LIFE was so much simpler in the old days. I’ll give you an example: the other night, my daughters fancied a take-away. Chinese? Indian? Italian? McDonalds? After much debate they settled on Greek (my youngest was desperate to try a kebab).

When I was growing up in North Yorkshire, it was fish and chips and that was it. I was in my teens when a Chinese take-away appeared in the local town. We were all intrigued but no one was in a rush to go there. We had to be broken in gently in our corner of North Yorkshire.

The long-winded process of deciding got me thinking about how much more straightforward things were back then. I can think of many more examples:

• Shopping: We had Hintons, a small supermarket in town. It was years before Spar appeared and, later still, Asda a few miles away in Stockton. Hintons closed at about 6pm, so if you didn’t get your milk or bread you had to wait until morning.

And, like every other shop, it was shut on Sunday. When Spar opened with a 10pm closing time we thought it really radical. It was open on Sundays too, which was shocking. I’m not religious, but I remember feeling strangely guilty the first time I shopped on a Sunday, and I still think it’s weird that you can pop to a supermarket at 2am.

Now she’s got a job and a bank account, my eldest daughter has just started internet shopping for clothes, surfing sites for hours – it’s all a far cry from my life with the occasional trip to Chelsea Girl and odd purchase from my mum’s catalogue.

• Television: It is incredible to think that when I was born there were just two channels. I was about to start school when BBC2 was launched, making decisions over what to watch far harder. BBC1, BBC2 or ITV, what a dilemma. In those days it was common for people to turn their noses up at ITV, which they saw as commercial and tacky, and snub it altogether. The only time my Auntie Kathleen watched ITV was at our house at Christmas. Now look at all the channels – hundreds, and yet only a handful are watchable.

• Communications: When I was a child and we were having tea my dad used to huff and puff every time the phone rang, and with three children it went off regularly. How would he deal with the present scenario? I’ve even wrestled my daughter’s mobile from her grasp as she rudely texts while I’m talking to her. And, with Facebook, Twitter and email, that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Everything is so complicated, no wonder we are all stressed.