So there we were, the four of us, living in our council accommodation, with almost no money, and my mother responsible for three still very young children. One of the very obvious, to me at least, differences between then and now was that the war and the aftermath had politicised the generation who had lived through it in ways that are difficult to grasp in an era that is now curiously a-political. The election of the Attlee government in 1945 and the foundation of the Welfare State, based upon collective provision for all and need rather than social class, determining access to the fundamental requirements of a civilised society, marked a fundamental break with the previous social norms. (Not, of course, that the pernicious effects of class had in any fundamental way been diminished). Now, politics is first and foremost a question of identity. Ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and an undefined notion of rights tends to be the basis of political discussion. The neo-liberal assault on the whole notion of collectivism and the rapid growth of individualism and its consequence, consumerism, as the basis for political discourse has been overwhelming in my life-time and makes it difficult to find mutual ground to begin a discussion with those from a younger generation.

 My mother came from a solidly working-class background. Her father had worked for the London bus service and her mother was a secretary. They were both involved heavily in the local Labour Party. My mother was an intelligent woman who had won a scholarship to the Grammar School and, if she had come from a different class, would certainly have progressed to University. This, of course, was out of the question. She had to leave school on matriculation, and then became pregnant and married at a young age. She and my father were members of the Young Communists and I think she remained a CP member until 1956 and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. My father had died a couple of years earlier.  Coming from this background, I grew up with a political sensibility and I too became active in the politics of the 70's and 80's. My children are interested in politics also, but not in the way that makes it the centre of the way they view the world as it had been for my mother's generation and, to a great extent, for mine, though it took different forms - but more of the idea of the counter-culture later.

As I have already said, my memories of this early stage of my life are of being cold and often afraid. The fear was a product of having no money and the awarness that we would be pursued for debts - to the milkman, the council and anything else we had to pay for. I have a strong memory of my mother dragging me into a cupboard in our kitchen when she thought the milkman was knocking on the door for payment. She made me be absolutely silent, but the man interrupting our day decided to try the side door to the kitchen, and, finding it open, came in. This forced my mother to emerge from her hiding place with me in tow to find that it was actually  someone from the gas board to investigate a suspected leak. I still remember the look of astonished incomprehension on his face - and my mother's forced laugh of embarrassment. Too many people I talk to today have no understanding of the daily humiliations that poverty inflicts on people, let alone the physical effects of hunger, dampness and cold.

It was while we were living in this temporary and unhealthy accommodation that I contracted scarlet fever. I think I was just about four years old, but perhaps slightly younger. This was a pre-antibiotic era and so I was despatched to the nearest Isolation Hospital, some five miles away. Isolation meant exactly that. I was suddenly cut off from everything I knew and was not allowed to see anyone at all while I was there. This would normally have been for around two, perhaps three, weeks. It would be incomprehensible today to separate such a small child from his family for such a period of time. Even overnight stays are parent accompanied and rightly so. As it turned out, I picked up an ear infection which meant I remained contagious and my stay in isolation turned from weeks to months. How many, I'm not exactly sure, but probably three to four. It was certainly long enough to erase memories of home. When I finally returned, I called my mother 'nurse', for some time.

My recollections of the hospital focus on a handful of very vivid memories, none of them pleasant, and, I feel, have marked me in some ways for the whole of my life. It's actually quite painful to write this. One was waiting in bed in darkness and listening to the slow arrival of the supper trolley as it made its way slowly down the corridor delivering food that we would have to eat, to all the children in the ward. It would get nearer and nearer and I knew I would be made to eat the slimy, milky foodstuff that would always make me sick. Looking back, this was certainly tapioca, doubtless nourishing, but only if you could keep it down. What was really frightening was the darkness, the approaching torment and knowing the consequences.
Another memory was being picked up out of my bed by a group of young nurses and being carried down a corridor to a small room at the end. They were all laughing about something and I felt confused and alarmed. I was held up in front of a mirror so that I could see myself and the giggling faces behind me. My blonde hair had grown very long while in the hospital and blonde curls hung down my shoulders. Into this, they had tied a large blue bow sticking up on the top of my head. I knew that they were laughing at me, but not why.
Next to the ward I was in was what I now know to have been a ward for children with whooping cough. At night I could hear them whooping and I imagined children slowly turning into wolves in their beds.
Near the end of my sojourn in this institution I was told that I could go out and play later that day. I hadn't been outside at all for the months that I had been there and I remember feeling quite excited imagining playthings and other children. I was wrapped up in a tight-fitting navy-blue coat and thrust through a frosted glass-paned door to find myself in a large tarmaced space surrounded by hospital buildings. It was completely empty of both people and anything to play with. I wandered around the perimeter until I found a large gate through which was a road. I watched occasional cars passing for a while, and then spotted an object on the ground. This was a small, plastic word game. The sort with one letter missing, and you could push the letters around to create words. I amused myself with this until someone appeared to summon me back in.
My homecoming must have been close to, or recently after, Christmas, because I was allowed to sit in the front of the ambulance up high and saw all the coloured lights in front windows as we sped past the houses on the route home. Of course, I didn't know where I was when I arrived back with my family. In about eighteen months I had lost my father and family who now had to be rediscovered. 

