When people reach a certain age - what a friend of mine graphically describes as "playing in injury time" - they have a natural tendency to look back and compare then with now, usually to the detriment of now. They recall an era when the trains ran on time, young people were polite to their elders, wise old policemen patrolled the neighbourhood, you could have a good night out and change from a fiver, and all was well with the world. I certainly find myself doing it, but the difference with me is that when I cast my thoughts back to an earlier travelling and holidaymaking time, my conclusions are exactly the opposite. In most cases - though not all, I'll admit - it is much, much better now than it was in that imagined golden age of the past.
Take communications. Back then, if you wanted to contact home or office from your foreign holiday location, you had to book a call and wait in your hotel room until a line became available. You'd sit there for at least an hour in Europe, and much longer in farther destinations, until the telephone rang and you were "patched through". A crackling, disjointed contact then followed, voices fading, interference on the line and every possibility of being cut of in your conversational prime. As a working journalist who had to keep in touch with his office, I suffered more than most. Today I marvel at the technology that enables holidaymakers to call home instantly, pressing the buttons on their mobiles as they lounge by the hotel pool or ride on the excursion coach. Not to mention the ability to take and transmit instant photographs. It was never that easy in my young days.
And how about the wonderful convenience of credit cards? Time was when you took wads of cash and travellers' cheques - the former being liable to theft or loss, and the latter involving a criminally wicked exchange rate in the hotel, or hours spent queuing in the local bank. Today you take sufficient local cash for what my daughter calls "small spends" - coffees and snacks, the occasional taxi or cheap souvenir - and use the card to cover everything else. Agreed, the statement, when you get it weeks later back in the real world, can cause a sharp intake of breath, but it is the convenience not the cost that I praise. And, of course, there is the convenience of the Euro and the knowledge that if you have any left over from that trip to, say, Italy, you'll be able to spend them on your upcoming visit to Greece, or Portugal. Long years ago I wrote about "holiday money" which would exist in parallel with real currencies, but be valid in holiday destinations throughout the world - or at least around the Mediterranean. The Euro and the credit card have done the trick nicely.
Time was, too, when you studied brochures, visited the travel agent for advice and booked your foreign holiday well in advance, hoping that it would live up to its promises. Today you can use the internet for research and advice, check out far more options than the old brochures used to offer with travel and accommodation options that suit you and not somebody else. The downside of that, however, is that if anything goes wrong, the independent traveller has to take the consequences - no "local rep." to sort out your problems and make sure you get home.
As for the old-time rigmarole of booking a British seaside holiday - getting brochures by post, making booking by post (who had telephones?) and trying to find somewhere that could accommodate you during the school holidays. All in the past.
So, am I glad to see the back of the old days, and unhesitatingly welcome the new? Not quite. There is one area of the holidaymaking experience that is definitely not as good as in those former times…flying. Once upon a time flying was considered glamorous and exciting. Girls wanted to be "air hostesses" for that very reason - roughly on a par with wanting to be a supermodel today. But "air hostesses" have become "cabin crew" - of both sexes - who toil with trolleys and have a very tough time of it, especially on those no frills airlines that offer you the world for tuppence.
Long haul schedules now mean that cabin crews rarely "slip" to spend a few days (sometimes a whole week) in a glamorous locations. In the days of BOAC, when a crew might spend several days on, for example, one of the Caribbean islands, the captain stayed in a different hotel from the rest of the crew, to maintain his status. And there was no airport security (an oxymoron if ever there was one). You turned up, checked in and were invited to get on board the plane as soon as it was ready for boarding. "Trickle loading", they called it, and very civilised it was. Today you take off your belt and shoes, put your loose change and laptop through the X-ray machine and wait in a shuffling line so that you can spend time buying things before you are told to wait in a pen called a departure lounge, before being boarded in numerical order. "Hurry up and wait", is the mantra of airports today. But it wasn't always so, and that's the part of old time travel that I miss most.