I was nearly tempted out of my sick bed by a chance reading of a Guardian piece which claimed to have uncovered 43,00 – that’s forty three thousand in case you glossed over the figures – cases of child abuse in a 21 month period. Noooo! An extra 43,000 victims? Another 43,000 queuing at the compo agency? Surely not, can there be anyone left in Britain who has not been a victim of something or other? I subsided back into the pillows on further reading whereby it turned out that these ‘victims’ – half of whom were ‘black or ethnic’ – teenage boys incarcerated in youth offender establishments,  you know, the hulking great 6′ 2″  Jamaican lads from South London sink estates who’ve been convicted of gouging out someones eyes with a crowbar, who have been ordered to strip to ensure that they are not carrying a machete into prison with them. Apparently these brave lads sorry, children, have been describing the practice as ‘undignified’, leading ‘to feelings of anger, humiliation and anxiety’. Not as much anxiety as the staff ordered to care for these ‘children’ would have felt if they had not ensured that they didn’t have a 12″ carving knife strapped to their left leg no doubt, but right on cue, out came a leading children’s rights campaigner to describe the ‘practice of children being forced to expose their naked bodies to adults in authority as institutionalised child abuse’. Knowing that they would be strip searched had led to a mere 275 of them being daft enough to still be concealing a weapon or other illegal item – and that apparently is sufficient to describe the practice as ‘unnecessary’. Give me strength.

I lay there thinking of my recent trip to England, and the village where I lived for ten years or more. It had a railway station, a rare omission on Mr Beeching’s part; no ticket office any longer – and how we used to amuse ourselves telling the Americans who had flooded the area that in order to catch a train you had to wave the train down as it passed through the station. You didn’t of course, it stopped there anyway, but the sight of those shed sized marines desperately jumping up and down and waving their arms like Benny Hill on speed was one of the great joys of our village life. The village didn’t have much to support itself on, surrounded by sand dunes and impermeable flint-stone – but it had survived and prospered. The sand dunes were full of rabbit warrens; the rabbits duly caught, skinned and sent down to the tanneries of East London by train to line the gloves of the gentry. The flint was discovered to be just the thing to ignite a spark in gun powder, and generations of the men folk had sat and laboriously chipped away at the flint to supply the flint lock pistols in both sides of the American civil war. When the lump of flint grew too small to safely chip, they took it home with them, and when they had a large enough pile, they set to and built themselves a house with it – beautiful houses that glistened like rose cut diamonds as the sun danced on the cut facets of the ‘knapped’ flint. The river was never teeming with fish, but just a mile up river was Elvedon, where the elvers, the baby eels, first started their journey. By the time they reached our village they were plump and tender, a much desired delicacy in the East End of London. They too were trapped and skinned and sent on their way by train.

Every time I see ‘Operation Elvedon’ in print, I think of old Kenny Adams, the last of the eel trappers, who would punt past my house each sunset to lay out his traps.  The punt his Father had made was gnarled and twisted, as was Kenny, both nearing the end of their life, but still useful. Still independent. Still functioning. Kenny didn’t need a grant from the countryside commission to keep his craft alive – he did it because it was what he had always done, he knew no other way. Now we have a generation to whom ‘Elvedon’ means only a scrap between the left and the right wing media, scores of journalists being dragged out their bed at daybreak by demoralised policemen.

Michael Gove is determined that children aged 8 – 11 will have 99 hours of history lessons to absorb the full range of key developments in the reigns of Alfred, Athelstan, Cnut, and Edward the Confessor. Blimey! I can hear the sniggers from here when they get to Cnut. They’ll be rushing down to the local t-shirt printers (one in every town nowadays) to have their ‘FCUK’ t-shirts adapted to read  ’FCUK Cnut’. More dispiritingly, it may be the tattoo parlour that they visit….

