It does drive me round the bend. I never had all that when I was growing up. I used to do colouring in and reading. I also had a load of friends on my estate that I used to play out with until it got dark.
When I was growing up in the 60s, you never saw kids indoors on sunny days. If you were lounging away indoors, someone would give you some work to do. Adults didn't approve of kids sitting around when the sun was out. The streets were full of children (hardly any cars then) playing hopscotch, cricket, tag, marbles - all sorts of games. You could stretch a huge thin rope across the road and play skipping with about seven kids at once jumping over the rope.
We had a field at the bottom of our road (yes, this was London, but on the outskirts) and there was a stream that wound its way around and under the streets. We'd play football on the field, then decide to damn the stream. everyone worked as a team, collecting rocks and logs for the damn.
We also had Epping Forest on our doorsteps and we spent hours roaming around, creating dens, slinging ropes over high branches to make a swing and playing Robin Hood or Robinson Crusoe.
We had no technology at home. Mum had a copper washer (a big tub that you filled with hot water and it would heat up like an urn) and everything was done by hand. Dad, very keen on DIY and carpentry, didn't even have an electric drill. Everything required manual operating.
I'm glad i have things to make domestic life easier, and I love the internet because I can discover and re-discover and huge range of things that interest me - but I never rush to my very old mobile phone as soon as my message signal pings.
Shirley Conran once said of the 70s 'Life's too short to stuff a mushroom'. My message for whatever decade we are now in is 'Life's too short to update your Facebook status on the bus'.
