The sun is splitting the trees, as my mother used to say. I haven't been out so I don't know how cold it is; I'll just stay in my warm cocoon until the cleaning lady arrives. She comes every Friday morning for a couple of hours and I try to keep out of her way. We picked Friday morning for this activity because I was usually at my Writing group but, since I've aborted that I find myself hanging about getting in the way.
This afternoon, Brendan is being presented with his 'scholarship' cheque at a posh ceremony at one of the better reception centres in Launceston. Apparently, each department at the TAFE has a similar scholarship and they're all presented this afternoon. We're his de facto family so will sit there beaming proudly while he collects the cheque. It's all part of the process.
Sorting out my stories, I find that I have two with the same name. I'll post one today and the other on Monday. This one is from 2020.
THE WAY WE WERE 1 2020
It’s an embarrassment, to look back and think about the way
we were in those days long ago ...d in fact, not so long ago. Perhaps we can be excused for how we behaved
in the Sixties: we were young and surely youth is a reasonable explanation of
all kinds of bizarre behaviour. With the
threat of the ‘Bomb’ ever hanging over our heads, life seemed unreliable, and
our mantra could have been ‘Eat, Drink and be Merry’.
The Seventies, too, brought its own pressures and we’re
often told that, in those years, we were trying to develop an identity
different to our parents by reacting against all the values we had been
taught. Some people say that if you can
remember the Seventies, you weren’t there.
Others say there was something in the air which made us behave the way
we did; I thought it was tobacco smoke but maybe it wasn’t. Trying to be avant-garde in the Seventies we
wore our hair too long and chose clothes which made a statement. Looking back, I think that my clothes were
making the statement that I had no taste.
By the Eighties, many of us had acquired some semblance of
respectability. Some of us had mortgages
and were on the treadmill of seeking promotion in our careers. Yet, we still rebelled by growing beards and
drinking exotic cocktails. Not content
with the 3-bedroom weatherboard and iron cottages of our parents’ generations,
we strove for brick veneer with 2-car garages and rumpus rooms. Strangely, to this day, I have never been
invited to a rumpus in a purpose-built room.
The Nineties was a time of Hope. We were optimistic that the good times would
continue. We acquired the habit of
eating out more regularly, even driving long distances to experience a new
restaurant. Influenced by the power of
advertising, we filled our houses with gadgets.
How did our mothers ever make an appetising meal without the kitchen
whizzes we now had displayed proudly on the walls and would I ever get around
to using all the tools in my garage?
Some of us made our first overseas trip in the Nineties and
learned that there was a vast and different world out there. Airfares had come within reach of all and we
took advantage while we could.
In the Noughties, we were Respectability Personified. We were the ones being asked to be the
secretary of the Bowls Club or get involved in the Show Society. We all had a library card and only watched
worthy shows on TV. We had opinions on
politics and what movies were worth watching.
Our grand-children, secretly, thought we were boring
In the Tens, our lives have slowed down. An exciting day out can only occur if we are
not too far from a reasonably clean toilet.
We avoid spicy food on the advice of our doctor and always make sure our
spectacles are not too far from our reach.
We spend a lot of time reading and the lucky ones of us enjoy contact
with younger members of our family.
In 2020, we look back on lives enriched by constant change. We are the lucky generation, born into a
world reeling from the aftermath of two World Wars, but still a world filled
with confidence that the future would be better than the past, that the purpose
of our lives was to make the world a better place for those who would follow
us. The question is, though, have we
failed in our duty to build on the sacrifices of our grand-parents and parents? Are we the generation which has squandered the
legacy which was gifted to us when we took the baton from the generation before
us? If so, is it too late to change our ways?
It's probably not too late but do we have the will? My parents took a deep breath in the 1940’s
and knuckled down to deal with the very definite threat of Herr Hitler. I’m old enough to have experienced rationing
which wasn’t lifted until the 1950s in the UK but that’s a distant memory even
to us oldies. I think today we have the
idea that hardship is what happens when the electricity is cut off for an hour
or two or the supermarket runs out of our favourite ice-cream. And maybe it’s not such a bad thing that our
life is easier. Who needs hardship?
In fact, life is good so let’s enjoy it.
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