Monday nostalgia.

No slugabed this morning! O, no! Once the alarm rang I was up and about, loading the washing machine and then off for a run round the village. En route I ran into Jack and Rosie. Jack is an old gent in his late seventies who drives most morning to a point up the road from our house where he gets out and walks his little dog Rosie up and down before getting back in his car and heading home for breakfast, usually tea and crumpets with honey. I know this because we usually have a chat about this and that before he gets in the car and I continue my run. 

This morning he was commenting on the ease with which he falls asleep in front of the TV, perhaps because the programmes he was led to believe would be entertaining prove to be less funny than expected. I commiserated; much of the modern comedy on the radio is seriously lacking in funniness in my opinion. Maybe we are getting old and jaded. That was when he said everyone should go back to reading the Beano, the children’s comic my husband swears helped him learn to read. So we reminisced about Dennis the Menace and Gnasher, Lord Snooty, Minnie the Minx and others. This led on to the price: at least £5 nowadays but formerly 3d – that’s three old pence for those too young to remember old money. That’s just over 1p in modern money but then those three old pence bought you a whole lot of things. That was my week’s pocket money and you had to think carefully before deciding what to spend it on. 

And old Jack said that he had to do jobs around the house to earn his pocket money, including turning the mangle. He did a quick check that I knew what a mangle was: a mean device with two rollers that you fed the wet washing through to squeeze the water out, making sure your fingers didn’t get in there as well. From there we went onto the old boilers there used to be for washing towels and such. Did I remember what the gadget was called for swishing the washing around in the boiler? Oh, yes, indeed: a posser, a thing that looked like a small three legged stool with a long stick through what would have been the seat and a handle at the top so you could swirl it around in the hot water. No wonder washing took such a long time back in the day! How nice to be able to pop everything in the washing machine and have it all done for me by the time I got back! 

There’s nothing quite like a good bit of nostalgia! 

I was reading about a group of people looking back with nostalgia to a time when it was easy to take your children out of school for holidays during term time. A group calling themselves “Parents Want a Say” is claiming that the removal of head teachers' discretion to approve absences means that education officials are breaching family life. But why does it breach family life that parents are expected to keep their children in school during term time? Of course, it used to happen less because there was a time when it was less usual for the British to have holidays abroad and so people were not rushing for cut-price flights and bargain offers. 

Maybe I am prejudiced, having worked as a teacher and knowing how disruptive it can be when children are absent from school for 2 weeks at a time so that the family can go to Benidorm or Magaluf off peak. Because, let's face it, most of those who want to take their kids out in term time are not taking them on enriching visits to sites of historical or cultural interest but are taking advantage of cheap flights to sunny climes! I remain flabbergasted!

And anyway, when did having a holiday abroad become a right? Or even an essential part of family life? Somewhere along the way our society has taken a wrong turning and decided that everyone, yes everyone, has the right to a big car, a big house, fancy clothes, the latest gadgets and, this is where I began, expensive holidays in the sun. This regardless of family income. And so companies like Payday Loans, Speedyloans and such like are able to lend money at ridiculous rates of interest to people who then get into financial difficulties. Crazy world! 

No comments today on the success of UKIP and the French Front National and various other right wing parties in the European Elections. Lots of people are commenting everywhere. I’m sticking with remembering a simpler time. 

As I said earlier, there’s nothing like a little nostalgia!