Timing and Relevance in my Life

Doing things my way? I always have, the only problem being that everything changes. I have had to perform a range of modifications all my life and this sometimes created complications I still love to complain about.

I was spoiled perhaps because the first lifestyle change I encountered appealed to me.  It was in the 1970s when as a young woman I was able  to do away with skirts and dresses  and adopt trousers, shorts or jeans. By then a new fashion  had replaced the old style patterned blouse with a plain cotton top or even T-shirts with strong political messages about the state of our planet. This led to a phase when you could no longer readily source the old style flowery dressy patterned outfits that our mothers wore.  Adapting to this change for me had a totally positive tone. I enjoyed  the available options and was soon at the forefront of a new slogan a group of my friends went by the ‘Wear your own Art’ name. Together we considered these alterations to be significant for the sake of women’s advancement and never looked back.

There were however many old habits that  stayed with me much longer. I prised writing everything in longhand and with an old-fashioned ink pen. I found the nibs dependable, the only problem I had was finding the right colour inkwells, and alternately the right refills for my pens. I made some alterations but never moved as fast as technology, and was left behind the times on numerous occasions.

The next thing I had to modify  was my use of pencils, erasers and sharpeners. After a spell of some years I opted for the use of newfangled retractable pencils that would never let me down - that was only if I purchased the right .05 or .07 lead refills. My disappointment came when I discovered that some shops  did not store them and that sourcing them differed depending which state or country I was in.

Gradually my hackneyed long-hand writing had to give way to typing documents online. This led for me to change to two types of habits. I gave in to writing in ink and wrote my journals and my notes with one of the latest biro pens.  Running out of the exact biro refills when I needed them became my latest concern. I preferred Parker to Bic. After becoming familiar to my new method of lesser writing, I had to make other adjustments. Instead of exercise books or file paper I switched to refillable  A5 notebooks. I liked those because their pages were pre-punched and included diaries and categorised sections with page separators. They were easy to carry and attractive due to the choice of leather covers on the market. Both my planning and writing thrived on those.

My hurdles were not over.  Soon all diaries became digitalised and I discovered that I could draw directly on my computer page:  in-text tables didn’t any longer require the use of graph papers, neither did maps the use of tracing paper. I donated stacks of my exercise books and manila folders to a charity that sent recycled paper and books overseas.

The company said they were grateful for this and suggested I donate any lead pencils and associated paraphernalia to send with the paper. That helped me make a full transition. One of the volunteers joked that next time I made a donation they’d probably want my lap top. Not so funny, really!

Another thing that intrigued me is that, from the good-old fashioned crosswords we used to fill in with the care of pencils and erasers, people had switched to the online execution of a one and only puzzle-a-day Wordle. The  dynamic world that I used to know had turned inside out.  Were all these new ideas going to create more advantages or more difficulties for me?

The sudden proliferation of wheeled suitcases meant that carry bags became irrelevant. Yet  I used to love travelling with my good-old checked bag with a long strap and a side pocket to hold a magazine you could read on the journey. Of course long train journeys and paper book reading was also left behind and, unusually for me, I effected a gradual change from carting books along. A Kindle became my new companion.

Gone were the days when I went into a café to read the daily paper and do the crossword. I accessed news and magazines on my smartphone and held on to a Keep-cup of my own for my coffee needs.  The latter was popular because of Covid regulations and for the same reason there  were no more magazines to look through in doctors’ surgeries, even scripts were electronic and sent to your mobile for you to call up at the pharmacist’s  of your choice.

Of course I did not like to be labelled old and fussy but I sometimes rebelled  as I witnessed some of the leaps that technologies expected us to make.  I remember reading story books to my grandchildren and getting them to draw images on paper that they coloured in. The thought of us putting this heartfelt activity to one side and instead colouring by number or telling computers what colour we wanted a tree or a pet dog to be painted astounds me.

I remember the shock when television was invented and my parents thought too much TV screen would have negative effects on my intellect. At the time I also had to memorise my times tables and calculators were not expected to be incrusted on my pencase for me to get faster answers. Yet if you now work in a shop nobody ever expects you to recite the times tables so that they receive the right change. No one indeed needs to give you change since you simply flash a card with the necessary digitised code at the shopkeeper’s machine.

Reading started with phonics and verbalising sentences while holding on to books, not with the podcasting of stories for children to listen to as they go to sleep. Yet, we of the TV generation were able to follow the evolutions of cinema and we developed film appreciation.  International productions were telecast with the relevant subtitles. There were classics that we would have missed out on because they had not been written in English, like Les Misérables which were turned into an English language music-hall for example. We have become addicted to international productions on television ever since.

I however regretted that most of the above changes had not led any of us to learn new languages for when we travelled across the world. So lately I started studying the principles of linguistics. Predictably this did not help me learn languages fluently and even with the help of Duolingo, I did not switch to topical conversation with ease.

Once more I will have to make changes to my old fashioned learning system. This time I will have to dive into the immersion method that I have heard praised for language learning. Changes to adjust to the latest fashions is going to remain my everlasting motto!