You were lucky.

The Playground.

I just felt inspired to write this having read a blog written by a friend. She’d been going on about how she’d suffered her parent’s tongues as a child when they bemoaned what THEY didn’t have when growing up that SHE had now and that she should feel herself lucky. And now SHE finds herself, at thirty, repeating the same sort of diatribe to her children. So I wrote:

"Atari 2600! TVs with 5 channels!! Telephones!!! You were lucky."

"Charles Babbage was still building the first computer, made of wood and iron it had pulleys, valves and was the size of our house."

"TVs were built like shacks with a screen as big a postcard and had the one flickering channel which was in grey and grey and it was on air for about two hours a day."

"Telephones were a real luxury item and if you had one (which we didn’t) you kept it for emergency use only. The neighbours soon found out and those with phones became unofficial call boxes for the neighbourhood, yadda, yadda, yadda."

"You WERE lucky!!" End of comment.


I was born just after the outbreak of hostilities of WW2 and things were austere to say the least.

I would have been about five just after the war ended and times were harsh. We in UK were still short of food and clothing and if one went to a neighbour to borrow a cup of sugar it wasn’t always to be sociable. Even then, it would oft times only be half filled or maybe none forthcoming at all.


I could go on about the deprivations but I won’t. Because we were still happy with our little lot. We had no idea what luxury was. Televisions were as rare as hens teeth. Radios only worked sporadically and obviously there were no electronic games or toys. But we still were happy, I think.

My dad used to read to us or tell us stories from his memory. Most of these stories were of the spooky and ghostly kind. His favorites were those from the pens of Edgar Allan Poe and W.W. Jacobs so his telling could really make our hair stand on end, our young flesh creep and our fresh minds go into spasm. But our minds benefited from this stimulation, even and although I found sleep hard to come by in a freezing cold and dark bedroom under a heap of ex army great-coats.


We also played outside more, interacting with neighbours and their kids. Some of my fonder memories are of events that happened in our street. Playing football in the street with the proverbial jackets for goalposts, or cricket with the wickets drawn in chalk on someones wall.


There was always the argument over whether you had been bowled out but evidence of chalk on the ball was always the clincher. We didn’t require slow-mo TV replays. A six (runs) if you could hit the ball past the lamp post and you were out if it landed in somebodys’ garden.Sure, we used to fight over silly things, but that was what growing up was about.

It’s a pity that our streets and alleys have been commandeered by the motorcar. Where we had one car on our street, that same street now has about three hundred parked bumper to bumper (fender to fender). How could any kid now treat the street as a playground.Kids of today?

They really are UNLUCKY!