The telescoping of time

 A couple of programmes on BBC TV recently, including this Timeshift episode by Dr Lucie Green, have recalled the great flood of 1953 which devastated parts of the east coast of England and also the Netherlands. What struck me about the scene-setting narrative was the statement that Britain was still trying to recover from the effects of the second world war. This is entirely plausible - it was only eight years, right? - to today's programme editors, but it did not seem like that at the time.

The bulk of wartime rationing had come to an end by 1949. New motor-car designs, the Standard Vanguard in 1947,  the "moggie" Morris Minor in 1948 (celebrated in a recent IQ crossword) and the Jowett Javelin between those dates, had appeared. We had a state-of-the-art cinema (about which I have previously blogged) in Wallasey. And the crack in Auntie Betty's sitting-room wall had been fixed thanks to the War Damage repayment scheme (though I never did find out what German action had caused it in the first place). So for me the war was far behind us - and in early 1953 there was a coronation to look forward to.

There again, these are the recollections of someone who was still young at the time. No doubt the war still overshadowed my elders and betters, though it was not obvious. Now pop songs that seem to have been released only yesterday are already regarded as classics. It's all down to the telescoping of time with age, whether or not we are afflicted with dementia. The effect has long been observed, but it is only recently that clues as to its physiological basis have been found, as in this research. So I hope my younger friends and colleagues will forgive me if I occasionally assume knowledge on their part of some obscure event which occurred before they were born.