What's changes to the world / society have you encountered in your life?

Communications. As a child our only contact with the outside world - apart from going out and actually experiencing it - was a radio and newspapers, and only a Sunday newspaper was bought in our house. I think I was about 12 or 14 before we got a phone, but it was used sparingly, with permission, and not before 6pm.

Then in my early 20s I went abroad and my only contact with home was a 5 days each way letter. In the 5 years I was away there were two phone calls to me and one from me home. The one from me required considerable organisation - I had to book the call at the local school (where my husband was working - and wait 8 hours while it was booked and routed through I think Kinsasha to up country Kenya.

Then we came back to Ireland in 1973 and applied for a house phone. After three years the government said that everyone on the waiting list would have a phone within 12 months, and we did, so we had waited 4 years to get a phone. Still an expensive business and calls were kept short and in the evenings where possible.

Then I learned to use a computer in about 1997 when I went to college as an adult student, then the internet and emails - I seem to remember I sent my first email in about 2006, would that be right? The first one from my own computer in my own office anyway. My first mobile phone - a Nokia which lasted me about 10 years - one of those orange coloured ones. And only about 2 or 3 years ago a smart phone. And now we communicate the whole time with phones and laptops and tablets and skype and whatsapp (except I have taken exception to them because they want even more info from me) and talking to people all over the world any time you feel like it.

Well granted it was a bit of a gift of a question to the O&Os, looking for the 'I remember when' answers, it is quite interesting, to some of us at any rate.

We (in family conversations) have discussed before whether my granny - 1890(ish) to 1972; my mother - 1921 - 2014; or my sister and myself - 1940s to date had seen the most change in society in their lifetimes. Its hard to say. Gran saw staggering changes in the role of women, transportation and living and health standards. After that it was development of those themes until computers came along. Computers didn't really impinge on my mother's life, where they have on mine and my sister's. And if for some reason computers and internet were to fail we would be plunged back a lot further than the 20th century, so dependent are we on them.

Prior to the first world war the biggest changes were in transport, and most people living in a small town or village would not really have seen any appreciable difference in their lifestyle, during their lifetime, to that of their parents.

Jellybaby1 wrote: »

Surely not for the OP? Anyway, its an interesting subject for us elder lemons.

More to do with being a rereg I think.

In the 40s there was transport. Trains, cars, ships. It was not inconceivable that a person could get to another part of the country or even world. There was communication, letters, some phones, telegraphs.

I have a postcard written by my mother when she was 14/15 saying that she was coming home the next day from her job, by bus, she would change in some place and get another bus.

I started secondary school when I was 11 (in England). I walked about a kilometer to get a bus, into the city about 5 miles, a short walk and another bus about 4 miles to near the school. Coming home was a slightly longer trip as the route took me all the way into the city where I changed at the center and did the 6 or so miles home. I don't recall this ever being a bother to me. Well - there was one time as I was coming home, the return bus brought me nearer to home and dropped me off only a street away from where I lived. This one evening the bus slowed to a stop for no apparent reason just before the stop and the driver was cursing in a fairly good natured sort of a way. My pet dog was in the middle of the road, barking at the bus to stop and, red faced, I had to get off the bus and haul the dog onto the pavement...evidently she knew I was coming.

But yes, all that travelling around with no phones to know what time the bus might arrive, no way of communicating if there was a delay. In some ways this was an advantage as you didn't start worrying about people because they were a couple of minutes late and hadn't called, you just waited till they arrived. It was really a good deal less stressful.

Agreed on the washing machine. My mother (in the house i lived in up to age 10) had a 'copper' in the kitchen - a copper tub with a gas flame heater under it that the bedding and clothes were boiled up in. They were then hoisted out, put into a galvanised tub outside to rinse then put through the mangle which also lived outside. The clothing was moved around in the water with a poncher (sp?) It looked like a copper bell on a vertical handle, but it had a bottom to it and holes for the water to flow through. You used it a bit like a potato masher. What a labour. She got a twin tub at the next house.

Edit, no it was not a twin tub, it was a single tub with a mangle attached. I had forgotten that!

Prepared food, yes. Processed not so much, or at least food that is processed is a good deal better than the older ideas of processed. For people living on their own a decent meal ready to heat can be much more satisfactory than the waste that is involved in cooking for one.