TASHY DID - A LIFE
Hey kids, grand-kids, and any other nosey people who are reading these pages, this is for you to read now or sometime in the future. It may tell you a little
about how life was 60 or so years ago and rather more about me. Why am I doing it?
In the years after my father's death, way back in 1981, I kept thinking of things I wished I'd talked to him about. After my mother's death, just over
thirteen years later, there was less of a knowledge-vacuum because mother talked more about her past.
Just recently, my daughter and I unearthed my mother's diaries which went back to 1929, when she was just 13 years old. This reminded me of the 1998
incident with my 6 year old and I decided to put down here the story of my life so my children and grandchildren could, if they wished, read about what I had done. I would use my
memory and those diaries to build a picture from 1949 to the present day and add some personal observations.
So, here we go. Each week we will have a new year with preceding weeks being archived. In the first few years, as I will have less to say, probably, I will
add some info about your grandparents and their parents.
1976
Believe it or not, it was the same again this year. Everything seemed so settled. My little daughter was growing up and maybe at this stage I will share my views on parenting. I have no time at all for all those people, and experts, who cosset their children, behaviourally, In my home, my word, or that of my wife’s, was law. My children were not asked, if they were misbehaving, if they wanted to sit on the naughty step or go to their room because unless I had unwittingly produced an idiot, the answer would be no. Children will push boundaries. I do not get the slightest bit upset when they do. I will tell a child once not to do something. I will then give them the benefit of the doubt and repeat it. If they do it again then, nowadays, bowing to the nanny state, I will raise my voice to a level slightly exceeding that of a Boeing on take off, and shout their name. This usually stops them. In the old days, if appropriate, my children would get a smack.
Can I just define a smack for you. It is a controlled movement and only on a part of the body where it will do no harm, only sting. It is an indicator to the child that they have done something wrong, usually a serious thing. I have never hit a child nor slapped them around the head. I accept some people do not have the control to avoid this and I pity them. I also see why the rest of us are banned from smacking in some countries just as I cannot drive my car at 90mph on the motorway although it would be totally safe. Indeed I believe safer because, when you are driving faster, you concentrate more. I once drove a car on a German autobahn and we were doing in excess of 270kph. I was concentrating very hard and, I accept that if something had gone wrong, I would have had a big accident. But people get killed at 30mph too. At 30mph, for some, it seems so slow you may easily lose concentration. I have this thing about driving as you may tell. In 50 years I have caused three crashes, none at more than 10 mph and one going backwards where I reversed into a car that wasn’t there when I looked; still my fault though, I should have looked again.
But to return to children, my daughter will tell you that if she misbehaved when we were out I would take her hand and squeeze it; hard. She knew then that she was wrong. I had no desire to show her up and I don’t think, apart from if they were in danger, that I ever shouted at my kids in public. The idea of someone sitting down and asking a perfectly normal child who is misbehaving what is wrong and where is their inner anger, as I have heard, is ludicrous.
Of course there are exceptions. Some children, like ones who won’t go to school, do have problems and need to be helped. But with little boys and girls running around a room when you tell them to sit still, I have no problems at all; until I tell them for a third time. By the way, to date, it almost always works and they stop; I just have no problem with them trying it on. They are not hyperactive or anything like that; they are normal, healthy kids full of energy and far too wrapped up in their own play to remember, or sometimes even hear, what I say, hence the shout when I do want them to stop. I am extremely proud of all my children, so far, and how they behave. By so far I don’t mean I will be populating the world further, six is enough, but I mean so far in their lives. They went through some bad experiences, and I was a part of these, but I hope they knew, as I did with my father, that I was always there for them even if, in some cases, I was prevented from physically being there.
I also have very strong views on the media and computer games that I think are totally wrong for a young age. Newspapers are allowed to be on display where any child who can read can understand the headlines. Do the editors think of that or are they too concerned with profit and having the most lurid headline to attract sales? I may have been one of a minority who was not the least surprised by what came out in the Leveson inquiry. To me, these days, journalism in daily papers, is not an honest job. Investigative journalism, as I know to my cost and you will find out later, is more often than not, an invasion of privacy. Truth has very little place in things these days. Rather than relating the true facts of a case, a journalist, or a so-called trainee journalist, will claim there is a fraud, without understanding the meaning of the word, or lie about events while making sure there is a scrap of truth there so it sounds believable.
I remember having an argument with my daughter about her watching EastEnders when it first started, she was 11 or 12 but she was allowed to do so as that was what her mother agreed. Funnily enough she now restricts her own children’s viewing and would never allow them to watch it at such a young age. She does a brilliant job as a parent but it is less easy now with more forms of media intruding into our lives and the problem of isolating your child from what everyone else is doing. We also taught them to share with others and it was only because this little boy didn’t have a wooden spoon to share that she tried to impose some force on his little hat when he tried to take hers.
