A return to the good old days? Impossible!

What are we missing in our world today?

A sense of fun.

When did we last have fun?

Probably when we came of age, anytime from our teenage years through to our early twenties.

Those years are the ‘good old days’.

A YouGov poll for Times Radio, The Times and The Sunday Times published on April 10, 2024, bears this out, ‘Long for the good old days? So do most people, poll shows’.

A graph of the survey results shows that the respondents saw their coming of age years as the best years of their lives. I looked at my age cohort and also agree that the 1970s and 1980s reigned supreme (emphases mine):

Exactly when you think the good old days were depends, perhaps unsurprisingly, on your age. The over-70s are most likely to think the Sixties were truly swinging, just as they were becoming adults, according to the YouGov poll for Times Radio, while the under-30s think the turn of the millennium was the best of times.

Political persuasion also plays a part:

Half of those who backed Brexit think life was better in the 1960s and 1970s than today, compared with a quarter of Remainers.

People who voted Conservative at the last election fondly remember the 1980s heyday of Margaret Thatcher, while Labour voters prefer the years of Tony Blair’s reign.

Optimism about the future is higher among young people than it is older age groups:

Half of people think they will never again live their best life, and 56 per cent think the year 2050 will be worse than today. Only 17 per cent think it will be better. Young people are more upbeat: a quarter of 18 to 29-year-olds think things will be better in the next 25 years, compared with only 12 per cent of over-70s.

It’s not just Westerners who long for a return to the ‘good old days’. Here is the blurb to an Indian restaurant in London that plays older Bollywood hits as background music:

Discover Empire Empire, a celebration of food, art and music in Notting Hill. A nostalgic tribute to our younger selves, back to the carefree days when the whole world was our playground and everyone seemed to be having fun. Picture Jukeboxes, polaroids, murals, and the heartwarming touch of comforting Indian food.

Returning to the survey, Times Radio interviewed Dan Snow, historian and television presenter, for his take:

Looking further back, one in 30 think the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries were better than today. Dan Snow, the television historian, is not among them. “Obviously I hold a candle for the 18th century,” he told Times Radio. “But I don’t want to live in the 18th century. I like the fashion, I find it’s an extraordinary period of revolution, of transformation. It’s a period many people are drawn to in fiction and film [but] it was a terrible time to live. It’s a terrible time to be a woman or a person of colour or to have a dentistry problem.”

He forgot general anaesthesia, which did not exist then. If you had kidney stones and wanted them removed, you were given brandy, because that was the strongest sedative there was at the time. Although he lived a century earlier, Samuel Pepys wrote about his kidney stone removal in his extensive diary. What a horrifying passage.

Anyway, Snow’s admiration for the 18th century brought to mind a fascinating Guardian article from last week which explored the history of footwear from antiquity to the present:

But when did shoes get sexy? The rich tapestry of human sexuality being what it is, they probably always were. In 1769, Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne published a full-blown foot fetish novel, Le Pied de Franchette, after getting hot under the collar about a girl in pink high-heeled slippers.

Snow also plumped for his coming of age years as his best and recalled his optimism at the time:

Born in 1978, Snow best remembers the late 1990s, just before the rise of the internet and the terrorism seen on September 11, 2001. “There was this great sense of this global awakening and fraternity. The Cold War was over. I was listening to Slide Away by Oasis.

“In the communications revolution, this was exactly the right spot. We didn’t have social media, but we did have mobile phones to text each other. So you could meet up. You could text. The world was so exciting and I thought the future had everything.”

Yep. I, too, recognise those sentiments.

Some will say that we have much nostalgia and ‘good old days’ experiences to explore in Britain.

The news items below explain why those days have faded or are fading fast.

On April 10, The Times Diary looked at synagogues over the past few decades. One anecdote involves smoking in enclosed spaces, something the sainted Tony Blair banned in 2007:

After more than 40 years as rabbi of Maidenhead Synagogue, Jonathan Romain is to retire this summer around his 70th birthday. He began his stewardship with 72 households in his flock and has increased it to almost 1,000, giving him the “lovely problem” of having to move or rebuild four times. The most recent synagogue was opened by Prince Edward in 2017, a perk of being down the road from Windsor. A previous visitor was Princess Margaret, who put everyone at ease with the icebreaker: “Time for a fag?” Over tea, Margaret remarked on the prayer the rabbi had said for the royal family during the service. “We do that every Saturday, not just when you’re here,” he replied. “How nice,” Margaret said. “They don’t in our church. I’ll tell my sister.”

