You’ve always had it so good,
that’s what the kids said the other morning
as they languished at the kitchen table
hungover from vodka at the London club
still bronzed from their tropical gap year.

No experience for them of chilly bare floorboards
or bedrooms where ice formed on glass
or frozen bathrooms with hard quarry tiles
or terrifying geezers that blew like a bomb then quietly asphyxiated
or saving for a car that cost £20 under murky arches
or having to push it round the block to start
or breaking down in the rain in desolate countryside
or not having a mobile phone to ring for help
or not being able to get cash out of a wall
or doing DIY instead of calling the Polish builder
or recognising the smell of paint stripper
or sitting in a draughty launderette
or having to wash dishes and wring clothes
or having to change the stylus on the record player
or spending evenings in eating fish pie
or how the lights went out in the 3-day week
or how we could never find the candles let alone the matches
or how the rubbish piled up outside on the pavements
or how the bodies didn’t get buried
or making do with just 2 weeks’ holiday a year
or having nightmares of nuclear holocaust in the Bay of Pigs
or hearing de Gaulle saying “non” interminably
or watching Khrushchev throw ominous shoes behind an Iron Curtain
or being able only to take £50 when we went abroad
or not having a no-frills airline to open up the world
or not having the internet or email but writing letters
or feeling guilty about making love before you got married
or worrying about shame if you got pregnant
or knowing that boys would be doctors and girls would be nurses
or scraping through recessions and stock market crashes.

But Macmillan told us all we’d never had it so good
so they think he must have been right
and agree that the 1960s was better than now
and agree that it was heaps better than it had been
for my Mum and Dad in the war
so maybe yes, we have had it pretty good.