Youngsters these days, they don’t know they’re born:

CDs and PCs and TV till dawn!

They don’t have to fight to survive every day.

Spoon-fed and pampered, they do nowt but play.

In my time, by gum, they’d’ve all had a fit;

With a clip round the ear they’d be sent down the pit,

And when they got home there’d be housework to do:

‘Take this ‘ere hand brush and get up that flue!’

Life were no picnic when I were a nipper;

We had to survive for a week on a kipper.

For Christmas we got only nuts that were green,

And nine of us had to share one tangerine.

We didn’t have turkey – that were for lords;

It were rabbit or pigeon for us peasant hordes;

And one blackened sprout with a turnip or two

And we had to save half for the Boxing Day stew.

Back in my day we had no family car.

We went on shanks’s pony no matter how far.

We only had one pair of shoes between three

And they had no soles when they got round to me.

We didn’t have doctors – they all cost the earth;

The farmer attended when women gave birth.

He’d charge just a tanner, or sometimes a bob

For a difficult rope-and-pulley job.

We had stronger milk when I were a kid.

After three days it could lift its own lid.

It’d thicken and turn into new forms of life

And it had to be cut into chunks with a knife.

Kept for a week, it became such a beast

It had to be exorcised by a priest.

But ‘eck it were good, you could chew it for hours.

I reckon that milk gave us all special powers.

When I were a lad every winter were hard:

We’d ice we could skate on till June in our yard.

In bed we had frost on our nose and toes

And we had to wear coal sacks beneath our night clothes.

But hardship, I’ll tell you, built character galore,

Nobody moaned that they ought to have more.

We thanked the good Lord for the few crumbs we had,

Aye, it were champion when I were a lad.