Congratulations to all born in the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950's

First, you survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna and sardines from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, your baby cots and toys were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

You are reading this and therefore either survived or dodged the scurge of polio, TB and other potentially fatal illnesses that were prevalent during our childhood.

Many of us didn’t have a father at home during WW2 he was away fighting Germans or Japanese and you saw your mother struggle. You had to drink tepid smelly school milk and be force-fed cod liver oil and malt every day.
 
You had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode your bikes, you had no helmets or other protection. Not to mention, the risks you took hitchhiking .

As children, you would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a van or on the horse-drawn cart of the milkman, baker or coalman was always great fun. As was helping the milkman deliver the bottles in the early morning and earn a few pence. You would collect old clothes and scrap metal from bomb sites etc to give to the rag and bone man and get a goldfish in a bag. When old enough you had a paper round – you never found getting up at the crack of dawn difficult.

When your parent(s) could afford it you were sent out to stop the ice creal man on his 3 wheeler bike with the big ice box on the front which said in big letters "Stop Me and Buy One".  It was a saying we all recognised and some remember today - somewhat spoiled in later years by the condom brand who perverted it to "Buy me and stop one"

You drank water from the garden hosepipe or perhaps the stream when you went fishing for tiddlers and NOT from a bottle. You would share soft drinks with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.  Sweets were rationed – so you chewed and sucked on liquorice sticks.

You ate cakes, white bread, beef dripping and margarine stuffed with saturated fats and drank pop with sugar in it, but you weren't overweight because YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! You would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as you were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to contact you all day. And you were OK.

You would spend hours building your go-carts out of old prams and scrap timber from the bomb site and then ride down the hill, only to find out you forgot the brakes.

You did not have Plav Stations. Nintendo's, or X-boxes, in fact no video games at all. No TV, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat. The child’s matinee at the cinema on a Saturday morning was your only screen pleasure – double pleasure if the plan worked and you got in through the fire escape door opened by a mate who was already inside.

YOU HAD FRIENDS and you went outside and found them! You rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! You fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

You walked to school with your mates – possibly playing marbles along the street gutter as you went.

If lucky enough to have a bike you rode off into the countryside with mates to fish in streams and ponds, collect insects to scare girls with or make rafts out of logs and scrap timber to sail on the deep lake in the bottom of the local quarry.

You played with worms and would eat one as a dare (well most boys did) and mud pies made from dirt. The worms did not live in us forever  - unless you developed itchy-bum worms and had horrid medicine spooned down you to kill ‘em..

You made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although you were told it would happen, you did not poke out any eyes.

You would play cowboys and Indians and used garden canes to fashion bows and arrows. It wasn’t unusual to forget you had left a cowboy or a squaw tied to a lamp post when you went in for your tea.

You played conkers, skipping, hopscotch, marbles, football and cricket. Local teams had try-outs and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't ,had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing you out if you broke the law or school rules was unheard of. They actually sided with the law and other authorities!

Our generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas. You had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and you learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

You have lived through both the worst and best of times and have experienced life to the full. No wonder you have concern for the future of the present young generation, especially if they follow like sheep the ignorant minority who have had a spoon-fed life, have no respect for authority and are seemingly not capable of rising to the challenges the future will bring.