Born before 1940

Thank you so much to all friends family and followers who have got your hands on a copy of Hero on a Honda...

or Honda under a Hindi.

I'm quite chuffed to be the centre of attention for a little while.

 

 

Yesterday, a sheet of lined foolscap paper with red margin fell out of an album belonging to my Aunt Muriel who died several years ago in her nineties. It’s written with typewriter and ribbon, where the ‘a’ is black in the middle. The paper is brittle with age, like parchment; folded creases beginning to crumble and split.

The origin of the piece (at the end) is curious.

I’d like to share it with you. It’s entitled:

 WE ARE SURVIVORS – for those born before 1940

We were born before for television, before penicillin, polio, frozen foods, Xerox, plastic, contact lenses, videos, Frisbees and the pill. We were before Radar, credit cards, split atoms, laser beams and ball point pens, before dishwashers, tumble driers, electric blankets, air conditioners, drip-dry clothes and before man walked on the moon.

We got married first then lived together (how quaint can you be?)

We thought ‘fast food’ was what we ate at Lent, a Big Mac was an over sized raincoat and a ‘crumpet’ we had for tea. We existed before househusbands, computer dating, dual careers and when ‘meaningful relationship’ meant getting together along with cousins and ‘sheltered’ accommodation was where you waited for a bus.

We were born before care centres, group homes and disposable nappies. We never heard of FM radio, tape decks, and electric type-writers, artificial hearts, word processors, yogurt and young men wearing earrings. For us ‘time share’ meant togetherness, a chip was a piece of wood or fried potato, hardware meant nuts and bolts. Software was a wholly jumper, made in Japan meant ‘junk’, ‘making out’ meant how you did in your exams, stud was something you fastened a collar to your shirt and ‘going all the way’ meant staying on the bus to the bus depot. Pizzas, McDonald's and instant coffee were unheard of.

In our day smoking was fashionable, grass was mown, coke was kept in the coalhouse, a joint was a piece of meat you had on Sundays and pot was something you cooked in. ‘Rock’ music was a Grandmother’s lullaby; ‘Eldorado’ was an ice-cream. A ‘gay’ was the life and soul of the party and nothing more, whilst ‘aids’ meant beauty treatment or help for someone in trouble.

We who were born before 1940 must be a hardy bunch when you think of the ways in which the world has changed and the adjustments we have had to make. No wonder we are so confused.

(From the Arctic Lookout Magazine of the Russian Convoy Club)

 

Each successive generation could write its own piece.

Change happens, and gets faster and faster.

I wonder what Muriel might have made of a ‘black hole’