WHEN WE WERE YOUNG

 

I’m fifty years old this year

How did I get so old?

I’m lucky to have survived childhood

It was so dangerous or so I’m told

 

Our cots and toys, brightly colored

With lovely lead-based paint,

No child-proof caps or locked cupboard doors

We actually played in the kitchen how quaint

 

We rode bikes without helmets,

Or any other form of protection

We rode in cars without seat belts

Choosing the front seat without hesitation

 

We drank water straight from the tap

And very often from a brook or stream

We ate sweets with dirty hands

And our milk was topped with real cream

 

We ate full fat chips and bread and real butter

Milk puddings and jam Roly Poly

We drank fizzy pop full of sugar

But we never suffered from obesity

 

When we were out playing in a group

We bought one big bottle of pop

Probably eight or even ten of us

All drinking from the same bottle top

 

We built our own go-carts

Out of bits of scrap, very crude

We’d crash and get bloodied and bruised

Even the odd broken bone but no one got sued

 

In the holidays we played out all day

Getting home before it got dark

We had no mobiles so no one could find us

We did anything and everything just for a lark

 

We played knock-down-ginger and afraid

Of being caught after knocking the door

Our parents wouldn’t get us out of trouble

In fact they actually sided with the law

 

We walked everywhere my mates and I

We even had to walk to school

So if you think things are better today

Then you’re just a bloody fool

 

(This poem is based on an email that was doing the rounds a few years ago. To the best of my knowledge it was not credited to a particular writer but apologies if I got that wrong.)