Wokery gone mad

Don't think we need that - where Japan leads we follow, and I don't think there's much "disparaging of heterosexuality" in Japan.

Ah yes... I remember it well.

But... I am a "boomer" (apparently) and as such, am frequently said to have lived a life of absolute plenty, comfort and affluence right through from birth to being a pensioner.

OK, I can't really remember not having a TV (I'll give 'em that), though I can recall it only getting BBC. But we never had a fridge or even a vacuum cleaner (first experience of a domestic fridge at 26, when I bought a house for £7,000 (oops!). And the idea of a car (despite my dad being a professional driver) was sheer sci-fi.

Oh I can. I can also remember periods of there being no food in the house, too.

Neither did we, which didn't do much for food hygiene. Oddly enough, I have no recollection of ever having any of the so-called childhood diseases (measles etc)- none of them, but I remember a number of food poisoning episodes.

If it happened, you are lucky to have been spared measles. I wasn't...

The episode still fills me with horror after seventy years.

I was also a victim of the fashion for admission to the childrens' hospital. *Twice* - once for removal of tonsils and once for removal of adenoids.

Why, one might ask?

Damned if I know. But in those early days of the NHS, it was all the rage. Male cousins of about the same age all had the same procedure.

It's contraception and feminism. Or feminism and contraception.

contraception is just the mechanism - not the cause. And "feminism"? You mean women making decisions for themselves?

I have no recollection of *not* having every single disease going, including food poisoning.

No central heating, no fridge, no hot water most of the time. No duvets .

Horrid in wintertime.

The glass of water beside my bed had ice on it in the morning! But, I did't get chicken-pox as a child. I caught much later from one of my small daughters.

Indeed (and no double glazing!).

But most contrary to modern received liberal opinion, that is how we boomers (most of us at least) lived.

I was born less than six years after the end of the war. The country still had a Labour government and *food rationing* (the western part of Germany had actually managed to abolish that a year or two earlier).

When the war was over, rationing in the UK became more severe; even bread was now rationed. It was part of the government’s drive to reduce imports and help the balance of payments.

But worse, even as a small boy going shopping with my mum, I was struck at the poor quality of the fruit and vegetables on offer. It was decades later that I discovered that the high-quality fruit and vegetables was exported to Europe, including to the very countries that we had spent so much blood and treasure defeating; again to help the balance of payments.

In the film ‘The Bridges at Toko-Ri’ (a Korean War film), the main characters are having a night out in Tokyo. The taxi they got in to was a MkI Ford Consul, made in Dagenham. You couldn’t buy one here at the time. Balance of payments again.

And no curtains either - not in my bedroom at least.

Living in London I had every childhood disease except the important one for later life - mumps! One time I had several weeks off school when I had scarlet fever followed immediately by chickenpox. I don't remember any of these being too bad - including measles - except for whooping cough. But it wasn't the disease itself which was the problem - it was the IM injection of penicillin into a sensitive area (the bacterium was still sensitive to penicillins in the mid-50s. It's resistant now).

Out of interest, do you know how the affordability of a house for £7,000 compares to the earnings required to buy a house today?

Not forgetting window panes frozen on the inside.

And a measly single bar fire in the bedroom. Brrr!

Why did we have antibiotic injections then, but get pills now?

Duvets started about 1970? I think we got them for Habitat. A bit like onesies, you get them and wonder why you didn't have them before.

At the time penicillin was destroyed by stomach acid (

I went on holiday to Iceland in 1969. I couldn't understand why the bed had no sheet or blanket, but what appeared to be a sort of eiderdown! I didn't like it then and my view hasn't changed. I have never used a duvet.