It is a truism that youth is wasted on the young. Now, having just entered my eightieth year, I find myself looking back, not with regrets, I have had a very lucky life on the whole even with its many disappointments, and whose life doesn’t have disappointments? but with some nostalgia for my youthful days. I never realised how blessed they were in virtually every way; days indeed that were filled with sunshine unappreciated. Well, except in memory, those dear dead days are beyond recall as the old song has it, so there is no use in thinking of “if!” That is one of the smallest of words but one of the most evocative. True it is not used on its own – “what if?” “if only”. What if I had made this choice instead of that? If only things hadn’t turned out the way they did, etc., but if one broods on the might have beens, that is a sad state of affairs. Rather remember your youth knowing that you couldn’t have had it any different, that that was what fate had in store for you and has had in store ever since; and if, when young, you were aware of that, you would surely have nade much more of those years and enjoyed your youth to the full.
I find it strange when I hear, as one frequently does, the youth of today say “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do.” I can’t remember as a youngster ever feeling bored – there was always something to do. Admittedly I had the advantage of living in a seaside town but I didn’t spend all my life on the beach. I was never much good at games, only playing rugby when moving on to high school, but younger than that, going right back to early boarding school days say, there were Dinkie Toys, lead soldiers, toy farms, homemade bows and arrows; later carts made from old orange boxes, a length of timber for the chassis and a cross piece of wood at the front with string or rope tied to each end so that it could be pulled one way or the other to turn. There were bicycles, the scouts, camping, the St.John’s Ambulance Brigade, always places to explore, the occasional picnic on a Sunday (what excitement getting everything ready for it and looking forward to the day), a dive into the country when driving was still an exciting thing to do and on a Saturday afternoon perhaps a visit to the Bioscope, all dressed up, neat and tidy and hoping there would be a cartoon and, if there was, the whole cinema would erupt with the shout of “Cartoon!”
There was no television, no computers on which to play games. We had the radio and terrific serials (or so I thought at the time anyway) to listen to, and a pair of comedians who today would be considered racist, doing an Indian send-up called “Applesammy and Naidoo”. Bored? Not in a hundred years.
Would today’s young generation live as varied and interesting a life instead of being hunched over their computers hours on end.
Thinking back now, they were halcyon days despite at times the occasional tear but wasn’t that all part of growing up?