Man About Town – November 2026

By Mark Edwardson

I’m approaching a significant birthday. I know you’ll find this easier to believe than I’d like but this face is approaching sixty years old. And I know what you’re pondering, “Why is he lying about his age? Are they his own teeth? And is that thriving brush on his head a syrup?” I’m not saying. It’s good to maintain a bit of mystery in a relationship. But I admit my looming seventh decade has induced a deep sense of reflection.

I’m just about Generation X. In a conversation with another GenXer we discussed what’s happened during our lives. Man on the moon, Concorde and an England national football team that’s been European champions twice. Just three momentous achievements but we decided that was just the start of a pub-bore list.

What else have we got now that us GenXers couldn’t even dream about when we were young. And I don’t just mean when we were children.

The thing that came to mind immediately was the Internet. Love it or loathe it, it’s almost impossible to function in modern society without access to it. Shopping, booking holidays, applying for jobs and benefits or submitting this article can all be done without the worldwide web but, blimey, doesn’t it take ages? How did we have any spare time in the 1970s and 80s? I was in my 30s before I accessed the ‘net. Now we see toddlers in high chairs web surfing. I’m not saying it’s a good thing but you take my point.

So, we can remember a time before the dawn of home computing in the early 1980s and the smartphone 25 years later. We’re the last generation who can recall a time when we didn’t have the world in our pockets, Dr Google or unfettered access to funny cat videos.

What else was missing? Well, in my life our first colour TV arrived in 1974 just in time for the World Cup Finals thanks to my dad. It was a 26 inch Philips. Gigantic at the time and much, much bigger than the black and white Murphy TV set it replaced.

Remote control didn’t arrive until 1981 for us. Relatively late, admittedly, but who recalls the drudgery of walking over to the TV and pressing large buttons to make a selection from BBC1, BBC2 or Granada? The family VCR didn’t turn up until 1983. And it was Betamax. So, mostly good but it means we can remember a time before truly multi-channel TV via satellite or cable. Forget The History Channel, rolling news or TV shopping - we didn’t have TV at all during the day. Once “The Sullivans” or the “News at One” finished, that was it until children’s telly at teatime. That’s assuming the three-day week and blackouts allowed it.

I think you can see where I’m going with this but stay with me. We can remember a time before smallpox eradication, “test-tube” babies and the jaw-dropping tour of the solar system courtesy of the Voyager space probes. There has been enormous progress of course, much of it welcome and life enhancing.

However, it wasn’t all long hot summers, butterflies fluttering amongst wild flowers in sun-drenched meadows and cloudy cider with your mates. As an example, take my first car which was an Austin Allegro. A vehicle so badly built its reputation for being “all aggro” was well deserved.

Do you remember we had two keys for our cars? One for the doors and another for the ignition. Not only was it inconvenient but it was also useless when you look at horrific car crime statistics from forty-odd years ago. In truth my Tahiti blue Allegro “Special” didn’t require keys. I managed to get in and start it with a strawberry mivvi lolly stick. Based purely on the number of times it went missing I wasn’t the only person who knew about this little trick. Sadly, it always came back.

So, what are we to conclude? Well, I’d say the best things ever made are rolling off production lines at this precise moment. Tomorrow they’ll be even better and probably cheaper. The “good old days” give us a sense of warm fuzziness but nostalgia isn’t what it was. If my Allegro was anything to go by youngsters from Generation Z have got it much better than they’ll ever comprehend.