Ding-ding! Reg Varney as Stan Butler in On the Buses, 1971. Photograph: ITV/Rex Features
1. Vocalised cheerfulness I'm not saying people
were happier in the 20th century; they weren't. There was a lot to
contend with: war, TB, no bass end on record players etc. But there was
more public cheerfulness. People would sing out loud just walking down
the street. Try doing that now and see if passersby make eye contact.
Remember bus conductors?
Chirpiness was a required skill then for a Routemaster crew.
Passengers were often treated to a "soundclash" – the conductor perhaps
whistling the latest Tommy Steele, the driver loudly crooning something
upbeat by Edmundo Ros. It was a bit like nowadays when you get
teenagers at different ends of the bus playing syncopated misogyny on
their phones, only happy instead of angry.
2. Coal
Yeah, I know it killed half of us, but I miss the smell of coal smoke.
It used to be everywhere, belching out of trains and chimneys, atomised,
inhaled. Most people were addicted to cigarettes too. Everyone died
smokey bacon flavour. Buildings were agreeably shrouded in grime. Fog
was thick, like a sodium-yellow blanket. Of course we older people are
kicking ourselves that we didn't put some soot away for the future. Now
it goes for up to £3,000 a scuttleful and is keenly sought after by
billionaires, who dress up like the cast of Mad Men and snort it through
10 bob notes. Sooty the hand puppet, he was from a more innocent age
too.
3. Proper weather The climate's been broken for years (see "Coal" above, soz) but it can't be fixed because NOBODY DOES REPAIRS ANY MORE.
4. Having a pint with a racist
Maybe it's the invisibility of old people, but I rarely "fall into
conversation" with morons in the pub these days. It's what happened in
the golden age before we had mobiles to check. There'd be a neutral
remark about the weather and before you knew it some sullen clump of
sideboards and tash opposite would be blaming "them" for his early
black-and-white version of Broken Britain. Then you'd have an argument
while you drank your pints and it seemed quite important to engage and
challenge. Today, if anyone says anything racist the protocol is to
smile, pretend to go to the toilet, tweet "Oh my God, there's a totally
racist dude in this pub", then covertly film them and hope they say
something YouTubeable.
5. Women's liberation
So much clearer then: men are shit, we've ruined everything, stand
aside, woman's right to choose, equal pay, non-patriarchal parenting,
loose clothes. Now
feminism's tribalised it's much more confusing.
Julie Bindel's lesbo resistance or
Caitlin Moran's cock-based irony?
Both, obviously. But I miss the days of free thinking and reparations,
when New Men did all the cooking and were more than happy to be sexual
playthings, although to be honest my mind's wandering a bit now.
6. The majesty of concrete
Lovely, egalitarian, optimistic great lumps of concrete, eg the Hayward
Gallery, were going up on the South Bank at about the time the Kinks
released
Waterloo Sunset. We were in paradise.
7. Haughty television
Never mind Starkey, Schama and all the other clever dicks with their
blousons and gesticulating on battlements and meticulous reconstructed
scenes because apparently we can't be trusted to use our own bloody
imaginations any more. Before colour telly,
AJP Taylor could talk into a camera for an hour armed only with an immaculate brain, a glass of water and 10 Woodbine.
8. Working-class MPs
We used to have loads of them. Working miners became union reps,
discovered a natural gift for turning rage into oratory and were duly
elected as parliamentary tribunes for working people. Dennis Skinner's
still there like a pissed uncle at a funeral, but who remembers
Coventry's
Dave Nellist?
When he was an MP in the 80s he insisted on taking only the average
wage of skilled workers in his constituency. The rest he gave back to
Labour, who in return expelled him for being too militant and then
waited gormlesssly for Neil "The Welsh Mussolini" Kinnock to become
prime minister. Today our House of Commons is just the Members' Pavilion
at Lord's without the hats.
9. Counter culture These
days it's all "meta" or "pop-up" and I'm not entirely sure what they
are. Oppositional thinking's too sophisticated now. It was all much
simpler when culture had three gears only and a puncture repair kit in
the saddlebag. Ah, Spam sandwiches, orange squash, purple hearts …
sorry, mind's gone again.
10. Non-monetised public space
The internet saw the last century out and this one in. Early on there
was great excitement about "virtual reality" yet who could have foreseen
REALITY TURNING INTO THE INTERNET? A journey through London in 2012 is
like navigating your way from one JavaScript nightmare to another in the
days before ad blockers. Every available square inch of public space,
every cubic foot of public air now has to be jizzed over by flickering
ads and corporate branding. And looming above it all the grotesque
Shard, our capital's latest and most disgusting lump of privatised
skyline. Capitalism giving us a scaly, taloned middle finger. What next –
sponsored clouds? Toll pavements? Paywalled churches? Sure, it sounds
ridiculous but you mark my words, soon they'll be charging us to get
into St Paul's Cathedral. Oh.
Charlie Brooker is away.