Look at any old photographs, or read any old book or newspaper and you see some pretty primitive stuff! In the 1800s and the early-1900s life was definitely tough, by our present-day standards. For a start, they didn’t have the benefit of pretty well unlimited power from electricity then making such (can’t do without today) equipment as washing machines, radios, televisions, and powerful, aerodynamic cars, which used another new power source — petrol. Doctors made up their own medicines in those days, before you went home from your consultation, and it was mainly mixtures of sugar, opium and heroin, because all the wonder drugs we now enjoy had yet to be invented.
A night out with the family usually meant going to the local theatre where some comedian, popular at the moment would be telling bawdy jokes and wearing funny clothes, or for a bloke on his own, it was an evening in the pub, spending most of his hard earned cash on cheap booze, before having a fight with someone and then going home to do what he wanted, to the missus, whether she liked it or not.
It was a dirty world too, possessing none of the efficient cleaning chemicals and equipment we enjoy today. Where we now quickly vacuum clean our carpets, in those days the poor housewife had to lug them outside, hang them over the washing line and beat them with a stick. The Monday wash included firing up a boiler filled with water that took about an hour to come to the boil, when lye soap was added and the week’s wash thrown in. It had to be stirred all the while the boiling process was going on and the washed material was then lifted up to a mangle (also known as the ‘wringer’) bolted on to the side of the boiler, turned by hand to squeeze as much water out as possible. Then it all had to be carried out to the clothes line in the garden and hung up to dry. Women were tough in those days, but they did live in a comparatively peaceful world.
Today’s world couldn’t be a greater contrast to the above! Virtually everything is done for us now, we have wonderful machines that wash our clothes, keep our food fresh, clean the floors and cook our food. We have aircraft to whisk anywhere in the world in little more than hours, and frighteningly comfortable cars that can now be actually told where to take us — in complete safety. We have a million different drugs to choose from, for whatever ailment afflicts us, so different to the linctus that was all a doctor once had in his armoury and we have lots of wonderful, but useless, toys to play with — smartphones, electronic games, mp3 units and digital cameras, all wonderful, but actually all pretty useless too, not to mention expensive! Then, for our personal comfort we now have air conditioning, electric blankets, all sorts of weird exercising machines and cinemas where we can go for a little light entertainment, though that last one is becoming a bit of a dinosaur now that we all have home theatres, Netflix and smart telephones to entertain us.
Yes, everything is much better now isn’t it! But is it; just think of the other side of the coin in this wonderful new world of hours, kids used to be able to clear off and play all day without a worry — now we daren’t let them out of our sight for fear of some predator taking them. Go out for an evening and you’re just as likely to be king-hit by someone (and being a woman doesn’t help these days either). Even a simple car ride can degenerate into a terrifying shambles because of some idiot suffering from ‘road-rage’!
No, we humans always seem to have an unhappy knack of not getting things right somehow, it’s almost as if nature needs to keep everything in balance, so for every new discovery we make, we have to suffer somewhere else. Sad isn’t it!