No, Dave, you know that is NOT what I meant. And in your rush to belittle my words, you have completely misconstrued them. I said the 'Old WAYS, not the Old DAYS'...


Teachers, in my school, did not make you feel that without your exams you were *nothing*. There were bad teachers, there always are, but teachers were allowed to teach in the way that was natural to them. They were allowed to design their own lessons, go off at tangents, and they didn't pile homework on us, or 'course work' either.

Your O levels didn't start from the moment you started the new term of those two years....It just carried on as normal, pretty much, with all of us swotting up a couple of weeks before the exams.

We went swimming for the fun of it, not to gain certificates and go up to the next level and the next and the next...

Teachers were not under HUGE pressure to meet their targets, tick all the boxes, and there were no school tables for anxious parents to pore over, deciding whether they should move house or not...etc...

We spent long hot summer days in the park, watching the cricket whilst chattering to one another, drinking Coca Cola or Pepsi...eating ice-creams and laying back on the warm grass, not to have oral or anal sex, but purely to relax, stare at the sky...whilst still talking to each other....and we were boys and girls in that group...

Friday and Saturday nights we often went to the local disco, but only if it was OK with our parents, who normally ran us there and picked us up...and most people drank soft drinks or beer at the bar. I don't ever, EVER remember seeing girls drunk in there either.

Of course, things started to go downhill as the alochol was pushed harder and life was made to be more stressed out and harsher...Discos closed down...

We grew up with happy music and happy times..and my generation and the one before was extremely lucky, I now feel.

Life was far gentler, because the Old Ways were still in place. Men did not expect 'sex' on the first date, and most girls wouldn't have given it to them either, because 'love' was higher on their agenda...

We didn't dress as tarts, wouldn't have wanted to...but we did dress in feminine styles, even with our jeans and cowboy boots on...

And then, the 80s hit...hard and hating...and life became harsher and harsher and harsher...and long after the Miners Strike was forgotten by many, apart from those who were so deeply torn apart by it, those who used it as an open door to anarchy were still working hard to disrupt and to cause damage...

'Class War' spread it's message of divisive hate. The Extreme Left helped it all along...TV programmes became more and more violent, women became less and less feminine and the Sex Industry replaced love.

The paedeophiles worked hard on the children...from within the toy industry, the music industry and the fashion industry and before long the Alcopops Industry was on our doorstep, and the sweet, pleasant drink was being supped by millions of very young teenagers, as the craving for alcohol seeped into their system, romanticised by the Drinks Industry itself.

In Horrabridge three shops started selling them, changing their entire shop layouts to give as much space as they could to all the new 'fun' drinks that were now becoming fashionable...because they made such a profit....

And no-one cared about the children......

The shopkeepers got rich, the parents got happy kids...and the kids found something that made them feel that actually, life wasn't that bad after all. In fact, as the alcohol grew stronger they found they could just about cope with all the tick boxes they had to tick in their controlled, dictated-to lives.

The trouble was, they needed to drink it 24/7....and then, one day, along came Mr. Politician who told them they could. In fact, he and his cronies said it was a wonderful idea!

So they did as they were told...and their parents smiled, happy that Little Johnny and Little Jemima were also happy, at long last...

Yes, life in Proleland was going exactly as planned........