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I admit, readers, that I was a bit stuck for an idea when I sat down to write this month's column.

Yes, I'm working on a vague theory about personal airships, and soon I will have amassed enough evidence to show that it is theoretically possible to train your dog to drive you home from the pub, and, more importantly, that the dog would enjoy it. But both of those need a bit more work, so I was still stuck.

Then I had an idea. Why not take one of Jeremy's columns from a few months back, alter it very slightly, remove all the references to Liberal Democrats, and then send that in? Brilliant! But I soon realised that you might notice, and then the Editor would refuse to pay me, and I'd be out of work. Quite right too.

So I've decided to tell you about the builder I've just had in to replace my bathroom, and a fine job he's done too. There's a modern bath with hot and cold water plumbed in with shiny copper pipes, and the walls are clad in tiles fixed with adhesive guaranteed for 1,000 years and separated by waterproof grout. The shower has a thermostatic valve.

I suppose he could have installed a tin bath fed by cold water delivered down a lead gutter, and slapped wattle and daub on the walls, but then I'd have sent him away with a tap wrench up his soil pipe and no money, and he knows that.

Nobody really wants to live in the past. We may venerate the antiquity of a rustic, 17th-century farmhouse, but on the quiet we'd fit a dishwasher.

I firmly believe, despite everything I've read in the Daily Mail, that the world is always getting better. How could it not be? Every generation claims it's going to the dogs, so if it really was, it would be there by now.

The past had pox in it. And minstrels. Obviously, the modern world has a lot of rubbish in it as well. Thing is though, it always did.

Time has a fantastic knack of reassessing it all later on, throwing away the bits that were no good, and preserving the stuff that deserved to endure.

This is true of everything, from fashion to cathedrals, and is the healthy process by which humankind pushes the outside of the acceptable and the timespan of history reins it back in. It's why the past looks so appealing: you only see the best bits.

Therefore, we blew up most of the urban redevelopment that characterised the early Seventies, but we listed that insurance building in Ipswich that featured on Top Gear.

Nobody remembers Barrier Reef, but we'll still watch 'It Ain't Half Dad's Army Do 'Ave 'Em Mum'. The glittering oeuvre of AC/DC shall remain with us, while Bucks Fizz will be condemned to the dustbin. At least, that's what's happened in my house.