I used to have these

Hundreds of them, cowboys, indians, soldiers, animals… boxes of them.

We ate a lot of Corn Flakes.

Rainy days were spent making the lounge into a western frontier or Battle of the Bulge with block forts and our imaginations (my younger brother and I). We had toy cannons that fired matchsticks, some had plastic shells and then we’d demolish the lot.

Tom Thumbs

Sometimes we’d take them outside and make battle grounds in the piles of dirt as Dad landscaped the new property. Then we were free to use real explosives; you know the Tom Thumb crackers.

Kids today don’t know the thrill of blasting your toys to bits.

Notably these toys neither squeaked nor beeped and screens hadn’t been thought of; at this time, we didn’t even have TV, although it wasn’t far away, just a couple of years.

Today, kids have become slaves to technology. iPhones glued to ears, iPads everywhere, tablets in the classroom.

It’s a social disaster.

Gone are the days like this.

And the kids complain that they are bored.

<rant>

It makes me incredibly sad, to think that kids of today don’t know how to play,  don’t know the pain and joys of a bloodied knee, don’t know how to fall out of a tree and retain your dignity or escape with only a broken collarbone.

In stead parents lock their children up in sanitised houses, scrubbed with germ-free soaps, antiseptics, disinfectants and let them destroy their prospects of face-to-face communication.

Parents have delegated their responsibilities. Worse than the advent of television that became the square-eyed babysitter.

</rant>

I think I have been upgraded to the ‘new Twitter’. Since the reboot of PC, my Twitter page had a ghastly Irish green square at the top. I figured out how to make it dark brown; much more in line with my background.

Rained last night, plants are happy.

It didn’t wash the dishes for me, though.

I forgot to take the fish out of the freezer, late lunch today. Fish ‘n Chips with leftover battered cauliflower from yesterday.

No classes today, three day weekend.

Going to check the fish and feed Clorinha.

Later.