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You know you are getting old when:

GHT

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,793
Location
New Forest
1697279191202.png

I really must upgrade my phone, I hear that they come with push button numbers these days.

Tina & I had an appointment at our doctors this morning. We had our winter flu inoculation, along with every other geriatric on the doctor's books. All the grey haired patients waiting in line looked like a pack of Q-Tips.
 
Messages
12,969
Location
Germany
"Zip-Around-Purse"

Okay...
Didn't we call it "pencil case"?? Later, when the new fashionable (unseparated) came, it was called a "throw-in" in old Germany.
 

EngProf

Practically Family
Messages
608
If you can remember licking the back of the stamp before sticking it on the envelope you must be old.
But to feel really ancient can you remember when.......................

View attachment 554448
You're just a young whippersnapper if you think that sign is old.
How about "premium" for 29.9 to feed my 1960's muscle car?
It had enough octane (and lead) to support 11:1 compression ratio.
 

Edward

Bartender
Messages
25,081
Location
London, UK
Kids today are wimps. I could curse like a drunken Naval sailor before I was seven years old.

I learned *all* my best swears from kids under the age of ten. Still do.

One of my first words was "s**t,* and it's still a regular part of my vocabulary. How could it not be, given my mother's talent for vigorous language?

Meanwhile, I have felt extremely unsettled over the past week. We have been screening the reissue of the 1980s Talking Heads concert film "Stop Making Sense," and I find it genuinely distressing that everyone -- *everyone* -- who has come to see it looks likes my grandparents. Yes, I know I'm about the age my grandparents were when I knew them, but it's a complete mental disconnect for me to see elderly people enthusing over what seems, to me, to be something for college kids. That's not what old people are supposed to like. Old people sing songs from the turn of the century. Old people sing "Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay" and "Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet," not "Once In A Lifetime."

We have a Joan Baez documentary coming later this month, and I'm making sure the defibrillator is ready, just in case.

A few weeks ago I went to see The Undertones live, and caught myself thinking - "Why are there suddenly all these old people at gigs I'm going to?" As odd to me as being in hospital for a few days the week before that and seeing all these old men who were born the same year I was. Madness.

View attachment 552190
I really must upgrade my phone, I hear that they come with push button numbers these days.

If you don't fancy push buttons, or even a touch screen, a rotary dial is a real option:

1698142478400.png



This is genuinely an actual product you can buy. I'm sorely tempted to pick one up with a cheap PAYG sim just for taking to events and places where it might be handy to receive calls but I don't need to dial out much....

Of course, if I can be sure of having the carry-space, this is even more tempting...

1698142583837.png


Again, a genuine product! Tempted to get one of these for the home office when it's properly finished, and give them that number at work...

It does amuse me, though, that all the sales blurb for these on the web talks about making phone calls "just like in the Sixties" - as if these weren't the norm well into the eighties. I remember our first push-button landline in about 1982/83, and we were significantly early adopters as Dad then worked for GPO Telephones / British Telecom.
 

GHT

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,793
Location
New Forest
1698144072060.jpeg

This one is a mock up, but even so, how cool does it look.

You were right with your comment Edward: "just like in the Sixties." We moved into our current address in 1998 and inherited this phone.
phone11.jpg
It's still connected and still works perfectly, but being lazy, we have another that has all the regular numbers that we call kept in a memory so that we have no need to dial, or to be precise, button press, other than one or two digits.

phone.png
This one, an original Bakelite, is no longer connected, nowadays it's a showpiece.
 
Messages
12,969
Location
Germany
Hobo knife, anyone?

I never had one, but the only use for me would be to have the spoon for eating cake in train. I wouldn't need the fork, nor a can opener, nor a corkscrew.
Ok, it could leave the fork at home, only carrying the spoon with, if I would like to get one of these knifes.
 
Messages
12,969
Location
Germany
My loungers, yesterday in electronic-chain store, next to the classic mp3-players:

THREE "discmans" , indeed!!

Three B-quality ones, but I just don't get, why they should have a comeback. They still suck too much power, to be senseful. And they were never handy.

Why there are no cassette-walkmans, they always ran as long as mp3-players, up to ten hours. I loved my very compact Panasonic walkman, but it didn't last very long.
 

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