Another Grumpy Day !!

I have just got in from being dispatched tout de suite and with much alacrity to the shops to avoid an Easter disaster, (no Yorkshire pud with the beef) as we had no eggs. Apart from the roads being virtually deserted I had completely forgotten that it was Easter Sunday and therefore nowhere would be open. The newsagents was open but that is run by a lovely Indian couple Soo and Ram for whom Easter has no meaning apart from profit from selling Easter Eggs. All the other multinational running dog capitalist conglomerates were shut apart from that is the Co-Op.

What a sad reflection on how much our standards and principles have declined since the founding of the Co-operative Societies by the Trade Union and Labour movement many of whose beliefs were founded on religious principles, indeed it is often said the Jesus was the first Socialist, that the only shop open for business is the one whose roots are to be found in those beliefs and principles.

I can remember when I was a child the only shop to be found open on Good Friday morning was the village baker who opened for an hour to sell hot cross buns (proper ones of course, not the rubbish you buy today) apart from that nowhere else was open. There were no papers as printers had the religious holidays off, butchers, bakers and others all closed over Easter, Christmas, Whitsun and other Bank Holidays. These holidays were a time for rest and relaxation and spending time with your family but sadly now with the advent of 24/7, 365 days a year trading and power advertising any time off work is seen as an opportunity to sell you something and get you out in the garden building a patio that you don’t really want but have been convinced by one of the TV gardeners (usually sponsored by one of the large DIY stores) that you simply must have or poisoning yourself with a barbecue (suggested by a TV chef usually sponsored by a supermarket) by cooking frozen food from the freezer that you bought on the last Bank Holiday.

I could go on all day about the much vaunted good old days ( I remember them well, Typhoid, Ricketts, Diphtheria, Polio, mass unemployment and poverty etc, etc.)
But I wont, suffice to say that now I have time on my hands and I have the chance to become more sullen and morose by the day and even more grumpy than usual I find that I am more and more hankering for a return to a society with basic decent values, simple good manners, proper table manners (a particular bugbear of mine) and a lot less of the ‘in your face’ attitude of advertisers, newspapers, teenagers, prime time television programmes, (and that’s another appalling American expression) and a lot less of the me first materialistic attitude that Thatcher spawned.
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Quite how I got from a trip to buy some eggs to a rant about the Thatcher Generation is beyond me, but then I am a Grumpy Old Man so I absolutely reserve the right to be grumpy as and when I feel like it!