[idiosyncratic]

I wonder what the equivalent of the nostalgia expressed in the OP will be in another 50 years time?

In my case I am quite happy to live now & not in my grandmothers house in the early 1960s. She still had an outside toilet, no hot water other than that heated in the 'copper', no bathroom, electricity only for lights upstairs & only a few 'sockets' downstairs. She was considered quite 'posh' because she had a television (9" screen) & a fur coat that she got after a win on the horses. She was a widow as my grandfather died from a chest infection exacerbated by his working life as a coal miner & cement lorry driver.

My other grandmother's house was a bit better - still an outside loo, but it had a bathroom & an immersion heater for hot water. My grandfather on this side of the family had been a docker since the days when they went every day to see if there was work & were sent home if there was none.

Neither set of grandparents owned a car, or had a telephone.

So what will be the equivalent, today? - only having a 32" telly & a DVD player, not being able to afford Sky sports. Having to make do with a 'text only' mobile, not a touch screen?

Personally I think we have it easy, these days & while I agree there was something in the camaraderie of earlier times, I wouldn't want the freezing bedroom, the dentist with a drill driven by rubber belts round a pulley or having to have a bath in a tin tub next to the fire to come back again...