was listening to them 29 years ago - a very sobering thought indeed. Anyway, it struck me for the first time that the world they were describing was, whilst not completely different from the world today, a significantly different place (unsurprisingly, given how long ago it all was).

For example, one of their songs (Stereotype) describes how the main character (the 'stereotype' of the title) catches 'VD':

"He blames his fiancee when he gets VD
The doctor says no drink for 17 weeks
He wants to go out but he has to stay home
Sit in & watch colour TV on his own. "

Now I (& others of my generation & older) know what VD means, but I doubt whether kids in their teens would know; such conditions have long been known as an STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) - which I have to say sounds a lot better. Also, nowadays we wouldn't qualify what kind of TV we are watching as all TVs are colour; in those days their were 2 types (black & white and colour). I am old enough to remember that you were quite posh to have a colour telly, which seems really strange now.

This whole thing got me thinking & wondering how the world has changed. As my memory alone is fairly rusty, I looked up '1979' in Wikipedia (this alone shows how far things have progressed - the whole Internet thing would have been considered fantastical by 1979 standards; if someone had told me back then that I would someday be able to chat to someone on the other side of the world using a computer and something called the World Wide Web, I would have thought they were mad. Bizarrely I was quite happy to believe Blue Peter presenters when they told me that by the 2000's we'd be going for our holidays on the moon, & eating meals in capsule form).

The world really did seem far bigger back then then than it is now - with mysterious far away countries with their mysterious cultures. Also a lot of part-knowledge of historical events, some which interested you, most of which didn't. The world feels like a much smaller place now; partly this is due to advancing years - I've visited more places & learned about a whole variety of things, some important, some less so - plus a whole host of trivia. Obviously the more years you are knocking around for, the more knowledge you gain, which inevitably brings the world closer .

But a large part of this shrinking world is due to the technological advances that have been made over the past 20 years or so. As I've said, the concept of a world wide computer network would have sounded outlandish back in 1979. But it happened, & now we can do all kinds of things: we can buy stuff, we can chat in 'real time' with people in Australia (or any other equally distant land), we can bid on online auctions (e.g. eBay), we can buy our car insurance, book & pay for holidays, & we can even register to vote. If we feel like sorting out our finances in the middle of the night, we can access our bank details, move money around & view our up-to-the-minute bank statements. We can meet future partners, reveal intimate information about ourselves (to the whole world - at least those with internet access), & even have 'cyber sex'. We can join the Ku Klux Klan online if we so wish (though I certainly wouldn't advise it). It's extraordinary, and I really do wonder how on earth I got by before, though of course I did.

Another invention that would have sounded fanciful in those days would have been mobile phones ("Mobile telephones? That you walk around with? Yeah, right.") It happened though.

But before they came along we all got along fine. If you were out & needed to use a phone, you would go & put 5p in a public phone box (2p when I first started using them). If there were no public phones you just had to wait till you got home, simple as that. And we all had the same phone (below).

There were different colours available, but the phones were essentially exactly the same. You got them from BT, who would come to your house & install them - & that was your phone - end of story. They had a distinctive ring, which was pretty loud as I recall, & heralded by a single 'ding!' so you had advance warning. This made it virtually impossible to make clandestine phone calls on another phone - if you had an extension as we did - as they would 'ding' on both phones, alerting other members of the household that you were using the other phone. This made ringing friends when you should have been doing your homework extremely difficult - though there was a way of picking up the receiver without it 'dinging', which I discovered just as the phones were replaced by touch-tone ('button') phones which didn't have that problem.

I was in my last year at Middle School, where I was finally finding my confidence & some good friends (one of whom, Deborah, I am still in contact with). I felt hopeful about 1980 - which sounded terribly exciting - & looked forward to growing up.

I was also into music in a serious way. Though I mainly favoured chart music (which wasn't so bad - the late 70s was a very good time for music), I had already borrowed (& played to death) Never Mind The Bollocks by the Sex Pistols. This album still ranks in my top ten favourite albums - I'd say it was very nearly perfect.

Here's some of what was happening:

The good:

Rapper's Delight - Sugar Hill Gang
A Message To You Rudy - Special
Boogie Wonderland - Earth Wind & Fire
London Calling - Clash
Public Image - Public Image Ltd
The Devil Went Down To Georgia - Charlie Daniels Band
Off The Wall - Michael Jackson
Don't Stop Till You Get Enough - The Jacksons
My Sharona - The Knack


And the utter tripe...

Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? - Rod Stewart
Bad Girls - Donna Summer
Born To Be Alive - Patrick Hernandez
Coward Of The County - Kenny Rogers
If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me? - Dr Hook
Nice Legs Shame About The Face - The Monks


And in the news ... (as provided by Wikipedia):

• Kurt Waldheim announces the Internation Year of The Child. Mr Waldheim was president of Austria in the late 80s & early 90s, & secretary general for the UN during the 70s. It later emerged that he had played more than an observational role during the Nazi regime, after which revelations he found it difficult to continue his career in politics.
• Pol Pot's Khymer Rouge regime fell, resulting in Mr Pot fleeing the country & going into hiding. The Khymer Rouge were an extreme communist party who controlled Cambodia btween 1975 & 1979, & under whose rule around 1.4 million were slaughtered.
• The Sahara desert experienced 30 minutes of snow.
• Jim Callaghan's Labour government lost a Motion Of Confidence, resulting in a general election which the Conservative party won by a landslide. Margaret Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister & stayed in power until 1991, though the Conservatives continued in govt until 1997, making their stay in government 18 years.
• Iraqi president Hasan Al-Bakr resigned & Saddam Hussain took over
• Three families fleed from East Germany in hot air balloons
• 1st nudist beach in Britain opened in Brighton.

Blimey.