Their generation

I've seen teasers of this on telly lately, but I came across the link to the YouTube vid via Ewan McIntosh. It had him in stitches. It had totally the opposite effect on me! Mind you, Mr Bean makes me cry, too (so lonely, so socially inept!). I know, I know!

This is a generation that survived at least one world war and the Great Depression. Those toothless, frail old men were once dashing young rakes - possibly even decorated war heroes. Those bent old dears were once nubile young women who held hearth and home together while the men were away - many of them venturing out into the workplace for the first time. They knew the hardship and deprivation of rationing. They saw cities bombed to bits. Many of them saw their families fragmented by the evacuation of children to safer locations. Some of them may even have been evacuees themselves. The whole world has changed completely since "their day" and they have had to learn to cope with that change: modes of travel, methods of communication, forms of entertainment, technologies in the workplace, banking, space travel... the list is long! Their hard-earned wisdom is often written off as being irrelevant and useless. I mentioned in a recent post how my grandfather asked on his 90th birthday, "What's the point of a lifetime of experience, if no-one wants to know?"

I found myself paraphrasing Tiny Tim as I watched these game folks really giving their all to the performance and having a whale of a time: "God bless them, every one!"