Do You Remember The Good Old Days ...?

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were children in the 60's and 70's, probably shouldn't have survived because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint, which was promptly chewed and licked.

We had no child-proof lids on medicine bottles or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pans.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip-flops and fluorescent "spokey-dokey's" on our wheels.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags - riding in the passenger seat was a treat.

We drank water from the garden hose, not from a bottle and it tasted the same.

We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice with sugar in it but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

We did not have Playstations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. 99 channels on TV did not exist, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no DVD, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet chat rooms.

We had friends - we went outside and found them.

We played rounders and sometimes that ball really hurt.

We played British Bulldog which also really hurt.

We danced to Madonna, when she was invented, never mind reinvented.

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones but there were no lawsuits.

We had full on fistfights but no prosecution followed from other parents.

We played knock-on-the-door-and-run-away and were actually afraid of the owners catching us.

We walked to friends' homes. We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school. We didn't rely on Mummy or Daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the corner.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls.

We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility and we learned how to deal with it all.

So there.

Stu