Radio 5 invited people to phone in with their reasons to be cheerful this morning. A very pleasant relief
The main message is that life always does go on. Unless or until something nasty comes very close to home, the seismic events may have very little effect on many, who have other things uppermost in mind
That indeed is one of the advantages of growing old – you know you have survived
I was marginally involved in the great devaluation crisis of 1967. I was not living in England, but we still had the Sterling Area, so many other countries were directly affected
A policeman came to our house late at night with the message (phones were rare – the police station had only radio contact with the capital) & a lot of hard work ensued. But really it seemed like only one small event in what was a time of personal change & adventure. What I remember most is that it made the arithmetic of conversions into $US much easier to do (no computers & precious few calculators then)
The other important point is that by no means everybody suffers. For many, especially those who can keep their jobs, life will continue with no more than its ordinary problems. And there are always those who gain
We tend to think of the 1930s as a time of unrelieved hardship (my own mothers family had to up sticks & move to where my grandfather could find work) – but when were most of those mock Tudor suburbs built? Who could afford to buy the houses?
