Amazing the rubbish that still lands on the beach from the past - Vladimir McTavish
The weather is still cold and occasionally brutal. Many parts of the country are still getting heavy snow falls. Long-distance road travel remains a bit of a lottery.
However, the sun has been out for a few days, flowers are beginning to sprout in Inverleith Park and some of us can optimistically sense spring is just around the corner.
The thoughts of those optimists will possibly turn to walks in the park, trips to the country or strolls along the beach after months of snuggling up in front of the telly.
However, anyone taking walking along their local beach might be in for an unexpected surprise.
According to a story on the BBC News website, people out walking on a stretch of sand in Scotland found plastic bottles seemingly dating back to the sixties and seventies.
This included many long-forgotten brands like Squeezy washing up liquid. Remember that one, older readers? It was the brand leader back in the day. I can’t remember when I last saw it in the shops.
Many of us will be familiar with finding the odd piece of ancient jetsam in the sand. I had always assumed they had already been there for decades rather just recently swept in on the tide. Either that, or someone had found some bottles under the kitchen sink and chucked them out years later.
But such was the volume of the detritus, it seems that age-old rubbish is much more robust than we previously thought.
In recent years, I have even come across old beer cans, including Tennent’s ones from the 1970s that still had the photos of the “Lager Lovelies” on the back. Social attitudes to such matters may have changed in the past five decades.
However, it appears the life of aluminium remains as enduring as ever. It would be interesting to know if any of those models, many approaching their 80s, have been taking their grandchildren out for a day at the seaside and happened upon one of those tins in the dunes.
“Look, kids, that’s what your granny used to look like. It’s me when I was 21”, they would tell the astonished kids.
Of course, anyone of a certain age will remember summer holidays in the sixties, when we would just routinely chuck all manner of stuff into the sea without a moment’s thought.
Bottles, some with messages inside, as well old swimwear and picnic left-overs. It really is quite shocking some stuff might still be out there. It seems some comes back eventually.
Imagine how our lives have changed over the past six decades. England won the World Cup. I was still in primary school school. The Beatles has released their sixth album Rubber Soul, which would have retailed at something like 32/6d, roughly £1.65.
To explain to younger readers, that was pounds, shillings and pence. Remarkably, we were still using old money. We only adopted decimal currency in 1971.
Back in 1966, a child was celebrating his sixth birthday. He was called Prince Andrew and he was doubtless looking ahead to a life of wealth and privilege.
Nowadays, he is known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Who would have thought his future turned out to be less secure than a picture of a “Tennent’s Lager Lovely”?