'75 not out!'......

Come 3^rd May and I’m three-quarters of the way to the telegram from Her Maj. I definitely have a great future behind me. I was 2 when WW2 began and 7 when it finished, 9 before I had my first ice-cream, 10 before I saw a banana. Oh the deprivation of wartime! But now I get a free TV licence!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We kids had almost total freedom to come and go as we pleased. The only men about the village were mostly oldies, like George D the painter and decorator who got shell-shocked in WW1, had a terrible tremor and was never heard to speak; and George B, the groundsman for our cricket pitch who was a conshie in WW1 and was for ever after known as Slacker Beckett. No bathroom, no hot water, no inside toilet, no cars, not much of anything really!

Britain has been involved in 28 wars since 1945, so never a dull moment. We were carted off to the armed forces at 18, where there was a wide choice of places to be shot at – Palestine, Korea, Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, the Suez Canal Zone, to name but a few. The 15 years after the war were the pits. Bread rationing, which had never happened during the war, was introduced by the Labour government. Sweets only came off ration in time for the Coronation in 1953. Sex had not yet been invented. But beer was about 8p a pint, cigarettes about  22p.

I missed the Swinging Sixties. I was in Africa for the whole decade where I experienced the dying days of colonialism. I was fated to become a tiny cog in the dismantling machine in Zambia and Malawi in the 60s, and Namibia and Rhodesia in the 80s.

The seventies were a terrible time for Britain, but a very good time for me, despite there being the worst administration of all time under Heath. We dumped the Empire as quickly as we could, and were tricked into joining the ’European Common Market’; now we are living through the grinding of the tectonic plates as the whole rotten edifice begins to fall apart. We had the 3-day week (the joke at the time was that Liverpool Corporation workers refused to do the extra time). And we sat and watched while Red Robbo and other specimens of pond-life systematically dismantled British manufacturing industry.

The 80s were tremendous fun, when everybody except the miners seemed to be in party mood, when business was fuelled by alcohol not Class A drugs, and we had ‘The Two Ronnies’ and ‘Morecambe  and Wise on the telly. The Big Bang was champagne at 11 a.m., ‘barrow boys’ making shedloads of money in the City, and Porsches and Aston Martins in the pub car-park of a Sunday morning

I spent the nineties and noughties all over the place,  the Caribbean, the Balkans, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda,  Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, the US, Pakistan. I have been either a rolling-stone or a permanent expat for all but 19 years in the last 50.

I last took sick-leave in 1964.

But each decade was better than the previous. Although we spent the best years of our lives under the threat of nuclear extermination, the baddies were beaten in the end; the Nazis, the Communists, apartheid, Maoism, the Khymer Rouge, the Balkan genociders, all gone during the past 70 years.

Our standard of living has improved out of all recognition. But quality of life? Hmmm……Time was when I could smoke in most any place except in Church; when I could go out for a drink without worrying that the cops were lurking around the corner with a breathalyser; when I could say pretty well what I liked without being accused of racism, homophobia, or verbal assault; when I could get on a flight without enduring the ludicrous attentions of ‘security’ and travel as a valued passenger, not as self-loading cargo.

Now the Islamists look like winning; the draconian ‘anti-terrorist’ laws, far more stringent than anything even in WW2, have created the kind of repressive and intolerant state that the Islamists so love. Free speech is a thing of the past; vulgar abuse is now a ‘hate crime’; Magna Carta is dead history; habeas corpus almost extinct, along with double jeopardy and the rule against disclosure of ‘previous’. Dave has not done a single thing to undo the abuses of the Blair reign of terror, including the 3,500 new offences created by the Revd. Tony, and the wretched Human Rights Act which enabled the Wicked Witch to set up lucrative new chambers expressly to exploit the rich pickings therefrom.

For those who say ‘fings ain’t what they used to be’ I say ‘No, matey, they never were; nostalgia is not what it was!’

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.