I wish the owner of this plot had lessons about the environment…probably now he would have other ideas in mind what to do with that ‘wasted’ land of his.

[Daphne – A chunk of land in Gzira surrounded by buildings does not constitute ‘the environment’. If it were yours, you would want to develop it, too.]

Mum didn’t swallow Valium; we used to drink an orange soft drink, “tal-Qattus”, which was produced in Safi, “hobz biz-zejt u l-kunserva” or “bit-tadam” was our snack. We built our go-carts and scooters, and there were fewer cars on the roads. Some of my classmates used to go hunting or bird-trapping with their fathers (today’s hunters), and the father of one of them used to to go “il-kazin l-iehor” to make fireworks. He died and had a hero’s funeral. I even tried my hand at making fireworks and was slightly injured. I was lucky I didn’t lose an eye.

I don’t miss the “caravan” of dirty and smelly carts with 14-year-olds on top of the sacks which were filled up with domestic waste intended as food for pigs. These horse-driven carts passed through our road everyday at around one o’clock. They used to collect this “pig food” from the nearby “barriera”. I don’t miss the bus conductors and I don’t miss the horse-driven hearses.

We were street boys. We used to play “xixu”, “gwerra Franciza”, “harba”, “noli”, “campella”, cowboys and Indians, and with marbles and toy soldiers. Girls used to play with beads and at “passju” and with their “pupa”. We used to make our “wadab” (catapult) from twigs, strips of car-tyre tubes and old shoe leather.

Yes that kind of life produced risk-takers and inventors but also a lot of unskilled and illiterate people. It doesn’t mean that today’s children won’t be as good as their parents’ generation.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1920’s, 30’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses which used
asbestos. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, tuna from a tin, and didn’t get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention,
the risks we took hitchhiking .

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of an estate car on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC or Subway.

Even though all the shops closed at 5.00pm and didn’t open on the weekends, somehow we didn’t starve to death! We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the local off-licence and buy sherbet sweets and ‘locust beans’ and liquorice sticks.

We ate iced buns, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because…… we were always outside playing. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, only going home when our tummies rumbled – and no-one worried as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old pram wheels and scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and ‘camps’ in the woods and played in stream beds with matchbox cars. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms………. we had friends, and we went outside and found them.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. And only girls had pierced ears. We ate worms and mud-pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. You could only buy Easter eggs and hot cross buns at Easter-time…….no, really.

We were given cap guns at five or six and catapults for our 10th birthdays. We drank milk laced with Strontium 90 from cows that had eaten grass supposedly covered in nuclear fallout from the atomic testing in 1956. We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them.

Mum didn’t have to go to work to help dad make ends meet. [Daphne – That wasn’t such fun for the mums. Money isn’t the only reason women work, which is why that was the Valium generation: they had to drug them to keep them quiet. Things may have been great for the children, but they weren’t so great for their mothers.] Our teachers used to larrup us with big sticks and leather straps and bullies always ruled the playground at school. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Our parents got married before they had children and didn’t invent stupid names for their kids like ‘Kiora’ and ‘Blade’.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever. The past 70 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.

[Daphne – Don’t be so crassly simplistic. Pollution is not caused by people who drew suns at school. It’s caused by everyone who isn’t living a Stone Age life, including you.]

Why not give them sweets and burgers all the time…children are so sweet and adorable…why tell them no? Then, when they are adults with high blood pressure, they can think about solving their health problems (if they haven’t already died of a heart attack aged 20).

[Daphne – What melodrama, honestly.]