Anniversary Speech

SALOMON’S ANNIVERSARY SPEECH 

Here, for those of you who missed it the first time, is a shortened version of the address I gave to attendees at our commemorative lunch in May: FIRST, I would like to take you for a stroll down memory lane...all the way back to the year 2000. The dawn of a new millennium. Remember the Y2K bug? The fear was that once the clock struck midnight on 1st January 2000, every computer in the world would think it was 1900. We braced ourselves for planes falling out of the sky, ATMs spitting out Monopoly money, and even the possibility of our fridges deciding to start a war. But guess what? Nothing untoward. The biggest disaster? No sleep on New Year’s Eve! However, in Technology, the year 2000 was the golden age of the cell phone. This could not only make phone calls while you were away from home, but could also send and receive texts. Then, just when you thought mobile phones were for others, along came the smartphone! What next? A computer in your pocket? Surely not? My grandson asked me what my first phone was like, and I said, “It was attached to a wall, and only rang when it was important”. These days, if your home phone rings, it‘s either a scam, or someone is trying to sell you something you already have, or have never wanted. Your first home computer was probably a heavy, towering box with a large keyboard and minuscule screen, fed by an unreliable phone line that had to be dialled. There was no e-mail to spend hours going through, and ‘spam’ was something eaten for lunch from an oblong tin. And TV! Do you realise there were just four channels? Meanwhile, your kids kept asking to be given the new PlayStation 2, so they could stop hanging out with their friends and start spending entire weekends yelling at each other in their bedrooms. 

SO, A QUARTER OF A CENTURY SINCE. It doesn’t sound like much, until you realise that it’s been long enough for babies to become parents, trousers and hemlines to rise and fall dramatically in fashion, and for the price of an energy bill to shoot up like a dodgy crypto investment. Let’s take a moment to reflect on just how much has changed, and how much we’ve changed. We’ve gone from writing letters - actual letters, with pens - to getting a “thumbs up” emoji as a thank-you note. Many of us are now proud grandparents. If you’re lucky, your grandchildren may send you messages, often including “LOL” - which I can never remember means either “Lots of Love” or “Laugh Out Loud”. While we do love them dearly, mainly because they know how your phone and TV work, the real joy of being a grandparent is that you get to hand the child back when it is time to go home. IN OUR OWN SCEPTRED ISLE, we’ve lived through many political Uturns. Prime Ministers have come and gone - some more willingly than others. We’ve had referendums, reshuffles, resignations, and lockdowns. Ah, lockdown; a period that taught us many things: how to work from home in pyjamas, how to cut hair, and who to include in the six constituents of your ‘bubble’. We clapped for carers and stockpiled loo rolls like they were currency. 

IN THE PAST 25 YEARS, technology has marched on at an alarming pace. There was a time when you had to dial a number and hope someone was home. Now you can send a text, an email, or a WhatsApp, and get a reply - all within 30 seconds. We’ve come to own smartphones, smart TVs, and even smart doorbells with built-in CCTV. Let’s not forget the cultural shifts. Reality TV has given us everything from people eating bugs in the jungle to baking under pressure in a tent. Music, too, has changed from vinyl records to cassette tapes to CDs to digital downloads to streaming – and back again? - and now we pay a monthly subscription to hear songs we already own, interrupted by ads for vitamins, continence pads, and dating apps. In fashion, we’ve gone from flares to skinny jeans and back again, with a brief and confusing period where people paid £200 for trousers with rips in them. Ties and suits have become virtually non-existent; somewhere, an entire generation of tailors must be weeping. Let’s not forget health and fitness. Or rather, the lack of it. In our youth, we could dance until 2am. Now, if we sneeze too hard, we need to lie down on the sofa. And have you seen these step-counting apps? I was given one to wear for a week, and all it did was suggest I “re-evaluate my lifestyle”. I returned it and had a chocolate biscuit out of spite. 

BUT we’ve learned new skills — like how to pretend to mute yourself on Zoom or join a WhatsApp group. We’ve had to necessarily come to love online banking, only to spend every login moment trying to work out which of our list of 200 passwords will work this time. Through it all, we’ve aged with grace. Well... sort of. Our backs ache when we sneeze, and when we go out, we check if the venue has chairs, heating, and a decent toilet situation. However, as the lucky ones, we have made it through. With humour and resilience, provided there is a cup of tea or coffee. WHAT I BELIEVE has helped many of us is u3a. Together we have Learnt new skills, Laughed and Lived. Since Tonbridge u3a came into being in summer 2000, we have been guided by a phalanx of dedicated individuals and their supporters, all who have played their part, and that is what u3a is all about. So, to conclude, here’s to the next 25 years; may they be a little calmer, a lot funnier, but slightly less reliant on QR codes. 

LIONEL SHIELDS