Night musings

THE PROBLEM WITH my having an early night is that I tend to wake up early too.

Tonight, for example, I go to bed with My Good Lady - and yes, eventually, I get off to sleep. This is around 11 o'clock.

By 2 a.m. I'm wide awake, and I know it's no good my turning over and hoping to get off again.

No, if I'm not to disturb MGL I have to get up. Which I do.

Over a cup of tea I come along to this computer; MGL has been complaining about getting online with this machine, so I take it in hand and sort out the little glitch that's appeared on it.

Then I go to the Internet bank and pay off a couple of bills, then check my emails and read a few blogs, while at the same time listening to David Jacobs on the BBC iplayer.

And I can't help being struck by how, in the course of my life, things have changed.

My parents never even had a bank account until later in their lives; money was always kept in a sock drawer or under the mattress.

Mail, of course, was always the slow kind, and anything foreign always came with exotic-looking stamps in the top right-hand corner.

As for radio, you listened to what was known as a "wireless" and if you missed a programme, well that was it, unless they repeated it, which they did only for soaps.

The world seemed a much larger place in those days, full of eye-popping terrors and wonders and mysteries.

Our idea of what America looked like, for instance, came from movies and magazines - and it always appeared so glamorous, so different... and so unattainable.

Today, you can get there in a few hours and at a price that most of us can afford.

Would I go back? No. Never. Not in a million years!

But I do sometimes wish that that child-like wonder remained, and that we weren't so addicted to Hollywood special effects for our thrills...

Sorry... Just the kind of musings that occur when you can't sleep!