The Slog's ancestral home at 43 St Margaret's Road, Heaton Park, Manchester. We moved here in 1951 and stayed until 1964. Being a little bit posh, we were the only ones with a TV set , and so the entire population of Freshfield Avenue [to the right of this shot] crammed into our house to watch Elizabeth II crowned Queen in 1953. The tedium of being three years old and watching hour after hour of coaches, processions, Abbey interiors and waving crowds was indescribable. The last rabid Royalist left at 7pm, except for two troughers called Esther and Tommy, who stayed for three days, and then were unceremoniously booted out. So dawned the new Elizabethan Age.
For anyone these days known as a 'Baby Boomer', being brought up in 1950's Britain brought an experience I imagine almost everyone shares. This concerned the likelihood that one would walk into the sitting room and hear the end fragment of a half-whispered ''serious'' conversation between mum and dad. In my case, I was about eight years old, so that would make it 1956.
''...his trouble is,'' Dad asserted, ''if it's not married he doesn't bloody well want to know''.
My mother nodded.
''That's true enough,'' she agreed.
Mystery upon mystery: what 'it' could this be, and why did 'he' shy away from married 'its'?
''Who were you talking about?'' I asked.
''Never you mind,'' Dad threatened, ''you'll understand soon enough...when you grow up''.
A few years further on (two at most) I walked into this:
''Well,'' mum suggested, ''she didn't catch it from a toilet seat did she?''
The Bible might have called this Talking in Tongues. Who was this butter-fingered person, and since when did toilet seats throw slippery stuff at people?
''Catch what?'' I demanded.
''Oh, you know...nothing really, just a figure of speech,'' Mum replied in an airy manner.
Baffling as it all seemed at the time, there was an entirely sensible micro-social policy in action by my parents on such occasions: they were determined to give my brother and I a complete childhood.
A combination of airhead parenting, Murdochian tabloid sewer diving, explicit online content and a paucity of common sense from Stonewall Tatchell and the appalling New Labour hag Harriet Harman has meant that today, children are exposed to depraved sexuality - and encouraged to sexualise themselves in dress and manner – long before the appropriate stage in their lives. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that an organisation to ''normalise'' bestiality between children and ponies would be part of Harman's dayglo rainbow if ponies were better organised and could speak English.
I am not a prude: once the necessary hormones kick in, then nature's rules apply. My elder daughter lost her virginity at fourteen; I'm pleased I didn't know about it at the time, but my first [ex] wife had already displayed foresight in putting her on the pill. However, there are dumbo ''parents'' out there who will send 10 year-olds to school dressed to out-do every male's Lolita fantasy, and then look baffled when some alleged ''teacher'' abused in his childhood turns out to have traumatised the kid by exposing himself.
Another ritual we have lost beyond the art of white lies is the concept of the husband in the garage of an autumn evening doing male things with chisels, Bostik glue, spanners, bits of metal and wood – and washing the car without fail on Saturday mornings.
''What's Dad doing in the garage?'' seemed like a reasonable enquiry. But as my father was making Christmas presents – sledges, castles, catapults and so forth – the answers were always more vague and misleading than a Commons statement from Jeremy Hunt.
But there was another dimension if one was the father of boys. This was the role of the head of household in teaching my brother Mike and I what being a man was all about – that is, all things technical that had to be tamed, put into perspective, and finally slotted into place somewhere under the car bonnet close to the cooling fan.
Mike was pretty good at this: he always wanted to watch Dad doing this stuff. My father used to say fine, but don't mess with Bostik, or get it on your clothes or skin. Dad was busy one day using Bostik to adhere the forward thrust gear to the exhaust outlet [or something] and of course my Bro couldn't resist the mysteries of Bostik, a brand name he was unable to pronounce properly.
''Dad?'' he announced.
''Yes Michael?''
''Got Bloskit on me fingers''.
By the time Mike had variously confirmed the presence of Bloskit on his nose, shirt and in his hair, Pop finally laid down his spanner with a stage sigh and took him indoors to my horrified mother. My sibling looked like a Government information film on the dangers of using superglue.
