04/02/2026
A huge happy 100th birthday to Mr Maurice Norman from all of us at Gibson lane practice! 🎂🥳
What an incredible milestone. Mr Norman kindly shared a beautiful poem he's written about how life has changed over the last 100 years - a real privilege to read and a moment we won't forget. 💫
A 100 Years Ago
People often ask me,
As if I ought to know,
What were things really like,
A hundred years ago?
Such a lot of differences,
Of that there is no doubt.
But what is most significant,
Is what we did without.
First the telephone.
There's the thing.
Even if you had one,
There was no one else to ring.
If you wanted to send a message,
That was a job for me,
To tell Aunt Flora, "It's a boy."
Or "Can Miss Topham come for tea?"
I'd fetch the doctor.
If someone was ill
Or take the sad news.
About Uncle Bill.
Today it's all mobiles.
Everyone's 'on tap'
No matter what the circumstance,
There’s sure to be an app.
Everybody has a 'phone.
It's never from their hand.
They cannot leave the thing alone,
Texting in a language I do not understand.
And holidays! We went to Yarmouth.
For our sun and sea and sand.
Full forty miles away from home,
It was like a foreign land.
Now, it's off to Orlando,
Bali, Brisbane or maybe Spain.
It isn't really a holiday.
Without a thousand miles by 'plane.
Traffic was slight, horse-drawn, of course.
Anything else was rare.
If a car or lorry came along,
We would stand and stare.
The street was our playground.
And through the day,
There was little.
To disturb our play,
At five o'clock all went berserk,
With people coming home from work.
As the flood of cycles made its way,
We had to go elsewhere to play.
The traffic now is so severe,
I had to wait for it to clear.
And let me out of my drive today.
Ten minutes before I'm under way.
We used to reckon feet and inches,
Pounds and ounces, £s d,
Rod, pole and perch, pecks and bushels,
Fathoms, if at sea.
Height in metres, petrol in litres
Somehow does not seem right.
And I'm quite sure that Celsius
Is colder than Fahrenheit.
The jingle in our pocket
Told us we were rich.
And even at an early age
We knew which coin was which.
Now it's rather funny.
A piece of plastic is pressed against a screen.
No-one wants to handle money.
No matter what you buy, cash is never seen.
We'd no instant coffee,
No sliced bread,
No plastic wrapping,
Paper bags instead.
We'd no TV, no microwave,
Wireless was for the few.
No Internet, no washing machine.
We had an outside loo
And the hardiest constitution
Quickly became forlorn
When sitting in the privy
On a cold and frosty morn.
The only take-aways were Pie and Peas,
Or Fried Fish and Chips.
No pizzas or Big Macs, no KFCs.
No Supermarkets and no zips.
No ball-point pens, no calculators.
We counted in our head
We'd take a lighted candle
On our way to bed.
I miss the cheerful flickering fire
But I really mustn't grouse.
It never could be as comfortable
As a centrally-heated house.
Change, though inevitable,
Can be frustrating, as well you know,
But life is so much easier now
Than a hundred years ago.
MGN
