Nostalgia,of course, is not what it was. The correspondents to Saga magazine might go misty-eyed at memories of Sarsaparilla, Lancaster bombers or Ivor Novello but on television these days you barely need short-term memory to drift into the past.

BBC2's latest series is I Love the Nineties. The Nineties? We're remembering the Nineties? Look, I still put 199..on the start of my cheques. I'm not remembering them, I'm still there.

Most of us are still wearing clothes we bought in the Nineties. At the back of the kitchen cupboard are probably tins I bought in the Nineties.

These are not the distant blue remembered hills or the long ago and faraway memories of true nostalgia. This is, almost literally, the day before yesterday.

So we've had Reeves and Mortimer, Take That and Reservoir Dogs. On Saturday on BBC2 they also had Absolutely Fabulous, the day after a new series had started on BBC1.Where does the past end and the present begin?

But it's not just the Nineties. Great chunks of Saturday night's television viewing were looking backwards - old England v Germany matches before and after the live one, a film about the assassination of President Kennedy, the Bee Gees Story, Madonna's early career. And that's not counting the repeat of quiz shows and Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. Again.

Even the Science Fiction film was The Terminator in which, of course, Arnie Schwarzenegger goes backwards in time.

We are already up to the gunnels with history programmes and this is also the week that the Antiques Roadshow was back. At this rate, we'll soon have a "This time last week." column in the paper.

So why do we went to keep looking backwards?

Experts say we're on the brink of a recession. They keep looking for clues - like house prices wavering or restaurants empty. Maybe they should look at the television schedules instead.

If we want to spend our Saturday evenings escaping to the cosy familiarity of the past, then it must be because we're scared of the future. Is it so frightening? I don't know. But if so, it's always safer to look the way you're going, rather than backwards where you've been.

ONE in three adults in a recent experiment failed to pass a basic school test - the equivalent of what the average 11-year-old is now expected to know.

Are these the same adults, I wonder, who complain that education is not what it as, that children learn nothing and that exam grades have been dumbed-down too far?

One of the sample questions asked people to follow the instructions on a packet of Paracetomol tablets. Many adults got it wrong. That's an awful lot of people who must still have a headache.

ONE in three people in this country apparently don't give anything to charity. How on earth do they manage it?

Like most people, I have my pet charities to whom I send what I can. But that's only the start of it.

Every day I am beset by people demanding money from me - a neighbour doing a parachute jump, another running a marathon, a child doing a sponsored silence or wanting to wash my car. All worthy people and worthy causes, so I pay up quite cheerfully.

Then there are the raffle tickets on the post office counter, the collecting box in the pub, the dreaded big brown envelope going round the office - if it's not someone's leaving present, it's someone else's sponsored something, or would you like to buy a raffle ticket/recipe/quiz question?

Since Gap years became routine, I have sponsored students to travel to just about every corner of the globe. Mine will have to go too, if only to get my money back. The supermarket always seems to have a collecting point for toys for children, or cans for cats, or tins for pensioners. There are flag days and coffee mornings and evenings where you pay £10 for a glass of wine and a sausage roll so that you can spend some poor African to college. You daren't answer the phone in case it's Marie Curie wanting you to do a house to house collection, Breast Cancer wanting you to sell raffle tickets, the Red Cross just wanting your money. Now.

And that's all before you open the post and all those envelopes with pens in.

It's not that I grudge any of it really. We all know that more good causes need more dosh and they have to be more brutal to get it. Most people pay up, if only because it's easier to give than to get out of it.

But sometimes, just sometimes, as I'm hunting through my purse yet again, I'd love to know the secret of those hard-hearted one in three.

1. Men are not as good as women at shopping.

2. Women are not as good as men at drinking.

Conclusion: We all need to practise more.