When I first went to live there, long before the M.11 was built, it was a village in time warp. The beautiful Georgian houses inhabited by an army of single, elderly spinsters. The Misses Summers – not sisters, but elderly ’companions’, one the daughter of the local vicar who had set her up with a sweet shop in the High Street, since she was minded to never marry, and her companion, the decidedly masculine and muscular village barber, possessor of a moustache that would have been the envy of many a man. They lived their life, to ripe old age, in harmony within the village without any Equality legislation, or necessity for ‘hate speech’ laws – and a generation of children learnt that there were different lifestyles available to those who chose not to emulate a heterosexual lifestyle. One side of the sweet shop contained the marble barber’s sink where the ‘tweedy’ Ms Summers, as I came to know her,  would attend to the men folk’s hair, the other half was lined with glass jars of home made boiled sweets, the ‘sweet and timid’ Ms Summers domain. I still have some of those jars, and yesterday Mr G hung the small pine cupboard in our new kitchen where Ms Summer displayed her other sideline, the lethal fireworks she sold once a year. The barber’s sink came to rest in a house we restored in Herefordshire – I still mourn its loss.

There was Ms Murrel, and Ms Fox, neighbours in grand houses, quietly tending the village church, relaxing after a life time teaching the village children how to read. Olive, who had once given birth to quads, light years before disposable nappy manufacturers gave you a life time supply of their goods in response to such an event – light years before disposable nappies had been invented. She had soaked and scrubbed, washed and dried a mountain of the terry towelling originals in her time, with na’er a ‘social services approved’ assistant carer in sight. Uncomplainingly. Only one of the quads now lived, a man of limited intelligence, cared for dedicatedly by Olive. The huge and elegant mansion with its sweeping gardens down to the river had been sold ‘by social services’ to care for her son after her death, and now, I discovered last week, was owned by a London businessman who rented out its vast rooms to some dozen Polish families gainfully employed digging up carrots in the surrounding fields, washing them and packing them like sardines for the Londoners who would be appalled to find that carrots grew in dirt. Their cars and surplus possessions littered the gardens, the cast iron conservatory was gone, the sweeping garlands of roses trained over iron hoops, collapsed and neglected.

And Muriel, whom I lived next door to for so many years. Sister to Olive. They had come to live in my house as young children. Their father had been a footman at Buckingham Palace, returning on the train when leave permitted. When he died, Muriel had stayed at home to care for their Mother, when she too died, a small part of the house had been kept back as a home for Muriel, I had bought the rest of the house. I can remember locking myself out of my house one night when I had the flu and had popped outside to get something from my car. It was a freezing cold night, and I was just in my dressing gown. I knocked with some trepidation on Muriel’s door, unwilling to disturb her so late at night – ‘come in my dear’ she said, ‘I’ll pop the fire on for you’…she had been sitting listening to the radio, knitting herself new socks, no fire, on that freezing night. She wasn’t short of money, just of that proudly hardy generation that put on an extra cardigan when the nights grew cold – and did something useful.

Now Muriel had gone, discovered lying in her home, dead for four days they say, by the postman. Her only friend in the village had been on holiday – there was no one else to miss her. Her house was full of Polish electricians, busily rewiring the cold store for carrots…

I thought how all these women had been my role models in my formative years. My Aunty Ailsa, drafted into the war office in Liverpool, progressing to being in charge of the contracts division at the Ministry of Defence, unmarried until she retired, daily doing battle with the salesmen from Decca and Marconi over multi-million pound sales, triumphantly independent to the end of her days. Aye, and Ms Jones, Ms O’ Neil, and all the spinsters at Duncroft, who taught us that it was possible to stand on your own two feet, to look after yourself, to provide for yourself.

In the 30 years since I moved to that village, we have had Women’s Lib, Equality legislation, a burgeoning welfare state, an army of social workers, a state that wishes to be responsible for every facet of our lives – and a public that is shocked when a judge gives a woman 37 years for a brutal murder; the TV announcers last night were running through the list of people who should have been held responsible for that murder; the supermarket who sold her the knife, mental health workers, the policemen, the Doctors, ‘her mental state’, although that is something she was patently aware of herself, having made three telephone calls saying she felt like killing someone…

Children, women, homosexuals, ethnic minorities, the unemployed – they’re all victims now. Victims of whom? Well, there’s only one group left! White, middle class, heterosexual men…it can’t be long now before they are outlawed.

