Back in the late 1980s, I was active in my trade union. I would attend meetings in London on a regular basis and, occasionally, travel round the country. There were no mobile phones, the world wide web didn’t exist and we made contact by sending letters and by using landline telephones. If anyone wanted to contact me, I was hard to find.
When I travelled, I took a Sony Walkman with me, along with a bag of cassette tapes which would occasionally get chewed up. It was cutting edge technology. How could I know that barely 26 years later and I would have a mobile phone which stored my entire music collection, my diary and I could surf the internet at my leisure?
As regards the advent of technology, I would not change a thing. Simple things like Blue Tooth and Wi Fi have changed our lives and being able to buy stuff from my armchair instead of having to go shopping for it is a big win. I can manage a football team on my laptop and book my flights to anywhere in the world. What’s not to love?
Newspapers and magazines are now on life support. People of my generation cling to the printed word. I love my Guardian, my Private Eye, the occasional Railway Magazine and Mojo. But then, I liked the NME too. And Sounds, Melody Maker and Disc (and Music Echo). And the Record Song Book, for that matter. Oh yes, and Shoot, Scorcher and my very favourite magazine (actually it was a comic) Roy of the Rovers.
I cannot begin to tell you how mortified I was when Roy of the Rovers magazine closed down. I must have been its oldest reader and I would still be today if it was still being printed. I had a fair idea that Melchester Rovers didn’t actually exist (they never seemed to be on Match of the Day) but as with the world of professional wrestling, I was more than prepared to set aside my sense of disbelief to take it all seriously, as Roy Race smashed in yet another injury time winner in the European Cup Final.
And wrestling: oh my God. I used to get three wrestling magazines a month back in the late 1980s, early 1990s. I could recite the champions from each organisation with ease. It got so bad, I once subscribed to a magazine that gave weekly results from America! Even though every single night the results from each arena were much the same, I could not wait for the magazine to plop through my letter box. “These days are gone forever,” said Donald Fagen, “Over a long time ago. Oh yeah.”
Please don’t start me on books! Not that I am complaining about e-books (the vast majority of copies of my first book ‘Corfu – not a scorcher’ have been sold via Kindle), I would always, ALWAYS, prefer the hard copy.
Perhaps there will come a time when things will begin to level off. People will continue to buy hard copies of books, newspapers and even music. I am not Canute-like because I know how things are going. The information technology era has barely started and one day dinosaurs like me will be extinct.
You can’t fight the future anymore than you can fight the moonlight, as LeAnn Rimes once, so helpfully, pointed out. I am quite happy to have my life on a mobile telephone but by the same token I’d like to have Roy of the Rovers available in my local supermarket.
I’ll be sad if the printed word dies out one day, but I suppose if it kills the Sun and the Daily Mail, it won’t be all bad.
