They always have and they always will. Without progress we would all still be living in caves. Who can envisage now a world without motorised vehicles, without household appliances, without television, without supermarkets, without technology - the list is endless.
Take the two magazines I edit. Twenty years ago Hethersett Herald just wouldn't have existed. I can say without fear of contradiction that Good News is the best that it has ever been. That's not me boasting, it's just a fact that today the magazine can be produced in a way that wouldn't have been possible 20 or 30 years ago.
Now it is printed by professional printers and for the first time in full colour. Go back a few decades and it was rolled out by hand, stapled together and looked just like a sheet of type with occasional drawings but no photographs. But I pride myself in producing the best quality product to date safe in the knowledge that sometime in the future someone else will probably improve it some more.
So why do we still refer to the past as "The Good Old Days?"
When I write that phrase a song keeps springing to mind. Barbra Streisand and Gladys Knight and the Pips are just two artists to record The Way We Were. "Memories Light the Corners Of My Mind, Misty colour water memories of the way we were" or something like that. Often I mangle song lyrics and hear words that just aren't there.
It's one of my favourite songs and so meaningful. Then as soon as the weather gets warm I start singing Sealed with a Kiss.
"It's gonna be a cold lonely summer."
Of course that makes no sense at all because I don't sing it until the weather heats up.
And then there's the song "it might as well rain until September."
Then on the last day of June I always sing this one.
It was a hot afternoon
The last day of June
and the pavements were steaming.
I told Billy Ray in his red Chevrolet it was time for some thinking.
Now Summer The First Time is one of my favourite songs ever but again I get the words muddled up. It's about a young boy and his night of passion with a much older woman.
But there's a line that actually says "I stared at her two lips" which I have always misheard as "I stared at her tulips" which doesn't quite have the same power.
There's another very simple and very powerful line that says
And the boy took her hand
But I saw the sun rise as a man
As I write this we are sitting in the forest on Kelling Heath in North Norfolk before going down to Weybourne for lunch at our favourite bistro. We seem to visit this on a regular basis. It does hold a specific memory for me.
Our grandson Elliot couldn't have been more than three or four and just wouldn't sit still- a bit different to now at the age of 10. We took him on the steam train from Sheringham and got out at Weybourne Station which is almost a mile from the village.
We walked down to the bistro and for the first time ever, he sat and ate his food without moving. It must have been the long walk that tired him out. Bad news is we had another long walk back as well
Yesterday on our way up to North Norfolk we stopped at Frettenham to see Elliot play for Norfolk Under 10s against Northamptonshire Under 10s. Elliot got a couple of wickets with his leg spin and that reminds me that the first Ashes test starts this week and it should be a humdinger of a contest between England and Australia - both of whom are in form.
Still on a sporting theme, I'm currently reading Sue Barker's autobiography which poses a question - when is an autobiography not an autobiography? Answer of course is when it's a biography. This one says Sue Barker with another author whose name escapes me at the moment. In other words it's written by this woman with Sue Barker's permission and presumably following interviews, but is it strictly an autobiography? I would say not. I would call it an authorised biography. For me a true autobiography is entirely written by the subject and that explains why mine is taking so long to finish.
I got through most of my life but then towards the end started putting down random thoughts and ideas in no particular order. These need to be severely edited and I keep putting it off but will need to pick up the pieces, grit my teeth and just get on with it over the next couple of months.
After the Champions League Final, Manchester City player Jack Grealish referred to the way he had played as "crap." Grealish doesn't usually play crap unlike myself who writes crap every day of every week. But hey ho I really do enjoy so doing.
But I lost the thread of talking about the Weybourne Bistro which today does a very nice bean salad. It also has an intriguing photograph on the wall which shows the post office in the good old days.
I tried to date it by it's look and plumped for the 1940s and wasn't too far out as it's 1937 - just before the Second World War.
Final thought of the day takes me back to Gladys Knight. Can you imagine asking one of her backing group what he does for a living.
"I'm a professional pip, " might be his response.