Perspective

President Ronald Reagan born in 1911 & Pope John Paul II born in 1920

Like several regular readers of  "Yorkshire Pudding", I was born in the middle of the twentieth century. We were aware of key events and phases in that century seen from different angles - personal, national and international. We had a real sense of what those hundred years meant.

Now we are in a new century. Already twenty years have  gone by. It's interesting to consider what would have happened by now if we were still back in the 1900's.

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Born in the first year of the century, my grandmother Phyllis White is now twenty years old. She remembers working in a munitions factory on the edge of Sheffield at Templeborough. She worked there for two years along with hundreds of other young women. Most men of fighting age were in France or Belgium, participating in a ridiculous war - The "Great" War. What was "great" about it?

It's two years since both of my grandfathers returned from those killing fields. They never met each other but they both fought at The Battle of the Somme and returned to civilian life without physical injury or psychological counselling. No one will ever know what they experienced.

Twenty years ago there were hardly any automobiles. The majority of urban transport depended upon horses. There was horse shit everywhere. Now with World War One over, the age of the horse is fading away with cars, tractors and omnibuses taking over. It's as if there has been a revolution in transport.

Queen Victoria was still on the throne as this century began. Her loathsome playboy son King Edward VII lasted just nine years before the current monarch King George V came to the throne.

The entire nation mourned when the "Titanic" went down in The North Atlantic eight years ago - the same year that Robert Falcon Scott and his polar team met an icy end in Antarctica.

In Malton, North Riding of Yorkshire, my father Philip was born six years ago. He now likes to ride on the family's milk cart around the streets of  the adjacent village of Norton. My mother Doreen will appear  in May of next year in The West Riding of Yorkshire. She will be born into a coal mining family.

Next year someone called Adolf Hitler will become the fuhrer of the German Nazi Party as the German economy continues to nosedive and in two years time archaeologist Howard Carter will enter the sealed tomb of Tutankhamen in The Valley of the Kings.

For five years the English F.A. Cup football competition has not taken place but in May of this year Aston Villa will beat Huddersfield Town in a keenly contested final at Stamford Bridge in London. The Rugby League Challenge Cup will be won by  Huddersfield for the second year running.

This year Pope John Paul II, Isaac Asimov, Mickey Rooney and Ray Bradbury will all be born and in August all American women will theoretically  be entitled to vote in elections though many thousands of black women and indeed black men will still face serious obstacles.

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Yes it is interesting to layer this century upon the last century - to see how far we have come and to give ourselves a clearer view of the passage of time and how years fit together like building blocks. It's called perspective.

Aston Villa FC - Cup winners 1920