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The agony uncle who travels incognito to avoid
affidavits
by
Perry Estelle

Edgy Britwit logic chopping on the loose

This week - Growing Up

How did I get to fifty years old without one risk assessment or health action plan? Am I a total fuckwit? (By Fooge)

Dr Farquar says: So what. I ran through the house with a pair of scissors as a kid and am still here I am to tell the tale.

When we were kids we did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cellphones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We went out on our bikes in the morning and as long as we were ‘home before the streetlights came on’ our parents had no cause to worry. Football teams had trials and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Footballers were just local lads and their talent was measured by talent and not a seven figure price-tag. Imagine that!! You bathed once a week in a tin bath filled by the kettle with your sister on a Wednesday night until you were fifteen years old and then if there wasn’t enough carbolic soap to go around you had to the swimming baths to finish the job and get clean. Nobody caught MRSA!

We were out bike-riding, scrumping, fishing or building a den or tree-house in the local wood.

Parents today are breeding social cripples not character personalities. Very sadly, kids today are still bored with all of the gadgets they have and don’t even know what it is like to make a conversation without sounding like Vicki Pollard.

I hope mine all get curvature of the spine and DVT hunched over their game-boys, the idle little bastards. As a fulltime nursery assistant it’s really hard to beat kids in my care without leaving upper body marks or somebody grassing me up. What shall I do? Get another NVQ assessor? (By Fooge)

Dr F: You poor thing. As a child I often ate a mud-pie with worms and was allowed to play with lead painted razor sharp tin soldiers. I made a go-kart out of an old pram and lived on lashings of butter or dripping on burnt toast and tripe and cowheels for Sunday. My comics had war cartoons of carnage and speech bubbles like “Eat this you sausage-eating Nazi scoundrel” and on the next page the bullet riddled Jerry would say “Himmel, bitter! Not before I kill you first …Die you filthy stinkin’ English pig-dog!”

Now the ‘N’ word is used only by those whom refer to themselves. I long for one day when white people will greet each other “Hey Spookie Spook Doggy Dog. You goddamn chicken-eating honky white trash tuna bellied white motherfeckin’ paleface Eminem lovin’ pink fingered moon-assed pint of milk crossed with a ‘keep left’ sign Blondie bastard ice-cream Brobat knob of a sanitary towel coloured sunnavabitch”.

We saved up to go to the football where we smoked. As teenagers we went to the local ‘fleapit’ and smoked some more and had unprotected sex and smoked some more and then spent all our time inside milk bars and cafes where we drank coffee and smoked again. We were always broke but always had money for ‘tabs’. We used the fag packet to put under a plate of greasy fried food one end.. so all the fat would slide down and we could eat off the top of the plate.

We stripped down our pushbikes every week and rebuilt them with 3in1 oil. We actually knew how to mend a tyre puncture using kitchen cutlery and inevitably blackening a thumbnail. We built boats and planes that really sailed and flew.

No wonder Air-fix, the all time champion British 100 year old kit toy company, went out of business last month. What is there left for kids to make with their hands? Give them a Kinder egg and hope for the best I suppose. Polystyrene cement in an unventilated room gave me hours of pleasure as a kid.

We drank flat beer and drank pop and ate sugary over-salted food and I grew up so healthy ....I ended up looking after other sick buggers like you to this day. Go figure.

Now we have twats like Jamie Oliver whose only achievement in life is to ‘sell out’ to supermarkets and flog other peoples shite and a feckin’ ‘flavourmaker’. He must have been up all night thinking that one up.. the big tongued, frothy mouthed cockney pipsqueak! How can somebody who talks like an overworked sludge-pump teach our kids to talk.. let alone.. eat properly!

I don’t blame my parents for my childhood if only just the fact that for some reason ‘the birds and bees’ were never mentioned. You had to find out what sex was all about by watching your elder sister and her boyfriend in the front room from behind the living room curtains when the Telly was off and Mum and Dad went to bed. Except one night when they heard me fart during all the excitement and caught me with my shorts around my ankles wanking up against the chintz, we all came unstuck during the interval of ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’.

We got ‘boned and stoned’. You sometimes caught ‘nasties’ but we had a clap clinic on each corner instead of a bottle bank. Sure, we had gangs, and kids got hurt in fights. But you wore your Mum’s make-up so your dad would not see the black eye. If he did find out you got beat up and he would give you one too match it.

Men held doors open for ladies. People respected their elders. Clothes and shoes were made properly and were ‘handed down’ to your siblings who were proud to wear them. Jam and pickle were homemade and funerals were held at home. You darned socks and wore a ‘Sunday best’ that was made to measure and had to outlive two World Wars. Men smoked pipes and arm-wrestled in pubs. Butchers had trade-bikes and drank with slaughter men. Shopkeepers were the only people in town to own a car. Bakers had a straw hat and a huge wicker basket at the door. Dustman actually came down your garden path and into your yard to your bin and picked it up on their shoulders and emptied it. Hot ashes too. The Esso man came around to fill your paraffin heater - the only other source of heat or warmth in the house, apart from your grate and Grandma. Coal was ‘nicked’ from the local depot down at the railway at night by my Dad. He made our clothes and furniture. He had two pairs of shoes and a trilby. He had two shirts, two ties and two pairs of trousers. But he looked like a film star all the time. When he passed his driving test at forty years old we got a white Ford Zephyr. I really thought we were the richest people in the world.

We had that car for years. It rotted away. Then we got a Ford Zodiac for £200. It was a Bobby dazzler. Then Dad smashed it up. He killed another motorist prompting the further purchase of a pair of glasses. For years he had been driving the family around the country with less than 25% vision.

Bri-nylon drip-dry products meant that, if you had nylon sheets, a baby-doll nightie and pajamas, it could be a health and safety issue. At bedtime if you both turned over at the same time you would create enough static to power a small town. The ‘beehive’ hairstyle was the result of 40,000 volts up your arsehole after a night of shagging. Carpets were made of nylon too. So, trips to the bathroom could mean that, if you walked barefoot to the ‘can,’ by the time you sat down you had harnessed enough energy so that, when you touched the towel rail, it would fuse the entire housing estate and arc yourself out halfway through a shit.

Of course there was underage sex, but if you got pregnant and you stood your round and were reasonably attractive, your lover usually did the ‘decent thing’ and stood by you. You brought the baby up as a family together under one roof until you could save up for a gate-leg table and twin-tub. You both had a ‘shotgun wedding’ where the photographer and some of the relatives got pissed and started fighting. You honeymooned at a Bed and Breakfast in Skegness and moved into a council flat and both of you left the kid with Mum while you got on with your crap jobs in factories and looked forward to Fish and Chips on a Friday night. Feck ……………..it was paradise!

 

see also Dr Farquar - Smith on:
Transport
Christmas
New Year
Success
Love
Health
Laughter
The Ward
Death
Cremation
More death
The Generation Gap
Intelligence
Medicine
Diet
Psychics
Body Neurosis
Smoking
Diagnosis
Truth
Drink
Anti-Social Behaviour
Health and Safety
Life
More Life
Yet More Life
Even More Life
Everlasting Life
Thinking
Dreaming
Extra Terrestials
Definitions
More Definitions
Sleep
Friendship
Money
Timewasters
Hygiene
Hair
General Enquiries 1
General Enquiries 2
Halloween
Sheep
Pet Hates
Dementia
Senility or Stupidity?
Conundrums
Conundrums 2
Christmas 2
Aversion Therapy
Personal Experience
Measurement