I heard somewhere the other day, that today’s amazing is tomorrow’s normal and it got me thinking…I have lived in an amazing time.

I remember standing in the backyard gazing up at Sputnik. All the family was there, and dad pointed it out and we watched the small star slide across the night sky.

It was amazing – and although now, other small descendants of Sputnik fly to Mars and Jupiter and men have actually walked on our moon… I saw the first, and it is still amazing.

I was amazed by cars without manual gears, then cars with air-conditioning… now a satellite can tell me exactly where I am and a voice comes out of a speaker to tell me I have taken a wrong turn and to go back.

The first TV in Australia – first black and white – then in amazing colour.

Plane travel – no one did it, then I braved the propeller age with my Nana, then jets…  but now my granddaughter – who I took touring age four – headed off by herself to tour Europe.

I saw Neil Armstrong step on to the moon – I bought the first mobile phone – the size of a suitcase with its own handpiece that cost me megadollars back then, and it was amazing. Now people walk around with phones that can start appliances when you aren’t home.

Computers – my first, a little blue machine with a one meg memory. It was amazing… email… amazing – all the banking done online – amazing… What comes next? Amazing has become normal…

In between there have been so many things… we had a milk separator – who would know how to use it now in this day when umpteen varieties of milk and cream are arranged on the supermarket shelf?  I still loved scalded cream, milk sat in a pan on the edge of the wood stove and the glorious cream slid carefully off on a saucer… I do think today’s cream is not nearly as great.

I used to travel to the shops to buy things, now I look on my computer and order and it arrives neatly packed in a few days – I don’t need to leave the house.

I have seen all of this, amazing that has become normal. And when I am long gone, people will look back at today’s amazing and smile…