Too young to remember the 50s? Lucky you.
Every tenth address a bomb site, butterflies coupling on the willow herb.
Shreds of wallpaper flapped on the sides of the next-door houses.
Taps stuck out of upstairs walls, flaunting the intimacy of bathrooms.
You’d take a milk jug to the Jug & Bottle to get beer for your dad.
But when your folk went in the pub they left you outside with the dogs.
Walking home from school ran the gauntlet of sweeties from smelly old men.
And big boys wanting your dinner money before they’d stop punching you.

We went around in a gang punching boys whose dads didn’t vote Labour.
Sweets were rationed. The coupons were worth more than cash.
You could get a pound of sweets for a pound of sugar.
The high spot of Sunday lunch was music requests for our boys in the BAOR.
We’d never heard of James Bond. The secret agent hero was called Dick Barton.
We’d never heard of Dr Who. The scientist hero was called Prof Quatermass.
In 1951 the Festival Of Britain was a shining star over a grey land.
The spindly Skylon displaced Mickey Mouse and Wot No Fags?

Next year the King died, and cheerful music vanished from the radio.
Until the Archbishop of Canterbury put a huge crown on a pretty girl’s head.
Our groundbreaking airliners were just that. They kept dropping out of the sky.
Windscreen wipers stopped dead when you put your foot down.
Cars had starting handles: car batteries barely ran the headlights.
To change gear on a hill you had to double-declutch.
Cyclists were cranky folk forever getting themselves knocked off their bikes.
You stopped to make sure they could walk, then drove on.

But it wasn’t all gloom: getting run-over no longer bankrupted your family.
Dentists treated you for nothing on the new NHS, filling your molars with mercury.
Opticians likewise, and bottom drawers filled up with discarded glasses.
No one lived much past 65 – retirement age. Twenty-a-day saw to that.
Boys started smoking at big school: being a non-smoker was the mark of a misfit.
Petrol was leaded and borstal raised a generation: no one made the connection.
You could leave school at 14 and earn grown-up money.
But your mum extracted housekeeping before you bought your teddy-boy suit.

So don’t go telling me about how bad things are.
I grew up in the 50s.