Things I miss.

My mind.

A short refractory time.

The was a toffee factory across the road from my Nans in Windermere. We always spent our summer holidays there (at our Nans). We used to often go across the road and ask at a window for broken bits. This once the man at the window took a slab of toffee, smashed it in bits and gave us the lot.

The sentiments this expresses, mostly:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

I know what you mean, I offered to help Liz out by moving into one of her spare suites.  I was offering to pay some rent and even walk a Corgi occasionally.  Some folk.

Bloody hell - how old are you? I'm 52 and can't remember not locking our house when we were kids because of burglary. Mt wife's family moved house because of repeated burglaries in 1973. I remember walking round the streets in the 70s and seeing graffiti everywhere - particularly on train stations and public transport, smashed bus shelters and phone boxes (or public urinals as they were known as). You can't get much simpler than my barber, believe me. Maybe you're talking about the 1950s but certainly the late 60s and 70s in the North East was no great shakes. 

I'll tell you what I miss most from my childhood:

White dog shit.

And jokes about white dog shit.

Bizarrely enough, I saw some just the other day! It'll be like ninja-shit now, it'll be totally covered in snow! 

'

I'm 58, I'm talking about the late 60's and early 70's when we didn't have to lock the car or house

When we moved to the Isle of Man in 1991 you really could leave your house open, car sitting with the keys in it etc and be 99% sure everything would be exactly as it was when you came back. 

By the time we left in 2000, drugs were easily available and if you left your house/car open you were a proper eejit. A poor and car-less eejit at that! 

I wonder if one of the reasons that you are occasionally prone to taking a dim view of things isn't that you believe that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. The 70s was a time of football hooliganism, the IRA, strikes, power cuts, widespread racism and shite on the TV (remember Mind Your Language?  That was utter shite.). The modern world has an awful lot wrong with it, but the past was never a golden era.  Despite the world's present problems there is much to be grateful for, I think.

It's strange dichotomy isn't it; the 70s were my childhood (5 to 15 years) and I have so many happy memories. My parents were the first in all our families to own their own home so I grew up in a new detached house on a new estate, went to a new school, played football all day long, and had wonderful caravan holidays all over the UK, an uncle that gave me Marvel comics imported from the US.  It was an idyllic childhood. But I also remember the crap housing my grandparents lived in, with an outside loo, whole areas that had been pulled down and were practically bombsites, the nightly news reports of bombings by the IRA, the dirt and graffiti on all the buildings, the truly shite cars most drove - if they could afford a car, gangs going out "Paki-bashing", terrible fashions, strikes, a general feeling that the country was finished as first world country and was in its death throes and, as you say, power cuts and shortages. 

Ironically, burglaries have fallen massively since their peak around 1991 and are not to far above the supposed halcyon days of the 70s. I'd wager that if you leave your house unlocked today you're as likely to be burgled as you were in 1970 - but today, like then, we wouldn't do it.