Sixty years seems like an eon, but of course it is only the tiniest of quicksteps in the march of time. Yet in those 22,000 or so days so much has happened, been invented, improved upon, made new.
Consider that six decades ago there were no motorways in Britain, no Blue Peter on television, no Tupperware, no double glazing and no me. The war was long over, rationing had stopped but England and the rest of the UK hadn’t quite started to swing like a pendulum.
Harold Macmillan was in Downing Street, ERNIE began selecting Premium Bond winners and a young shaver called Cliff Richard released his first single.
As Which? reports in its celebration of 60 Products That Changed Our Lives, it was also the start of an era that would shepherd in exciting new appliances designed to take the time and effort out of household chores.
Little things that were actually big things, such as plug-in toasters (1958) and electric kettles that switched themselves off (1960). They meant housewives no longer had to supervise boiling water or attend to slices under a grill — which left them free to do other things, such as the laundry.
The laundry! Automatic washing machines were in the shops by 1962 but still too expensive for most households (the equivalent of £2,325 today). At the risk of sounding like a Downton Abbey scullery under-maid, I can remember when laundry was a colossal, bicep-busting chore that lasted all day and involved a washing board, a twin-tub machine and giant, evil-looking laundry tongs.
Sopping wet clothes had to be lifted out of the tub and into a mangle clipped to the sink, then loaded back into the spinner. Once a rubber lattice had been placed on top and the beast was switched on, the whole house would reverberate as if a jet flypast and an earthquake were taking place simultaneously.
Today, I bless my strong and silent Bosch as it effortlessly swishes through every load. Ditto my John Lewis dishwasher, which I think I love more than my lover. Which? lists the dawn of the dishwasher as 1965 but I didn’t have one until about ten years ago. For me, it is up there with the computer and Netflix as a godsend and a life-changer. I suspect anyone who grew up having to wash and dry dishes three bloody times a day would agree.
Smartphones arrived in 2007 but, late to the party as ever, I didn’t get my mitts on one until 2014 — and since then I have never let it go. It changed everything — first of all the need to carry a huge bag full of files and diaries to and from work and assignments. Smartphones allow consumers access to information to order books, plan a journey, play music, take photos, shop. They set us free.
Obviously you know all this already, but I still marvel at it every day — it’s got an inbuilt torch! — and only wish smartphones had been invented before I needed spectacles to read the tiny print and how many people hate me on Twitter.
And as a journalist, what would I do without my laptop (1992), which liberated us from the office.
Now we can work and write on trains, planes, at home, in hotels and even — if you get the sunshade just right and don’t tell the boss — by the pool.
Elsewhere, I drop an appreciative curtsey to the satnav (2004), which took much of the stress and map-reading arguments out of holidays abroad, not to mention the terror out of driving through Naples or Paris.
For days before each flight departure I would inwardly quake with horror at the thought of even exiting the airport correctly, without ending up on the wrong autostrada for a thousand miles.
Satnavs soothed away that particular lifestyle problem, like so many other wonderful things on this list.
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