My, what progress we have made in 30 years. If Michael Gove wants to teach history, he might usefully start by going back 30 years and teaching a bit of social history, of how people lived without recourse to hundreds of billions of social welfare fund, without feeling victimised or traumatised by life. He’ll be teaching it to a generation who genuinely don’t realise that they can just get on with life, make the best of what is around them, enjoy, and live to a ripe old age.

As far as I am aware, not one of those women failed to make it to at least 90.

Henry March 6,
2013 at 23:24

“Children, women, homosexuals, ethnic minorities, the unemployed – they’re
all victims now. Victims of whom? Well, there’s only one group left! White,
middle class, heterosexual men”

There is indeed a weirdly strong trend here that discriminates quite openly
and unashamedly against white straight men. It’s like kids in a playground
being told (or deciding) that it was wrong to pick on one particular child,
then gleefully discovering that noone minds too much if they pick on someone
else.

Another point you capture is the subtle use of the passive voice by
Guardianistas. Women and children are nearly always “victims”. They are not
only victimised, but ‘sexualised’; they or society are ‘pornified’. You hear
this vague nonsense all the time from the likes of Diane Abbott, but it
originated with writers who wanted to be deliberately vague – it’s not at all
clear from this language WHO is doing the ‘pornifying’! The implication is
that white men and boys are responsible, but it could be blamed on the
“patriarchy” instead.

There’s a huge amount of dishonesty involved here. I don’t mind feminists
being dishonest with themselves – we all do that – but the fact is that I have
a beautiful son who could well grow up into a world dominated by their
deliberate obtuseness, and that rankles with me.

Mizz Mildred
March 6, 2013 at 12:26

Carol42

Re:” Not so long ago most kids finished school at 14″. This is very true. A
woman in my art group, about 3-4 years older than me, reached 14 just before
the war ended. She was directed into a job she hated. She had no chance to
nurture her considerable artistic talent until she was much older. Now,
although kids ‘grow up’ in some ways, so fast, spurred on by peer pressure,
they are nannied, protected and called ‘children’ to a ridiculous age. It
seems like a huge contradiction somehow. Way back in the fifties, when I was a
cadet nurse in outpatients, Young girls from the local ‘classifying school’
were brought to the VD clinic to be intimately inspected. No one was hovering
around to protest at the indignity and humiliation heaped on those young
girls. They were dressed like school girls but treated like prostitutes! There
are contradictions in institutional behaviour in all eras. We never seem free
of it. Well intentioned efforts to remove harsh treatment of ‘children’ from
all systems, somehow seem to lead to other unanticipated problems.

carol42 March 6, 2013 at 00:31

Hard to imagine that it was not so long ago that most kids finished school
at 14 and went to work, they certainly didn’t think of themselves as children
but young men and women ready to enter the adult world. Having once been
involved with the Children’s Panel in Scotland an abiding memory is one 17
year old coming to a hearing with his new baby, I doubt he thought he was a
child. Usually they were out of our care at 16 but if they had been in care
until 18. It is ridiculous that strapping 16 year olds are classed as
‘children’ not my definition of a child.

Lucozade March 6, 2013 at 06:47

Carol42,

I couldn’t believe my ears the first time I heard a 17 year old refered
to as a ‘child’.

They certainly don’t think of themselves as children and babyfying young
adults (even if they all get equally babyfied) is abusive in itself.

Though i’d say strip searching isn’t nessiserliy appropriate for all
adult prisoners either.

They can use metal detectors, sniffer dogs, check their mouth, pat them
down and keep a close eye on them when they’ve just arrived at the prison or
find ways round it like asking them to remove their own underware but giving
them one of those hospital night gowns to put on while being searched might
be less humiliating while still doing the job….

