Days Gone By

I don't generally look back in life very often. I've always been interested in what might be around the next corner. I still do. Having said that, it's important to reflect - to see where we are now and to compare with where we were. I recently read M's reflections on what we had as boys and it made me stop and think.
A lot is so different now.

He wrote of the long, hot Summers and the freedom we had as kids. I also recall the long, cold Winters (1947 in particular) when we forgot what the road looked like under the snow. Things were so much slower back then. And brighter. And more fragrant. Everything had a smell - Brett's the grocer shop, all spices and butter and cheese. Dandelions, daffodils, lilac trees, slow flowing rivers, magnifying glass burnt holes in bike pumps all produced wonderful aromas of their own. Lasseter's hardware shop, all wood and metal and polish, Wheale's cycle shop with it's murky interior and smell of rubber and oil. Rabbit hutches, smelly because they needed fresh hay but guarded by big, fierce occupants who dared you to reach in and do the job!

And didn't things taste better then, as well? Carrots and radish pulled up, wiped on your sleeve before eating. Chestnuts. Victoria plums, crab apples scrumped off someone else's tree, locust bean, lemonade powder in a paper bag which left you with a yellow finger! Wall's ice cream. Peas straight out of the pod. A potato, black and hot, straight out of the bonfire!

We were easily pleased. Climbing trees, digging caves and elephant traps, buying bags of nails from Woolie's so we could hammer them into trees or posts to form our initials. Bike rides. Races. There was always a pecking order amongst us. We had fights. Lost some......won most! but we never hurt anyone. Never kicked them. Never drew a knife. We smoked butt ends in home made acorn pipes but didn't even know about pot or drugs. We made ourselves sick - but didn't cause ourselves to turn into anti-social, paranoid thugs.

We couldn't wait to leave school and start work. We held a grudging respect for the police and people older than us. I'm sure life wasn't perfect - or even easy for our parents and families - but we had values. We were guided by them. I wish these values were still held today because I think we might have a safer place in which to live, if they were. We might be prouder of ourselves as a nation. Our families might be closer.

I bought my little Godson an Eagle Annual for Christmas this year. It is old looking and beautifully presented - full of all the safe and adventurous stuff it had in the Fifties. It would be nice if just some of the values it represents, rub off on him.