The Daily Telegraph - Features

‘Numpties’, and all the other dodos we will miss

Apparently all those rude words we used to call each other in school (drip) and at home (nitwit) and at work (numpty) are falling out of use and the youth now prefer to call each other other names that we won’t go into here.

Mind you, we can carry on as usual and we probably will (only this morning I called my husband a twit) but the list of endangered insults (tosser, anyone?) is a stark reminder of all the other things we used to take for granted that are dying out, if not already six feet under.

Washing your hair in the sink with a mug, for example, or (if you were very lucky) those rubber hoses you attached to the taps. Beds with blankets, pre the dawn of duvets. Electric bar heaters (unless at Balmoral). Leather ski boots and wooden skis. All of these are consigned to the scrapheap, again unless you are visiting one of the royal palaces, which may still be the last places you might find a mustard-and-cress sandwich and kidneys on the hotplate for breakfast.

The list of dodos is long and that’s before you get into all the things that have vanished since we were dating (hence the great appeal of One Day: those of us who sobbed as we watched the TV series were crying as much for the good old days of mix tapes as we were for the doomed romance).

Here are some endangered things we will miss more than calling each other numpties.

USING A MAP Do miss this actually, because with satnav you never know where you are in relation to everything else; north of that? Nearer the coast? Further away? And it creates stress. If you’re told the precise time your journey will take at the outset, that’s setting you up to try and beat it a) and b) you can’t stop looking at the clock and counting down the minutes to your destinatio­n. It’s like resitting your A-levels every time you get in a car.

BLACK TIE And a big froth of a dress for women in which, let’s face it, everyone looked a lot better than they ever do in the less stiff options. Only the super posh wear morning coats for weddings now. Black-tie gala events, once just that plus a taffeta ballgown, are now black tie plus show your pants or abs nights (see Lady Lola Bute’s much-publicised 25th birthday party).

PHONING ON THE LANDLINE Really miss this because we are all agreed that the phone in your pocket is fantastic for running-late texts, amusing clips of dachshunds, shopping lists, checking bus times and Uber ordering, but it is also destroying our ability to concentrat­e fully on anything, from the view, to the kids, to the call we are making (“Sorry was just texting… what was that?”) and letter writing. I have a carrier bag full of love letters (not to boast, I was away for months); my YAs, I’m guessing, have not one. You also can’t get lost with a smartphone. You can’t not meet up with the person you might have bumped into at the festival. You can’t risk kissing a famous stranger in a pub in Aberystwyt­h, because someone will take your photograph. It’s like wearing a tag really.

APPOINTMEN­T TV Watching Brideshead Revisited is etched in my memory like the day Princess Diana died. For others, it was Bouquet of Barbed Wire. And all those compulsory-for-all-thefamily shows – A Family at War, The Golden Shot, M*A*S*H – were what kept us together after the bucket-and-spade holidays phase. It’s possible that you are never happier than watching TV with three generation­s of family, and now it only happens at Christmas.

AGEING GRACEFULLY By which I mean without some kind of injectable interventi­on. And I’m a bit sad to be missing out on the pearls and matching coat and dress and hat phase. Dutybound to keep wearing the groovy stuff… that’s modern life.