 

HELLO AND WELCOME

This is my first blog. I am a complete novice to this, so right from the start I want to apologise for an almost inevitable sense of amateurism about techniques, presentation and accepted modes of address associated with the blogger's art. I will, I hope, get better in time!What I want to do with this blog is tell you a little about my life - nothing very dramatic or even unusual there - and try to use this as a means to offer some observations about the current times we live in and hope that someone else will read it and feel able to add their own thoughts and opinions.

I was born in 1950 and therefore am what is often termed a 'baby-boomer' (an odd description for someone just drawing their state pension). My generation is often presented as one having lived during a golden age of prosperity and all-round good fortune, now living a life of tranquil ease with a good pension and owning a property of ever increasing  value. This to be contrasted with my children's generation, condemned to a life of ever-increasing years of work, little chance of getting on the 'property ladder' ( a curiously British way of describing your home) and pensions fast disappearing as  the state retreats leaving a fully privatised world. There is, of course, a general truth in all of this. But there are also huge exceptions in both pictures, and it's worthwhile trying to consider some particularities amidst the generalisations.

I remember very little about my very early years for reasons which will become apparent later. I was the second of three children, my brother being three years older and my sister following quickly after me (she was very premature). These were the years some time after the end of the war, but rationing was still in force and bomb sites were common in most towns. I lived in outer London and we used to play on these derelict sites, climbing up onto exposed joists and down into rubble-filled cellars. There was little concern on the part of parents about where their children got to when allowed out - which was almost every day - or much concern about when we should return. I don't remember any terrible accidents, though I'm sure they must have occurred. My own children's play and activities has been carefully supervised and controlled, whether going to friend's houses or to organised activities / classes, and this continues to be the case with my grand-children. Childhood experience for many children has changed completely from that of my generation, and this must reflect greater anxiety - and  better awareness of potential dangers -on the part of parents. But something unique to childhood - discovery, excitement and learning your own strategies for dealing with the world - has also been lost.

My mother and father were very young parents and we all, for a few years, lived in a small flat in my grand-parent's rather large house. I remember nothing of these years. My father died and my mother found herself with three children under the age of five. I have no memories of my father at all. We were moved by the council to the ground floor of a house that had been deserted by the owners during the war, and was now used for homeless families. Another family was housed upstairs. This is the first - I was going to say home, but it's not quite the right word - place I really remember living in. It was bitterly cold, sparsely furnished and had an outside toilet that was an ordeal to use, and in cold weather, you would only use it when you couldn't hold it any longer. My mother's income was her widow's pension (10 shillings a week -50p) and child allowance. With such young children she couldn't work at this time and we lived in poverty. We were clothed from jumble sales and were often hungry. We three children slept in one bedroom and it seemed to me that being in bed was the only time I ever felt warm.
 In contrast, my first child was born after we had purchased our first house - a two-up two-down end of terrace with a long, narrow garden, -  and, though money was tight, we all ate well and were not cold in winter. In a few years we bought a larger house with three bedrooms, where our second daughter was born. Some years after that, we moved to a four bedroomed house and our son was born. Both myself and my wife always worked full-time throughout our working lives. This material progression is, I think, what is meant by the half-envious, half-pejorative term 'baby-boomer'. What the term does not address is how material advance came about or why it is now under threat. Rather than look at these questions, it is simpler and easier to point an accusing finger at an entire generation and to suggest that the apparent turn-around in generational fortunes is either an a-historical and a-political natural phenomenon or it's all our fault!

to be continued......