When I made the thread about the Boy Queen: Christina of Sweden I thought about the differences in attitudes of the 1933 Greta Garbo film https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024481/ and the nowadays 2015 film: The Girl King  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1254322/

I mentioned there:
"about the difference between 1933 and 2015...?
Perhaps I have another perception of time as the other contributors of this board. For me 1933 is still recent, nearing the eigthies now...I wonder what Priscilla and Dirk Marinus find about that feeling or perception?
And yes in some thirteen years 1933 will be a "century"...  ..."
 
I was a bit, as Temperance sometimes says, mulling over my perception of time from when I was young and now looking back on some 75 years of life.
When I was young looking always to the immediate future and only the immediate past interested in...
And now some seventy years later, that immediate past of my yought is still as yesterday as if those youth experiences has made a time lapse to the immediate nowadays past, making a condensation of the two and the in between as one short big experience. And making continuously comparisons between the start and the rest...

Ouf... I made an attempt to express or describe the feelings that I am not sure of if my description is right...I hope that nordmann forgive me and that he can bring some line in my thoughts...or perhaps a psycho analitical survey of my thoughts...I hope he will not start with terms as "senility" and all that...

Paul.

Paul,

  thinking back about the past.

Some of the things  which I can recall from my early life starts from about early 1937 onwards. As a matter of fact I can remember that I fell into the water on my way home coming back from nursery school.
I started proper schooling in 1938 ( aged 6) and that school was in a different location thus that is why I have a memory of falling into the water when at nursery school.


Dirk

Dirk,

Yes I too have these early rememberings, although it was more in a kind of a dream, that I explained to the parents, who confirmed it as true. I in the middle of the water in a kind of a brook. I thinking I would go under water and crying and crying...

In fact it was a brook on the other side of the street. And the parents during the war living in the house of grandmother from mother's side together with an unmarried brother and two billeted German soldiers. During the war they had received from friends a parcel opposite the house to cultivate for vegetables and it was still there immediately past the war...
And yes this was the brook between the street and the parcel...It has to be before 1946, because we, I, my younger sister and my parents moved that year to the Belgian coast...

But I had rather problems to express in my former message, my feelings of youth experiences and nowadays experiences and the time in between, becoming that short, nearly a time perception of only one short experience...I can't express it in a more appropriate way...

I wonder how Priscilla sees it? I remember her saying once "cherising the cosy little moments of my life" (or something in that sense). Perhaps is it for me also something like that? Having a perception of a "short" string of life in which I see from time to time some highlights and perhaps also downlights that ever come back in that condensed survey of my mind?

Paul.

This poem (of which there is a copy near a clock in Chester Cathedral) has been ascribed to 'various authors', to Henry Twells and to Unknown.  It's interesting to read I think, though non-religious people may disregard the last couplet.  This version I found on the 'worldquotations' website.

"
When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept. When as a youth I waxed more bold, time strolled. When I became a full-grown man, time RAN. When older still I daily grew, time FLEW. Soon I shall find, in passing on, time gone. O Christ! wilt Thou have saved me then? Amen."

LadyinRetirement wrote:

This poem (of which there is a copy near a clock in Chester Cathedral) has been ascribed to 'various authors', to Henry Twells and to Unknown.  It's interesting to read I think, though non-religious people may disregard the last couplet.  This version I found on the 'worldquotations' website.

"
When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept. When as a youth I waxed more bold, time strolled. When I became a full-grown man, time RAN. When older still I daily grew, time FLEW. Soon I shall find, in passing on, time gone. O Christ! wilt Thou have saved me then? Amen."

 
LiR,

perhaps is it that what I wanted to express...???  

In the childhood, still untroubled by philosophical thinking and yes a daily experience with a smile and a tear ('n lach en 'n traan), but no deep soul seeking about what happens to you? And just living through the days without too much attention. And yes the time creeps perhaps because one is always looking for future events to happen as soon as possible and perhaps that waiting for a desired opportunity is that enerving? Not yet that philosophical approach as when growing older.

And yes how older one becomes how faster time passes, at least for me.

Perhaps when growing older and the time starts to fly, the childhood comes nearer in time and one has perhaps the impression of one's lifetime that it wasn't that long, with the childhood nearing to the old age in one "single" short narration?

Perhaps there  are not that many that are philosophing about the perception of time in their life and perhaps I am one big exception , but perhaps there can also be a secondary goal of challenging nordmann for comments as he is so competent on nearly every field of knowledge...

Kind regards from Paul.

