Old fashions

Progress, as we note here from time to time, is not always forward. There are, for example, quite a lot of "retro fashion trends". You will have noticed that car-washing by hand is far more of the now than the rather passé automatic wash. And what about the return of the old-fashioned grocery delivery van fulfilling orders placed electronically? Why, there is even an insurance firm promising that customers who telephone will be answered by a real person rather than a list of options calling for a good memory and some tough choices between hash and star. And now, families are discovering that cloth nappies are preferable to the plastic ones that account for 4 per cent of the nation's domestic waste and piling up in non-disposable billions. Next, they'll be telling us that food does not benefit from travel, forcing and artificial fertiliser. Meanwhile, get your money into steam, knobs, pigeons and eight-track stereo.

Progress, as we note here from time to time, is not always forward. There are, for example, quite a lot of "retro fashion trends". You will have noticed that car-washing by hand is far more of the now than the rather passé automatic wash. And what about the return of the old-fashioned grocery delivery van fulfilling orders placed electronically? Why, there is even an insurance firm promising that customers who telephone will be answered by a real person rather than a list of options calling for a good memory and some tough choices between hash and star. And now, families are discovering that cloth nappies are preferable to the plastic ones that account for 4 per cent of the nation's domestic waste and piling up in non-disposable billions. Next, they'll be telling us that food does not benefit from travel, forcing and artificial fertiliser. Meanwhile, get your money into steam, knobs, pigeons and eight-track stereo.