NEVER IN THE FIELD OF…
Like many, I’ve been trying to mentally conjure up some similar situations for myself and for my kids, when it comes to trying to show that we’ve got through ‘this sort of thing’ before.
So far – and from my own family – I’ve come up with examples from; the Winter of Discontent, the AIDS crisis and the Teachers’ Strikes of 1985. Then of course the grandparents mention the war and rationing and then … I blether on about living with no shops and hardly any food choice and security issues from when we lived in Africa etc etc.
But whilst the lessons from all of these situations is that we can learn to adapt and to ‘put up with’ for the greater good(whilst still holding leaders to account for action or inaction), let’s face it, this country has never collectively experienced such a surreal and – frightening for many – situation.
Obviously the bizarre ‘not in school’ situation chimes most of all with my kids – so they were asking about the 1985 Teacher’s Strike and “what happened with schools then?” They were bemused when I said that during the strike, we were expected to go in for lesson 1, home for lesson 2, back in for lesson 3 and then out for 4 etc etc. “That’s just stupid,” they said. I agreed.
So, I decided to be honest with them and said; “well, the truth of the matter is … that a lot of us bunked off. We set off to school in the morning in our uniform, then after registration and lesson 1, we wagged it for the rest of the day.”
The kids – of course – were half horrified and half delighted – asking “So what did you do all day?”
I decided not to tell them about the teenaged en-masse purchasing of Merrydown Cider from Dukinfield precinct (“I love Merrydown, Merrydown loves me, it gets you p****d for 101p” as I remember the rhyme going). Instead I said “Well, most of our parents were out at work. So we went to each other’s houses and randomly called people on the phone. For a laugh.”
I had to explain this further to them; “There were only landline phones then. And obviously it was a really stupid thing to do and annoyed people. But we did stuff like… get our tape recorder positioned at certain points and then play it down the line. Like playing ‘Hello!’ by Lionel Ritchie just as they answered. Or we’d pretend that we thought that we were speaking to a shop and asked for something mad. Like a lawnmower or something. Or we’d just pretend that we knew the person and start trying to chat to them like an old friend.”
After being met with looks of complete bewilderment and incredulity, I went on to say; “Yeah I know. I know It was totally irresponsible and idiotic. But when teenagers are left to their own devices, then can act like total divs. And also – we rang chat lines. Which was even stupider. We were on them for ages, pretending that we were 21, when we were actually 13. And talking to some complete stranger.” My daughter said. “I cannot believe you did that!” “Yeah, I said. “The phone bills must have been horrendous. Chat lines were premium rate. And the parents never figured it out. The mums probably blamed the man of the house for ringing the really dodgy chat lines.” She replied; “I didn’t mean that, Mum – I mean… what about SAFEGUARDING?”
Different world, different world.
RANDOM RINGING
But there are some things that don’t change and one of them is just how important reaching out via the old dog n’ bone can be. For example, today our landline had a message left by a female voice. She had rung our number by mistake and left a message for someone else. But the odd thing was – I was sure that I recognised the voice. Using the cunning 1471 method, I called her landline number and lo and behold, it was a woman – one of the eldest members from our Quaker meeting. I don’t have her number and I’ve never spoken to her on the phone before.
What are the chances of *that* sort of ‘random ringing’?
Well, we had a lovely chat. I’ve always thought of her as the wisest elder that I know and quite frankly, it was good to hear her words right now. Even though the interaction was completely unplanned.
And this reminded me – we don’t all do social media. And neither should we! So, if you know of anyone who relies on the landline or on a letter or card. Now is the time to return to the 80s.
But whilst you’re doing that, keep clear of the Merrydown. Especially in public places.