Another thing Tony Blair ended was the ancient tradition of fox hunting. Only drag hunting is permitted; no fox is harmed.

Also, shooting as a sport has had more regulation — admittedly, also, though not exclusively, under a Conservative government — so the demand for rifles has tanked. The paperwork is too much bother.

As a result, an old shop in Hampshire (Hants) is closing, as The Telegraph reported on April 12, ‘”Dying trade” forces gunsmith to close shop after 100 years’:

… Malcolm Lambert has owned Lamberts of Ringwood, Hants, since the 1990s – but the shop itself has stood at its Market Square site since 1916.

The 78-year-old gunsmith – someone who repairs, modifies, designs and builds guns – is retiring at the end of the month and has blamed declining footfall and fewer country shoots taking place on a fall in business.

It comes as shooting sports face increasing red tape. In November, campaigners said they faced a shooting “ban by the backdoor” after Natural Resources Wales (NRW) recommended the introduction of strict new rules limiting the release of partridges and pheasants on the basis that they are not native to the country.

It threatened to make it much harder to release certain game birds for shooting in Wales [Labour-governed Senedd].

Mr Lambert said the decline in shoots was a key driver for the decline in his trade …

Manager Linda Jury added: “It’s difficult to open any shop on the high street.

“It’s a terrible shame but plenty of people have come in with their memories of Malcolm. I will miss it a lot. We have a lot of regulars who need us for their farms or clay pigeon shooting.”

The shop closes at the end of the month.

Well, you say, we still have steam trains.

Or do we?

I learned of a new (to me, anyway) quango, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), that is putting a spanner in the works there, too.

On April 11, The Telegraph reported, ‘Steam trains face end of the line in Britain after row over slamming doors’.

Seriously, the slamming doors are one of the best parts of the experience.

We discover:

Some of Britain’s last steam trains are in danger of disappearing from the railways following a row over the door locks on 60-year-old carriages.

West Coast Railways, the biggest operator of steam and classic diesel trains on the national network, said its business was in the balance following the move by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) to scrap an exemption that allowed it to use traditional hinged-door carriages.

The safety watchdog banned the popular steam-hauled Jacobite train service – dubbed the “Hogwarts Express” for its appearance in the Harry Potter franchise – in January because the doors on its 60-year-old carriages don’t have central locking. The ORR was concerned that passengers could open the doors themselves while the train was moving, risking injury.

The ban threatens not just the Hogwarts Express, which has run every summer for 30 years along the West Highland line, but also many of West Coast Railways’s other historic trains.

The company operates 60pc of all main line heritage rolling stock in the UK, comprising 125 coaches. Fitting new locks across the fleet would cost an estimated £7m, a bill that commercial manager James Shuttleworth said was both unjustified and beyond its resources.

A cross-party group of MPs backing West Coast have written to Rail Minister Huw Merriman urging him to engage with the ORR on the matter and warning that regulators operating unchecked “have the capacity to bring business they regulate to a quick end”.

Refunds are already being issued, and tens of millions in tourist revenue will be lost this year:

The loss of the Hogwarts Express would cost an estimated £25m a year in lost tourism revenue, depriving the Highlands not only of rail passengers but thousands of other visitors who flock to Glenfinnan to watch the steam engine and its rake of vintage coaches traverse the famous viaduct. A three-coach Scotrail diesel unit is unlikely to have the same allure …

In the meantime, West Coast has been forced to fully refund passengers who bought tickets for the Hogwarts Express. Some 77,000 tickets costing between £55 and £98 apiece were already sold for a season that should have started last month, meaning more than £4m must be returned to customers.

West Coast said it has been singled out by the ORR as other main line operators have an exemption to use the same carriages affected by the ban.

But, there, the ORR says, they would be wrong:

An ORR spokesman said: “The law states companies cannot operate rolling stock with hinged doors for use by fare-paying passengers on the mainline, without the means of centrally locking them in a closed position.

