The Downturn, future generations will have to pay

I have heard it said lately and repeatedly on TV and Radio that ‘We will be paying for this economic downturn, recession/depression for generations to come’. It came back to me that my father said exactly the same to me just after the World War II only we would paying for the war. And we did, for many years. I only began to see any prosperity in the late sixties and early seventies. I even had a go at having it myself. Like all good things, for me, it soon came to an end.

So where do we stand with this banking and economic debacle, we the common people, the ordinary people? Personally I think we are in dire trouble. Oddly I think the older generation will handle it better than the young. They remember how to make-do and mend, they know how to cook and sew, things almost unknown to most of those below 30 or even 40. They also know how to budget and shop with care although even we have fallen foul of being tempted into credit card debt. (Count me in on that on that one.)

I feel sorry for the young because they will feel badly let down. Born to expect to have ‘things’ of every kind from TVs to takeaways, X-boxes to throw away clothes and computers to take the strain out of learning. They will turn very nasty about it and who will suffer. The thing to do is easy to attack old folk. A headline screamed at me in town today ‘Two yobs rob old lady’. Frightened? Yes I have to admit I am although I know it is a minority and there are lots of respectable hard working youths out there.

But the future is going to be different. Why? Because they do not really know what a real recession is. I was born during one and experienced being deprived of most things that made life worthwhile during the war and for some years after. I remember only a tin of baked beans in the cupboard and one pair of shoes to wear, and those mended by dad with old rubber tyres. Freezing cold rooms to sleep in and for dad and I, living in a tent in mid winter. And my experience was not that bad compared to some people’s. They talk about the recession of the 80s, 90s but although we lost two businesses in them it wasn’t that bad.

So am I a Cassandra? Do I foresee dire times ahead. Who in my generation ever thought to see Woolworths sink without a trace? Well my advice is draw in your horns, tighten belts and husband your resources both financial and in kind. When this mad reduction in prices passes goods will become scarce and expensive. With luck the world may come through it in 4 or 5 years but it could take ten.

Hell, I hope I am wrong about all this. My New Year message is sad and frightening, I am sorry but it is how I feel and I do not look forward to 2009 – 10 – 11…., my latter years.

Christmas trees remembered

Better write something Christmassy. Looking at Christmas trees for sale it reminded me of a time just after the war ended. Scarcity was the name of the game especially, for us, of money. We lived in an area of Scots pine and silver birch trees so dad and I went out and , do no do this, pulled up a self-seeded seedling pine tree. It stood about a foot high. We potted it up in something, I can’t remember what, and decorated it with coloured wools and sweet wrappers.

During the war decorations were hard to come by and I remember we found loads of silver foil the Germans dropped to try and fool the radar. I seem to remember we children called it radar but I may be wrong about that. Anyway everybody brought it home and decorated our Christmas trees with the strips. We all went around saying
‘Nice of the Germans to give us our tree decorations’.

WW2 Evacuation of children

I have been watching programmes about Evacuees in world war two being reunited. The evacuees were children aged between 4 and 15 or so. Now this is exactly my generation as I was 4 when the war broke out and it struck a cord deep within me.

I was not actually evacuated in the same way myself as these children were, sent away on their own to live with strangers. Yet I was in areas continually bombed and at one time my father declared that Mother and I should go to Devon for a while until the bombing died down a bit. So it was that I found myself somewhere deep in the countryside and attending village school. We lived in what, before the war, had been a busy tearooms, Devon Cream Teas type of thing. Mother was so board that she took to teaching me to read. Overhang of that, I could read too soon and never learnt to spell, but I can speed read. Thank God for spell checkers.

I remember very little of our stay except a few happenings. Thick snow and having no wellington boots was told to walk in the foot steps of the café owners small son in the garden, BUT the son had a stash of pre war chocolate biscuits in a summer house. The little horror made me walk three times round the garden before we went in munch the biscuits. Heaven.

