This year (2025) it will be 60 years since I started at Durham University. I find it almost mind boggling when I realise that 60 years before then it was 1905. As I prove regularly, someone dressed in the typical attire of 1965 wouldn’t look much out of place today, whereas someone in the clothes of 1905 would have looked very odd indeed in 1965.
Science fiction films about events that take place in the future, show people in tight fitting clothes of pastel shades that are obviously made of synthetic material. Study of Star Trek reveals that the woollen pullover will have completely disappeared by Stardate 1207.3 (Sunday, May 11th, 2256).
If wool is no longer required in 200 years, what does the future hold for sheep? I’ve read that just as we regard slavery and the burning of witches with horror and revulsion today, people quite soon in the future will regard our eating of meat in the same way.
Because of the popularity of betting and gambling, the future of the horse seems secure but if it weren’t for our dietary preferences and clothing needs, the cow and the sheep would surely have gone the way of the mammoth, the quagga and the Tasmanian tiger by now. What do vegans have to say about that?
Looking at street scenes from 1905, 1965 and 2025, the most obvious change is the reduction in the number of people visible, the absence of horses and the corresponding increase in cars, vans and lorries.
It can’t be seen but the 1965 street noise level must be much greater than that of 60 years earlier. I suspect that the city centre noise is at its all-time highest now in 2025 but with the relatively rapid introduction of electric vehicles, our streets will become quieter.
My nephew is a frequent visitor to Shanghai where virtually all vehicles are electrically powered. He says that street noise there is almost silence - just a constant background hum. I have no idea how noisy hydrogen fuelled vehicles will be but they must surely be quieter than petrol engines.
A striking difference in street scenes over the 120 years is the change in the ethnicity of the crowds of people. Pedestrians in photographs from 1905 are exclusively white. Spectators at football matches are not only white but they are exclusively male too.
In a photograph I have of the students at Hatfield College, Durham taken in 1968, there is just one black student among the 350 in shot. Today, more than 30% of undergraduate students at Durham are from a Black or Minority Ethnic background and that figure has trebled since 2010.
By just looking at photographs of heads, it is fairly easy to tell those from 1905 and to some extent, their social class. Every man and woman wore a hat when outside. Working class men wore what almost seem to be cricket caps. Indeed, Oscar Wilde in The Ballard of Reading Gaol written in 1897, describes a convicted murderer taking exercise in the yard “In a suit of shabby gray; A cricket cap was on his head,….”
Most women in the street wore bonnets that were fairly small, on top of a pile of hair, while those of a higher class wore hats that soared above their head. These were known as “3 Story” or “Flower Pots”.
In 1965, hats had all but disappeared. They were no longer a fashion accessory and seem only to have been worn in the event of rain or extreme cold. Today, in 2025, head covering is becoming fashionable again but mainly, it appears, among shoplifters.
The jeans that I wear today would not have attracted attention or odd looks in 1965 but jeans were virtually unknown in the UK in 1905.
I have a shirt in my wardrobe today that I am possibly wearing in a photograph that was taken in 1975 or was bought later but they both have the same pattern and the same collar shape. It may not be the same shirt but it is exactly similar. It could therefore be 60 years old but I have no idea when I acquired it.
Both Caroline’s hair and mine would not look out of place in 1965 but our hairstyles would both seem odd or eccentric in 1905. Then, men had short hair containing Brilliantine that was combed back and often with a centre parting. Women all had long hair. Apart from its texture and a (slight) change in colour, my hair has looked exactly the same over the past 70 years.
Of course, it is technology that has changed more than anything since 1965. I would never have written anything like this even in 1995 unless I were a professional writer as the only person who could have read it would be Caroline. Only professional writers and authors would have written for unknown readers.
In 1965, if I wanted to know if the word preceding ‘shoplifters’ in an earlier paragraph should be ‘among’ or ‘amongst’, I would have had to visit the library and find a volume that helped.
If I wanted to know the year that Oscar Wilde wrote The Ballard of Reading Gaol, I would have had to do something similar but instead, by using Google, I just entered “among amongst” and then “wilde reading gaol” and had the answers almost immediately. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, it is impossible to even imagine what will be happening in 2085.
In 1965, there were three television channels. Of course, in 1905 there weren’t any whereas today, there are around 500.
The winning exhibit of the 2024 Turner Prize was a red Ford Escort covered in an oversized doily with pop music blaring from its speakers. The “artist” who collected £25,000 for this “immersive sonic score, reflecting inherited and withheld histories” was female and a Sikh so that was fashionably and suitably diverse; a concept that was unimaginable in 1965.
It’s not as if she built the car or crocheted the doily herself. I doubt that she even covered the car with the doily on her own, but the idea of doing so was hers and so she is, by definition, a conceptual artist.
Thanks to Google, I can tell you that conceptual artists are those who create art where the idea is more important than the final product. By that definition, I’m a conceptual artist because my ideas are always more important than the final product as there never is one. No one from 1905 or 1965 would believe it.
There was controversy about art in the past. In 1907 Picasso created Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. It showsfive nude female prostitutes in a brothel in Barcelona. It was hugely controversial and led to widespread anger and much argument. Henri Matisse considered the work something of a bad joke. Today, it's considered a revolutionary piece that was the beginning of modern art. Maybe, the Ford Escort will be revered in 2085.
Something that happened in 1965 but never in 1905 or, it seems in 2025, is hitchhiking. Hitchhiking to Durham from Lowestoft and back in the mid-sixties saved me the train fare of £3 each way or, as I used to think of it, 36 pints of beer. Six times a year in those days, every roundabout along the A1 had three or four hitchhikers standing and waiting and often getting soaked. I haven’t seen a student in a college scarf waving a thumb at traffic for more than 30 years.
In 1905, a pint of beer was one old penny (0.4p).
43p a pint allowing for inflation.
In 1965 it was 1/8 (8½p) a pint).
£1.38p a pint allowing for inflation.
Today, beer is around £5.00 a pint.
The only fast-food outlets throughout England in 1905 were more than 20,000 fish and chip shops. There were also a few Chinese restaurants with the main concentration of them being in the Limehouse or Chinatown district of London.
I can remember the first Chinese restaurant to open in Lowestoft where I was at school. It was in 1964 and the cost of the set lunch was 4/6 (22½p). In 2025 there are around 20 Chinese and 8 Indian restaurants in Lowestoft.
Near to Hatfield College in 1965, was a Chinese restaurant and it was a rule that someone in the group had to order number 42 so that we could hear the waiter say, “Praw bambooshoo washay.”
Yesterday evening, I saw the exact same dish on an online takeaway menu. I had to have it. I phoned and spoke to a young lady.
“Praw bambooshoo washay,” I said.
“Yes sir,” she said. “Prawns, bamboo shoots and water chestnuts. Would you like any rice?”
