LETTER: Times have changed but for the better?

So one big day, I think not, just another day like the rest.

This morning I did not have to turn the gas on. It was so warm during the night I could not sleep, so went downstairs and pulled the thermal blinds back to cool it down a bit.

It doesn’t take much to keep me from sleeping now any how, my toes were burning more than usual, as they were too hot. That’s the way with old folks, either too hot or too cold.

The bloody old misery guts, no one takes any notice of us anyhow. Should be dead at 86, taking up houses that the young should have, so that they can have wild parties with drugs etc.

In my young days, no drugs ­­­‑ I was too busy working for a living and trying to better myself and own a house, and after a lifetime of grafting, I now own a house.

But the way house prices are today very few will be able to, certainly not if you try to have your cake and eat it.

Ah the days of dark bread and marge, one egg a week if we were lucky, but we were lucky. If we had been a few years older we would have been in the Army or getting shot out of the skies over Europe.

Still we were at school and if we had no writing paper there was always chalk and slate, a long way from an iPad. So as what I call “The last of the Mohicans”, I left school at 14 and went to work. My mother was a widow and prior to the 1944 Education Act, could not afford to send me to grammar or high school.

Still, I had a really good primary school teacher.

It was called an elementary school in those days.

I learnt pretty good grammar or English ,or what ever it’s called today. I was taught all the Latin roots of the English language.

I was taught in geography all the shire counties and major towns in the British Isles , also their industries, 1939-style. Everything had to be learned off by heart and remembered.

When I hear/see some of the younger generation on TV, I ask myself what does the present English curriculum in schools teach them until they leave at 16 to 18?

I remember more about the former British Empire than a lot leaving university or indeed the history of the UK.

I got that lot off my chest and probably forgot to put capitals, full stops etc in it. it’s because of my age, that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it.

Read enjoy or otherwise and destroy.

Old Grumpy

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