Mother and I walked a lot in the country lanes and once saw a beautiful owl, probably a barn owl, sitting on a gate post. It never moved but its eyes followed us as we passed by. Never seen one in the wild so close again. At school there was a shortage of paper and the only thing I remember was that our exercise books were cut in half to make them go further. I wasn’t any good at learning to write – bored as I could already read.

The war still came to us even in deepest darkest Devon. A stray bomber for some reason dropped its stick of bombs nearby as it left Exeter. Invasion was so close that at one time Mother was prepared to go to the coast with a gun and I was to be sent north with the other children with only the well known brown card label pinned to my coat with my name on. It didn’t happen but it was at the time that the Americans were practising in Devon for the invasion of France. Perhaps there is a confusion here somewhere.

Later father said the bombing at home had died down and told us to come back. He was wrong it was still horrendous. We did all survive it. Father lived until 1980 and mother died only this year in France where she went to live after the war. The casualty in our family of the was my parents marriage. Regarding the evacuees in the programme, I felt a great affinity with their stories.

Mike Hawthorn

When ever I see something about F1 drivers of the past I have to remember the time I met Mike Hawthorn, the driver who tragically died young in a car crash not on the track. I lived in a YWCA hostel and boyfriends were allowed into the sitting room to wait until their girlfriend was ready to go out. One of my friends, renown for having loads of boyfriends, asked me to go down and keep a ‘Mike’ happy while he was waiting.

I was a naive fifteen year old girl and I had no idea what to say to him but my friend was insistent so I went down as he was an important boyfriend. When I opened the door there was a handsome blond man whom I recognized as Mike Hawthorn! Of course I froze and he was very kind to a tongue tied teenager. I cannot remember what we talked about but later my friend said he was most amused at my attempts to entertain him.It would be like walking into a room today and finding Lewis Hamilton there.

Being in Touch

Seeing all the young people going around with phones either clamped to their ears or with flying thumbs over the key pad it stuck me that today’s generation, and a few of us older ones, just cannot be out of touch with other for a moment. Now in keeping with my blog title how does this remind me of something.

Some years ago I heard of a university project that was in the USA, somewhere, that involved a dozen or so students being linked together with computers that were in a pair of glasses, or goggles, not sure which. They could see the real world with one eye and the other was a computer link to all the other students and the professor. I know they could communicate with each other but I am not sure what else they could get. Possibly the internet. The point that interested me was that they became so used to the company of the others they began to work as almost one brain, one entity. When the project came to an end they felt quite lost.

Are we getting to this point in reality? Folk seem entirely unable to walk to the bus stop or round our towns and cities without being in touch with their friend, relations and perhaps even enemies, think bullying. If unable to talk they text, and when they get home they go on line and chat, email, blog, video and go into virtual worlds to be in touch with each other and anyone one else anywhere in the world.

I even have a go at it myself, love email, am on You Tube, and write this blog. I can used my PDA quite well and can text with the best of ‘em. (73 ½ exactly)
So will our descendents be permanently in touch with others and is it a ‘Big Brother’ step too far. I guess I won’t be around long enough to find out. Shame.

11-11 salute

Today is 90 years since the end of the first world war, so the media keeps reminding me. My parents lived through that war but I lived though the second. Luckily I did not lose anybody close nor was I bombed out. I was machine gunned.
However I will dedicated my blog today to two Canadians that my family had made friends with. They turned up one night in their tank outside our house and were on their way, we later realised, to the Normandy beaches. They had stopped by to bring me, an eight year old, some chocolate.
We never heard from them again and may or may not have survived. I have never forgotten that they could bother about one small child at such a time. I salute them now.

Feeling my Age

I haven’t written for a while as I was preparing to go into hospital for an operation and having it. Now I am try to get over it.