Lucozade March 5, 2013 at 21:45

Actually, having just looked at the article regarding strip searching
there, I see it says that their were no recorded incidents were knives or
drugs were found, it was mainly just things like tobacco that were found
(which is surprising, in a good way) – so with that in mind, I suppose strip
searching is ott and uncalled for – and I never thought about them doing it
with girls, especially when their on their period…

Boys don’t seem to get as embarrassed over taking their clothes off in
front of people as girls most of the time, do they…?

(or is that sexist…?)

Mizz Mildred
March 5, 2013 at 17:35

Good to know you are back in action ,Anna, with a really witty, nostalgic
blog, with a serious message. I looked at the article in the Guardian and
wondered about a future headline…..FATAL STABBING IN YOUNG OFFENDERS
INSTITUTION. WHO IS TO BLAME? Perhaps THE CHILDREN’S RIGHTS ALLIANCE
POSSIBLY????? If it was my child stabbed to death by a hidden knife I would
sue them if I could. When we were little we had cap pistols and made bows and
arrows and played Cowboys and Indians or rather ‘Native Americans’. Innocently
sang about ’10 little ****** boys. I had a black doll and went to see see The
******Minstrels. We were a thousand times more innocent than most kids are
now. The language we used to use is peppered with forbidden words. We hear
dirty jokes about Snow White and the Seven dwarfs…..another no go word. Can’t
call someone a cripple or say someone is in an asylum( a place of safety). The
word gypsy is objected to by some. Yet, on the whole, it was a gentler,
politer era. I enjoyed my much more innocent childhood than kids are allowed
to have these days. Now we are told we all came out of Africa long long time
gone. So what’s all the fuss about?

Lucozade March 5, 2013 at 18:22

Mizz Mildred,

Re: “‘FATAL STABBING IN YOUNG OFFENDERS INSTITUTION”

I bet this is a ploy by in mates themselves to try and make the checks
and searches less stringent to allow them to get away with smuggling more
stuff their not allowed in and the ‘leading children’s rights campaigner’
has swallowed it hook, line and sinker, lol…

Many of those who smuggle weapons in may well be intending on using them,
and may well have a record if violent behavior, if ‘only’ 275 or less
offensive weapons were attempted to be smuggled in, thats 275+ people that
could potentially be injured or killed with those weapons, thats probably
the reason many were smuggled in in the first place. That’s still too much,
isn’t it?

These are perhaps the sorts of things that should put people off ending
up in jail or young offenders institutions in the first place…

Moor
Larkin March 5, 2013 at 17:02

@ White, middle class, heterosexual men…it can’t be long now before they
are outlawed. @
Michael Douglas movie, circa 1993 I think.

All the talk of stopping trains has me thinking about a teenage Jenny
Agutter waving her red bloomers on the railway lines……
The
“my Daddy” moment might be pertinent too.

Anna
Raccoon March 5, 2013 at 17:14

Just talking about you! Saying how excellent your blog post was yesterday
– Well done!

Moor Larkin March 5, 2013 at 17:28

Why thank you, and nice to see you getting back on the horse too…….
;-D

Anna
Raccoon March 5, 2013 at
17:43

Well, I had been getting a bit saddle sore, to say nothing of bow
legged!

Alexis
Marlons March 5, 2013 at 16:23

It really feels good to reminisce those good old times.

Griffin March 5, 2013 at 16:16

Thank you for this nostalgic account. It is timely indeed, as this
morning’s newspaper carries a report about an habitual criminal, aged 36, just
convicted of murder, who has reportedly fathered 17 children by 15 mothers.
The report doesn’t say whether his behaviour might have been influenced by the
indignity of being rudely strip-searched as a youthful criminal .

