In 1958 I was born to a couple who were older than most new parents.  My Father was thirty-nine and my mother was only four years younger.  Demographically, they were of a particular sector of the working class.  My Father was an engineer and my mother, whilst having been originally trained as a nursery nurse, held a variety of positions, from shop work to care assistant in a state run old people’s home.  What made them different, was their aspirations.

Although never ashamed of their roots, they strove for something better, something more akin to middle class.  Unlike many of their contemporaries, they chose not to struggle at buying their own property but remained as tenants of the local authority.  This allowed them to spend money on other things, such as better food, foreign holidays, new cars and new clothing.  It  also allowed them to spoil their only child.  Throughout my childhood I was always conscious of having things that my friends did not, of visiting places they could not and, although this may be nostalgia, of being generally happy all of the time.  That isn’t to say that I received no discipline.  My Father was still a product of his times and I was happy within strict controls, perhaps because of the security of strict control.  Despite being born with the added burden of a physical disability, I never felt that life was unfair and I can only put that down to loving, support and ‘providing’ parents.

One thing I am conscious of today, is that I grew up with the war.  That is WW II.  I know that may sound incongruous with my date of birth but, in being born to parents who lived through the war as adults, I was continually surrounded by their memories, their music and the values which they learned in war time.  Values such as thrift, the work ethic, good manners and optimism, sometimes misplaced but always there.  Even today, I love music and film from the thirties and forties and I have feelings and memories about the war that seem as real to me as my own true memories, even though I know them to be recollections of oft told stories.

Looking back, I remember how society as a whole seemed to be locked in the past even as it dreamed of the future.  On television, Dad’s Army competed with science fiction.  On the radio, which was still equally as influential as TV, The Army Game and The Navy Lark were incredibly popular.  Young boys played war games and played with toy guns, model soldiers and Action Man.  I suppose it’s not surprising;  Rationing lasted well into the fifties and kept alive a certain ‘war time spirit’.  My parent’s generation had also witnessed the break-up of the empire, with Great Britain going from one of the world’s major powers to a largely insignificant island kingdom on the edge of a continent, the nations of which were exploring greater unity and making it clear that such a union could work without their erstwhile saviour.