One boy's life and times
E-Book, Englisch, 246 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-99146-800-4
Verlag: novum publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
An introduction I love my children and grandchildren and together we share the same world. There is however a big difference between us. While they are natives of this world, I feel like a temporary resident. I am a little out of place, or more accurately, a little out of time. The transformational changes that are so evident in everyday life, like sophisticated technological advances and changing social norms, take some adjusting to. I find myself alternating between being delighted, baffled, or, on occasion, frustrated. Familiar things from my childhood remain but now seem different. For example, factories still operate, and shops are stocked ready for sale. The big change is that things seem to happen with so little human involvement. Goods continue to be produced, and business is still transacted, but now these processes are unfettered by the world’s different time zones and outdated concepts such as ‘normal working hours’. Despite these apparent 24/7 operations, it is sometimes difficult to speak directly to ‘real’ people. When making purchases over the internet, I have myself been asked to confirm that I am not a robot! Of course, life has been made simpler in many ways by technology, and for those willing to participate, it offers platforms for shopping, banking, and communication. Live news feeds offer immediacy, making the way in which I once received news seem pedestrian. The downside is that live news produces simultaneous comments, some of which may be ill-judged, leading to cyber bullying and unfounded conspiracy theories. The technology itself disregards national borders while drawing together a digital community into a global village of trading and communication. This produces the mixed blessing of denting parochial and nationalistic perspectives of the past, but at the expense of eroding long-held values and local cultures. An exponential change in part driven by technology has taken place within this country in terms of values, attitudes, and expectations from when I was young. I have inhabited a vastly different world from the present one. I was born into a simpler place and time, an era that pre-dated moon landings, personal computers, mobile phones, and the use of the internet. When I was born not every household owned a car, a telephone landline, or even a refrigerator. I lived in a world that went by in a less complicated, seemingly more innocent way. This was a world where news, business and conversations were slower, more measured but by comparison limited. Friends were fewer, certainly, when compared with the count on Facebook, but they required the commitment of personal interaction. Adults networked by chatting to those around them in a queue, on a bus or waiting in a doctor’s surgery. My early knowledge and views were shaped by listening to conversations in the street, over the dining table, at school, during Sunday school lessons and at the ‘Common’, a patch of greenery at the end of the road. Growing up you get used to hearing the sage sayings of adults. One was ‘there’s no time like the present’, which was meant to stress the opportunity for taking immediate action. In retrospect, the phrase could have been taken literally, the fifties and sixties were unlike any other period of history. It was a time that now seems quirky, lacking sophistication and dated, yet seismic changes were going on while I went about day-to-day life. Like fellow ‘baby boomers1’, I lived through a unique slice of time. The world I knew as a child was markedly different from anything that had gone before. 1 A baby boomer is someone born between the end of the Second World War and the mid nineteen sixties. This was a period of huge change and achievement, with much to celebrate. As a society we had harnessed the potential of electricity, acquired clean water, benefitted from penicillin and other medicines, and established the National Health Service (NHS). Rationing was finally being shaken off. The First World War, 1914–1918, was meant to be a war to end all wars. Such optimism was not well placed as another world war was being fought against the same enemy a little over twenty years later. Emerging from these conflicts on the winning side there was a new opportunity for lasting peace. To this end, a Western European alliance of nations, now known as the European Union (EU), offered potential for not only security but also trade2. Crime rates were down, housebuilding by both the public and private sectors was a reality, and successive governments were committed to a general policy of full employment. Despite high personal taxation, there was an undeniable truth in the words of a Prime Minister of the period that, as a nation, we had ‘never had it so good’3. A step change in technological advancement was taking place and consumerism was starting to take hold. For the right price new types of appliances for the home could make cooking, cleaning, and washing less of a chore. The cinema and theatre as sources of entertainment could, for a fee, be supplemented by ownership of a radio or television set. For those whose pockets were not deep enough, there was credit in the form of the hire purchase (HP) agreements. The ‘never, never’ promised jam today and the maxim of ‘never a lender or borrower be’ belonged to an earlier generation. For the first time ever there was widespread ownership of a revolutionary form of personal transport, the motor car. 2 Although Britain did not join the six founding countries until 1973 before voting to leave in 2016. 3 Harold Macmillan who was Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963. Life however was not lived under permanent blue skies, there was something of a permanent, sinister shadow, some might say a very dark cloud. A ‘Cold War’ between two rival political ideologies, capitalism and communism, was raging. Far from being just a noisy disagreement, there was a deep mutual distrust and a real fear of the threat of mass nuclear destruction. As well as stockpiling weapons, the Cold War also spawned intriguing tales of spy networks and secret agents. A space race between the two sides got underway unofficially to confirm which ‘ism’ had superiority. Aside from a fear that the nuclear button might be pressed there was much for the nation to wrestle with. Britain may have emerged from the Second World War victorious a decade earlier, but it was nearly bankrupt. The Americans were owed billions of pounds and were now calling in their debts. Any sort of economic progress was inevitably impeded by this burden, indeed, governments feared real hardship and secret plans to avoid starvation were considered necessary. The magnitude of our indebtedness meant that the country was by necessity politically tied to its transatlantic paymaster. Then there was the legacy of once being a colonial power. At its peak, one in four of the world’s population belonged to the British Empire. (A huge map on the wall of my classroom evidenced as much with great swathes of countries coloured pink.) Running an empire came at a cost both financial and moral. Now immigration from the Commonwealth was becoming a source of social tension in some parts of the country. These are some of the headlines from the world of ‘then’. I lived through it all in a kindly subculture on a new suburban Black Country estate. Experiences of childhood, early relationships, family and how you are raised all help shape your moral code, what you believe and ultimately who you are. Societies are built on stories such as mine. Reflecting on these stories helps me make sense of my place in a world I once lived in and how today’s world has been shaped by the past. It was a Danish philosopher of a century earlier who observed that life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards4. 4 Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). Certain trivial items and customs have faded completely from use over the years. I can remember Smiths crisps being sold as unsalted, but packets came with a small blue packet of salt inside. Then there were toys that were just plain dangerous, including lead soldiers, Meccano construction kits with sharp metal edges and toy cannons that fired match sticks with far too much power. Children’s toothpaste was different. Gibbs toothpaste was sold in a round metal tin and had the texture of brittle boot polish, and significantly came in a choice of pink and lime green colours. The big autumn event for children was always November fifth, when the thwarting of the 1605 gunpowder plot to blow up parliament was celebrated. In addition to the sale of fireworks, bonfires were lit, and this tradition carries on normally in back gardens, rarely at organised events. We often went to a distant cousin’s home whose daughter Wendy celebrated her birthday on that day. No bonfire was complete without a scarecrow-type effigy of Guy Fawkes (one of the gunpowder plotters) being placed on the top of the bonfire pile. In the run up to the big night, children would lay their guys on the floor in prominent places such as street corners and outside pubs and ask passers by, ‘A penny for the guy?’. Coins and loose change could be exchanged for fireworks for the big night. This practice seems to have died out...