I too remember how things used to be. On dark winter afternoons during the
war my sister, then aged eight, used to walk on her own across Plumstead
common to and from her music teacher. That wasn’t unusual during those days.
Children had that sort of freedom and rarely did we come to any harm beyond a
grazed knee or the occasional fracture (of course there was far less road
traffic). But we were disciplined and knew our boundaries: I remember having
my ears boxed by a policeman who caught me scrumping applies; and not for
nothing was my headmaster known as “Whacker”. And real wrongoing was really
punished.

As I saw myself, the years of the pre-war depression and the war itself
were awful for many people. But I have the strong impression that, on the
whole, people of my generation have had happy lives, perhaps more so than
people do today.

Anna
Raccoon March 5, 2013 at 16:21

“I have the strong impression that, on the whole, people of my generation
have had happy lives, perhaps more so than people do today.”

Agreed, we have had the best of everything – we have ridden the crest of
every wave, improved health, better housing, more choice, that’s why I fail
to understand why this generation is so quick to imply that everything is
wrong with their lives; they have been born into an era that is devoid of
the inhumanities that those 70 and 80 year old women I was referring to had
endured, yet they scream like stuck pigs at the slightest inconvenience. We
seem to have succeeded in breeding a generation of wimps.

Moor Larkin March 5, 2013 at 22:02

I remember a rhyme that I used to chant (sometimes only to myself) when
I was learning to rise above the childish taunts of the playground. This
served two purposes, one was to allow me to stop being manipulated by the
dominant boys or girls, and the other was to help me start to figure out
my own inner adult and stop thinking I had to please the rest of the
playground all of the time, and always be part of the gang.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will never hurt
me”

It’s not hard to see that UK society is being trained to think the
exact opposite way.

Stephen Davies March 5, 2013 at 16:09

Oh dear Oh dear Qhat would I do if I didn’t get my daily shot of 100% Proof
humour in the Racoon Arms
FCUK CNUT —Priceless !!!!!

Jonathan Mason
March 5, 2013 at 20:31

Is that why he used to be known as Canute?

Furor Teutonicus
March 5, 2013 at 15:57

XX he might usefully start by going back 30 years and teaching a bit of
social history, of how people lived without recourse to hundreds of billions
of social welfare fund,XX

YOU might start usefully be checking your calander.

35 years ago it was already “all the rage”, to claim 200 – 300 quid every
six months “Deccorating allowance”, among many other grants ( GRANTS! NOT
“loans!!) that were available. My Sister was a dabb hand at it. Luckily for
myself AND the tax payer, she is now dead.
Not soon enough, however.

Anna
Raccoon March 5, 2013 at 16:17

Oh quite agree, 30 years ago my ex-brother in law was already claiming
invalidity benefit because he was alcoholic…..
However, my point was that
(a) it wasn’t the norm, and (b) I was talking about a group of,
specifically, women, who had endured hardship we can only imagine, and then
got on with their lives, without suing anyone or claiming to have been
victimised. They were an inspiration to me.

Lucozade March 5, 2013 at 17:31

Furor Teutonicus,

True, and you used to get a grant for going to university 30 years ago
and free milk in schools which you don’t now.

And when the NHS first started many, many years ago you used to get free
dental treatment for everyone, which hasn’t been the case for many
years…

But still, the notion of people appearing to feel they are ‘entitled’ to
these think without being expected to give anything in return seems quite
unreasonably bad these days…

binao March 6, 2013 at 08:51

Very few went to university in olden times.
A few weeks after my
16th birthday, O levels done, but results not yet in, I went to the
employment office to look for a job.
Shaking of the head, followed by
‘..there are more than a quarter of a million people out of work ,you
know; not much about’.
Riffling through cards, much sucking of teeth;
‘there are three apprenticeships, but not much else. How many o levels do
you think you’ve got?’
So August 17th 1959 I entered the world of work,
to be dedicated for 4years and 11 months (hand made paper indentures) to
learning the business of making biscuit tins and the like.
8.00am start
the first day, then 7.30am to 5.30pm; 5.00 pm Fridays; an hour for lunch;
day release to tech, and later three evenings a week as well. Every
journey on foot, bike, or bus, if just paid, no matter how long it
took.
Health & safety- minimal; learning by hurting.
Pay- first
year somewhere between 10% and 15% of the journeyman’s rate. It’ll be in
the indentures. ‘You’re lucky! We don’t charge for an
apprenticeship!’
Some money to Mum, some for tools, the overalls
scheme, and paying my own fees at tech and textbooks.
Did I feel
adult?
Not really, but no longer a child.
Don’t even ask what I
think about perpetual adolescents and mature students.

