''The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid'', Bill Bryson

When middle-aged writers reminisce about the 1950s in all its clichéd glory it’s easy to buy into the idea that they experienced one of the greatest periods of change in recent history. This was brought home to me in a particularly embarrassing way a few years back, when we had a lecture at work from a man who had gone to the moon with Apollo 13. After he’d given his slightly stilted old-man speech and shown us some film clips where he was played by Tom Hanks, the floor opened to questions. Never having been shy on this front (as all who have known me, at any age, or in any circumstance, will verify) I put my hand up, and asked him if he ever wanted to be an astronaut as a young boy. To which he answered, fairly gracefully in the circumstances (not a debater, then), that when he was a boy no-one had ever been to space and there was no concept of being an astronaut. Oops. I left work that day still quite dazed by the realization that such a change could have happened in that period of time: ''oh ok there’s the moon; now they’ve invented a way to go there; now I’m going!''. It brought home the scale of change that his generation lived through, which seems incomparable now.

Along with space odysseys, Bill Bryson writes in his autobiography about the introduction of a realm of trivial things now entirely taken for granted – television, fridges, shopping centres, the concept that smoking isn’t actually good for the lungs – as well as some more important ones – the end of racial segregation, the invention & rapid deployment of nuclear weapons. Which begs the question, what’s the equivalent for someone born in 1980 listening to this boast of their parents’ generation? For me, born into middle class Britain, the answers (so far, at least) seem to be comparatively trivial: the invention of the desktop personal computer (but then computers did exist before I was aware of them), the introduction of the mobile phone (and the rather amusing memory that I was resistant to getting my first one because it was uncool and none of my friends had one, but my far-thinking Mother insisted on it for ‘’safety’’).

In fact, I had this general attitude – that nothing much exciting has happened in the last 20 years – until I moved to Geneva and had the perspective-changing experience of meeting lots of people from other countries. I was naively staggered by the realization that people only a handful of years older than me (and from European countries!) have lived through revolutions, civil wars, and even lived under Communist regimes. Which as far as I was concerned was something that happened to old people and you learnt about in History. One particularly memorable evening involved Czech and Hungarian friends reminiscing about the three sets of government regulation clothes that were available to wear as a child, and attending Communist Youth ''nuclear war simulation'' camp. And suddenly you realize: actually, it’s not being born in 1980 that causes this lack of ‘experience’, it’s being born in the UK in 1980. Whilst you can’t possibly be jealous for someone having gone through a social revolution in their country, it does suddenly bring a major respect for the level of maturity that it creates in those who have and makes you wonder how the ‘’easy’’ nature of your own life has influenced you.

So whether sheltered British children of the late 70s and 80s will ever be able to write a book like Bryson’s probably depends on what’s going to happen in the future. Quantum physics seems to be hotting up I’m reliably informed (by occasional skim-reading of New Scientist), and I guess sooner or later we’re going to clone a full human being. In a rather clichéd way it does make one wonder what we’ll be saying when we’re 90 and looking back. But if Bryson is allowed to write 308 pages of cliché then hopefully you’ll allow me just the one.

[Incidentally, my favourite line was a variation on my friend Tom’s classic debating gag (thus proving his potential as an airport-bestseller light comedy writer) : ‘So it perhaps not surprising that as [the nuclear race] happened I sat in Des Moines, Iowa, quietly shitting myself. I had little choice. I was ten months old.’’.]