Monday 1 March 2010

Why is everything so old ?

There is a fella i've seen around a lot who had a look that doesn't normally do it for me, but for some reason it worked on him.
Long blond hair in a sort of heavy rock fashion with a pretty boy face and ripped jeans. I saw him today and he's cut it all off !. He looks like a bald monkey and that pretty face actually looks a bit weird and podgy now.
It's funny how a haircut can change your looks isn't it ?.

The local paper prints pictures of Old Halifax all the time.
But all these pictures were taken in 1910 or something like that. I assume they think that the readership of this rag ranges from 80 - 100 because i never see any old shots from the 70s, 80s or 90s.

My dad loves books full of pictures of old Oldham. I assume because he can be all nostalgic and remember shops and streets as they were when he was a kid. But i always thought the same of these books as well. All the pictures seemed to be from the fucking 1900s and i'm pretty sure my dad isn't that old.
Looking around the town center, even the bloody electric lamp posts are designed to look like gas lamps, the houses are built to look like they have been around for a 100 years. The street signs look like something from 1460. Even some of the shop front writing is marked out old style which just looks silly when your selling flat screen telly's and mobile phones.
Don't get me wrong i'm not for going too modern, but i still can't get my head round why time is supposed to have stopped in 1920.

8 comments:

Paul said...

Oi what you call oldshots of the 70s and 80s happens to be my youth! cheeky bugger.

naturgesetz said...

Well, I suppose they think that the things from 100 years ago or more look better than the things people do today.

The old pix are also sort of a history lesson for you young'uns.

I agree that "Ye Olde Tellye Shoppe" goes a bit too far, except as a joke, but see my first paragraph.

Anonymous said...

Why not go modern? It's more honest than all this fakery that the heritage industry puts up all over the place. We should have confidence in our times, not be forever harking back to some supposed golden era! It was probably crap anyway, with poverty and persecution. Certainly the gays would have been strung up from tricksy lamp posts like the ones you describe. Is that the era we think of as ideal! Bollocks

Michael said...

Paul
LOL. I'm happy for them to print pictures from 70s & 80s or 90s. If that's your youth it'll mean more to you than something from the 1920s right ?.

Naturgestz
Ye olde Tellye shoppe made me laugh. Funny, but true.

Alec
my grandad used to talk about people not having to lock their doors in his day.
The truth is, they didn't have anything worth nicking that's why.
I know that for a fact because he would spend hours telling us about it.

Anonymous said...

the h/c cut thing is so true, i used to cut hair for a living...sometimes the cutest guy would come in, make me cut all his hair off and leave looking like my granddad...very sad;)

drew said...

When I think about your country I must admit I think it is old especially compared to the colonies(US) where I live... You have to remember Britain built a mighty empire in it's time so I think it is still rooted in that storied past. Quite fascinating but I see your point since you are of a new generation.

Anonymous said...

It's probably a reaction to nu-labour and "Cool Britannia".

Halifax has probably been modernised with all those architectural carbunkles being thrown up. Then the residents, rightly, complain and voila you this reaction.

The word is sodgeon, is that a buggered fish ?

Anonymous said...

Britain didn't build an empire by being rooted in the past. Energetic people, saying fuck the past, wanting to do things built the empire. So the empire's gone, not before time. Now we live with the consequences of interfering in other people's lives. We've got to suck it up and get on with whatever comes next. In fact we should have been for the last fifty years instead of whingeing about what's gone and forever trying to recreate it.