Lucozade
March 6, 2013 at 13:33

Binao,

Well there’s nothing wrong with being a mature student if it could
lead to a better job…?

A lot of people are told their too old for an apprenticeship at 18
these days, so it could be easy to miss the boat as far as there
concerned especially if you’ve stayed on at school, but maybe aren’t
really all that academic.

I wonder if 38 year old men who are still living with mum, letting
her still pay for nearly everything feel like ‘adults’ (I know one or
two), lol….

Tom
Mein March 5, 2013 at 14:38

People generally do not realise that they are “victims” until it is pointed
out to them by one of the fine, upstanding members of the current UK
“compensation culture” law professionals

Lucozade March 5, 2013 at 15:09

Tom Mein,

Put it this way, with the exception of someone deceiving someone and
setting them up for a fall that they won’t realise the consequences of until
the shit hits the fan i.e being ‘conned’, in almost all other cases, if your
being done wrong to that badly, you feel it when it’s happening, or very
soon after.

If you need some one to convince you you’ve been done wrong too and
couldn’t see it or feel the consequences of it for yourself, you have wonder
why that is…?

And if their right….

Stevegee March 5, 2013 at 14:13

Without wishing to spoil the nostalgia for one moment, our local station is
still a request stop. With only one platform, there are also helpful large
arrows indicating the destination in each direction. A very few years ago when
a keen local train spotter died in old age, during his funeral at our church,
a passing train whistled all the way up our valley. So not all charm and
community thoughtfulness has disappeared.

Lucozade March 5, 2013 at 14:11

Surely the strip search is as much to protect the other
‘children’/inmates?

If a high number of these people have a record of violence with offensive
weapons, and that is the culture they tend to come from, surely if they
weren’t thoroughly searched for weapons and another ‘child’/inmate was
attacked and killed, they’d be accused of negligence too…?

Sometimes things may be unpleasant, but unfortunately need to be done.

Also, they could be trying to smuggle drugs into the place, which could get
into the hands of other ‘children’ there and, in some cases, could be
dangerous.

If a ‘child’ died on their premises from taking dodgy drugs, because they
hadn’t searched inmates thoroughly enough before they came in, would they not
be accused of negligence…?

They’ll be wanting babies born with clothes on next, tut, lol….

Davieboy March 5, 2013 at 13:33

A wondefully evocative piece; should be required reading. Thank you!

Ted Treen March 5, 2013 at 13:06

I’m pleased that you’re feeling somewhat better. I sincerely hope the
improvement continues, and even accelerates…

Being adequately over 60, I too remember this golden time – yes it had its
faults, but it was a damned sight more golden that now. People accepted
responsibility – especially for their own action/inaction – and were not
infused with a misplaced overwhelming sense of entitlement.

Allowing various governments to destroy this and to micro-manage us –
usually as some latter-day “bread & circuses” operation aimed at keeping
their gang in power – proves that collectively or at least on average, we have
gone start staring mad.

There is a saying from antiquity, “Those whom the gods wish to destroy,
they first make mad”

I believe it’s often wrongly attributed to Euripides, but I do not know if
the actual originator is known. No doubt the venerable Gildas can probably
advise…

Ted Treen March 5, 2013 at 13:08

That should have been “stark staring mad”: must get a new keyboard as
this one can’t spell…

Brass Monkey
March 6, 2013 at 11:50

I’ve had keyboards like that! They seem to be very popular these days.
Especially with the much younger people.

