" Things ain't what they used to be. The world's going to hell in a bucket. It was better when I was young."

My mother used to say this and I used to nod and say: "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

But what goes around comes around – cliched but true. Nowadays it's me saying stuff like that. I should imagine that my mother's mother said the same things to my mother and her mother to her, ad infinitum.

Though just a blurred memory, I can imagine granny saying it now. "Those horseless carriages are never going to catch on. They're too fast. They'll blow your head off." Probably great-great-grandmother said the same thing to great-grandmother about the railway. "Puffing all that steam around like an iron-clad devil. It'll take you all to hell!" Or something like that. I couldn't really say seeing as I wasn't around at the time but I have a good imagination. And so have you, if you put your mind to it.

My mother had no criticism of horseless carriages but she did bemoan the passing of certain items of womanly clothing – corsets came at the top of that list, closely followed by liberty bodices and vests.

When I was a teenager with a thigh-high skirt and waist-length hair, she was appalled that I refused outright to wear a vest over my bra. I ask you, is there anything more likely to cramp a courting couples' fumblings than a vest?

On the other hand, a pair of corsets would have been a pretty formidable barrier to the courting process, too. Now how could I have thrown my leg over the pillion of a motorbike if I'd been wearing a corset? I'd have been drummed out of the 63 Club (which met in Lawrence Hill, Bristol) as not being with it at all. "Aha," my mother would have said, "but you would have been warm."

While sipping a particularly nice Cabernet Sauvignon, I meditated on this and eventually reached the conclusion that once we attain a certain age it happens to all of us. I suppose we've kind of reached saturation point. We look back nostalgically at our past, preferring the sounds of the Sixties and Seventies (in my case, anyway) to the drivel bashed out today. (See? I'm calling it drivel.)

The thing is that in 30 years' time the teens and 20-somethings who are appreciating that music today will hold it close to their hearts – and their taste, for years to come. Tomorrow they'll be decrying the stuff their kids are listening to, criticising their clothes and suggesting they should wear a crop top rather than that stupid antique vest they're wearing. The kids will say that they will not buy from a high street shop, but will continue to buy second hand. The world needs them to be eco-friendly and old stuff lasts longer than new anyway. The parents will, of course, tear their hair out and rant and rave as they've always done.

The rules, fashions and attitudes gained in my youth formed the basis for who I am. The fact that I was more beautiful back then and was getting two bushels a day of wolf whistles, compliments and sexual propositions has nothing to do with it. I am not jealous of those now on the receiving end of all that attention.

I think we're a bit like a trifle. Our early life is the firm foundation, the solid mix of jelly and sponge fingers. The custard of the middle years is softer and creamier but wouldn't settle properly without the jelly. The creamy stuff on top, sprinkled with hundreds and thousands, curly bits of chocolate, nuts or whatever, is simply that – the cream on the top.

More wisdom on the subject of life and trifles will be available next Tuesday morning on Thornbury Radio – plus one of my Christmas ditties seeing as it's their last broadcast before Christmas.

Not that Christmas is like it used to be when I was a girl – off to the coal yard for a bit of nutty slack, scraping the ice off the windows, just a handful of nuts for Christmas… oh, shut her up someone!