His dark materials...

About a year ago I spent my early mornings reading Philip Pullman's "His dark materials"-triology. It's a brilliant story about a girl called Lyra and her adventures in different worlds or dimensions or whatever. I've actually got a book called "The science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials", but I've obviously not read it. If you give this world enough time though it'll transform itself into something new. No need for magic. Society's change is constant (don't you just love the amazing paradox of constant change?). I went for a walk with a friend last night, and she told me about how she'd promised to help her brother and his missus at their daughter's 4th birthday party, to which 11 other little girls were invited. And we got talking about birthday parties in general and our own in particular. My friend told me about her 8th birthday party (which I attended, btw) and one of the girls she'd invited turned up an hour early with her accordion as means of entertainment. This obviously raised the question, as we were trying to walk through the masses of snow, how much exactly have the world changed since we were kids. I nurture the belief that people, or rather the human mind, actually never change. But the conditions in which people operate obviously changes as time goes by. And the conditions of childhood have changed, especially with the introduction of the internet. Before the internet the culture of childhood developed on a much more local level. You didn't know what the kids in Canada were up to, and if you wanted to know, you had to go through the process of getting a pen-pal there. Other things that were commonplace when we were kids have disappeared. My favourite of these was the practice of sending all children with even the slightest hint of accent or dialect to a special teacher who would teach them to speak articulate and without any distinguishing features to the structure/melody/pronounciation of their language. I have a feeling this doesn't happen anymore.