YOU know you are getting old when a pop band you think are new and modern wins a long service accolade at a music awards ceremony.

This happened last week when Blur scoped the prize for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Brits.

That came as a shock to me when I happened to tune in to the awards ceremony on TV because I still thought they were new kids on the block.

I admit I haven’t quite gotten around to listening to them and still confuse them with Pulp (is there a difference?).

What’s more, Mrs Editor’s Chair and I felt we had turned into our parents as we sat watching these music awards not knowing who any of the babyish-looking new bands were. I yearned for some good old-fashioned groups from yesteryear such as the gentle old Clash or Sex Pistols.

This reminds me of a joke I heard in the 1970s from legendary Bucks comedian Ted Rogers who was bemoaning the state of modern-day music.

Ted’s routine went like this: “Picture a scene in the future when the family are sitting around the piano. Someone will say ‘come on granddad, give us a tune from the old days’. And granddad will then sit down and sing ‘Little Willy, Willy, won’t go home’.”

It was a funny joke at the time (Little Willy was a song by The Sweet). But Ted Rogers’ future is now here and I’m living in it.

In the not so distant future, I will probably be that granddad, but instead of a Sweet song, I will be crooning Anarchy in the UK.

However, these musings led me to realise how quickly a generation can lose touch. I thought I was fairly savvy with the internet and I was one of the first people to buy a home PC.

But Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the relentless march online have loosened my grip on the modern world. I rarely use these mediums, although I know I should.

So what hope then for the legions of middle-aged people schooled in a different era, but who – unlike me – have never had regular access to technology?

They may have worked in manufacturing in an industry that is now on the decline or that, due to technology, has disappeared altogether. They may be years away from retirement but have seen their chosen career disappear while they don’t have the training to jump into another kind of workplace.

I wonder just how many of these people exist. We know all about the ‘lost generation’ of 16 to 24 year-olds who don’t have a job. But what about the other lost generation, who have seen their world change in less than two decades?

When I became editor of the Bucks Free Press in 1994, we didn’t quite have full page onscreen make-up. It was the first year of the internet and no one knew what it was.

Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist and very few people had mobile phones. Email was hardly used by anyone.

That’s only 18 years ago. So imagine what it must be like for the legions of folk trapped in what has effectively become a technological time-warp.

And that’s why I wasn’t surprised by the recent report that showed Wycombe had suffered massive job losses from 2004 onwards. The district was apparently hit worse than anywhere in the UK, which was a shock, but perhaps not as surprising as it sounds when you consider how much industry we lost.

Forecasts say Wycombe won’t return to pre-recession levels until 2018. I have now promised to try to help Wycombe District Council move this along and regenerate the area.

But part of getting people back into work is closing the timewarp and finding meaningful jobs for the people, who like me, think Blur are a new band.

We can only do that through retraining and through equipping the lost generation of middle-aged workers with new skills and a new direction.

Yes, I worry for the young in this climate. But do not forget the older victims of this job crisis either.

They are the workers that time forgot, and we need to give them the skills and pride to bring them back into the modern-day jobs market.