"Therein lies the rub, Bessy. You could afford a car. We couldn't. We didn't even have TV until I was 10 in 1963. When I first married we had no TV either, or telephone. While you can look at your past with the rose coloured glasses of privelege the vast majority of us look back at the reality."

Oh, come on, Dave, get real. My Dad never owned his house, throughout his entire life. When he died he didn't have enough to bury himself...and his children helped to pay his bills, towards the end of his life. We lived in a rented house, the same one from when I was 6 months to age 27, when I got married..it was an ordinary, small semi, nowt special at all....and we never had holidays abroad, or fancy this or that...hand me downs from my brother were often my clothes...

Yes, Dad had a car, but not until I was about 10 years old, so that'd be 1965...

Privilege?

Ha!   Every month he worried about paying the bills, all his life long...but he loved his ocuntry, loved the countryside, and in those days it was dirt cheap to run a car, as well you know...so it didn't cost much to go out, nor to have a drink and a sandwich once a week...



"Don't get me wrong - I loved my childhood and upbringing. Even if it was amidst the dark satanic mills of t'north. It was a wonderful time, amongst ture friends, many of whom remain the same today. It was a past of discovery and getting the most out of every last experience. It also taught me the true value of England. Not that of the Village Green Preservation Society (Good song btw - Better by the Kinks than Ms Rusby in my opinion). The England, and note I do use England rather than Britain, that accepts and welcomes all peoples, races and, above all, allows changes to accomodate everyone."

Exactly. But sometimes, changes come which aren't always for the better...and that's when the rose coloured glasses really are put on, by those who refuse to see with clear vision....

Try to make out I'm Mrs. Middle England, if you so choose, as others have done, but sadly, for them, I grew up in the wrong part of Pinner, not on Pinner Hill where the private roads and huge houses were, but down the bottom, where ordinary people struggled. Nowadays, of course, those houses go for crazy amounts, but my happiest memories were helping Dad in the garden, playing in the trees, picking the fruit from them..simple, free pleasures....

So yes, chocolate box England was all around and it still is, even oop north....and there's nowt wrong with admitting that..

It's like we've all been sprayed with Dozy Lotion, where none of us are allowed to remember England as she was, let alone talk about it...

Well, I was inside the day they crop sprayed my island to make people forget how it was...and I have never believed in NOT looking back, nor taking the best from the past into the future either...

I don't give a fuck that my country is now of many colours, because that has brought it's own enrichment...but I can't stand tribal hatreds, be they from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or from White skinned Skinheads or Mods and Rockers...

I love this land, with every breath in my body and I will never, EVER give in to those who tell me that I can't be proud to be English, to be British, or that I am from a truly amazing country that has a history the rest of the world envies, even if some of them try to rub out that history and leave us only with the bad parts....We are a great country, and anyone who tries to undo that greatness......can shove off...