Tuesday 30 December 2008

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.

Saturday 27 December 2008

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’.

Thursday 18 December 2008

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.

Friday 12 December 2008

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.