No Longer Big, No Longer Clever

Everyone was on glue in the 70s

It seems very unfair that given I neverread the Beano as a boy life now begins to emulate it. It’s the swearingmostly, I clearly can’t in front of the kids and that took some getting used togiven that once upon a yesterday my every third word was the ever poetic‘fuck’. When in the kitchen hammering a slap up feed* into place, or the gardenmore recently when Tracey Emin got stuck up a tree and the sprouts set aboutone another, shouting and a hollering, I wonder when the dread fear of Daddyyelling out ‘What the blinking flip is going on in there’ is going to growthin?

                          Mybeloved Q tries hard but hasn’t mastered the art yet, albeit when driving.She’s a better driver than anyone else on the road, or must be because everyoneelse seems to be by oath and curse considerably worse. Swearing is big andclever, everyone knows that, and I feel a right plum** when my computer actsaccording to my nature and I in a rage scream at it ‘right you blinking flippingthing, I’ll blinking flip you, you flipping see if I don’t’. I sound like anargument in the playground of Grange Hill.

                          No,I was never one for the Beano. I was a boy for comics called things like War! and Sharks! which probably explains why I’ve caught myself saying both‘strewth’ and ‘crickey’.

                          LogicallyI’ll be saying ‘borag thungg’ in a year or two, and referring to everyone as an‘earthlet’.

                          Andhow zarjaz will that be?

*There it is! Beano, from when inpost-war Britain a decent meal was a reward for... I don’t know, I never readthe flipping thing. Foiling things I think. Back in those halcyon days of themiddle-century when all it took to thwart the plans of a foreign power wereboyish pluck and a robot chum? Something like that?  

**Plum? For flips’ sake!