After a nasty bout of gastro for R on Saturday night, things are starting to return to normal. Spent most of yesterday with mops and buckets and numerous trips to the laundrette, the house suffused with the whiff of disinfectant.
And all the time trying to suppress the sense of unease at wondering if it's a delayed action waiting to strike us down next. So far, so good, but I'm still a little nervous. It's certainly not the best time to think back on what a Saturday night involved ten years ago. But then, that's generally the case with most comparisons as far as parenting is concerned. 'twas ever thus, I'm sure.
If you go back a little further, it's even fair to say that our generation have had an even longer period of carefree indulgence to reflect on than those who went before. There various reasons why this period of life has become so truncated compared to the previous experience.
a) Employment is less secure, so people take longer to settle on a career.
b) We are having kids later, in part because of a)
c) Essentially adolescent behaviour and consumerist habits are aggressively marketed to the twenty/thirty somethings in order to keep them spending money on computer games/alcopops/high fashion/new methods of communicating for longer.
And in the usual incoherent babbling style I am so fond of, it is the communication methods bit that I turn, particularly as it offers the most startling comparison.
Now, I have to be careful here, seeing as this is a blog after all, but with the advent of twitter, mobile e-mail/blackberry devices, Facebook walls and countless other methods of broadcasting our thoughts (yes, like this blog), have we actually got anything more to say than we had twenty years ago? OK, maybe we have, but is it actually worth saying?
Sure, Twitter supposedly instills a haiku-esque (how great is that piece of linguistic bastardisation?) economy of thought by restricting communication to 140 characters.
Also, it is true to say that modern communication technology has enabled news from different parts of the world to get past the usual mechanisms of information suppression.
But isn't the overwhelming majority of the information being communicated actually really rather trivial and unnecessary? Couldn't we do with a little more reflection? Are we evolving or regressing as far as our ability to communicate meaningfully with each other is concerned?
This is all leading up to the fabulous newspaper ad below. Could scheming ahead obviate much of our communication today? Should we, could we abandon careless use of the telephone?
And all the time trying to suppress the sense of unease at wondering if it's a delayed action waiting to strike us down next. So far, so good, but I'm still a little nervous. It's certainly not the best time to think back on what a Saturday night involved ten years ago. But then, that's generally the case with most comparisons as far as parenting is concerned. 'twas ever thus, I'm sure.
If you go back a little further, it's even fair to say that our generation have had an even longer period of carefree indulgence to reflect on than those who went before. There various reasons why this period of life has become so truncated compared to the previous experience.
a) Employment is less secure, so people take longer to settle on a career.
b) We are having kids later, in part because of a)
c) Essentially adolescent behaviour and consumerist habits are aggressively marketed to the twenty/thirty somethings in order to keep them spending money on computer games/alcopops/high fashion/new methods of communicating for longer.
And in the usual incoherent babbling style I am so fond of, it is the communication methods bit that I turn, particularly as it offers the most startling comparison.
Now, I have to be careful here, seeing as this is a blog after all, but with the advent of twitter, mobile e-mail/blackberry devices, Facebook walls and countless other methods of broadcasting our thoughts (yes, like this blog), have we actually got anything more to say than we had twenty years ago? OK, maybe we have, but is it actually worth saying?
Sure, Twitter supposedly instills a haiku-esque (how great is that piece of linguistic bastardisation?) economy of thought by restricting communication to 140 characters.
Also, it is true to say that modern communication technology has enabled news from different parts of the world to get past the usual mechanisms of information suppression.
But isn't the overwhelming majority of the information being communicated actually really rather trivial and unnecessary? Couldn't we do with a little more reflection? Are we evolving or regressing as far as our ability to communicate meaningfully with each other is concerned?
This is all leading up to the fabulous newspaper ad below. Could scheming ahead obviate much of our communication today? Should we, could we abandon careless use of the telephone?
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