I make a conscious effort not to surrender to the potential for misty eyed nostalgia that exists for good or ill within us all. Mine is just beneath the surface, always ready to bubble over. This is why I must be firm with it, ruthlessly suppressing any trace of it.
Today though I decided to succumb to it. I read an article about the ‘actress’ Joan Collins who feels that the ‘youth’ are lacking the moraL fibre of their parents:
And this comes from an actress who has had numerous extra-marital affairs and starred in films entitled ‘The Stud’ and ‘The Bitch’. Does anyone mind if I look elsewhere for moral guidance?
The article made me think of my school friend Cally (diminutive of Caroline.) In spite of her angelic blond haired, blue eyed appearance she appeared to be precocious in all the wrong ways. She told us in forensic detail about her sexual exploits with the boys on her estate. The other member of out trio: Rachel and I listened to her, wide-eyed, both fascinated and disgusted. We were, after all, good Catholic girls.
Years later I met Cally again. To my surprise she was studying languages at Bradford University. I reminded her of the sordid tales she used to tell us. She replied ‘You didn’t believe all that stuff, did you? I made it all up. With a little help from Jackie Collins.’
I bought my mother an electronic photo frame for Christmas. She unearthed an avalanche of old photographs. The photo above depicts my brother and I, aged nine and three, in the garden of our grandparents’ council house. The neighbourhood consisted of ‘streets of ugly 1930s red-brick semis‘. And no, it’s not in Dewsbury. They were however similar to the house that my parents spent most of their working lives struggling to buy. Oh, Mrs Thatcher, you never told us that in your utopia, in your ‘home owning democracy’, you would still be despised if you didn’t own the ‘right’ kind of house. Respectable working class people. Respectable but most certainly never respected. Thou shalt not suffer little chav brats to live.
Just an afterthought: the Catholic working classes deter their brats from promiscuity by telling them that God is watching and, if he sees them behaving inappropriately, they’ll roast in the fires of hell for eternity. Of course, in the long term, this tactic results in some seriously fucked up people but, in the short term, it is highly effective.
Say it loud and say it proud: ich bin ein untermensch.
Finally, oops there goes the neighbourhood.
P.S. The times they are a changing: illustrated here and here.
Once we were high school girls
Worshipped like movie stars
By the local boys
But our sweet, cherubic faces
Are now drawn, lined
Once athletic, now rotund
And memories
Crushing,
Crushing,
Crushing…
We were red-cheeked, laughing,
Exchanging Valentine kisses
But nobody calls anymore
And things change so fast
Is that a ghost, we ask
No, it’s an old sheet flapping in the wind
And wisdom does not compensate.
So Sick of Drowning 