We saw them arrive

Polly got me thinking about the things we take for granted now, but never existed in our youth. Here are a few, with some memories thrown in.

Barclaycard was the first credit card to be introduced outside the USA in 1966. My Dad had one in the early days, and I remember it came with a booklet that was a list of all the places where you could use it.

The first cashpoint machine was opened in Enfield in 1967. There are now over 60,000 of them. I don't remember much about the introduction, I never had enough cash to bank for a long time. My father knew his bank manager - yes, banks had staff and phones that they answered.

Low cost package holidays were introduced by Thomas Cook in 1851, and package holidays were popular all the way through to the sixties - but based on coach or rail travel. Holidays involving cheap flights only started in the early seventies, I remember being envious of a schoolfriend who went to Spain on one of the first ones in about 1972.

Windsurfers were not a feature of the seaside until after the seventies. I remember a lone windsurfer sailing up the Thames in 1977 doing a sort of promotional display and generally showing off to the crowd who were waiting for the Queen's Jubilee firework display.

McDonalds were unknown in Nottingham in 1977. We decorated our Hall for a themed party with images of America. The significance of the Golden Arches had to be explained to a number of people.

In 1978 the Christmas Lights in Regent Street included lasers. We didn't know what they were, and they didn't look very impressive either. We never realised at the time that they would become indispensable for shopping, as price labels (which were then individually applied) would go and instead a bar-code would be printed on every product and scanned by laser at the till.

Mobile phones were unheard of in the 1970s, although Motorala demonstrated a prototype in 1973 that was about the size of someones head. My employer finally allowed me to install a "car-phone" in 1989 after being stranded and out of contact with the office as a result of the storm that year. It had a full sized handset with a curly wire, a box in the boot the size of an encyclopedia and an aerial that stuck out of the side of the car. (An encyclopedia was one of those things we used before Google).

House price changes make interesting reading. From the Halifax web site, in 1957 the average house price was £2,030 and in 2007 it is £182,000. Even when inflation is taken into account that is a staggering multiple.

Some things do get better though. My first house was bought when the mortgage rate peaked at 15.8% - that is not a mistake. It actually was that high, and the current rate of 6.6% is highly affordable by comparison. It's hardly surprising we decorated our houses with awful wood-chip paper and magnolia emulsion - we couldn't afford anything else.