A Generation Thing

Like Linda and myself, number two son Tom does cryptic crosswords, and he is pretty good at them. For the most part cryptic crossword clues rely on your having a reasonable vocabulary and being able to figure out the wordplay in the non-definition part of the clue (anagrams, hidden words, acrostics etc). However, there are clues which rely on some general knowledge (Shakespeare, the bible, commonly used foreign words or phrases). On one occasion, when Tom was stuck on a particular clue, I had a look and suggested reeds, as there was a reference to the finding of Moses in the clue.

Tom still didn’t understand until I explained about Pharoah’s daughter finding the infant Moses among the reeds in the Nile.

‘Didn’t you know that?’ I asked.

‘Never heard of it,’ he said.

Now, we did not give our kids a religious upbringing. The closest we got to that was Santa Claus, and they were pretty sceptical about him from an early age. However, they still went to their nearest primary school, St Lukes, which was nominally Church of England. Indeed I went to some assemblies when the kids were aged around 5-8, and they were full of these happy-clappy, whoop-de-doo evangelical hymns. So I was a little surprised about Tom’s complete lack of awareness of the story of Moses. But maybe I was wrong to be surprised. Why should he have known anything about Moses?

There are major differences between the generations, and indeed a gap in birth date of a few years can make a big difference to one’s personal culture. Linda is only four years younger than me, but that means that she was absolutely the right age for the punk revolution, whereas I was almost an old hippy. We each have musical likes that the other finds completely unlistenable-to.

I remember remarking to a colleague with some regret that my four upper front teeth are false. Not false in the sense of crowns or bridges. False in the sense that I take them out at night, a matter of considerable regret to me. She remarked, ‘It’s a generation thing.’ I think there is some justice in that, but it is also to do with where I come from. Scotland, renowned only partly unfairly for poor diet. Too much sweet food in my younger days, and not enough looking after my teeth, did for me. I recall when I was in my twenties and still getting fillings and crowns and heaven knows what from the dentist, my parents saying, ‘I don’t know why you don’t just get them all out. Then you won’t have to bother about them any more.’ That was the culture from which they came. And there was an economic aspect to it: once you’ve had all your teeth out and had a lovely set of false gnashers made up for you, no more dentist’s bills.

The other thing that I think of as generational is racism. When I was young, my everyday speech was peppered with casual racism and sexism. And my parents were even worse. I recall once as a student (yes, almost grown-up!) talking in company about an acquaintance, absent from the company at the time, who was renowned for his stinginess, and I agreed, ‘Yes, he is a bit Jewish like that.’ I then wanted the ground to swallow me up, turned to Dave Livermann and said, ‘Dave, I am so sorry. That was really out of order.’ Dave with typical good humour told me not to worry about it and confessed himself somewhat amused at my shame and embarrassment. But it was really out of order, and my kids would never dream of saying anything like that. But that is a time thing as well as a generation thing. I’m sure I still have racist tendencies, but I would not even unconsciously think the things never mind say them, that I would have said in the 1970’s. My dad in his later years in the 1980’s would be considerably less racist in his speech than he was when I was a child in the 1960’s.

One thing on the race front which I do admire about the generation of Bill and Tom is that the ethnic origins of their friends, colleagues or acquaintances is almost not noticed by them, or is only referred to in order to distinguish them from another member of their circle of the same name.

The generation above me fought in the second world war and endured hardships of which my generation has little idea. But the generation after mine has also been deprived of some of the privileges which I and my contemporaries had. Not only was there no question of paying fees to go to university, I got a grant. Because my old man had a good job, it was only partly paid, and the state assumed a certain parental contribution. To my dad’s eternal credit, he brassed up for the parental contribution in full and looked cheerful about it. But the point is that kids nowadays don’t have the privilege of free higher education which I had. I taught at Durham University in 1986, and I recall an Open University summer school taking place. I imagined that the participants would be people older than me, who hadn’t had the same opportunities as I had. In fact, they were almost all people younger than me, who hadn’t had the same opportunities as I had. Thanks, Mrs Thatcher.

A last few words on cultural generational differences. A couple of years ago, there was one of these threads on Facebook asking people to name some aspect of their lives that young people wouldn’t understand, and a colleague of mine suggested a party line. A party line was in the days when all telephony was wired, and if there were a shortage of lines, two households might share a line to the exchange. We had one of these, sharing a line with the Burns family up the road. You might pick up the phone to call someone and find yourself listening to a conversation between Mr Burns and his boss. When one thinks of science fiction in the 1960’s, so much of the stuff never came true, flying cars and all that. But the communications stuff did come true. You can have a conversation with someone on the other side of the world now, and see them as well as hear them.

Between 1979 and 1981 I shared a ramshackle flat in Edinburgh with Jim Cursiter, Harry Campbell and Kevin Connelly. The place was a bit like Steptoe and Son’s house (another thing the next generation wouldn’t understand), and with four young men of that generation looking after it, rather back-to-nature in terms of cleanliness. Two things about that time have gone forever as far as I know: even then the Co-operative milkman still had a horse and cart, and the flat’s perishables were stored in a gas (not electric) fridge.