Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Those good old days, when you got a new disease every week and there was an aerial dog fight every morning on your way to school. Money? We never had it and never needed it.

My goodness, the Express website is a fucking trash fire, isn't it? Layout all over the place, no evidence of any sub-editing before publication, grammatical and spelling mistakes everywhere, and random links to columns all carrying variatons on the same theme - "the woke" are the enemy and must be destroyed.

I lingered for a bit until I couldn't take any more. Read a thing by that Calvin Robertson which was basically "imagine Alan Partridge complaining that he wasn't allowed to dress up as a vicar".

But yes, "we was poor but we was happy, even when they were ripping our tonsils out with pliers, but it was OK because we could all have a singalong to Vera Lynn" is not a good take.

Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 8:54 am

But yes, "we was poor but we was happy, even when they were ripping our tonsils out with pliers, but it was OK because we could all have a singalong to Vera Lynn" is not a good take.

Isn't that the Gammon Anthem?

To me it read like one of those tedious things that pop up on social media - "we survived our childhood without/despite..."

Yes, almost as bad as those "old person goes into shop and does some passive-aggressive bullshit to embarrass young person serving them and all the customers cheered, or would have if they were real".

Cyclist wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 6:00 am A batshit old biddy writes...

Woke please read! A love letter to a lost England of decency and respect MARGARET DOWNIE

https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expre ... iption/amp

As a child of the last war - my primary school years neatly encompassed the whole of it - I (and everyone else) was exposed to wartime drama which built very close family ties as trips away any distance were a non-event. Ill-health was a given.

I, along with all others, acquired in sequence:

* whooping cough

* measles

* german measles (this left me hard of hearing while another child in our class actually died from it)

* mumps

* chickenpox

* meningitis (this acquired at 11 plus age left me even deafer - and the child who gave it to me died)

* and finally polio.

I did escape scarlet fever.

However as antibiotics were not available I also was riddled with infection and in 1940 sent to a makeshift hospital near the banks of the Thames called Goodmayes where my tonsils and adenoids were removed in one day.

Two days later most of my teeth were removed.

I was there for two months and parents could visit for two hours only on a Sunday, just two people as there was little room.

We were in the midst of fighting a war there and great flashes on the walls which lit up the rooms as the Luftwaffe's bombs dropped.

Strangely, I don't recall anyone being frightened...

Now read on, if you dare.


A lost England of decency and respect

NO BLACKS

NO IRISH

NO DOGS

'Suffering is good, especially vicarious suffering. That's decency, that is.'

Boiler wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 9:42 am To me it read like one of those tedious things that pop up on social media - "we survived our childhood without/despite..."

Drank from the hose?


Not sure if that's an odd redneck habit, or euphemism for child abuse.

In praise of dead schoolchildren.

I don't think even Birbalsingh would be that strict.

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 11:25 am In praise of dead schoolchildren.

I don't think even Birbalsingh would be that strict.

Well if it set an example to the rest of Year 9………
Who’s the strictest now you woke mo’fo’s

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 11:24 am

Boiler wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 9:42 am To me it read like one of those tedious things that pop up on social media - "we survived our childhood without/despite..."

Drank from the hose?


Not sure if that's an odd redneck habit, or euphemism for child abuse.

No, I genuinely have drank from a hosepipe as a child. But when I was seven we'd not heard of Legionella...

Well, they didn't have Pokemon back in those days. Gotta catch 'em all!

My mother had Scarlet Fever. She told me the saddest part of that for her was having her favourite doll burned as an infection control measure

Thing is - why aren't people grateful that young children today will never know this kind of shit? It's not "improving" or "character building", it's fucking dreadful. I'm grateful my great-nephews will never know such disease.

It's absolutely fucking typical of the Gammon mentality - we had a shit life and so should you.

davidjay wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 2:01 pm It's absolutely fucking typical of the Gammon mentality - we had a shit life and so should you.

I wonder whether ConservativeWoman or some other looncamp will launch a "Bring back Polio" campaign.

Won't anybody think of the Iron Lung makers?

Boiler wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 12:42 pm My mother had Scarlet Fever. She told me the saddest part of that for her was having her favourite doll burned as an infection control measure

Thing is - why aren't people grateful that young children today will never know this kind of shit? It's not "improving" or "character building", it's fucking dreadful. I'm grateful my great-nephews will never know such disease.

Yup, that's the spiteful core of it, the rare times they're actually acknowledging the past was a bit shit rather than some utopian dreamscape: mate, the lives of the young are better now because they don't have to suffer as much.* The fact you're so fucking spiteful about this says loads about you, not them, ya bitter cunt.

*in these areas, at least... welcome, climate change...

There was a 101 year old woman who used to come into one of the libraries I worked in at the time.

She told me a story once of pre-NHS healthcare - specifically, the time one of her sisters needed a leg amputating.

The doctor came to her family's house, herded everyone into one room, then took her sister into the kitchen, and told everyone else to play the gramophone very, very loudly.

My service user reckoned that she could still smell the antiseptic and hear the screaming, even at 101.

In my experience, especially now, people who talk about the Good Old Days either weren't there, or were too young to comprehend exactly what they were looking at.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 8:28 am Those good old days, when you got a new disease every week and there was an aerial dog fight every morning on your way to school. Money? We never had it and never needed it.

I remember on the odd occasion going past some soldiers in full combat gear w/ hard hat & rifle while walking to school in the morning, the earliest occasion I can recall was when I was six years old - and I was walking alone.

Like fuck would I want any child, let alone a six year old one, to have to experience that today.

The author says their primary school years coincided with WW2. So, if we're assuming they were 5 in 1939, that gives us a birth year of 1934, making them 88. Fair enough, entered the workforce 1952 or so, retired late 90s or so.

They say that "a handsome husband and a thousand a year" was a punchline to a popular joke of their childhood. Well, according to https://wordhistories.net/2020/03/22/ha ... sand-year/ the phrase was already being used in nostalgia pieces in the 1920s.

This really does read like the ramblings of some simpleton.

davidjay wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 2:01 pm It's absolutely fucking typical of the Gammon mentality - we had a shit life and so should you.

Nothing could ever get better...

Or should. Or they'll resent it and anyone who benefits for life.