Scenes from my childhood. Regardless of what the guardian writers and BBC social engineers think and preach the social pressure to conform and participate in the near past led to more pride and less misery....now a flat screen TV and cheap drink fill the yawning chasm that liberalisation has brought to the me me me world we live in.
9 comments:
Hard to think of any one getting out there and scrubbing the steps now. My mother always says when she comes to the Bay Area the all the houses look the same as noone gardens here. Just get the mow and blow guys in. Guess that's the same.
Ah!, donkey stoning the steps, mopping the flags, all had to be immaculate, another set of words , minding the fort, today was it was for real.
Thoughtful post, Thud.
My family had a terrible time in the recession of the early thirties, and we never knew about it until a couple of years ago!
scrobs, put a post up as I'd be interested in the story.
Remember, gran always used to say you could tell the state of the inside of someone's house by the look of their net curtains!
That's a beautiful street and a beautiful photo.
Those ladies would have known purpose and happiness. There is much that is uplifting about hard work and fresh air.
I imagine a fair bit of yacking going on there too !
Their husbands (HUSBANDS) would have been working docks and factories no doubt.
There is a long essay by Lawrence Pearsell Jacks which I could paste here but I won't. I'll summarise it in one sentence instead:
'The North Wind made the Vikings.'
In many ways I'm jealous of them.
My great uncle earned his bread and dripping in the 30s by prize fighting.
Others lost their legs in the Great War or their lungs to the mines.
I'm as soft as clarts, me.
Looks a bit like Coronation Street.
I agree that social pressure is important. The other day on the evening commute two young lads (19ish?) were shouting to each other over the relative peace of the tube station while waiting for the train. Everyone, everyone noticed and disliked it and wanted them to shut up like everyone else.
The difficulty is, unless you've been brought up that way or learned yourself, how are you supposed to know what is good form and what is bad form? The noisy lads weren't doing anything *wrong* per se.
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