The old days

My father and grandmother in my 1960s and 197Os childhood and adolescence thought things were better in the old days, though they were the first to say that people were very hard up in the old days. I never believe them until I came to live in Romania in 1998, when it had the standard of living of England circa 1949. Then I saw that they were right. The old days were better.

[In case you doubt my working class credentials my grandmother was a cashier at the Co-op, whose left-wing politics she despised as she did Labour. Ian Smith and Enoch Powell were her heroes.]