
I'm currently leading a quieter life than usual. A lack of funds and a week spent on the slimfast diet means no pubs and certainly no riproaring social whirl. All good healthy living and lots more walking for the very happy pooch. Healthy living is incredibly boring though but I have no desire to smoke, use drugs and if I party all night I pay the price over the following two days. Sadly my age is catching up with me. Gardening, tea and biscuits, reading, etc...are my preferred choices nowadays if I don't want to feel like I have been reamed out with a six foot cotton bud.
I used to try and imagine when I was sixteen what I would be doing in the years 2000 and 2010. It wasn't any of the 'Tomorrows World' predictions of moonbase living and eating pills for a square meal. I have to be honest if anyone had told me I would be a nurse living in Lincolnshire I'd have laughed. At that age my thoughts didn't go beyond the next week and were primarily focused upon girls and music, mainly upon one young Greek Cypriot girl whose family intervened once they realised we liked each other. Young love might climb mountains and swim oceans but it stops at the immovable object of a stern father and his sons. Truth to tell I was a generally typical sixteen year old boy....absolutely clueless about what I wanted to do. My fathers generation worked on the land or emigrated because they did not have the luxury of considering what to do next. I was lucky in that regard but I do worry about my son who is sixteen and what awaits him. He is at college but he's desperate for some work so he can earn his own money. Sadly, the unemployed eighteen year olds and older are struggling to find work let alone a kid straight out of school. He's talking about joining the RAF next year once he has completed his college course so that he may learn a trade there. We'll see what happens...several months isn't that long but to a teenager it's a lifetime!
TTFN.






