The Snowflake generation

This was supposd to be about the Snowflake generation and it is,  but first of all in my endless quest to seek out major news that is often missed by headlines of war, plague and pestilence I found this important story about the  cheating scandal that has rocked the world stone skimming championships that took place in the Hebrides.   Some of the contestants have been tampering with their stones that have to be passed on a measuring device called the  ‘Ring of Truth’ .   And, much to my delight, the adjudicator is called the Toss Master.  

However on to Snowflakes.   Watching the VJ memorials was incredibly moving – such extraordinary bravery from men who came back after the most horrific experiences and for the most part never mentioned what had happened to them.   They just got on with their lives.   Difficult to read their stories without crying and also without thinking about how today’s youth might handle things.   Human nature doesn’t change and we still have wonderfully brave young people but we also want to wrap them in cotton wool.   

As children we were allowed to run wild all over the countryside.   People say there was less danger then but I’m not so sure.   We had a gardener who suddenly disappeared – my brother and I were very disappointed as we used to spend time chatting to him in the potting shed.  Years later I discovered that he had been sent to prison for being a paedophile and molesting local children!   Nobody asked us if he had done anything to us (he didn’t) but today I’m sure we would have had therapy.

I read somewhere that a council has closed the swimming pool because they can’t afford to heat it – we used to swim in the English Channel and frequently refuse to come out no matter how much our teeth were chattering.  No Costa del Sol for us, just Heinz tomato soup and sand sandwiches behind a breakwater sheltering from the biting wind.   We knew how to enjoy ourselves in those days.  

Childen today aren’t allowed to be bored – they have activites planned day and night – gym, art, music, after school clubs, and of course the digital babysitter – there is always something to amuse them.   Boredom is a thing of the past.  You don’t know anything about boredom unless you spent a wet Sunday in the 1950s on a farm with no television staring out of the window watching the puddles grow.   If we had mentioned feing bored  we would be told to read a book.   There wasn’e even the diversion of a telephone call.   There were two telephones in the house – one in the farm office and one in a cupboard in the hall.   Not only did we have to ask permission to use it thete was no privacy – my father sat in earshot and could hear every word so no confidences could be exchanged.

If children today tell their parfents they don’t like school their parents take them seriously, listen and talk to the school and  even in some cases change schools – if I had told my parents that I wasn’t happy at school they would have just shrugged and ignored me.   I wasn’t being sent to school to be happy but to learn how to be a good wife.   As long as I knew how to speak English correctly and to add up it would enough for me to find a suitable husband.   We were expected to be tough – prisoners today would riot if they had to put up with the conditions we endured at boarding school.  

And when we were out and about we were trusted to know that ponds might contain deep water and that weedkiller and pesticides were best not drunk without large warning notices.   As for bulls – we didn’t need a sign to tell us to keep out of their field – we knew to treat them with respect.   Talk about calling a spade a spade – when I was young people didn’t worry about offending people.  Now you can’t refer to a chick with a dick as a man if ‘they’ identify as a woman for fear of giving offence.   A shopkeeper recenlty was attacked because, after a series of thefts he put up a notice saying ‘Scumbags keep out’ and he was made to remove it for fear of offending scumbags!    I think I’m going to start pretending I’ve got dementia (not much of a stretch!) so that I can be rude to people and they won’t like to criticise me as it won’t be my fault!!