Tempus doesn’t half fugit!

PAV’S PATCH: AS we approach the end of the first month of the new year, I suppose it’s only natural to get a little reflective.

As you get older time really does pass ever more quickly. It only seems two minutes since one of my friends was celebrating his 25th birthday and I was teasing him about being old as I was 22.

Unfortunately, that was in 1980 and he’s now approaching 56 while I’ll be 54 in April. Not so long ago I was going to lots of 18th birthday parties. Suddenly, we’ve zipped through to silver weddings and retirements. Funerals can’t be that far off.

The speed that time passes was really brought home to me on December 9, when ITV rebroadcast the first episode of “Coronation Street”. I watched it with a warm glow, totally happy to be transported back to 1960. However, my 12-year-old son was horrified and couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

First of all, it was in black and white – that really threw him. But the shop scenes had him wide-eyed with amazement. “What’s that machine dad?” “A bacon-slicer.” “A what? Didn’t bacon come in packets?”

Of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised because my son has no idea what an ounce or an inch is. Even so, I struggled to suppress a smile as he tried to work out a shop where you were served by a woman behind a counter.

He was also rather taken aback by Elsie Tanner’s kitchen and the Barlows’ front room. He’s never seen an open fire and I had to explain all about pokers, tongs and coal scuttles. Ah, the memories of my old chap putting on his flat cap and donkey jacket to go and get a shovel of coal from the shed in the back yard.

Time really does race along. In the first of these columns, more than four years ago, I told the story of how I’d taken my son to the library to get a book on the Tudors and was staggered to find a volume on the history section shelves called “Living in the Past – the 1960s”. The Dukinfield of 1960 may be yesterday to me but, if you think about it, to my son it would the equivalent of 1920 to me when I was 12. I think I feel sick.

I find the most embarrassing feature of time’s unstoppable onset is the fact that, in your mind, you never get older. This can cause problems, such as looking at girls who are young enough to be your daughter. Let’s face it, I had no chance with them when I was 23, so it’s not likely to change now that I’m 53.