LAST week it was the turn of 1995. Yet another year we're supposed to have loved.

"Oasis and Wonderwall, Damien Hirst, alcopops" gushed the blurb in my TV guide.

We're being swamped by these retrospective shows: I love 1972, I love 1984, I love 1991.

We seem to be obsessed with the past.

Old episodes of Top of the Pops, Dad's Army, Porridge, Rising Damp. The mood is, if it's old it's got to be better.

On television, even new programmes hark back to what's gone before -- Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Bill and Ben, and the remake of the popular Forsyte Saga yet to come.

Fashions are the same, with styles being dredged up from decades ago. It's as if we don't want to move on, as if we can't face the future.

I didn't think I'd ever use the phrase: "It wasn't like that when I was young," but I do, almost on a daily basis.

Speaking with friends about how we're not letting our children out alone until they're at least 19, I found myself spouting off about how safe the world was when I was growing up, how I roamed from dawn until dusk in a traffic-free village.

I had to stop myself before adding the old favourite: "Where you didn't have to lock your back door when you went out."

I'd always associated looking back with older people, sitting in armchairs reminiscing about the good old days. But everyone does it.

My friend spoke the other day of how, on a rare night out, she embarrassed herself in a bar after querying her change for three drinks.

"It's ridiculous, I gave him £10 and only got a few pence back," she moaned.

Then everyone harked back to the days when you could buy eight rounds and a kebab on the way home and still have change from a tenner.

In these times of uncertainty, it's difficult to be optimistic about what is to come. But do we always have to dwell on what we miss -- even as recently as the 1990s?

I've still got food in my fridge bearing a 1999 sell-by-date, for heaven's sake.

I'm hard pressed to think of anything I miss from the last decade, bar my favourite cherry trees (they were so bright and welcoming in spring), the Hitchcock-like flocks of starlings that swooped and dived at dusk (scared off by anti-bird devices) and, of course, Rackhams -- always to be relied upon for a decent pair of woolly tights.

If we really think about it, the past wasn't that great. True, there were fewer cars about when I was young, but my mother had to park ours in the high street about half-a-mile from the pint-sized supermarket and stagger back with heavy boxes of groceries.

There was none of this 24-hour opening -- all the shops closed at tea-time and on Wednesday afternoons.

We did leave the back door open, and every passing pensioner, dog walker and delivery man would pop in and bore my parents to tears for hours on end.

If we all didn't dwell so heavily on the past, we might start to enjoy the present.

I Love 2008 may be too nightmarish to contemplate at the moment, but what about a show entitled "I love Christmas 2001" with ideas on how you can have a good time without resorting to old singles by Slade or Wizzard.

Alternatively, you could live for the moment and ponder these words, which I heard on the radio the other day: "The future ain't what it used to be, the past isn't getting any better either."

I don't know who said it, but it's quite right.