A Kind of Anniversary

The fifteenth of February is not normally a day I think about, but it is an anniversary. On the fifteenth of February 1971 the UK converted from using pounds shillings and pence to using our current decimal currency. On the same day I left home and set off for what would now be called a "Gap Year" adventure.
It was quite an adventure, taking in

• France
• Germany
• Austria
• Yugoslavia
• Greece
• Turkey
• Iran
• Afghanistan
• Pakistan
• India
• Nepal
• and eventually most of those countries in reverse order.

Of course as one's past becomes historical so people begin to think they know it because they have read about it. I guess  my own memories could be coaxed and distorted by the reflections of others. One thing that is perhaps hard to get across is the air of optimism, the idea that "the old order is rapidly changing", the sense that (predominantly) young people had a lever on the world that might make it progressively a better place.
Young people then were, as far as I can work out, no more stupid or naive than they are now. We were however hopeful and I think for the few who went to Universities this hope was partly fuelled by the possibility of getting appropriate jobs (not that life was without struggles) when we eventually came down to earth.
My link of the day is to Muther Grumble the Alternative Newspaper that in some ways summed up being a young person in the North East of England at the beginning of the 70s.