Steven Tansell

I remember the days when us kids played outside, and swung on ropes and old bike tyres slung over the lampost arms, as soon as the streetlights came on, we all trudged off home to our little nests, very tired, very happy and, safe and sound, yet again! There were no computer games back then, the only graphics were called trees, woods, fields and sky, when the sun was out it was play time, and when the moon came out it it was bed time! Words had a simpler meaning back then, gay was happy, and a blow job was something your mam and nan had done at the hairdressers! Kids played lorries and trains in old cardboard boxes, long before those boxes got upgraded to inner city dwelling for the homeless. The schools had someone called 'The Nit Nurse' who came occasionally to check your hair, your finger nails and your teeth, and every kid received a bottle of milk a day, until Margaret Thatcher stopped it all! When 'Thatcher The Milk Snatcher' turned her toes up I toasted her passing with a pint of fresh milk! We were the last family in the street to get a T.V. because my granddad called it 'The Idiot's Lantern' and didn't want one in the house! He relented eventually so that he could watch the 'Armchair Wrestling' on a Saturday afternoon compered by Kent Walton!

All in all, even with rickets and polio, measles and chicken pox running riot through our childhood, compared to the kids of today, I truly believe us baby boomers had the best of the deal!! I'm 74 now and often wonder what sort of world it will be if and when the kids of today reach their seventies and beyond?