Baby Boomers are the generation born between 1946 and 1964. The name came from the great rise in births after the Second World War, when people had survived the worst and decided to get on with living.
And there were a lot of us.
We arrived into a world that still carried the smell of war, rationing, hand-me-down coats, outside toilets, and mothers who could stretch a pound of mince over three days. We grew up in houses where nothing was wasted, children were seen and not heard, and if you were bored, you were sent outside until you recovered.
Now, of course, we are “Boomers”. Not just older people. Not even pensioners. Boomers. A label said with a sigh, an eye-roll, or the tone of someone explaining how to attach a file to an email for the seventh time.
We are accused of not keeping up. There may be some truth in this. The world has changed rather quickly. One minute we were putting coins into public telephones and hoping someone was at home, and the next we were expected to book a doctor’s appointment through an app, scan a QR code to see a menu, and remember a password containing two capital letters, a symbol, a number, and the blood of a unicorn.
It is not that we object to progress. We quite like central heating, online banking when it works, and the fact that cars no longer need to be persuaded to start on a cold morning. But we do sometimes wonder why everything now has to be updated, verified, synced, paired, charged, accepted, declined, and accompanied by terms and conditions nobody alive has ever read.
This website is about that feeling.
It is about the world Boomers remember and the one they are now trying to understand. It is about growing up when life was harder in many ways, simpler in others, and probably not as golden as we like to pretend. It is also about living in a time when every generation has been given a title, every opinion has a hashtag, and every small inconvenience appears to require a national conversation.
Boomers mean no harm. We are not trying to stop the future. We are just occasionally standing in its way because we cannot work the self-service checkout.
Now and then, we see history repeating itself. Ideas we heard fifty years ago come back dressed as something new. Old mistakes return with better graphics. Things our parents warned us about suddenly appear in lifestyle magazines as fresh discoveries. We notice this, but we are usually too polite to say much. We may, however, raise an eyebrow. It is one of the few facial expressions we can still manage without needing a tutorial.
The stories in this website are meant to be funny because, if Boomers had one useful gift, it was the ability to laugh at themselves. We had terrible fashions, worse haircuts, questionable wallpaper, and cars that rusted while you were looking at them. We made mistakes. Plenty of them. We annoyed our parents, baffled our children, and now find ourselves being explained to by grandchildren who think the 1990s were ancient history.
So, this is not a moan. Well, not entirely.
It is an affectionate look back, a slightly confused look around, and a gentle reminder that every generation eventually becomes the one standing at the machine saying, “Where do I put the card?”
And one day, Gen-whatever-you-are, it will be your turn. You will complain that music was better in your day. You will be suspicious of new trousers. You will fail to understand why the young are speaking in a language that appears to have no vowels.
And hopefully, when that day comes, you will do what the best Boomers learned to do long ago.
You will laugh at yourselves.