I also despise many of the video/computer games that are available to young kids. They are, in my view, pornographic. Something pornographic is likely to deprave or corrupt and that is exactly what these games do. People have often said to me but didn’t you play cowboys and indians? The answer is yes, we did, yes we played with toy guns and yes we watched programmes with cowboys and indians. But compared to what is there to-day, it was nothing. And, I think that hiding in a ditch and leaping out at someone with a toy gun and saying “bang” is so much more of a game than actually watching a computer screen and pushing a button to fire a gun and see someone fall down, bleeding, as is sometimes shown. I played monopoly but never really thought I had built a hotel in Mayfair. You play some simulations these days and you really feel you are doing these things. That’s how I view it with violence. I also believe that realism takes away the imagination and that borders on cruelty. Imagination, even defined as your ability to see things as they aren’t, to improve something, is a vital ingredient in our world. The great Mr Einstein is quoted several times with his views on imagination. Here are just a few:-
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” and I couldn't agree more.
Okay, enough of that till later. We took a holiday this year and went down for a week to Swanage. We took mother-in-law, well actually she paid for herself and her granddaughter, which was nice. I never had a major problem with my mother-in-law, as other people are supposed to. We differed on many things. I remember one occasion, at a friend’s wedding, in summer, just after my daughter was born. She was in her pushchair and nanny insisted on tucking a blanket over her in case she was cold. I would then un-tuck it, she would tuck it back and so on. Eventually she gave up. We were bringing up our child our way although of course we would listen to advice but I have never molly coddled my children. Summer is not cold. Children do not die from hypothermia in summer. Sometimes I think we protect them a bit too much and I also have a thing about medicines, sunscreen and, to a degree, vaccinations.
I also had a slight panic attack on this holiday. One night, well after midnight, I heard a commotion down in the car park outside our third floor window. I have always been a light sleeper so I went and had a look. It was pretty dark but I saw there was a fight and someone was getting badly beaten up. I have, for nearly all my life, been totally anti any form of violence. I do not consider boxing a sport, the aim is to hit someone. When I was about 12, I experienced a mild case of bullying in the playground. A couple of kids were having a go at me and a friend. After a while it got to be unpleasant and I punched one of the other kids on his shoulder and I hit him hard, very hard. They ran off but I realised that, for that one moment, I had lost control and, had I chosen to hit his head, I could have done severe damage. From that moment in my life I have never hit out at, or struck, any other person which is why my views on smacking are as they are. I know I would never hit a child in anger or annoyance. Anyway seeing this incident stressed me quite a bit and I remember a brief panic attack before going back to sleep. I don’t really now why it affected me apart from my hatred of seeing this kind of behaviour.
After being told to “pull myself together” by my doctor in 1974, I changed doctors. The new one I liked. He told me that the chances of dying from a heart attack when panicking were, for a healthy individual like me, remote. If I was really over-panicking the body would just shut down and I would faint. He also told me that he didn’t know why he did his job sometimes. For normally healthy people, most illnesses, like flu, colds etc, he couldn’t really do much about, while if it was something serious, he couldn’t either. I have said earlier that I don’t take medicines and, over time, I think my body’s immune system has learnt it is not getting any help from outside. If every time you have a pain, an ache, a virus, you swallow pills then I think, and I may be wrong, that the old immune system will start to shut down a bit thinking, I’m not needed, here comes a pill. Stick your leg in plaster for a few weeks and watch the muscles wither and I think the immune system does the same when its work is done through another source. I also have a problem with so-called pain killers. If you have a headache for example and swallow some pain-killer how does it know which nerves, as I believe these cause the pain, to numb or does it just shut off all nerves. If it does, I don’t like that. I also think that if you have a pain, and deaden it, how do you know when it is better or, in the case of joint and muscle pain, that you are not over using it and causing more pain. This may sound silly in view of what I have said about walking on damaged ankles and playing badminton on screwed-up knees but at least feeling the real pain stops me a bit. Okay I’ve just re-read this and I’m weird. But, if anyone wants my body when I’m gone to examine a drug-free, smoke-free, (I have never even had a puff of a cigarette) distorted piece of humanity, ……………….I’ll think about it.
At the end of 1976, we discovered that my wife was pregnant again and we would soon become, I hoped, that typical 2+2 family. And for those who have been following my fashion styles, I now had a pair of platform soles which pushed my height up by at least 3 inches but slowed my time from Cheapside to Liverpool Street by about a minute. Probably contributed to the now screwed-up knees too. Oh well.
