Play for Today
We said goodbye to Play for Today in 1984. These are some of my favourite milestones in the strand of dramas.
Cath Kidston Stores
Risk your life for a floral teatowel? Not so much. Flour? Now you’re talking.
Fax machines
Fax machines are vanishing from the NHS. By order. Although they are still surprisingly healthy in other parts of the world.
Cafés
Cafés. Remember them? It seems not so long ago that we could meet a friend for a coffee and a cake, or perk up a trip to the shops with a timely cup of tea… In fact, it was a week ago today that the UK government closed all sit-down dining venues, including restaurants, pubs,…
The spirit duplicator
Remember those fuzzy school handouts in purple? The ones that came with the complimentary side-effect of a hangover? Sadly gone. Geography lessons will never be the same.
A Debenhams near you
In January 2020, the UK lost a further 19 Debenhams department stores. More casualties of the British High Street crisis. So, should we put our mourning outfits on?
Handwritten letters
A note written especially for you. By hand. A rare thing, except maybe, perhaps, at Christmastime.
The astrolabe
Once a useful measuring instrument for finding out where you were at sea, perhaps the astrolabe can guide us when the opinion polls are all at sea.
Bye bye, Brides
Bashful brides or canny cohabitors? Probably neither
Thomas Cook
It was in the early hours of the morning of 23 September that the slogan “Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it” took on a new and wholly unwelcome meaning.
Coal cellars
Once every household aspired to own one. Now they’re just ghosts beneath our feet.
