Peter Moore: Were the good old days really that good?

“Those were the days, my friends,

We thought they’d never end.

We’d sing and dance forever and a day.”

Anyone old enough to remember the 1969 Mary Hopkins hit probably thinks that the good old days were the 1960s and 70s. When asked “when were the best years” most people pick the time they were young. 

This was confirmed in a recent YouGov poll. About a third of people, and most of us baby boomers, see the good old days as the swinging sixties and seventies while the under thirties look back on the millennium as the highlight. 

Only 16 per cent reminisced over the 1950s, so they are not following Buddy Holly reminiscing. Sadly, even Buddy did not get the chance to reminisce as he died before the song was released. 

Only four per cent thought that the 1940s were the good old days. I’m not sure who these four per centare. There can’t be many people left who remember the 1940s and, if they did, was a world war and the blitz really an enjoyable time? 

Amazingly one person in thirty thought the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries were better than today. It looks as though they do not read much history. The 17th century saw a civil war, a King executed and, later, a coup. The 18th century saw the slave trade and continual wars with France and the 19th century severe poverty and workhouses. At any moment, whatever the social class, people could die of smallpox and childbirth was often lethal for mother and baby. Many fairy tales describe a wicked stepmother because many children had a stepmother after their real mother died in childbirth. Perhaps these people watch too many costume dramas.

We all have a natural editor in the brain. The memory filters out less pleasant memories. Anyone reminiscing over a holiday in South Devon in the 1950s and 60s will remember lying on a beach but filter out memories of sitting on the Exeter by-pass before the M5 was built or the car overheating on Telegraph Hill. When package holidays to Spain started people will filter out problems at the airport or cramp squeezing into an economy seat on the plane but remember continual sunshine and beaches. 

I could look back on my student days and forget the pressures. After the first two years there was a tough exam which 30 per cent of students failed and half of those were thrown out. I survived but I did live with the fear that I might not pass. What were the career prospects for a failed medical student? Three years after this exam we had finals, and again failure was a real possibility. Any junior doctor job in prospect would not happen if I failed finals. 

Most people in their late teens and twenties are unsure of the future but they will still look back on these times as “golden years”. They forget how stressful it was worrying whether they will pass the right exams or whether they will get into their chosen career?  And I have not even mentioned conflicting emotions over their love life. 

The best moments for me must have been when I got married and when I qualified, both in the 1970s. 

Older people have always looked back on “the good old days.” Donald Trump even uses the phrase “make America great again” implying that there was once a golden era, although he never puts a date on the mythical “golden era”. Perhaps people in the plague of 1665 were heard saying, “this is not in the same league as the plague in the fourteenth century. They really knew how to have a plague in those days”.

Or did people in the early twentieth century argue that “things have never been the same since Queen Victoria died”. 

When can we say, “those were the days, my friend”?  If you’re well and settled in life maybe it is today.