I remember having an argument with my daughter about her watching EastEnders when it first started, she was 11 or 12 but she was allowed to do so as that was what her mother agreed. Funnily enough she now restricts her own children’s viewing and would never allow them to watch it at such a young age. She does a brilliant job as a parent but it is less easy now with more forms of media intruding into our lives and the problem of isolating your child from what everyone else is doing. We also taught them to share with others and it was only because this little boy didn’t have a wooden spoon to share that she tried to impose some force on his little hat when he tried to take hers.
I also despise many of the video/computer games that are available to young kids. They are, in my view, pornographic. Something pornographic is likely to deprave or corrupt and that is exactly what these games do. People have often said to me but didn’t you play cowboys and indians? The answer is yes, we did, yes we played with toy guns and yes we watched programmes with cowboys and indians. But compared to what is there to-day, it was nothing. And, I think that hiding in a ditch and leaping out at someone with a toy gun and saying “bang” is so much more of a game than actually watching a computer screen and pushing a button to fire a gun and see someone fall down, bleeding, as is sometimes shown. I played monopoly but never really thought I had built a hotel in Mayfair. You play some simulations these days and you really feel you are doing these things. That’s how I view it with violence. I also believe that realism takes away the imagination and that borders on cruelty. Imagination, even defined as your ability to see things as they aren’t, to improve something, is a vital ingredient in our world. The great Mr Einstein is quoted several times with his views on imagination. Here are just a few:-
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution." “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” and I couldn't agree more.
Okay, enough of that till later. We took a holiday this year and went down for a week to Swanage. We took mother-in-law, well actually she paid for herself and her granddaughter, which was nice. I never had a major problem with my mother-in-law, as other people are supposed to. We differed on many things. I remember one occasion, at a friend’s wedding, in summer, just after my daughter was born. She was in her pushchair and nanny insisted on tucking a blanket over her in case she was cold. I would then un-tuck it, she would tuck it back and so on. Eventually she gave up. We were bringing up our child our way although of course we would listen to advice but I have never molly coddled my children. Summer is not cold. Children do not die from hypothermia in summer. Sometimes I think we protect them a bit too much and I also have a thing about medicines, sunscreen and, to a degree, vaccinations.
I also had a slight panic attack on this holiday. One night, well after midnight, I heard a commotion down in the car park outside our third floor window. I have always been a light sleeper so I went and had a look. It was pretty dark but I saw there was a fight and someone was getting badly beaten up. I have, for nearly all my life, been totally anti any form of violence. I do not consider boxing a sport, the aim is to hit someone. When I was about 12, I experienced a mild case of bullying in the playground. A couple of kids were having a go at me and a friend. After a while it got to be unpleasant and I punched one of the other kids on his shoulder and I hit him hard, very hard. They ran off but I realised that, for that one moment, I had lost control and, had I chosen to hit his head, I could have done severe damage. From that moment in my life I have never hit out at, or struck, any other person which is why my views on smacking are as they are. I know I would never hit a child in anger or annoyance. Anyway seeing this incident stressed me quite a bit and I remember a brief panic attack before going back to sleep. I don’t really now why it affected me apart from my hatred of seeing this kind of behaviour.
After being told to “pull myself together” by my doctor in 1974, I changed doctors. The new one I liked. He told me that the chances of dying from a heart attack when panicking were, for a healthy individual like me, remote. If I was really over-panicking the body would just shut down and I would faint. He also told me that he didn’t know why he did his job sometimes. For normally healthy people, most illnesses, like flu, colds etc, he couldn’t really do much about, while if it was something serious, he couldn’t either. I have said earlier that I don’t take medicines and, over time, I think my body’s immune system has learnt it is not getting any help from outside. If every time you have a pain, an ache, a virus, you swallow pills then I think, and I may be wrong, that the old immune system will start to shut down a bit thinking, I’m not needed, here comes a pill. Stick your leg in plaster for a few weeks and watch the muscles wither and I think the immune system does the same when its work is done through another source. I also have a problem with so-called pain killers. If you have a headache for example and swallow some pain-killer how does it know which nerves, as I believe these cause the pain, to numb or does it just shut off all nerves. If it does, I don’t like that. I also think that if you have a pain, and deaden it, how do you know when it is better or, in the case of joint and muscle pain, that you are not over using it and causing more pain. This may sound silly in view of what I have said about walking on damaged ankles and playing badminton on screwed-up knees but at least feeling the real pain stops me a bit. Okay I’ve just re-read this and I’m weird. But, if anyone wants my body when I’m gone to examine a drug-free, smoke-free, (I have never even had a puff of a cigarette) distorted piece of humanity, ……………….I’ll think about it.
At the end of 1976, we discovered that my wife was pregnant again and we would soon become, I hoped, that typical 2+2 family. And for those who have been following my fashion styles, I now had a pair of platform soles which pushed my height up by at least 3 inches but slowed my time from Cheapside to Liverpool Street by about a minute. Probably contributed to the now screwed-up knees too. Oh well.
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