Ted Treen
March 6, 2013 at 12:34

I know exactly what you mean by the ‘much younger people’.

If I receive text messages/emails from either my offspring or from
younger colleagues (and me being well past 60, there are few older ones)
which are full of this dreadful textspeak or other abuse of the English
Language, I simply forward them back to the originator with a request
that they translate it into correct English.

It seems to work…

Lily March 5, 2013 at 13:04

Good article, Anna. I too am glad you are feeling better. xxx

Elena ‘andcart
March 5, 2013 at 12:33

Sorry. I missed you. Glad you are feeling better.

Elena ‘andcart
March 5, 2013 at 12:33

Lovely stuff. So much to remember. I must be getting old. But at least my
desire to live to be 100, if not older, is looking good.
One of my best
memories is travelling by Steam Train several times a year, backwards and
forwards to Scotland. Always in The Guard’s Van. Booze, Duty Free Fags and
Guitars notwithstanding.

Barrie Jones
March 5, 2013 at 12:28

The railway station at my town, enjoyed two way traffic (an up and a down
line) buildings to both sides comprising: ticket office, waiting room, ladies
waiting room, parcels’ office, station master’s office, toilets and a staff
room – it employed 32 people
Now, one line only, all the buildings gone to
be replaced by a steel shipping container with a hatch flame cut from one side
(unpainted, the soot and burn marks still in evidence).
It’s rarely manned,
you buy your tickets on the train.
Britain in the 21st century, people tell
me that in parts it compares favourably with Kinshasa and Monrovia.

Lucozade March 5, 2013 at 14:46

Barrie Jones,

That’s another thing, because of machines, there are probably a lot less
jobs available than there were before the introduction of these machines,
even if you inclued jobs like making, designing and operating these
machines….

Mudplugger
March 5, 2013 at 21:25

It’s interesting that some ‘experts’ are promotting major
infrastructure projects as a means to stimulate the UK economy and address
unemployment, a la 1930s.
What they seem to forget is that, in the
1930s, all such projects (Hoover Dam etc) needed vast amounts of manpower
– today, they need only a few skilled staff and a shed-load of mega-bucks
machinery, mostly bought from overseas. The only economies to be
stimulated are those foreign ones who supply the machinery – and, of
course, the pockets of those pals receiving the friendly
back-handers.
Better not mention HS2…….

Mark in Mayenne
March 5, 2013 at 11:12

I have happy memories from when I was young, of a railway station. Near my
grandmother’s house, and featuring a pedestrian bridge, the big dare was to
stand on the bridge right above where the train’s chimney would pass beneath,
getting covered in smoke and watching the landscape come back into view as it
cleared. I could never understand how my parents could tell I had been doing
it, from all the smuts on my clothes.

The Jannie March 5, 2013 at 11:03

Another superb piece. I felt the nostalgia – and the home truths – washing
over me.

Joe Public March 5, 2013 at 10:38

More Home-Truths and episodes from The-Life-of-Anna. Many thanks.

DtP March 5, 2013 at 10:05

Marvellous stuff. I accidently went to the Guardian article and the
comments, well, good grief, make one despair. Thanks Anna, hope you’re feeling
better.

Isobel MacLachlan
March 5, 2013 at 09:55

I really enjoyed reading this,it took me back to an era I’m also familiar
with.

Steve C March 5, 2013 at 09:44

My grandmother lived in Rhosneigr in Anglesey and you did in fact have to
flag down the trains in order to get them to stop. You also had to knock on
the drivers door to ask him to stop at the station. I thought the driver was
joking when he announced it. This was in 2000.

InLikeFlint March 5, 2013 at 09:39

Sublime.

JuliaM March 5,
2013 at 12:11

/applause indeed. Especially for this line:

“Not as much anxiety as the staff ordered to care for these ‘children’
would have felt if they had not ensured that they didn’t have a 12″ carving
knife strapped to their left leg no doubt…”