Chapter 1: DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT
𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗥𝗢𝗗𝗨𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡
We all like to think our childhood was brilliant, don't we? Not
only was everything supposed to be better when we were kids,
we apparently had more fun than the present generation of
unfortunates; our games were better, we were cleverer, more
creative and imaginative, and we didn't spend all day stuck in
front of a screen.
Well, this book says: hold on a minute. The 60s and 70s were nothing like the halcyon days people say they were and most of what passed for fun was actually quite rubbish.
There's nothing more boring than being told you should have been around in the 60s, or that the 70s were the best decade ever. The Baby Boomers had plenty of fun mocking their parents for going on about The War but at least the refrain then was 'You were lucky not to live through that!' Now it's 'Ah, but in the 70s we had real fun."
We hear a lot about how unhappy British children are these days (the unhappiest in Europe, supposedly?!). They don't go anywhere or do anything interesting; they're slaves to technology and computers, their exams are too easy, they don't know proper stuff, they don't explore or take risks; they eat too many crisps and can't spell.
Probably none of this is true. Those who control the media just think it is, because they aren't kids any more and are slightly jealous of the people who are. Jealous of their phones, their YouTube, their Facebook, their Wikipedia, their Google, their iPods, their friends, their height and probably their straight teeth.
If Nostalgia literally means a 'painful longing for things past', thn the greatest agony is reserved for lost childhood. The things we did as kids, whether they were dangerous, crap or just boring, are the things we weep over as our own children take our place in the playground.
And now the cries of pain have found a new outlet - the Nostalgia Activity book. A few years ago The Dangerous Book For Boys was published, full of super ideas to help boys have 'dangerous' fun, like tying reef knots in curtain cord, making bows and arrows from bulrushes and setting fire to pets with a magnifying glass.
Within weeks dozens of copycat books appeared with titles like The Dad's Book of Dad's Stuff, The Boy's Book of Harmless Explosions, and When I Was A Lad All We Did Was Whittle Wood Apart from trying to climb aboard a very tasty gravy train (made
with beef dripping... granules), these books were all preaching the same message: that we should return to the Old Days when everyone had proper fun; to a time when everything was rosy in the garden of England and we all had exciting adventures on seemingly endless afternoons, helping the police apprehend some burly men who'd been stealing postal orders.
Nowadays, of course, it would be obese men committing benefit fraud, but we can't turn back the clock by writing invisible-ink messages and making a pinhole camera. Skimming stones won't stop knife crime. No amount of pointless but greatly cherished pastimes from our childhood will change modern society.
In fact, we should face up to the fact that the world is only made more dangerous by people making their own tinderboxes and Bunsen burners and home-made flame-throwers and carcering down hills in soapbox carts.
But this is the era those books with titles like Wizard Wheezes in Wigwams and Family Fun With Pater and Mater would like to take us back to. They are pining for a 'land of lost content', where we were all supposedly happy and secure, whereas in fact grizzly death and disfigurement were as common as rickets.
Children of the 60s and 70s will often say: 'We were put out to play by our mums and told to just go off for the day and not come back until tea-time. That's true, but was this for our own self-improvement and good health? No - it was because there was nothing to occupy us at home. No 24-hour TV, no MSN and no PlayStation. If we'd have had those things to keep us quiet for two hours do you think our parents would have been so keen to kick us out?
The assumption is that, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, when everyone was supposed to have had a proper childhood, society in general had devised a programme of activities and parental practices especially designed to bring the best out of kids. What bollocks, of course they didn't! Mothers used to leave babies in prams at the bottom of the garden, not because the fresh air was good for them, but so that they couldn't be heard screaming their heads off (or choking or being suffocated by the neighbour's cat).
You see, the world was a pretty dangerous place in the Old Days: there were abandoned fridges on rubbish tips that kids could climb into and get locked inside; there were bombs and unsafe building sites; there were teddy boys, bikers, mods and rockers; there were plenty of paedos (on your street for all you knew because there was no Register); there were cars with angular bumpers to guarantee fatal accidents, and no Pelican crossings.