Hey, My Generation......

Hi everyone, run ragged by the pups since 6 am this morning. If I try to look stern and tell them off, they go down on their front paws, tails wagging in the air and I would swear if I didn’t know better the little beggars are laughing at me!! They know already that I am an easy pushover!.

Anyway, it’s just gone 1 o’clock, they’re both fast asleep in their cage cuddled up to each other so I can now enjoy my usual lovely cuppa and two chocolate hob nobs. (well, maybe one and I’ll put the other back in the biscuit barrel. It all depends on how bloody-minded I happen to feel once I finish the first one.

Well, as usual, been reading the DM Letters Page and there is what I think is a brilliant letter from a lovely lady by the name of Janice Wood from Sidcup in Kent. She is having a go at something a columnist in the DM (Sarah Vine) said in a previous edition, demeaning pensioners. (mind you, I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on what she said, she is after all, Michael Gove’s wife!!) Enough said there ey! look what happened there!

Oops, I digress as usual….. Here then with the letter Janice Wood wrote, I’m pretty sure most of us resonate with her…..there is a photo of her. She looks a lovely lady in her mid sixties - her hair in a bob to her chin with vivid pink dye highlights throughout her hair and her fringe. It rather suits her. chuckle.

Quote

LEAVE THE OVER-60’S ALONE. WE EARNED OUR PENSIONS.

What has Sarah Vine got against people in their 60’s (Mail).
I know I am old, but I dye my hair and try to look the best I can. I don’t drink a bottle of wine a day, but I go out at weekends and have some fun. Surely you should be able to enjoy yourself when you have worked all of your life?

My eyesight is not what it used to be, but other than that I am fine.
So please don’t shout at me or treat me like I am some sort of idiot who doesn’t understand what is going on. You won’t want to be treated that way when you grow old.

When my generation was young, life was very different. There was no hot water on tap. Instead, there was a tin bath hanging on a nail, which was brought in at the weekend for the family bath - everyone shared the same water. It took ages to fill using kettles and saucepans. The toilet was outside, which was a nightmare during the winter.
No central heating, so the coal fire had to be raked and laid on winter mornings.
No fridge or supermarkets, so shopping was done daily in the local shops.
No vacuum cleaner, no TV, no car, no washing machine or tumble dryer and no microwave.

If you had a baby, there were no disposable nappies, they were terry towelling and you soaked them in a bucket and then hand-washed them. I remember getting sore knuckles trying to get them pristine. Then you would hang them on the line. In the winter they would freeze solid and you would have to defrost them on the fireguard.

I worked from the age of 15 to 65, so feel I have earned my pension. I took my children to school or to the child-minder before work. I walked everywhere as like most I did not have a car. Sometimes I would be doing the ironing at midnight.

I am sorry that youngsters today can’t look forward to a good pension pot, but that is not my fault. It is the way things have gone.
People today have a much easier lifestyle, and I am glad as that is what my generation wanted for our children, to have the things that we never had.

Perhaps we were wrong.

Unquote

Good letter I thought. Makes one think. I’m coming up to 69 this month (gulp!) and I am trying to think of other things we never had in my young generation, such as a phone! Never mind mobile phones,
Hand wash, (in our house it was carbolic soap), electric blankets, my dad’s old army greatcoat was the top warmer on my little single bed!

Can anyone else think of anything that is taken for granted today which our generation didn’t have?

Re: Hey, My Generation......

Holidays abroad ,Ive never been abroad other than going to see my daughter in IOM , my son hops on a plane to Spain nearly every other month.
Ive not had any desire to go to be truthful , I find England a more interesting place .

Re: Hey, My Generation......

I don't begrudge the youngsters having things I never had SG they are welcome.
Like the woman in the letter, many of us had interesting and hard working lives which gave us a very precious thing some youngsters may never have , a sense of achievement against all odd.

Many things when I was 16 months old I went to live with my Aunt who really hadn't got to grips with the fact there was a health service 'free to all'.
So when I was ill she was afraid to take me to the doctor because of 'the cost'. The doctor also lived some miles away and there was no means of getting there only on foot.

Consequently whooping cough (no vaccination in those days) and frequent chest infections have taken their toll on my lungs.

My maternal grandmother died of diphtheria while nursing one of her children who followed her within days.She also lost one child with meningitis.
So modern medicine is 'taken for granted' because some have never known anything different.

.

Re: Hey, My Generation......

Every generation will say the same thing!
Think how bad it was for the generation before us, most of them lived on rations and during wars when they had nothing.
This generation will have something to moan about when the next generation replaces them!
It's just evolution and progress changing things!!

Re: Hey, My Generation......

As a family we didn't have tv or phones til quite late, microwave oven was hugely amazing thing, and tumble drier too !

Remembering the boiling copper in the shed my nan washed all the clothes and bedding in and seeing how easy it is now makes me wonder if it's food at fault for obesity or did previous generations just work harder ?

Re: Hey, My Generation......

They worked harder. Burnt those calories right off. Everything was done by hand.

Re: Hey, My Generation......

Hi

I can remember my grandad getting a TV, amazing, it was years before we had one.

Poultices?

Do you remember them?

Nasty hot things placed on your chest.

To be honest though, I feel sorry for the kids these days, we had one thing that they do not have, freedom.

We would be out all day during the summer holidays, jam butties and a bottle of water, all sorts of adventures, and not an adult in sight.

Playing cricket and football in the street, can't do that now, too many cars.

Making lorry carts from old pram wheels and hurtling down the roads.

Bonfire night, building a big one on the allotments, no adults. bangers and jumping jacks, now banned.

I would not swap that for all the X Boxes in the world.

Re: Hey, My Generation......

Honestly, I remember my brothers using my baby brothers pram as he had outgrown it. I distinctively remember well how they threw me and two other brothers (usually the youngest) in this pram and start pushing us down the hill running as fast as their little legs could manage. Inevitably, the pram would end up - upside down on the verge and there would be cut knees, elbows and sometimes chins, but nothing a wash with a flannel, a plaster slapped on, a sweet for being brave and away we went for others to be tortured ! great fun and we could go out for hours on the green.

I'm bloomin sure that pram was a Silver Cross !!!!!!!!!!! probably worth a small fortune nowadays.

Re: Hey, My Generation......

Hi

Yes, Artangel, can you imagine it

You ungrateful little gits, we had it hard at your age.

We had to actually take food out of the fridge, put it into the microwave ourselves and press the buttons.

Non of these new fangled automatic things.

Washing, now let me tell you, we had to put clothes into the machine ourselves, get the washing powder, put that in and then take it out and iron it, actually stand there and use a dangerous hot piece of metal to get the creases out.

None of these automatic sonic wardrobes, where you just hang them up at night and out they come in the morning fresh with no creases.

As for the TV, none of this just waving your hand at it to turn it on and off or to change channels.

No we had to find a remote control and work out which buttons to press and put batteries in as well.

You don't know how lucky you are.

Re: Hey, My Generation......

I use to have Bread poltices , not on my Chest but on my legs
A slice of bread soaked in a pan of hot water then wrapped in muslin .