Simply put, if I had been a single mum with two teenage daughters in Britain back in 1914, life would probably have been pretty bleak with nothing much to look forward to.

Of course, everything is relative and what you can’t possibly know or forecast, you can’t possibly miss.

It’s also true that had I been born or married into money, the future would certainly have looked rosier.

But if were to travel back in time to an exact replica of my life and social status now, I fear the culture shock would curl my hair without a single rag being applied.

My divorced status would of course have been rare and outrageous – probably unthinkable – although WWI did lead to reforms in the law putting women on a more equal footing in this respect.

It’s almost inevitable that I’d have worked in service or in an unskilled job (astonishingly, even shop girls were considered something of a novelty).

But if I was living in Oxford a century ago, I think life may have better than in many other towns and cities. After all, as far back as 1895 Agnes Maitland was made second principal of Somerville College, so change was already on the horizon.

Maybe if I got lucky I would have attended Headington Domestic Training School which boasted of training women to ‘serve in the best houses in the city’.

And strangely, I don’t think I have minded that.

If TV’s Upstairs, Downstairs is anything to go by, my life would have been hard (only Sunday afternoons off) but bearable, and as mid-life vices go, I imagine I’d have thought of vying for Mr Hudson’s attentions.

Or maybe, after a few cheap gins, making a move on James Bellamy (played deliciously by the gorgeous Simon Williams).

For my two girls, who would probably have left school at 12 and be working themselves, I would have hoped for happy marriages and healthy grandchildren (no change there really).

Assuming I had a decent job with a well-to-to family, my only other vice, apart from fostering romantic inclinations, would doubtless have been the music halls and very quickly emerging ‘gimmickry’ of cinema.

Imagine how truly exotic going to a ‘picture house’ must have seemed; how unreal those early pin-ups must have looked – Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and John Gilbert.

And no doubt I’d have chosen Greta Garbo as my role model.

Clothes may have proved something of a vice. Out went the tailored, rigid lines of the Edwardian period allowing women to finally cast off the rib-crunching constriction of the impossibly tight corset (which ironically I’m now just considering purchasing to hide my mid-life spread).

Of course, unless one moved in the right circles, it probably would have been impossible to dress fashionably. However, there’s always window shopping (sadly, no change there).

So yes, my life would been very different – my vices few – and compared to do today’s hard won freedoms, it would doubtless have felt like a thousand years ago rather than just 100. Here’s to 2014...

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