Thinking of childhood dreams, I remember I had a nightmare after watching something on TV where a young David Attenborough had visited somewhere where in the not too distant past where head-hunting had been practised and some of the heads were still on display.  The programme would have aired in the 1950s.

I find myself looking back sometimes and am quite fond of the old 'interval' films from the BBC some of which have been uploaded to YouTube.

I guess there is no harm as long as one looks back fondly without 'living in the past'.  I need to focus on the present currently.  Now that I have a 'new' secondhand computer, if I am going to start doing audio-typing from home again I'm going to have to think about getting some software to play the audio files - one that can handle DS2 files as well as MP3s.  A company called Olympus provides such software though there used to be a couple of others.  Not that I'm thinking of investing in it myself as I'm not a professional writer, but there is an e-typewriter available now.  It is primarily aimed at those who earn their livings by writing as it offers the bog-standard ability to type and save (though it does have wi-fi) but because it doesn't have the ability to surf the internet people will not be tempted to become distracted by going off into cyber-space.  I thought perhaps a tablet computer could serve the same purpose if it were not linked to the internet.  I did see one video review where a professional writer (Michael Jecks who writes the "Templar" historical mystery series) said he found it useful because it was light and could use it if travelling distances by train and would use his mobile phone if he did need to use the internet in transit.  https://getfreewrite.com/

Back in the day there were small manual typewriters (I still have one though I don't use it).  There were Bluebirds and Silver Reeds to name but two.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s the first word-processors I came across were machines which only did word processing.  They didn't have the facility to run spreadsheets and data bases and many other applications that the desktop and laptop computers did though I was working on desktop computers which ran more than just word processing programs by the end of the 1980s.  I have a golf ball typewriter but last time I tried to use it I had quite lost the touch of typing on an electronic* typewriter.  Maybe it is easier to transfer from typing on a typewriter to a computer as I had to in my working life than vice versa.

Edit on 27.7.2020 - looking at Paul's post below I think the golf ball typewriter was more strictly an electric typewriter than an electric typewriter.

LiR, that's a new aspect, the living in the past, that I had not yet thought about. For me not  yet!  living in the past. (BTW: I have only yet about the age of a Joe Biden or a Trump, although you never know...)

But perhaps thanks to your comments, I thought about periods in life, where each day was an eternity...for instance in the wake of an important decision in life or waiting for a life threatening operation...? Or for instance when returning on 15 March from Spain, having had a fortnight overthere without any restriction, and then waiting in a self imposed quarantine till the virus didn't appear...I wonder how other people have that time perception? The opposite is I think also true, when one has a wonderful time the days fleeing by in a hectic rate?

LiR, perhaps will nordmann now say you have to change your subject to "time perception" tout court? But as usual it is a deviation and perhaps related , while the described time perception is felt more among the older, who are more "thinking" about their life than the youngsters?

LiR, typewriters...

I started with a manual azerty typing with ten fingers (I guess with manual you mean the one with real letters (and for a copy you had to put "carbon paper" between the two sheets?)

Then the "electrical" one:
https://image3.marktplatznet.de/mp/00035/000001754490_1.jpg


With "electronical" do you mean with a keyboard and a screen and where there is a printer, which makes copies of what you typed?

In fact is that the same as I now do, with the keyboard and desktop?

With the modern flat keyboards as from an I pad I have big difficulties to type with ten fingers...always missing with nearby letters...but the grandson said that on most flat computers one can connect an extern (for me normal ) keyboard...

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul, I think the golf ball typewriter was an electric typewriter rather than an electronic one and I've changed my wording in my earlier comment.  You are right, electric typewriters had the motor which was electric whereas the electronic typewriters had memory chips although they also were powered by electricity. Not all the electronic typewriters especially in their early days had LED screens though some of the more sophisticated ones did. Some of the early electronic typewriters functioned by printing on the typewriter itself rather than on a computer.  I can remember using some (one was a Brother I think) which had daisywheels which did the printing but on the actual typewriter itself.

Here is a link to IBM's site which gives some information about the Selectric golfball typewriter.   https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/selectric/  Some electric typewriters (not sure whether the golf balls did or not) were able to make records which could be used again by using tapes like the old-fashioned Telex/teleprinter machines did.

LiR, thank you very much for the survey and it fits with all what I experienced.
Kind regards from Paul.

PS. I meant about typewriters and all that 

PaulRyckier wrote:

Perhaps when growing older and the time starts to fly, the childhood comes nearer in time and one has perhaps the impression of one's lifetime that it wasn't that long, with the childhood nearing to the old age in one "single" short narration?

