A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU *

(* For those of you whose idea of learning French was smoking Gitanes behind the shed du bicyclette this pretty much translates as "I Remember Yesterday Like It Was Yesterday". Actually that's not true: it's the name of a book by Marcel Proust which is so long and boring that no-one has ever read it. There's thousands of pages and Proust admitted he regularly fell asleep while writing it. It's about a girl called Madeleine who drowned in a cup of tea, which made Proust very sad. And a bit sleepy)

I miss the old days. They were so much better. And they lasted longer. Not like these cheap and nasty days you buy in shops nowadays. An afternoon started around lunchtime and went well into the early evening. I remember an afternoon back in the eighties that seemed to go on forever. This may have been at a Neil Young concert but that's beside the point.

Everything was better back then. You could smoke everywhere. On planes, in restaurants, in the shower. Cigarettes were better for you, too. Sure, people died of cancer but they did it with quiet dignity and certainly not all over the back of a cigarette pack the way young people do today. Show offs.

Drugs were better. We had real drugs with proper and easy to pronounce names like cocaine & smack & pot. Methamphetamine indeed. I'm not hanging around to take some five-syllable drug. I'm a busy man, I like to keep it simple. I dunno, you young blokes you take a bunch of eccies ( what the fuck is that anyway, sounds like a cough) & go see someone called DJ Ironic MisSpelling, we used to take acid and see God. He was always cadging cigarettes off me. I could never figure that out. Seemed at odds with the whole Omnipotence thing. Still, you get that on the big jobs.

We had proper wars. Big Wars. Wars with numbers. Wars where you turned up at nine in the morning, fought all day and then had the weekends off. Wars with tea-breaks. And if you got captured, it by some chaps who were misguided but basically decent with slightly comical accents. You got to hang around  with people called Nigel who would help you dig tunnels and grow a moustache. You and your chums would hang about in those cool looking flying jackets & silk scarves and stamp your feet on the ground and say "Damn it's cold" and make fun of the enemy. In a respectful way. Proper wars. Real wars.

Everything was better back then. You could go on the dole & then apply for a government grant to grow dope & fly to Bali for five dollars & you'd get stoned with your mates and Susan Sarandon would come round with chocolate eclairs & show you her breasts. Or was that just a dream I had ?  Whatever. Dreams were better back then, too.

Everything was. Especially comedy. "Nicaragua ? No, she went of her own accord"

Maybe you had to be there.