My friend Rachel (for whom my daughter is named) http://www.newness-of-life.com/ has a meme on her blog. You must go and check out her blog - she's both very nice and interesting, and although I don't comment there very often, I check it every day for updates 
Anyway. The meme.
This one is 10 ways things have changed since you left school. Now, I left school quite some time ago (although not as long as some of my readers 
) so there are a lot of changes, and mine are probably going to be the same as Rachel's.
1. The mobile phone. When I was at school, a mobile phone was a massive thing that was connected to your car by a professional, which involved putting your car into the shop for at least a day
2. Video cameras. I can remember, actually a few years after I left school, the first portable video camera. It was loaned to my ex-husband by his boss, and it was like something you would see in a news report - a massive thing with a battery like a current car battery, and you sat the camera on your shoulder.
3. When I left school, I was happy to get an electric typewriter in my work. I can remember being upgraded to one that had a single line display so you could correct any errors.
4. Telex machines. I don't think they are around any more - I certainly haven't seen one in years. For those who don't know what I am talking about, they were the forerunners of the fax machine. You typed your message, which was printed onto a tape in something akin to braille, and then you would dial the telephone to the other company's telex. When they replied, you would feed the ticker-tape thru the machine and the tape would come out at the other end. Folk who had used them for years could actually read the braille tape instead of feeding it thru the machine again to get a print out.
5. Photocopiers. When I was at school we had something whose name escapes me just now. You would have to create a master copy, which was very much like a negative, and then feed it into a machine that had a spinning drum, and the copies would come out absolutely covered in black ink that only came off on small fingers. 
6. Walking home from school. I walked home. There was a three mile exclusion zone - you could only get the bus if you lived further than three miles. Naturally, there was our house, next door and then the church - which marked the 3 miles. I didn't mind, as I got to walk home thru the woods. We would dawdle and wander, blether and mess about, and eventually reach home dusty and sweaty.
7. Smoking. When I was at school, the majority of the seniors smoked. A couple of our teachers even supplied us with ciggies. 20 Rothmans were something like 15p, and you could also get packets of 10 and 5. The local shops would sell to anyone who had any money, and didn't care if you were 'underage' because they would never have gotten prosecuted.
8. Disappearing for the day. In the summer or at the weekend, I would get up, get dressed, and disappear. I would come back home when I was hungry, unless I could cadge a meal off another kid's Mum. My folks never knew where I was, and weren't worried in the slightest.
9. Public transport. If we wanted to go into town, which was about 15 miles away, we could wait at the bus stop and be assured that there would be one along fairly soon, and on time. The fares were reasonable enough that schoolkids could (and did) jump on and off buses pretty much as they felt like it. I recently took a bus ride of about 30 miles and it cost me over a tenner!
10. Shops. I can remember when supermarkets hit us. A shop in a local village was taken over by the Spar, and our local supermarket was born. Prior to that, there were a butcher, a baker, a green grocer, there was a dairy in the village (in which my Dad worked as a milkman, and which supplied me with boyfriends for years!). Dad delivered milk to people's doorsteps, and your produce was both fresh and local.
Hmm. I'm all sad and nostalgic now.
