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Persistence of time
Feb. 24th, 2010 10:07 am"Want to know something that'll freak you out?" He asked me.
"Um. Go on then."
"If Back to the Future was made today, Marty McFly would go back in time to 1980."
"Ah. That makes me old, doesn't it?"
The wierd thing about human lifespans getting longer is that events which at first glance appear impossibly distant in the past are often actually only a couple of generations away at most. When I was in Dorchester last year I noticed that Thomas Hardy, that chronicler of Early Victorian life, died in 1928 - which means that things like the Indian Mutiny and the Napoleonic Wars are actually only three or four generations in the past. Whilst being aware of this on an intellectual level, it sometimes freaks me out a bit.
What's wierder is that events which seem pretty fresh to me are busily vanishing into the past too. I realised recently that for someone born today, the miners strike of the early 80's would be relatively as distant a history to them as the end of the Second World War is to me.
What this really made me think of is that I grew up reading 'Commando War Stories for Boys', and so by rights for things to continue in that vein somebody should launch 'Commando Miners Strike Stories for Boys', in which brave Tommies shout things like "For you, Scargill, the industrial action is over!", before gunning him down in a hail of hot lead. I'd totally buy that for my kids.
"Um. Go on then."
"If Back to the Future was made today, Marty McFly would go back in time to 1980."
"Ah. That makes me old, doesn't it?"
The wierd thing about human lifespans getting longer is that events which at first glance appear impossibly distant in the past are often actually only a couple of generations away at most. When I was in Dorchester last year I noticed that Thomas Hardy, that chronicler of Early Victorian life, died in 1928 - which means that things like the Indian Mutiny and the Napoleonic Wars are actually only three or four generations in the past. Whilst being aware of this on an intellectual level, it sometimes freaks me out a bit.
What's wierder is that events which seem pretty fresh to me are busily vanishing into the past too. I realised recently that for someone born today, the miners strike of the early 80's would be relatively as distant a history to them as the end of the Second World War is to me.
What this really made me think of is that I grew up reading 'Commando War Stories for Boys', and so by rights for things to continue in that vein somebody should launch 'Commando Miners Strike Stories for Boys', in which brave Tommies shout things like "For you, Scargill, the industrial action is over!", before gunning him down in a hail of hot lead. I'd totally buy that for my kids.
