Dear LPG, 

Have you ever thought about who is responsible for all the history that this world has to offer?  I am one of the many pensioners who has been living here for the past seven decades and, while there was a lot of history before that, I have seen a little of it unfold in my lifetime.

If you are over seventy you were around at the time of the last British coronation.   You were there when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, and you were there when miniskirts and bell bottom trousers became the fashion.  You have seen the little 9-inch box that was once called a black and white television evolve to be an HD screen which is on average, about 50 inches wide now while one per street has changed to an average of more than one per household over the years.  And many of us have experienced the evolution of Henry Ford’s combustion-engine car which is going electric.   We have seen many of those long-winded tasks that we all had to do by hand, like washing clothes and dishes, become jobs that are now so often taken care of with the use of machines and our domestic toilets have come into the house and out of the often cold and dark, back garden.

There has been a lot of history happening all around us during the years and some of it has had to involve each and every one of us in some way or another, but it often seems that it all happened while we were somewhere else until you are asked the question where you were when…
…when we decided to leave the European Union, the Berlin wall came down, the first test tube baby was born, Nelson Mandela was released from prison.   

There are so many things that we pensioners have seen during our lifetimes, and it is easy to remember the big happenings, but we have also contributed in many ways, although I bet few of us ever think about that.

If nothing else, we are responsible for the world population figure, not only because we are here but because many of us have added a few sons and daughters to it.   In theory we are each partly responsible for the government that runs our country, even if we abstained from voting.  Many of us worked in the factory’s where the cars and washing machines were made, fought in the wars that have been documented, and many more pushed pens and pressed the typewriter and computer keys which changed the legislation that we have lived by before we even think about the clubs we have been a part of, the causes we have supported and the things we have done to help our communities during that time.  

I believe that no matter how old or young we are, through our lives, we can live in the knowledge that each and every one of us has made local, community, and world history as well as our own.

GN, Bromley

GN offers us an online reminder or two of the more momentous historical events that we pensioners have lived through…  

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