A genuinely interesting topic on Slugger O’Toole…..Belfast in 2020…….how do you see it? And although the original post seems a bit contradictory in respect of terms of reference, it resonates with me. Although I would suggest that anything looking that far into the Future should have an upper age limit. Old fogies like myself have an inability to engage with the Future.

If I may be allowed to be slightly personal here….I find the months of November and December quite difficult to deal with. As well as our wedding anniversary (1st December) a sons and grandsons birthday (4th December), a granddaughters birth and death (16th December) and some other family anniversaries.

Christmas is always “nostalgic” as we get older. Missing faces. Parents. Grandparents. Uncles. Aunts. Heightened this year by a sense of occasion that my mother who died in 2003, would have been 100 years old on 27th November.

Of course….in preparation for Texas, I have been writing a lot about the 1960s and 1970s……and I can barely take any more “nostalgia”.

But difficult though the Past is…….I find the Future increasingly difficult. My older son was here on Sunday, showing me new apps on the Ipad. My younger son has been doing the same. Actually the previous sentence is the first time I have ever used the word “app” and it feels uncomfortable.

So I have been thinking  a lot about being 70 years old in 2022 (which makes Sluggers 2020 “thread” interesting). I dont like it.

For some reason when I think about Margaret Thatcher, I am not inclined to think much about the Miners Strike or the Malvinas War. For some reason the Thatcher Years are marked for me by that evening 45 minute drive home with my wife. Dark nights and the Fire Brigades Strike or the Ambulance Drivers Strike and Ken Clarke…..understandably not a man my wife likes.

In those dark nights, with two toddlers dozing in the back seat……….there was in the midst of the darkness a feeling that sometime the nightmare would end. The Political Pendulum swings. Years like the Thatcher Years eventually are consigned to History. There is always Optimism.

And indeed things DO get better. Thatcher is a distant memory. The Good Friday Agreement has at least brought a level of Peace. There has been “good” times (Clinton) and bad times (Reagan, Bush and Bush) and is “this the best we can do times” (Obama).

But now that I am 60 years old, the overwhelming feeling is that whatever era I am living in…..the Post-Banking Crisis Years perhaps……will not be solved during my lifetime. Greece will still be screwed.

Things will not be getting any better. Simples.