It’s a bit like realising that electronic typewriters, aka word processors (i.e. office computers) have been around since the 1960s and that that’s now over 50 years ago. They didn’t, however, become popularly available until the late 1970s and didn’t become commonplace until the late 1980s. Similarly, electric typewriters were first produced around 1910 but didn’t become commercially available until the 1940s or commonplace until the 1970s. The developmental shift of the electric typewriter can be seen to have gone in 30-year phases while that of the electronic typewriter went in 10-year phases. And just as the electric typewriter reached its zenith in the 1980s, its time at the top was marked by the word-processor which was taking off at that very time. It was a similar story with sound recording and vinyl records, cassette tapes and compact discs etc. The rapid and often overlapping development of various technologies can often seem bewildering in retrospect even to those (or especially to those) who lived through the changes. And the speed of change only seems to increase. A teenager today in 2020 will almost certainly look back in 50 years’ time at the iPhone 11 and the Maimang 9 etc as being endearingly quaint museum pieces.

And it’s not just you Paul who sometimes find themselves ‘philosophing about the perception of time in their life’. I had just such an experience the other nite when the 1963 film Tom Jones was broadcast on television. I wasn’t going to watch it at first because a) I’ve seen it before, b) it’s quite long and c) I don’t remember it being that good anyway. But then I reconsidered and realised that a) it’s about 30 years since I last saw it, b) it could be recorded and watched piecemeal and c) it would be interesting to see if it had dated.

Having re-watched it, however, it can indeed to be said to have been a ground-breaking film and seems to be the cinematic embodiment of poet Philip Larkin’s assertion that ‘sexual intercourse began in nineteen-sixty-three’. The device of actors turning directly to, winking at, or even addressing the camera was also innovative. Based on Henry Fielding’s 1740s novel it is a social satire and bawdy romp with many of the characters, of course, being caricatures. I was, however, particularly struck by the performance of Dame Edith Evans who plays Miss Western, the level-headed dowager aunt of Sophie who is Tom’s main love interest. At the time of filming Edith was 75 years of age having been born in the 1880s. If she were still alive today she would be 132 years old which is comparable to the 139 years between the year of Edith Evans’ birth (1888) back to the year of the publication of Fielding’s book (1749).



Edith Evans as Miss Western in Tom Jones (1963)

I didn't catch Tom Jones on the TV though I saw it at the cinema long ago.  Sophia, like Bathsheba in the 1967 version of Far From the Madding Crowd had changed from being black-haired in the book to being blonde in the film version.  I hadn't read (or more exactly dipped into) the book before I saw the film.  Susannah York was lovely looking and had the acting chops too.

It is surprising to realise just how long ago there was a version of the electric typewriter.  I just looked online and Wikipedia said some electric typewriters were patented in the 19th century but not in a commercial way until as outlined above by Vizzer.  Now we seem to have come full-circle with the e-typewriter from Astrohaus, the freewrite that I mentioned earlier in this thread, though that does seem to be aimed at professional writers.

Thanks Vizzer for trying to express something I have trouble with to describe.

I think I saw some episodes in the time with Dutch subtitles. I have to say that to be honest I found it a bit long-winded (langweilig, langdradig)  and if I recall it well stopped viewing it . Perhaps growing older and with my still busy life I tend for the more rapid developping stories. I don't say that if I see it now, as you I couldn't it enjoy it.
Although I doubt if my attitude would have changed...? For instance in the time we looked at the series "Calling the midwife" as very good and now looking at it at "BBC entertainement" it as lost of its previous gloss...perhaps that I become a bit "blasé" 

For those who want to see "Tom Jones" in English without subtitles...



Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

This poem (of which there is a copy near a clock in Chester Cathedral) has been ascribed to 'various authors', to Henry Twells and to Unknown.  It's interesting to read I think, though non-religious people may disregard the last couplet.  This version I found on the 'worldquotations' website.

"When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept. When as a youth I waxed more bold, time strolled. When I became a full-grown man, time RAN. When older still I daily grew, time FLEW. Soon I shall find, in passing on, time gone. O Christ! wilt Thou have saved me then? Amen."

There was more than a hint of this this week. It was mentioned on the radio that All Souls' Day 2023 now saw us a year closer in time to the year 2100 than to the Second World War. The halfway-mark between the 2nd of September 1945 and the 1st of January 2100 was passed on All Souls' Day 2022. For those of us brought up in the Twentieth Century for whom the phrase "since the War" was a yardstick with which to measure all manner of chronological phases and records etc, and for whom the year 2000 itself was a futuristic date, then this came as quite a startling fact. A twenty-something work colleague, however, received the information with respectfully raised eyebrows but an ultimately bemused expression.