“Other charter heritage operators, which use the mainline railway, have made the necessary investment to install central door locking on ‘hinged door’ rolling stock (or have committed to do so over a transition period) and it remains open to WCRC to do the same.”

The Government is bowing to this quango — and the courts!

A Department for Transport spokesman said: “The ORR is the independent rail safety regulator, and it would therefore be inappropriate for the department or ministers to intervene in their decision to refuse a further exemption to West Coast Railways, which was upheld by the High Court.”

Never mind, you say, we still have fancy cars running on huge engines.

Or do we?

On April 10, The Telegraph reported, ‘Bentley says goodbye to the W12 engine with its own £40,000 Scotch’:

If you were thinking of buying a new W12-powered Bentley, I’m afraid I have some bad news. You can’t have one.

… Bentley is currently winding down production with a view to fulfilling the final orders for W12-engined cars, which it reckons will be complete by the middle of the year. But the order books are closed – you can no longer buy one. Make no mistake: the W12’s time is almost past.

It would be disingenuous to try to compare the W12’s import for Bentley to that of the old L-Series V8 – the engine upon which almost all of the brand’s cars were based from 1959 until 2001 and which stayed in production, somewhat unbelievably, until 2020.

But equally, it would be churlish to understate the significance of the arrival of the W12 in the Bentley Continental GT of 2003. This, you see, was a turning point for the company; the first Bentley for decades that wasn’t simply a rebadged or rebodied Rolls-Royce, developed with new money from its acquisition by the Volkswagen Group and carrying with it the engine that would form the backbone of Bentley’s rebirth.

The W12 was developed by Volkswagen and the principle is simple: take two VR6 engines, with their staggered cylinder arrangement halfway between those of an in-line and a V engine. Cant each of them to an angle of 36 degrees from vertical and mate them at the crankshaft.

Bentley would rather you didn’t point out that the W12’s design origins lay in the Mk3 Volkswagen Golf, which featured the aforementioned VR6 unit, but the fact remains. Nevertheless, a good idea is a good idea, no matter from whence it came; the result is an engine that is almost as smooth as a V12 and delivers just as much power, but which takes up less under-bonnet space, allowing more room for passengers. In the latest Continental GT, it puts out 650bhp, enough to reduce the 0-62mph time to only 3.6 seconds.

Under the bonnet of the 2003 model, meanwhile, it signified the start of a new Bentley – one that didn’t appeal solely to the landed gentry. Traditionalists may scoff, but there’s no doubt that the money that has since rolled into Crewe – from footballers, musicians, YouTube celebrities, film stars and those who wanted to ape them – has helped Bentley to heights of which it could only have dreamed back in the 1990s.

So there is good reason to mark its passing. And what better way than a toast, with a very special whisky? Bentley’s own, in fact …

I’ll let you read the rest.

This leaves us with one remaining news item of nostalgia: the upcoming Bridget Jones movie.

Let us cast our minds back to the Millennium. Bridget Jones really was the English Everywoman, as The Telegraph reminds us:

Romantic heroines may come and go, but no one lingers in the memory quite so fondly as Renée Zellweger as Our Bridge, that pulchritudinous, pink-cardi-wearing Everywoman whose love, family and work travails so endearingly held up a mirror to our own.

As did her wardrobe. Costume designer Rachael Fleming undoubtedly didn’t set out with the intention of making Bridget’s outfits so iconic: quite the opposite, since they were supposed to embody a slightly dishevelled pragmatism that women would find relatable. But iconic they’ve become, even spawning their own microtrend – Frazzled English Woman – on TikTok; a cheerful melange of scrunchies, cosy scarves, short skirts, collapsed ballet flats and washed-out vest tops. 

As Gen Z is obsessed with the Y2K aesthetic, it stands to reason that they’d fetishise Bridget’s style. Unable to remember a time before iPhones and Instagram, they’re fascinated by any look that doesn’t involve being groomed and polished to within an inch of their lives. That Bridget walked around with dry lips, rosy cheeks, hastily tied-back hair and eyes devoid of XL volumising 3D mascara is of great anthropological interest to a demographic weaned on the glossy, ultra-groomed perfection of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Bridget just looks so… normal. 

That she does — and endearingly so.

Let’s hope that the latest instalment doesn’t ruin that, too. Otherwise, what do have we left?