OK so it has finally happened, I have got to that age. Yes the age of.......

“You don’t know how lucky you are”
“When I was a child we only had”

So yes for the umpteenth time I’ve just tried, and again failed to explain to our children about just how lucky they are being able to find any television programmes they want to watch with just a click of a button or two. The bemused look and baffled replies seem to defy logic in their minds almost like I am from another planet........

“You only had three television channels, just three?”
“Yes that’s right, and then a fourth channel started.”
“Just four channels?”

I haven’t even got on to the fact that as a child if I was even allowed to watch the television first thing in the morning I would have to watch the test card with the girl in the centre waiting for the broadcasts to begin! I look back at my own conversations with my parents and seem to remember a similar distancing of myself to their own childhood memories, especially my mum’s of how they were the first family in the street to actually own a television!

Children today are brought up surrounded by screens, not just televisions but computers, tablets, smart phones to name just a few - even reading their story books this way sometimes. Programming can be accessed anywhere and at any time on demand. The latest generation just cannot comprehend the differences between our childhoods no matter how many times I try to illustrate that children who were born like me, in the late 1970’s could only watch what was being broadcast on the television at that time. There was no on screen guides, we had to read the TV listings from a book to find the children’s shows we wanted to see. How did we ever cope!

Now our young ones are spoilt for choice with the ever increasing number of channels devoted to children’s programmes and the ability to choose from seemingly hundreds of shows. With the development of being able to pause, rewind and record shows whenever they want they will never understand having to be patient. I remember waiting a whole week before the next episode of my favourite programme was back on and then only be able to watch it once and that if you missed it, well you missed it. There was no recording programmes back then and because there was only one television if it clashed with your parents show then you went without. But we didn’t know any better back then so we just accepted it for what it was.

I’ve lost count of the times I look in our TV planner at recently recorded programmes to see countless episodes of children’s programmes recorded that I most definitely did not record and worse still that the children don’t remember recording. Maybe that’s why adults who were children of the 1970’s and 1980’s like to reminisce with programmes of the past like Mr Benn, Bagpuss, Sooty, The Flumps, Take Hart, Rainbow and Playschool as back then they were programmes to be treasured not taken for granted. I used to love Jackanory with the famous actors reading their favourite children’s stories creating the characters with their voices, a real fun way to bring the books to life!

Oh the frustrations of a 70’s child who is done with screen time, well when I’ve finished watching my recorded series that is!