it will be 2009 soon, isn't that mad

[southeastastra]

i thought, i'd at least be dressed in a silver jumpsuit and have my own hovercraft

yep - I remember doing pictures of the future at school etc and it was nothing like this.

I feel cheated!!

Funny when you're a kid even a day takes forever. When you're grown up it's like 'ziiiiippppp there goes another year'.

Weird.

dont! just dont even go there!!!

lol.

I was imagining my future by now would involve at least one flying car

Message withdrawn

LOL - all those things they used to promise us on Tomorrow's World - and reaaly for the most part, life goes on much the same!

Mind you, DH bought me an Ipod Touch for my birthday, and we did agree that not that many years ago it would have been seen as the Devil's Work. Such functionality in so small a gadget is incredible to me.

It only seems like 5 mins ago I got my first mobile phone, and the computer at secondary school took up a room - and was only good for playing othello! And we had to take turns!

only the sixth form had computers here too, bbc computers

i loved my spectrum 48k

I was telling a young colleague today about the photocopier I used at collage. It was emormous! You had to type the words onto a template, then peel off the backing sheet to reveal everything back to front and fix it to a drum. Turn the wheel and it dipped in ink and transferred the text the right way round! I seem to remember it took up the whole room!

Ha Ha I had a conversation in this vein with my 2 boys a couple of weeks ago when our heating was on the blink & it was freezing.. just had gas fire in 1 room for warmth.. was telling them about "when I was little & we just had 1 coal fire & no radiators in our house, till I was about 13" & you'd have thought I was telling them that I was best mates with Adam & Eve!

Don't get me started on when I told them about only having 3 telly channels, & a couple of kids programmes a day (A DAY!!!???! was their disbelieiving reply)

At the risk of sounding "4 Yorkshire Men"ish, we had an outside toilet and no bathroom when I was really small. And I remember being dried and dressed infront of the gas fire on Sunday bath night.

It makes me perpertually cross with my dd who complains every morning about being cold, and her clothes being cold. I tell her she doesn't know the meaning of cold. She'd implode if she knew about the lack of Cbeebies!

It is mad isn't it. I remember talking with friends at school and we all said we'd meet up in the year 2000 when we were 24 outside City pets in town. Funnily enough by the year 2000 City pets had gone and so had we! It was really hard to imagine being so old then (ha we thought 24 was old).

Technology wise how did we survive without the internet? The last decade or so things have really come on we had pagers then mobiles, the internet available to most, digital cameras etc.

PANTO I know what you mean about the TV, as I mentioned before, we were talking about tv in the 'olden days' too, when I said there wereonly a couple of kids programmes on each day..all my ds2 (6) could say was "well why didn't you just press the red button?!"

if only they knew...

& i'm only 35, not 135!

bev, I guess going back to the OP, we're not wearing silver suits and there are no flying cars just yet, but actually there is so much our dcs take for granted that just didn't exist (or were so expensive etc) in our childhoods. And I'm talking about the little domestic things rather than big advance in modern science.....

DVDS (or videos even)
CDs (Iused to tape the Top 40 off the rediffusion TV and everyone had to shush)
PCs
Internet
Ipods - kids would laugh at the old walkmans that ran the batteries down in 5 mins
100s of TV channels instead of 3
Central heating
double glazing
Colour TV - is it even possible to buy B&W anymore? And the size of them now!
Everyone has a bathroom.
"Most" people have a car. My grandparents never drove and my dad only learnt when he about 30.

(In fact til my teenage years there were about 3 cars in my cul-de-sac. We used to play tennis in the street. These days it is packed solid.)

Holidays abroad - especially to far flung destinations. Costa Brava was probably a luxury holiday when I was small.

Feel free to add your own....

food that's in the 'shame' aisles at supermarkets, findus crispy pancakes (cheese, not mince ) angel delight, fray bentos pies...........

There were no supermarkets when I was a child, you went in shops and people helped you to buy stuff.

Clothkits clothes.

I think I can alway remember supermarkets - even if small ones. Did they have brown bread in those days?