I was driving home, and as I headed down the A5 with Milton Keynes sprawling across the horizon, I got to thinking about Indian country!
That was what my dad used to say when we could see all the lights in the distance, late at night. Usually it would be after a long walk with our faithful dog Lady. My two sisters and I would be lost in the magic. The lights, we would be told were the fire torches of the Indians and any carvings or white arrows on the trees would be the marks of Indians! and we really had to have our wits about us if we were going to make it home alive!
I now get catapulted back to the late 70’s every time I see lights on the horizon. I think the simplicity of that kind of childhood is sadly lost forever.
Things need to be on screens to keep our little ones entertained these days. Deadening their senses and killing imagination dead. You can’t put a price on making mud pies in the garden or setting up assault courses in pub gardens and turning your back garden into a zoo.
A short sharp shock back to the present day, by my son asking for a tatoo saying ‘life’s a bitch’ at the tender age of 14!!!!! Shoot me now please!!! It just hit me, as I was trying to put myself in the shoes of my 14-year-old son, that indeed it was at the age of 14 that I first got intoxicated. it was at the home of family friends and there were lots of adults around, but being bonfire night, they too were all smashed! I was carried to bed by my pal Paul, son of host family and threw up all over him and his mums car on the journey home the next day. I remember being very unwell for days and my mother becoming quite cross as my weight plummeted to 6 stone. Chance would be a fine thing now!! I’m sure my meagre height of 4’11 could get away with that weight!? Alas food and drink are far too yummy for an old bird like me these days. I can remember not eating all day at school and being very proud when I could entertain the class with my musical tummy rumblings. I would pass out by 3pm, if I tried a stunt like that now. Youth…fearless and reckless, but oh what a time!
It’s rather clichéd I know, but I have decided to include a passing quote in my blogs from now on, as way of a goodbye. They may point toward how I am feeling at the time or they might not. So here’s my first by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian. ‘loves pleasure lasts but a moment;loves sorrow lasts all through life.
A walk in the park 