Ways of living you never want to go back to

smoking on planes / trains / in bars & restaurants.

Asking for directions abroad or god forbid, using an actual map to get around. Google Maps has changed the game for the better.

Or getting hopelessly lost abroad after having a few scoops. Amsterdam was the worst. Every street looks the same.

Living in the middle of Dublin.

Having to visit a travel agent (+numerous phone calls) and wait for ages in a queue to book a weeks holiday abroad

Having to watch advertisements during a movie.

An outside long drop toilet without heating.

Lockdowns.

I was going to post about the choice. Growing up in rural Ireland if you needed a part for a thing, to be told "The only place you might get that is <one specific shop in Dublin>. I remember the graphics adapter in my Amstrad 464 going sometime in the late 80s, and a trip to Dublin was the only possibility of a replacement part. Now, you just go onto Amazon. If you need something really really obscure, you go onto eBay.

Seconded on that one.

My sister moved into a flat share with her two closest friends when at college. I don't know what happened but after 2 years they fell out and as far as I know about 20 years later they still arent speaking.

While I have heard people say they made some of their best friends when flat sharing. I know of more than one set of friends who moved in together and now don't talk or fell out somehow.

I never had a flat earther, but a few people were at a similar level of crazy. And some of them took the phrase "taking liberties" to the extreme.

Covid and all the restrictions

please go back to not having one, nobody wants to listen to your music etc, while you pass.

Not having a mobile phone.

Getting public transport.

I'd rather spend twice as long in the comfort of my car.

Travelling to London by ferry and bus. Did it in the 90s before Ryanair's cheap flights became a thing. It was all the good stuff: the choppy 3-hour ferry crossing on a dingy boat surrounded by some interesting characters. The clinking duty-free where you could buy boxes of Major and bottles of booze. On disembarking in the utopia that is Holyhead, the scramble to find the right bus to London. Because most of the drivers had decided to liven things up a bit and not display their destination city on their buses, you'd hone your telepathy skills. And that's before you'd get onto the infernal bus and start the interminable drive south. The highlight was a stop-off at some jaysus service station at ungodly o'clock to visit the jacks and sip on some sort of hot drink that was allegedly coffee. And still, London was hours away.