I FORGET exactly which age we live in. The Jet Age, I believe, was last year. Or was that the Space Age? Are we this year in the Microchip Age or the Global Communications Age? Whichever is right, and I am open to correction, I would rather be living in the Perforated Stamp Age. At least in those times, things worked.

By things, I mean simple inanimate objects designed to take some of the harshness out of human existence. Like, for instance, postage stamps.

Time was when you could tear a stamp from a book and it would come away from its neighbours as a pristine rectangle with all its pointy, sticky bits a-ready for licking. And it stuck to the envelope, too.

Today, your average stamp (which costs something like 50 times more than the first Penny Black) fights and struggles to stay cosy in its booklet and only gives way when you have torn off half Her Majesty's head.

Then you have to reassemble half a dozen bits on the envelope, which is fine for jigsaw fans but a lot of bother when you are rushing to catch the last post (which, in Beggarsdale, is just after dawn on the day it is supposed to be posted).

The same goes for cheques. I could once read through my stubs and see where Mrs C had spent all the money. Now, the stubs are so torn and ragged that my overdraft is only a thing for speculation and surmise.

Time was when you could get a toothbrush out of its wrapper. Now, you have to be an expert safe-cracker to fight your way into its hard plastic coffin. And the brush is either so hard that it sandpapers your gums or tickles so much that the plaque laughs.

Has anyone recently tried to get a new shirt out of its box? There are enough bits of paper and plastic to make a Meccano set and, all around you, the carpet is littered with dozens of pins - except, of course, the one so cunningly hidden that it pierces your Adam's apple the first time you put the shirt on.

Who has ever bought a non-stick frying pan that does not stick within a matter of weeks? We still use a cast-iron pan, carefully washed by hand and lovingly oiled, with which Mrs C's grandmother used to brain her husband when he came back late from the Beggars' Arms.

I can remember a time when you could put a few pennies (proper pennies, almost as big as the aforesaid frying pan) into a telephone box and then, after pressing Button A, you could actually speak to the person you were phoning.

Now, if the modern pay-phone hasn't eaten your 50p, you have to speak to a series of computers which put you through the very second your money runs out.

And I can also remember the time when the girl in the newsagents could add up the cost of a paper and a tube of mints in her head without having to resort to a computerised till at which three other assistants are already waiting.

Science is a wonderful thing, no doubt. But why can only scientists and skilled engineers use it? Please let's go back to the Perforated Stamp Age.

p The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.