Life on Mars

I am currently in the process of working my way through

the boxed set of Life on Mars starring the very fanciable

Philip Glenister as DCI Gene Hunt (alias the Gene Genie).

 

I'll come quietly mister!

 

It's about a man who finds himself back in 1973 after a car accident

and oh! how I envy him even though he's not actually too chuffed

about it all.

 

Life was somehow simpler in those days.

I had just set out on married life full of, as it turned out,

misplaced optimism and even though money was

very tight and holidays were for other people not us,

I actually understood the rules.

 

Ask me now and I would have to say that sometimes

I don't even know what game I'm playing anymore

leave alone how to get across the board once

I've thrown a six.

 

Deviant, teenage Furby.

 

This morning, for my sins, I have actually witnessed a Furby

being fed, and toileted I might add, by means of a pink

i-pad placed in its vacinity and I started to have

very serious doubts which planet I was on.

 

Cops & Robbers circa 2014

 

What happened to wholesome, old-fashioned "dollies"

and doll's clothes to take on and off with chubby little fingers?

 

Does anyone play out down the alley anymore at Cops & Robbers,

Doctors & Nurses or Cowboys & Indians?

Silly me, cap guns were banned years ago.

 

What's a grazed knee or two between friends?

 

Who catches tiddlers at the rec, dices with death on a "proper"

swing in an attempt to reach the bumps over hard,

solid concrete or goes scrumping for apples over the

neighbour's back fence?  Nobody.

 

That's more like it!

 

From what I can see, the only visible thread which stretches

across the years and generations is a love of building

dens from whatever is to hand - old cardboard boxes,

chairs draped with outmoded curtains or, better still,

under the stairs wearing jinkies by torchlight.

 

 I wonder when some bright spark will come up with

a flatpack version?  It's only a matter of time ....

 

Beam me up someone - please,

I've forgotten where I put my jacks and I fancy a game.