The way it was: Deaglan de Breadun takes a rueful glance back at transitional Ireland in 1973
Could it all have been so simple then or has time rewritten every line? Could the pint really have been 19p when it is an average €3.41 now? And was sirloin steak only 72. p a lb (€12.98 a kilo today), butter 28p a lb (now €1.93) and milk 5p a pint (85 cent a litre today)?
Without ceremony, Ireland formally acceded to the European Economic Community (now European Union, soon maybe just "Europe") along with the UK and Denmark, on New Year's Day, 1973.
It was arguably the most important as well as most unsung event of the year. Certainly it was more lasting in its effects than another more widely publicised development, the Sunningdale Agreement for a new power-sharing executive in the North.
We entered Europe by stealth and with trepidation in some quarters. There was trepidation, too, over Sunningdale, but there were also bright hopes that a brand new day was dawning for the divided communities of Northern Ireland.
Now the EU is as much part of the landscape as the carton of milk on our morning doorstep. But Sunningdale proved a lot less durable and, tragically, thousands more were to die before the Belfast Agreement, a.k.a. the Good Friday Agreement or "Sunningdale for Slow Learners", came somewhat hesitantly on the scene.
The State Papers for 1973, some of which are released this week in the National Archives, show us an Ireland in transition from a sheltered, traditionalist, conservative way of life to a brave new world of opportunities and threats, dangers and possibilities.
Looking back on it now, there is a sense of exciting potential, some of it realised, some not. The European experiment, for example, was to bring many sacrifices in its wake but, these days, Ireland is held up as a model to other acceding countries.
On the national stage, the old order was passing, with the deaths of Civil War opponents Gerald Boland and Gen Seán Mac Eoin, as well as the authoritarian churchman John Charles McQuaid and the equally authoritarian unionist icon, Viscount Brookeborough.
Meanwhile, after 14 years as head of state and even longer as head of government, Éamon de Valera retired from public life.
Bright new faces walked the corridors of power: Fianna Fáil was ousted from office after 16 years by a Fine Gael-Labour coalition which produced a "cabinet of all the talents" that included such outstanding intellectuals as Conor Cruise O'Brien, Garret FitzGerald and Justin Keating, with Declan Costello as Attorney General and the late John Kelly as a junior minister.
But for one reason or another, this government did not survive to enjoy a second term in office and, despite some undoubted achievements, few would argue that it realised its full potential.
Like King Canute fighting the waves, the laws and regulations governing our land have often tried to hold back social change.
But reality began to bite at last in 1973 with the dropping of the ban on married women in the Civil Service, early moves on equal pay for women and the Supreme Court decision in the Magee case, permitting the importation of contraceptives.
There was naivete in the air: the State papers show a touching faith in nuclear power as a safe alternative to oil-based energy. Likewise on the North, there was a failure both in Dublin and London fully to understand the unionist mindset, with its sturdy resistance to change.
Diplomatic relations were opened with the Soviet Union and, although it was 56 years since the Russian Revolution, there was still some Cabinet resistance to the move. The fear of change remained strong.
There were fears too, well- founded ones this time, on the internal security front. The upheaval of the 1970 Arms Crisis had more or less subsided, despite a Dáil backbencher's plea for "bags of guns", but Border security was still a major headache and there was gunrunning on the Cypriot- registered vessel, Claudia as well as a helicopter escape from Mountjoy jail.
Meanwhile the criminal activities of the Littlejohn brothers showed that republicans were not the only source of subversion.
Just like today, the Government was deciding to buy a jet, then changing its mind. But a 1973 decision to demolish Georgian houses in Baggot Street, Dublin, to make way for a bank, would hopefully not be repeated today. A Dublin property record was set in 1973 when almost an acre of land in Ballsbridge was sold for £115,000. This amount would scarcely purchase an outhouse today.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The State continued to be essentially stable and democratic and showed a capacity for change and modernisation in some important respects. While honest efforts were made to resolve the Northern conflict, these were unfortunately doomed to failure.
That year, a total of 263 people died as a result of the Troubles and there was worse to follow: this was the real tragedy of 1973.