ISSUES AT STAKE: Those were the days, my friend

I was emailing someone in Austria recently when the thought occurred to me that in my youth – way back when the Dead Sea was just slightly ill and the Beetles were still larvae – such international correspondence would have taken forever.

Who remembers watching for the postman as he made his rounds, looking out for that letter that had been mailed six weeks before?

Better still, that parcel from a distance relative, with a birthday present inside or even money tucked away in an envelope (and not stolen en route)

Despite the fact it would be totally unacceptable to wait that long for anything nowadays (we would be considered worse than third world), at the time we did not feel in any way disadvantaged.

It’s just the way things were, like the tickey box on the corner, where you queued up to share the facility because cell phones never existed. That way you also got to overhear all the local gossip
And you devised ways to avoid having to put a coin in the phone box, using skilful dodges like the ‘long tickey’. At this stage, parents or grandparents may have to explain to younger readers.

You slept with doors open because crime was extremely rare, and the milk bottles – with their tokens – were left on the veranda or ‘stoep’ for the early delivery.

And talking of bottles, anything that came in glass, such as cold drinks, was sold with a refundable deposit.

Pocket money largely comprised going out and looking in the bush for discarded empties to take back to the corner store, where Nick the Greek begrudgingly handed over the pennies (explain again please) for the dirty returns.

Again, there were no such entities as ‘garden services’, as older children did the grass cutting (with a manual cutter), weeding and disposal of the grass, plus other chores, to earn pocket money.

Talking of money, all banking transactions were done face-to-face with a human being rather than an inanimate ATM; and haven’t we slowly evolved to interacting far more with electronic entities than with people?

I just can’t help believing (singing is optional) something important has been lost here, and that’s why the quality of our humanity has diminished.

But what we lose on the swings we gain on the roundabouts, and the kids of today will be given their version of the ‘olden days’ when life was simpler and better.

I, for one, remain an optimist: I believe the good old days are yet to come.