It’s not what it used to be. Everything, I mean, it’s just all gone to ….
I sometimes wonder if I’m not just becoming one of those ‘old people’ that just thinks the country has gone to the dogs – you know, the sort you would hear when you were a young-un, who would go on about being able to leave your front door open, who thought that the old ways were always the best, that so called progress in technology and the like is nothing of the sort. Does every generation go this way?
I was discussing this very point with an old friend over a pint not so long ago.
The mere fact that we can still have discussions over a pint in a pub shows that not all is lost. Granted, pubs seem to be dropping like flies, but there are still plenty of good ones – you just need to know where, but wasn’t it ever thus? (Are we really sad to see the back of so many post-war flat roofed boozers?) It’s just a matter of scale. A nearby village used to have half a dozen pubs in the late nineteenth century when my great(x3)-grandfather was finally moved to the workhouse up the road to see out his days, three when I was a teenager, now just the two. Also, let’s be honest, one of the main reasons people could leave their front doors open is that there was nothing inside worth nicking.
Anyway, my mate pointed out that we are not curmudgeonly old farts, because we can both think of a goodly number of things whereby life now is far better than even when we were lads – something that moaning old farts tend not to do, he thought. Technology has its ups and downs for sure, but the interweb has had immeasurable benefits – not least, that you can read such far-right nonsense on here and the traditional MSM – once the primary means for controlling the masses – is being undermined by the modern day Gutenberg press of the web. He was also of the opinion that there was some really good stuff on the music scene of late, but that will always be subjective – we tend to gravitate towards what we were listening to in our teens to thirties. Ah, Kate Bush…….
Anyway, medical advances (poorly-tested jabs notwithstanding) are still generally to be welcomed. Cancer – with apologies to puffins who may not be so lucky – is viewed now as largely viewed as treatable. (Had it not been for f*cking lockdown and the scaremongering a close friend of ours would undoubtedly have been treated earlier and probably still be with us.)
Cars may be bland and overweight, but equally they are safer – I’d rather my daughter be out and about now in a modern Euro-NCAP rated blob than the sort of thing my folks would have driven in in their teens. They are cleaner – I’m no Greta but the streets don’t stink of exhaust fumes such as they used to – to the point where I can appreciate the occasional waft of 1960’s classic bumbling past for its rarity and nostalgia value.
Politically, the establishment is as oppressive as it’s always tried to be, but there is hope from across the Pond, and even chinks of light on the continent. Here we may just have to wait a little longer, but I see grounds for hope and optimism – if we haven’t quite reached the ‘darkest hour before the dawn’ – it’s not far off and sunrise is heading our way. I mean, is it just me or was the steam going out of Pride month this year? And I know I’m not the only one noticing that ESG (environmental, social and governance) worship in the corporate world is showing the first signs of waning.
So yes, so much in the country is going to sh*t, but not everything, and so that’s not an old fart’s view; it’s the view of someone surveying the current situation but working, like many here, to do something about it, albeit in inevitably small but one-of-millions ways.
© text & images Genghis Tebbit 2025
