Baby Boomers Recognition Day.

 Baby Boomers Recognition Day.

It may not seem like it at times but today is Baby Boomers Recognition Day. Besides, we probably take this day for granted because we were the ones who simply knew we were born at a time when everything seemed so simple, straightforward and uncomplicated. For this was an age when every day just fell into place and nothing really changed. For we belonged to the Baby Boomers generation, children born after the Second World War or the beginning of the 1950s. We can now recognise that the now unfathomable complexities of modern technology could always be sorted out and resolved.

For today is Baby Boomers Recognition Day, a day for remembering that we were the people who witnessed the first signs of new discoveries such as the washing machine, TV, electric ovens and gas cookers. There were of course  holidays to foreign shores, man landing on the Moon for the first time, revolutionary gadgets in the home such as toasters, satnavs for your car, no more manual lawnmowers for the garden, things that used to be painstaking, time consuming and laborious, which are now a piece of cake to use. 

And so we wake up in the morning and jump onto trains or buses rather than horse and carriages or landaus for the upper class. We travel in luxury, we take off in magnificent looking aeroplanes with stewards and pilots catering to your every whim. And we no longer have to lift a finger because everything is wonderfully accessible. We get into our electric cars which make the most extraordinary humming sound and we charge up our cars at electric power points. We've yet to discover the art of flying without the aid of planes but undoubtedly will one day. 

We were the ones who greeted the Internet with a good deal of healthy scepticism because we were convinced that the World Wide Web was just a passing fad, something temporary and transient that would vanish without trace within a couple of months if not weeks. Little did we know about the wonders of  mass communication on the most dramatic scale. We had no idea that, at the tap of a keyboard, we could send an electronic message to family and friends within seconds, that we would see a detailed catalogue of information ranging from the weather, news, politics, art and sport almost immediately. 

Now we were given viable alternatives to a world that was somehow restrictive, awkward, inconceivable, unclear and beyond our understanding. Back in the golden age of the 1920s, Hollywood could hardly believe that it could now watch a movie on the silver screen with the sound of human voices rather than just flickering images and nothing but silence. The Jazz Singer, starring Larry Parks as Al Jolson, was now both an audio and visual experience and before you could blink there were musical soundtracks to the said film.  

The world of TV, firstly seen in the primitive studios of Alexandra Palace in North London many moons ago, eventually paved the way for those massive, sophisticated studios with cameras the size of a small house. Then the BBC opened up a whole new world of news and current affairs programmes, singers accompanied by big band wartime music, newsreaders and presenters wearing the nattiest of dinner jackets and bow ties. The decades seemed to fly past until there were sitcoms, situation comedies that reduced us to helpless laughter.  

By the mid 1950s and 60s, of course, TV had moved on rapidly into the rarified era of Sunday Night At the London Palladium, still in black and white but now light entertainment that kept us enthralled, delighted and enraptured. In 1967, TV now had three terrestrial channels with BBC Two providing Britain with genial company to BBC One and ITV, the first commercial channel. Now the world was well and truly wired up, cables connected, a powerful force for good and growing by the second, multiplying overnight.

TV had introduced to well scrubbed celebrities, permanent national treasures, politicians arguing and discussing their very forthright points of view. Suddenly we were made aware of controversial and horrendous wars across the globe, evil dictators ranting with the most impassioned deliveries, art nouveau movements, the 1960s, outlandish fashions on the high street and social commentators such as Malcolm Muggeridge who thrust their views down our throats whether we liked it or not. The Baby Boomers could hardly believe the evidence of their eyes. 

Where before there had only been quaint corner shops, lovable butchers and bakers, now there had sprung up vast enterprises, supermarkets that seemed to dominate the high street. There were giant supermarkets with trolleys and baskets, stacks of shelves that seemed to go on forever. The theory of evolution had come a long way since the days of  Victorian costermongers, barrow boys and chimney sweeps. We had everything at our disposal and, in hindsight, we were probably very fortunate. 

