For all 40 year olds and over

[Bill]

WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER!!"And we never had a whole Mars bar until 1993"!!!
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's 1940's, 50's, 60's!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonald's , KFC, Subway or Nandos.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY ,
no video/dvd films,
no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!


FOOTBALL RUGBY and CRICKET had trials and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and bully's always ruled the playground at school.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL !



And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!


You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.


And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

[mick56]

Hi bill delightful post,brought back many memories and most of them good.

[tovarich]

Thanks Bill, you've just written my life story and saved me the trouble. Long may we live on!

[chancer]

Curse you Bll. I was born in the bloody 70's and thats my childhood summed up. I'm OLD

[John]

Great post Bill, I'm "only" 25, and I wish most of that way of living still held some truth in existence today. Especially kids playing outside without mobile phones. That would be wonderful.

Nowadays too much health & safety is rammed down our throat, too much advice, too much pre-determined rubbish about punishments for the most trivial of things.

Let go, is what I say. Let society be primitive.

[Ada]

Excellent post Bill......As a 60's and 70's child, I can honestly put a 'tick' against every statement made.

[mick56]

I thought it was great to read john at 25 posting his acceptance of bills reminiscing,we have progressed in some ways, but IMO the biggest area where we fail in this country is in achieving a happy medium.We always seem to go from one extreme to another.

Bill mentioned School teachers and corporal punishment,this is a good example i got the slipper and the cane when i was at school,and there was one particular teacher who could have been accused of being over zealous with this particular way of maintaining discipline and learning,but in the main if you got it you deserved it.

By removing even the threat of it,and most other means of keeping order you have the ridiculous situation where by teachers cannot control a class of infants let alone teenagers and one result of this is an ever increasing illiteracy rate amongst school leavers.

And what do the people who implement these changes say"its the parents fault"i can only be kind and speculate that they are mainly childless.

[vegyjones]

Oh dear, you oldies...

No wonder you're all mental :D

[mick56]

vegman you have just layed yourself wide open.

[tovarich]

I thought it was great to read john at 25 posting his acceptance of bills reminiscing,we have progressed in some ways, but IMO the biggest area where we fail in this country is in achieving a happy medium.We always seem to go from one extreme to another.

Bill mentioned School teachers and corporal punishment,this is a good example i got the slipper and the cane when i was at school,and there was one particular teacher who could have been accused of being over zealous with this particular way of maintaining discipline and learning,but in the main if you got it you deserved it.

By removing even the threat of it,and most other means of keeping order you have the ridiculous situation where by teachers cannot control a class of infants let alone teenagers and one result of this is an ever increasing illiteracy rate amongst school leavers.

And what do the people who implement these changes say"its the parents fault"i can only be kind and speculate that they are mainly childless.

My eldest daughter is a teacher, teaching teenagers. At least she is at the moment, but maybe not for much longer.

EDUCATION< EDUCATION< EDUCATION My

[mick56]

My eldest daughter is a teacher, teaching teenagers. At least she is at the moment, but maybe not for much longer.

EDUCATION< EDUCATION< EDUCATION My

Yes and i suspect that given the right enviorment that most kids today would still like to be taught,but when teachers have no way of controling the minority who are not interested then all suffer.

[lowe1]

Great post Bill, I'm "only" 25, and I wish most of that way of living still held some truth in existence today. Especially kids playing outside without mobile phones. That would be wonderful.

Nowadays too much health & safety is rammed down our throat, too much advice, too much pre-determined rubbish about punishments for the most trivial of things.

Let go, is what I say. Let society be primitive.

There is never enough health and safety :D:D:D

[tovarich]

Oh for the good old days when the government of the day got on with running the country while we got on with running our lives. Brown seems to think we couldn't manage to live without having him looking over our shoulder. Do you think we are overgoverned?

[johnwilly]

Health and safety would have had a field day when I was a child. We made our own catapults, bows and arrows and when riding our bicycles we used to follow the local bus and see how close to the rear of the bus we could get, much rubber was left on the back of the bus, yet remarkably we never fell off our bikes. At that time we lived in a village that was hilly - so it was easy to keep up with the local bus. It was great fun.
Also I was one of those who broke his arm while swinging from a rope in a tree and ended in hospital to have it set. Of course when the arm had healed and the plaster removed. What did we do. Just grabbed hold of the rope and started swinging again.
No way was anyone going to stop us - except parents, who you tended to ignore when you didn't agree with them not to do this or do that. Today its so official its detrimental to your health.

[Bill]

Seems we'd all like to go back, perhaps not to the hardship we endured at times, but certainly to the values we placed on the community then.

[tovarich]

I never noticed the hardships, we must have been poor but didn't notice it since we were all in the same "poor" boat together. (But we did have a Chicken at Easter and again at Christmas)

Happy days!

[Bill]

Maybe your a bit young to remember the times just after the war Tov. Not the first world war by the way.:)

[plater]

Must echo quite a few of the above statements, and those memories of being taken home by the Village Booby (After a clip around the ear from him on the way) only to get another one from Ma or Pa for wasting his time

And as for the punishment from teachers, I was outside the beaks office more times than I care to remember, either the cane off Dep Head or the slipper off the Sports Teacher, happy day's indeed

Much Too Much bloody PC these day's is half the trouble IMO

[mick56]

Hi plater i never got a wallop from a copper but certainly had a telling off which put the fear of god into me,and there was nothing wrong with that.Just as with teachers, police officers are almost frightened to do their job properly these days.

I also agree totally with your comment regarding PC.

[tovarich]

Maybe your a bit young to remember the times just after the war Tov. Not the first world war by the way.:)

I can just about remember the times BEFORE the war mate. (Not the first world war mind you.) :D

[John]

Do you think we are overgoverned?

Is the Pope a Catholic...?

[John]

...but IMO the biggest area where we fail in this country is in achieving a happy medium.We always seem to go from one extreme to another.

Exactly, and as soon as one thing becomes more balanced, it knocks another off tangent. Now there are too many religions, too many people in power and too much war as a result of the aforementioned... I know it'll never happen, but I just wish our government would let go. Take their finger off the button, just for a day. They just argue with each other and nothing ever gets sorted out... one reason why the NHS is in millions of debt.