Thursday, April 13, 2006

 

A to Z in Sixty (Part 4)

Things:
I regret:
not finding out more about my Dad’s secret disgrace. I know only that he ran away to Canada when he was 14, illegally entered the United States via Niagara Falls sometime later, worked in New York (at what I don’t know, but he was given a tip by David Niven), and that he was discovered and deported. Now of course we’d think it was a bit of a laugh and commendable initiative, but back then, it was the family’s shameful secret. I probably could have asked him about it before he died, but a subject that had been taboo for so long seemed impossible to broach.

that compensate for getting old: sharing the Sunday papers in bed with my husband without feeling guilty for neglecting the housework or the kids; being free to spend a big chunk of time each year in the beautiful little town of Villefranche, just outside Nice, with boats in the bay, perpetual blue skies, lemons by the bucket-load and, as of yesterday, sea bream, normally too expensive in England, on ‘special’ at the local supermarket. If it weren’t for that damn French cheese, dieting here would be a breeze.

I like: wind machines – a blot on the landscape to some, but to me graceful arms spinning straw into gold; ice – frozen ponds or puddles for kids to slide on, vast glaciers and intense blue ice-floes sparkling in the river below and the delicious tinkle of chunks of it in a glass of gin and tonic; open fires – comforting, hypnotic, therapeutic and irresistible.

that drive me mad: people who say “to cut a long story short” and then proceed to tell you the long version.

that I dread: apart from the obvious one of ending up dribbling in an old-people’s home or worse still, not knowing I’m there (oh I don’t know, perhaps that’s better), being called 'spry'. It’s used exclusively for the old and even then, you know they’ve scraped the barrel to come up with the only positive thing they can say about you.

I’m glad I did: have children and experience those heart-bursting feelings of love and enjoy all the funny things they did and said. The family still say my six year old daughter’s gem: “Mummy, which came first, the Romans or the sixties?”

Unattractive Sights – I know we had skirts in the sixties so short as to be practically obscene (tights were invented then to introduce a bit of decency), flares, perms and side burns in the seventies, but could anything look more unflattering than today’s fashion of hipster trousers and crop tops on those with bulging bellies and unlovely ‘love handles’.

Ve haf vays of making you – take your medicine. Yes, the Government plans to compulsorily medicate us all by putting folic acid in our bread to eliminate the few hundred cases of spina bifida that occur every year caused by the lack of it. What happens if a few hundred people die from an allergy to folic acid?

Vietnam – All through the sixties increasing numbers of U.S. troops were sent to prevent South Vietnam from being taken over by the communist North. More than a decade of news stories fed us the daily statistics of killings and bombing raids. Conscientious objectors and cowards alike dodged the draft, students protested and finally in 1973 Nixon kept his promise in exchange for votes and pulled out the U.S. troops, leaving behind chaos, betrayal and their countless children. 30 years on, our reminders of the war are the Washington memorial; the iconic pictures of the naked girl fleeing a napalm attack and the Vietcong prisoner being summarily executed by an officer for the benefit of the cameras; and the unspeakable My Lai massacre, when U.S. troops killed over a hundred men, women and children. So what have we learned: Vietnam is now united, under communism, and the world hasn’t fallen apart, but the U.S. government hasn’t questioned its belief that a government other than the one they support must be removed.

Comments:
Can't believe it - only four letters left and still no Everton. But maybe it'll be under Z-cars.
 
Have you got any shameful secrets, I should ask you about?
 
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