Baby Boomers might be considered as spoilt and privileged because we were led to believe, perhaps misleadingly, that things would always remain the same and radical change was something we could never imagine. The Baby Boomers would be exposed to remarkable new inventions, alarm clocks with tea making facilities, showers and hot water baths that had gold embossed taps and pressure cookers in kitchens that the Victorians would probably have laughed at had you told them they would be a reality in the heat of the 20th century. 

But the Baby Boomers grew up at a time of dreadful poverty and hardship, a time when the pubs shut early on a Sunday and Sundays became ghost towns. At the beginning of the 1960s and perhaps the 1950s, there were no cars on the road and if you were lucky, you could probably get a loaf of bread, a packet of butter, a jar of jam and a pint of milk for hardly anything at all. But the days of inner city deprivation and hard living have now been transformed into a garden of paradise. Or so it would seem.

Baby Boomers though have never had it so good. There are now bright and shiny self help machines in supermarkets where all of your shopping is swiped through a QR code, where human contact at tills is fairly limited. A vast majority of us now possess credit cards, hole in the wall money mechanisms which pour out fivers, ten and twenty pound notes at the drop of a hat and no real need to dig out endless supplies of coins or paper money of any description. We are rapidly approaching the cashless age if we haven't already arrived at such a significant point. 

London of course, is now a towering symphony of noise and colour. The dullness and drab uniformity of the 1950s is ancient history, reaching a roaring crescendo of sound at its loudest. There is a striking vitality and dynamism about the capital city of London that most of us assumed would be drowned out by people who just wanted the quiet life. London's heady mix of nightclubs, restaurants, cafes and those selling food on the pavements, is a far cry from the days when London might have been accused of looking shabby genteel, dark and uninviting, closed in and frightened to express itself. 

But when we arrived on the scene in 1962, Piccadilly Circus was now a thriving Coca Cola fascia delight, reds, greens, whites, blues, oranges and yellows flashing constantly in front of us. And all around us, everything seemed to be happening, developing and taking shape like a giant jigsaw puzzle. There was still something sleazy about the streets of Soho in London but as a child you were still taken to the park by your loving and doting mum and dad and there were swings and roundabouts in your local parks. You were always fed, watered and cared for compassionately and never went without. 

But we proudly belong to the Baby Boomers period, the age of luxury and affluence, the generation that kept marching forward regardless of the most tempestuous events that may have been raging about us. We always looked smart at school with those traditional uniform of jackets, shirts and ties. We rushed home from school to watch Crackerjack, that famous children's TV programme on a Friday evening and we were never told that the outside world was both dangerous and threatening for fear of upsetting us. 

In a sense the Baby Boomers just observed the rest of the world in a state of stunned astonishment. Now of course nothing takes us by surprise anymore. The children are now accustomed to those tiny phones we call screens and then worry they might have a detrimental effect on our children's development. We now have the wonderful You Tube at at time when TV is slowly taking a back seat and You Tube is gradually insinuating itself into our children's lives and that could be just what we were waiting for. 

Of course the world is still the frightening place we always thought it would be. But we now have wrist watches that can do the weekly shopping without ever resorting to our purses. AI, ( Artificial Intelligence) is seemingly here to say and the jury, certainly for some of us, is out on this one. But are we really becoming dehumanised to such an extent that one day, we may never have to move out of our homes because robots will deliver anything we want? The questions are endless.

Let us just say that these are important times for Baby Boomers. We'd like to think that we've fully embraced the new algorithms, the data that continues to blow us away, the interactive games for children, the buttons and switches that continue to click before guiding us into the land of escapism, thrilling new cyber space travels that confound and amaze. We now take our holidays in far distant African safaris and Caribbean coffee plantations, cruises to Australia, Sri Lankan tea plantations, jungles and rainforests.

We think back to our glorious childhood where such seaside resorts as Southend, Blackpool, Brighton, Bournemouth and bed and breakfast hotels in Margate and this was our norm. We are the Baby Boomers and we have seen it all and there is a stark recognition and appreciation of how far we've come and we'll tell our children and they will pass it on to their children and grandchildren. For today is Baby Boomers Recognition Day and we are so grateful to be a part of this day of all days.