My age was brought home to me while in hospital. Only three of us in the ward chatting away. Two of us started talking about something that happened in 1946. The third lady said
‘Hold on, 1946 was only just after the war, how old could you have been to remember anything then?’
The other lady and I looked at each other. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Myself I was ten when the war finished almost to the day.’
‘And I was eight,’ The other lady said, ‘ Why, how old are you?’
‘Fifty three.’
‘Ah, a mere babe then.’
'Yes, Almost the same age as my son.' I rejoined
Reminds me of an old cartoon strip in The Mirror (I think) Andy something and his wife Florence. He is trotting past a pretty young lady and quips
‘Where have you been all me life?’
‘For the first half of it I wasn’t even born!’ she replies.

New Cold War?

Lately I hear the pundits talking about a New Cold War. They have no idea how frightening the first cold war was. I spent my teenage and twenties expecting to be blown up by an Atom Bomb and never thought to reach my seventies as I have.
This was enhanced for me by the fact that while in the Air Force (18 to 23) I was sent on an Atomic, biological and gas warfare defence course. We were shown films of the devastation of the cities in Japan hit by the two atomic bombs. These were not shown to the public until decades later, if then, and the images have remained with me all these years. All the 'duck and cover' and get behind mattresses left me cold because I knew neither would make a bit of difference. Atom bomb - sooner or later your dead!
I was horrified to find my son had equally thought that he would not have long to live as the rulers of atom holding countries either made a mistake of or went mad and pressed the button.
Politicians - do anything you can not to renew the Cold War!

Princess Margaret's Hat

True to my blurb at the side I now remember something I wanted to write about yesterday. It was about Princess Margaret. A TV programme reminded me of the only time I saw her and her mother, the Queen Mother. Now over fifty years ago I was in the W.R.A.F. I was part of the women’s forces display team on The Royal Tournament show in Earls Court , London.

I had been picked out to be in the guard lining the route for them to the Royal Box but I had caught a bad cold and the officer could not risk me sneezing at the royal pair. So I stood just behind my mates with the general public. Now I have a loud voice having been trained as a PTI and Drill Instructor and prone to speaking without thinking. The Queen Mother and the Princess came serenely along the line smiling and nodding (long before the informal royalty days) and Margaret wore a large flowered hat which looked as if a huge hydrangea flower had been put on her head.

“Ooo,” says I, who loved dressing up in fashionable clothes, “Ooo, look at Maggie’s hat!”
“Shhush!” said a nearby officer. A gasp from the crowd and direct freezing look from the Princess herself. Thank God I was not on the official guard or I would have been charged with insubordination. As it was I was just told off.
What do I remember about what they looked like? All I remember beyond the hat was the china plate make-up on their faces that must have been a quarter of an inch thick. I always respected the Queen Mother for her fortitude along with her husband during the war but I lost respect for Princess Margaret in later life.

Deer in the Wheatfield

Not far memory today as nothing has really hit me. So before I forget I'll relate a small but beautiful happening I saw this morning while out with my husband and dog for a walk. The road home is up hill and so narrow a path has been made the other side of the hedge. There is a path with grass beside it and a fence before it becomes a wheat field. It stretches away down the valley and is quite large.

Suddenly my husband saw something in the middle of the field. It was a fallow deer, a large one standing quite still about a hundred yards away. It is quite rare to see them in an open field in the daytime. It took off down the field past us in great leaps and bounds over the wheat. Pausing only once to look at us it bounded off again until it disappeared into the hedge row.

It was beautiful and a memory I will have to keep in my head rather than on a camera.

The 1948 Olympics

Hello everyone and anyone finding this page.

I always find something everyday that pushes a button in my memory and I find myself mentally writing it down. I decided to have a blog where I would do exactly that.

Today a British girl won a gold in the Olympics in China. The first Olympic swimming races I ever saw were on an pre war TV in 1948. I was absolutely fascinated. I was staying with the well-to-do side of the family who owned this wonderful box. I watched everyday and, already a good swimmer, I went on to become a school champion swimmer. Later I did quite well in the Air Force. Today I might have gone on to train to be a really good swimmer but that didn't happen in my day. Congratulations to the girl that won today. Go Girl!