Cheer Up! You're A Lot Better Off Now (23 December 1976)

A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MY READERS.  And for goodness’ sake cheer up, everybody.  Especially you younger ones.  For I tell you without much fear of contradiction that the average person aged 65 and over has come through at least 35 years which were worse than this one.  If any fellow oldey doubts this, let him or her look back a bit.

What about the four years of the first world war, when you were probably at the most vital stage of your physical development?

Remember the severe rationing of food; how your mother tried to make butter out of haricot beans; how you went to school on breakfasts consisting entirely of oatmeal and water; how there was black treacle but no golden syrup; how the family rejoiced over a tin of bully beef or plum-and-apple jam – to which the troops overseas were subjected ad nauseam?  Remember the dreadful epidemics of diphtheria and influenza?

And what about between the wars?

Remember how for 19 years in succession there were never fewer than a million unemployed and how at one stage nearly a quarter of the “working” population were out of work?

Then what about the six years of the second world war?

Remember how they were spent under the joint threat of death by bombing or starvation?

Finally, what about the years of austerity that followed that war?

Remember how the 1950s were reached before some items came off the ration, though the war ended in 1945?

The difference between those days and these is quite remarkable, though I believe 80-odd years old J B Priestley was right when he said recently that despite all the increase in material wealth people were no happier today than 50 years ago.

I think the main reason is that “more wants more,” as my grandma used to say.

To see how much things have improved you have only to look at the general health and physique of today’s children and young people.  We have at least done a good job for them, if not for ourselves.

I was always the tallest boy in the village for my age.  I so hated being conspicuous and subject to other boys’ taunts and epithets that I deliberately took to stooping.  Finally, I levelled off at exactly six feet and was then overtaken by another lad.

Among today’s young men I am not at all conspicuous.  For instance, the other day, just for curiosity, I went round the Gazette’s printing staff asking members how tall they were.  There are about 20 of them and I found no fewer than seven who were six feet or over, all at the younger end of the age range.  In editorial also I found one young man of 6ft 4in and another of 6ft 2in.  In both departments there were others who admitted to being no taller than 5ft 11in, but I did not precisely count such minnows(?).  There is no height qualification for entering either job.

My own son also is two or three inches taller than myself – and four stones heavier.

Girls, too, seem to have grown both in height and (how shall I put it) – in shape?

Quite gone are rickets.  Squints, glasses and false teeth are comparative rarities in both sexes.

In my young days tall men were either freaks or upper-class Guards-officer types.  Not so today.

How has the change come about?  Could it be that it is mainly due to the operations of the presently-much-questioned Welfare State?  Or is it due to the general increased prosperity of the past 25 years?

While on the subject of health I would like to pay tribute to the work of the Red Cross Physiotherapy Clinic over the past 28 years under the direction of Mrs Marjorie Ross, who has just retired.  The clinic has come a long way since it started two days a week behind the old Bletchley Council Offices in 1948, after previously being a mobile unit.

About three years ago my doctor said something about a touch of arthritis, gave me a card entitling me to a never-ending supply of pills to be taken two a day, and sent me to the clinic for an eight weeks’ physio course at twice a week.  After four weeks of pills and physio I felt quite better, but I kept it up for the eight weeks.  I took the pills for sometime afterwards, then gradually stopped them.  A jar half-full of them has remained untouched for the past two years and so far I haven’t had another twinge.

I hope all now attending have similar luck.