A Baby Boomer’s Tough Childhood

I was conceived that night....

We had it tough when I was a boy. Television? We had to watch a match box with a 3 cm screen. Pictures weren’t in black and white. Just black. But we never complained.

The war had destroyed the food industry and all we had to eat was Cremola Foam. We got so weak that some days we couldn’t even crawl into school.

If we were lucky. At school Matron lined us up and force fed us cod liver oil. On a bad day she would dish out lethal injections. But we didn’t complain.

Mobile phones – you’ve got to be joking. We communicated by lighting beacons. It worked fine for news such as “Napoleon has been defeated” but wasn’t so good for messages like “Get home right now you little bastard, your mum’s having a fit!”

Our dress wasn’t fashionable or sexualised. In fact, under the heavy folds of grey flannel and the bulging satchels, you couldn’t tell the boys from the girls. Babies were created by leaving a scribbled request under the kitchen sink.

But we never complained.

When I was a boy we didn’t spend all day glued to our computer screens. We got our information by being crowded into pens in the snow and being forced to listen while teacher read out the Prayer Book in Latin.

At least it was outside, it was healthy. None of us were obese or had high cholesterol. We just died of pneumonia, a far more virile way to go. And it was alright by us.

These days, of course, the world is in a shocking state. It completely baffles us. And my god, do we complain.