I was thinking the other day how quickly life seems to be going by. It dawned on me in a very strong sense that the hour glass is well and truly beginning to empty, and that if I’m lucky, I might have 30 years of living left. That would make me 87 then, which seemed so old once, but now seems to be coming quicker with each passing year. Thirty years ago, I was setting off to Canada after working in Ireland on newspapers. That seems not too long ago.

The passage of time was a topic of conversation then between myself and others of my same general age group, and how people today don’t have to learn things anymore. All of the answers to most questions in life are but a few keystrokes away.

Phone numbers. When I was younger, you had to remember telephone numbers. I can still rattle off the phone number in the house where I grew up, my sister’s number in the farmhouse she moved to when she married, the local shop where you would call up and put in your order for pickup later in the day.

That shop is long gone, and I wonder what ever happened to the pretty daughter that I had an embarrassing schoolboy crush on but was so shy that I’d just come out like a blubbering twit anytime Mary was behind the counter.

We had to remember things like bus and train timetables, making sure you didn’t have to wait too long at any one time.

Now you know when train is coming by the display boards in stations, so the dangerous excitement of getting on the wrong train to the wrong place is gone.

At newspapers back in the day — how old I feel when I write that — even when the edition was put to bed editors weren’t, trivia was a way of passing time. One editor specialised in the capitals of US states and territories, another in obscure Winter Olympic sports like curling or luge.

That board game Trivial Pursuits? It seemed as if every household had one and it always came out at holiday times or big family gatherings. That game was the idea of newspaper editors in Montreal, who would pass the downtime between editions asking each other questions. And then they took it further and developed the board game. It made them all millionaires and they never had to work again.

Monopoly was another board game that was played by families. It always ended up in a row, and whoever was the banker always seemed to win. Funny that.

Do people still play Scrabble, or is it a pastime that has now past its time? You’d always end up with too many ‘I’s, ‘O’s and ‘U’s. Funny that too.

One friend mentioned that he used to work as what is politely described as a Turf Accountant, and his ability to do quick mental arithmetic landed him the job. How many young people today know maths to that extent. All they have to do now is open up the calculator app and they’re away to the races.

When was the last time you saw a slide rule?

When I was in university, you always knew the architecture students by the big awkward round plastic tube cases they wielded. Or the civil engineering students carried big T-squares and rulers that would be used on drafting tables. Do those things even exist anymore? Or have they been replaced by computers and CAD?

I had a thought too that with camera-assist in new cars, young people might lose the art of parking and reversing into parking spots. There was a knack in learning to drive with one hand on the wheel, the other on the passenger seat as you craned your neck to look behind. Yes, when you’re 57 and the clock is ticking down, there’s no harm in looking backwards.