But my brother's attention to what his Dad was doing was totally elemental: the passing down of pre-printing press knowledge and wisdom. By the time he began to let my father teach him how to drive, he had already mastered the art of manual gear changing and foot pedals to the point where my elder sibling need little further tuition beyond the rules of road safety to pass his driving test aged seventeen with flying colours. Mike was never less than scrupulously attentive.
Needless to say, all such instincts of a practical nature were absent from ''our John''. I gave up woodwork at Grammar School at the end of the first year. My annual report from the woodwork master Mr Cheetham said, ''I'm delighted Ward has taken this decision, as with a chisel in his hands he is a danger to himself and others''.
Both my parents made mistakes in preparing me for adult life (many of them down to fears of unemployment – a hangover from the 1930s) but they got most other things right: they were both good role models who didn't just spout principles, they practiced them. When I brought the first serious girfriend I ever had home (a Liverpudlian Chinese) I do not doubt that – given the social concerns of those days about mixed marriages* – my parents were wary. But they grew to adore Carole, and were in the end disappointed when, after four years, the relationship ended.
*My father married my mother despite her inability (very wise in my view) to accept certain overly-literal elements of Catholic teaching. It seems weird to think of this now – and it led to them being ostricised by both the Orange and Green communities – but they made their bed and lay in it very happily for sixty years.
So, second main point today: where are the parents like mine now? Search me. The itinerant father has become the norm....and the cultural aspects are something we continue to dodge. We have mislaid these crucial familial duties, and we are so very much the worse for it.
I often get irritated by the mother of my kids when we meet at weddings and funerals, but when it comes to our shared offspring, her head has never been less than firmly screwed on in pursuit of responsible motherhood. That rule does not apply to the vast majority of contemporary parenting in the UK: much of it is narcissistic, selfish and feckless to the point where taxpayers' money gets shelled out to trace a bloke who seems to think it is his God-given right to inseminate an endless trail of naive women, and then disappear.
I'm all for the genetic reality of Alpha males spreading their seed.... but most of the men we're talking about here are more omegha than even iota. ''Alpha'' is way beyond anything to which they might aspire.
Here's a lyric from Neil Young that makes the point:
Your laughing eyes, your crazy smile
every time I look at his face.
I can't believe how love lasts a while
but feels like forever in the first place.
Still we're already one, already one -
now only time can come between us.
Already one – our little son
Won't let us forget.
But meanwhile, in the here and now, a mercifully brief glance at some recent actions suggesting that society would benefit from the policy authors being sectioned:
'In 2025, Charles III's pay will be expanded by 45% and paid for by the tax payer. His annual budget, the sovereign grant, will go up to £125million from £86million in just two years' time.'
C3PO is already worth £1.85 billion. An enormous percentage of the Monarch's wealth comes from alternative energy production. Just fancy that.
[Hat-tip to @Hornebig on Twatter for the Royal bulletin]
Plucky little Slovakia's new Prime Minister has told the the WHO to go forth and multiply when it comes to the Global Health Heist.
The US unelected Surveillance State, having run out of non-extremely-prejudicial ways to Dump Trump, is now openly using the Washington Post to whip up support for organising a grassy knoll for The Donald....on the grounds that the leading POTUS front-runner is a wannabe dictator. You couldn't make it up.
But it's not just DT that should be scared. At an accelerating speed now, scattered remnants of justice around the world are on the Covid Caper Case in general and suing Pfizer in particular. In response to this, the usual suspects are muttering darkly about new strains of this, new ways to get new poisons into the food chain, new nonsense about global warming et al.
As part of this, The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals overseeing the case against Douglas Mackey (the patriot that the DOJ imprisoned for posting a meme about the 2016 election) is on the verge of overturning the verdict
Scared people make crazy decisions. Especially if they're psycho in the first place. Keep your eyes peeled for the first signs of dramatic clampdown.....
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