Way back when God was a wee lad, I used to watch "Tomorrows World" on the BBC.

My dad and I loved that programme when the reception was good and there wasn't too much interference.

Raymond Baxter would come on in glossy black and white and tell us about all these new ideas that we were going to be enjoying in the near future, which back in the sixties seemed like exciting times. 

I remember him [or maybe it was Judith Hann] telling us about little plastic disks that were going to replace the good old reliable cassette tape.  Oh, how we laughed!

I remember them telling us about a new-fangled idea of cooking our food using radio waves.  Oh, how we laughed!

One of their more fanciful ideas was that of the video-phone where you could see who you were talking to.  They even had a demonstration where you could just make out a blurry face on a little three inch black and white screen. They said it would never get better than that though because the wires weren't up to the amount of information needed.  Oh, how we went hysterical over that one!

…

I got chatting to the neighbours yesterday.  They are looking very well, I must say.  I should maybe point out that they are currently in Washington and we chatted via Skype.  The quality was excellent – full High Definition colour, no fuzzing, no delays, no distortion – it was like chatting over the fence.

They did actually want to show me what was over the fence so they carried their laptop out and raised it up.  I felt quite seasick with the motion, and it was ony a road over the fence so I'm not sure what the object of the exercise was, but never mind.  It was nice chatting to them though once the motion sickness had settled.  I silently doffed my cap to Raymond and Judith – yiz were right all those fifity years ago.  I'm sorry I laughed.

This morning the power went.  Puff!  Nothing.  Back to boiling kettles on the gas and no telephone or Interweb.

It was like being back in Yesterday's World.

Only in colour.