The good old days

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos. They took aspirin, ate raw egg products, loads of bacon & processed meat, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

After that trauma, our cots were covered with bright coloured lead based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets or shoes ... not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Take away food was limited to fish & chips wrapped in newspaper - not pizza shops and Mcdonalds, KFC or Nandos. Even though the shops shut at 6pm and did not open at the weekends we did not starve. We shared one soft drink with four friends from the same bottle and not one died of this.

We use to collect old drink bottles & cash them in at the corner shop for sweets and bangers to blow frogs up with. We ate cakes, white bread with real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in but we were not overweight because we were always outside playing. We would leave home in the morning and play all day as long as we were back home when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day long and we were ok. We would spend hours building go carts and then ride them down hill with no brakes, we built tree houses and dens and played in the river. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo or have 999 channels on the tv. No mobile phones or personal computers or the internet but we did have friends and we went outside and found them.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. Only girls had pierced ears. We ate worms and mud pies. You could only buy Easter eggs & hot cross buns at Easter time. We were given air guns & catapults for our 10th birthday, we rode bikes or walked to our mates and mum did not have to go to work to help dad to make ends meet.

Our teachers use to hit us with canes, the leather strap and gym shoes and bullies always ruled the school playground. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of - they actually sided with the law!

Our parents did not invent stupid names like Kiaora, Blade, Blackcurrant & Rainbow. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility and we learnt how to deal with it. Thank God we didn’t have the health and safety brigade back then!

(I cannot take the credit for this but it certainly rang true for me lol so thought I'd share)