Ozzy, Lulu, Leo... and me (From The Northern Echo)

Ozzy, Lulu, Leo... and me

1:11pm Wednesday 11th November 2009

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IALWAYS knew it was a vintage year...

And now it’s been proved. Those born in 1948 are the luckiest of the lot. And that includes Prince Charles, Lulu, Dennis Waterman, Judy Finnigan, IanMcEwan, Elaine Paige, Leo Sayer, Anthony Andrews, Ozzy Osbourne, Gyles Brandreth, the Chief Rabbi, Terry Pratchet and ...me. What a year!

We always knew it, of course. Born in the same year as the NHS, we copped all that free orange juice and cod liver oil. We had a great education, despite the huge classes and the horrors of the 11-Plus.

And even though only six per cent of us went to university, we did so on grants with our fees paid – and walked straight into jobs at the end of it.

We were post-Pill, pre-Aids and we were the ones who brought the first records by the Beatles, the Stones and Dylan. They belonged to us.

We, in fact, made them with all those 6/8d singles.

We had no national service, no wars to fight and sweet rationing in our early childhood meant we had decent teeth too – and a school dentist if we didn’t. We had freedom to ride our bikes anywhere when we were kids, and to hitchhike all over the world when we were older.

And in 1968, the Summer of Love, we were 19 and 20. Perfect.

(Pause while I go misty-eyed with memories).

Novelist Deborah Moggach – an exact contemporary and friend at university – said: “We lived in that charmed interregnum where there was great freedom... The world delivered just what we were looking for.”

And, it’s fair to say, we made the most of it all.

We managed equal rights, equal pay, and even managed to squeeze in having our children in the days when parents were still the grown-ups and you just got on with it without all the agonising and bossy-boots interfering from the experts.

Research by Prudential Insurance shows that 2008 was the last year that the majority of 60-year-olds could retire on a final salary pension, so it looks as though we had it jammy right up to the end. Sex, drugs, rock and roll and a pension at the end of it. Bring it on!

And yet... when you look at the list of great 1948ers, you realise that they are all still working.

Many still are.

Partly it’s because we have to – we might have had free education and cheap houses, but our children haven’t – but mainly it’s because we want to.

We were the privileged generation and it simply hasn’t occurred to us yet that we won’t continue to be so. It must be all that free orange juice. We will continue to party centre stage and see it as our right.

Until, of course, we are finally pushed out of the way to make room for the next generation.

Then we won’t be so smug.

But until then...

Can't organise a ...

WELL honestly... it now turns out – after that daft lad was pictured urinating on a war memorial – that many of these huge drinking events at universities are organised by a company with the inspiring name of Carnage UK.

Depressing isn’t it? Students can’t even organise their own booze-ups any more but have to get someone else to do it.

And they say educational standards aren’t slipping.

Gaudeamus

MORE than 60 state primary schools are to teach Latin as a way of introducing them to language learning. Fantastic. It’s what I would have done if I ruled the world.

Fee-paying prep schools have done it for generations so it’s good to know that at last the peasants won’t miss out.

Once you’ve mastered Latin – not as tricky as you think – everything else becomes so much easier. Reading, writing, arithmetic and Romans – the perfect basis of a wellrounded education.

Go on, admit it

After you heard about the Euromillions win, you too started to wonder if you’d actually bought a ticket and forgotten about it and then daydreaming about how you would spend £45m. I know I did, through all the dreary chores and I still had £20m left. That’s good.

That’ll keep me going through another pile of ironing.

Tough love is what they need

IWAS – possibly still am – the world’s worst mother and my sons the most deprived among their friends. No computer of their own. Shock! No TVs in their bedrooms.

Horror! And I expected them to go to bed at a reasonable hour, do the washing-up occasionally and even write thank you letters. Which, of course, nobody else’s mother ever did. Well, according to the boys anyway.

But now I am vindicated. A new report by the Government think-tank Demos says that tough love is the way to go. A little firmness with your children and the occasional unpopularity results in happy, well-balanced, successful adults.

So there. Mum knew best all along.

Well okay. So perhaps – as they keep reminding me – sending them out to play rugby with torn cartilages in their knees (“Take a painkiller and get on with it.”) was a bit too tough.

But they survived. And one day they’ll thank me.

Maybe.

That reassuring crunch of grit

FROM Middleton Tyas in North Yorkshire to the county border at Piercebridge on Monday night, the roads were ungritted – despite the plummeting temperatures. Once I’d crossed the Tees, however, it was to the reassuring crunch of grit under my tyres.

So thank you, Durham and Darlington Primary Care Trust, who have given Durham County Council £1m towards road gritting. I reckon I had my two penn’orth on Monday night.

But it still seems an extremely odd decision.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
I CONGRATULATE you on your article about Marlon King, and that strange bubble in which these characters live. These people “earn” more in a week than the common man does in a couple of years! Even more staggering is the way in which the common man will scrape together the few hundred pounds for a season ticket, yet never complain at the absurd income of the footballers.

When GPs reached the dizzy heights of £100k per annum a few years ago, I seem to recall an outcry in the media. Footballers would complain if they only got that much per month, let alone per annum.

The Northern Echo carried the following statements by Gordon Taylor, PFA chief: “The disgraced footballer (Marlon King) will have the support of the PFA. Everybody in life can have big problems to face and this is probably the biggest and I hope he’ll be able to overcome it. If he needs help to get his life back on track, I assure you we’ll be there for him.”

I read this with absolute disbelief. The tone of it smacks of King as some sort of poor victim.

What about the problems faced by all of his victims over the years ?

The same utterings came out when Barton was jailed, then signed by Newcastle. I had supported Newcastle for almost 50 years, invested a lot of money, a lot of time, stood in all weathers in a stadium with no facilities. I wrote to the club to let them know that after all those years, my support was suspended while he remained at the club. They did not even have the courtesy to reply. There’s a surprise !

Geoff Carr, by email ■ And many thanks to all those who emailed and rang with similar views. We wait to see what happens when Marlon King is out of jail. Will he be shunned or snapped up?

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