I’m back home in Houston from my holidays!

My generation – I wonder if we are truly blessed?

There’s been a lot happening in this last month or so which culminated in going to see The Who on Wednesday.

The gig was amazing as you might expect from seasoned (and old, but remarkably well preserved) performers like Daltrey and Townshend. As the only 2 of the 4 who have survived the excesses of a wild and chemically induced youth, or in the case of Entwistle, mid-life, they referred to their departed colleagues often, with imagery of the four of them back in the day, all mods and mopeds, corsairs and zodiacs and psychedelia.

It made me think – I am truly fortunate to have lived in the decades I have for so many reasons.

Stating the obvious, we are the first generation in recent history not to live through a major world war. Now there are those of you who will retort that we have many wars in the world wreaking havoc in so many lives, and killing many, many innocent people.  But these are not world wars, yet. Our troops may be involved in ‘defending’ the innocents and providing much needed aid in areas ravaged by natural disasters, but they do so as a matter of choice, not conscription. We are free to be pacifists, conscientious objectors to wars, fight for those who need help most and not be executed for our views.

It is shocking to think that my grandfather’s generation would have been murdered for leaving the front line. By their own side.

My paternal grandfather would have been around 145 or so had he lived (!) that’s very old indeed and can you imagine the society that he grew up in? He lived as long in the twentieth century as the twenty-first has lasted. Nearly. He died in 1917.

But he didn’t die in the Great War as you may expect from that date line. He was a minister who unfortunately succumbed to the disease that killed many in those days: tuberculosis. He was whisked off to South Africa, ‘for the weather’ in an attempt to prolong his all too short life. He died shortly thereafter. My father and brothers were only small and found themselves along with their mother in a strange country without their father.

I can only imagine how difficult it must have been in those days, to get home to Scotland during the war. I don’t know the details but home they did indeed come (or I would not have been here). But my grandfather did not come home and he is buried in South Africa in an unmarked grave as my grandmother could not afford a headstone. My father made a journey there many years ago, before he died, to try and find his father’s grave. He never did.

Our parents’ generation tried to forget the War and move on but they were thwarted by Hitler and his ghastly regime. Countries not so directly involved were forced to take sides. Some chose the ‘wrong’ side or had to, due to long standing bribes and boundary agreements that in any case went out the window after it was all over.

Hungary seems to have been one such country. Right in the middle of things, pulled this way and that throughout history. I visited Budapest with six others from ‘my generation’ early in April. We were treated to a wonderful city, so full of amazing architecture which tells a story of a most muddled and mixed up history. From neo-nazis to communists, a jewish quarter and the River Danube. Throw religion into the mix and you have the recipe for a fascinating, if troubled, city.

We had a tour guide from ‘my generation’. His name was Zoltan and he wore his grey hair scrunched back in a pony tail and underneath a hat that can only be described as a Beatles cap. Those in ‘my generation’ will know what that is. He was a bit like a relic from the 60s. He was exceptionally knowledgable on every aspect of Budapest history and answered our often quite random questions with ease. And he liked, no loved, palinka, the local fruit brandy.

We did lots of things in Budapest, but the tour with Zoltan was the highlight for me. We needed someone of our generation to relate the tales that had most resonance for us, where he lived as a child, what he went through in the communist years, what it was like when the ‘wall’ came down and what it is like now. It all means so much more when you can relate the history to your own.

More pics of Budapest – overload alert – lots of them!

My generation also lived in the best era for modern music ever (imho) – the 60s and 70s. And I think later generations realise that and are – well – jealous.

Back in the day it was just what we did. We went to concerts. I don’t think our parents’ generation had ever had the opportunity. After all, they were too busy with the war. Their rebellious days were channeled into real fighting.

Our lot, my generation, had lots to rebel against, and we did. And of course we ‘found ourselves’ with the aid of various illegal substances. The parents were horrified. Men (boys) grew their hair, girls did too. You literally could not tell the difference. For our poor parents it was like living on a completely different planet – really it was. And yes, indeed it was a different world. We may not have had a world war but all the skirmishes and deadly local wars that sprung up constantly threatened our nirvana of youth. ‘The bomb’ loomed over our youth like a Hammer House of Horror villain waiting to jump on us when least expected. ‘Protect and survive’ – but it didn’t take us long to work out if the bomb was dropped, there would not be much surviving.

Song writing and music was influenced by these paradoxical events – free love, ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ and fighting the regimes around the world that threatened the ‘peace and love’.

‘My Generation’ benefited. Really we did. The most amazing era of music and the opportunity, now, to still go to live gigs with the same musicians. The most incredible thing is that they are still alive.

And there was travel. Not just down the road to the caravan at Stonehaven but real travel to exotic countries like Spain and France.  We were allowed to travel because there was no war. And Inter-rail was the way to do it.

My generation did Inter-rail en masse one summer after our first year at university. A whole month of rail travel in Europe for £38. We booked hostels, we slept on trains, we saw the cities and countries of our dreams. And we kept bumping into people from Aberdeen. Each time we grew less amazed. Although the folk we encountered were truly gob-smacked to meet us in some random station, we just thought, and said, ‘fit-like?’ and walked on, leaving them gaping in our wake. It was quite silly really. We had an incredible month.

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And then, once university was over, it seemed like our youth was too. We became our parents but yet not so encumbered with the relics of the societal rules that governed their lives.

The generations that have followed us now have new rules. Our generation found that too much excess was not a good thing and so sex and drugs and rock and roll kind of went off the menu. There is the evil and dark side to illegal activity that has never gone away and is probably more in evidence now than ever.  A major war here in the US is against illegal drug smuggling and the addictive behaviours that fuel the demand. Tragedies close to everyone’s home both here and in Scotland have drugs at the root.

Health and fitness is the new rock’n’roll, worshipped by those out running or cycling, walking with various smart devices strapped to their bodies. Monitoring their every heartbeat, in an effort to prolong the short time we have on this earth. I hope it works. The next generation will have to work till their 80s to keep the rest of us in the manner to which we have become accustomed.

My Generation is getting on a bit now. We’ll all be pensioners before we know it. It is kind of strange to think that the piped music in a old folks’ home of the future will be Pink Floyd – probably Comfortably Numb – and we’ll be watching YouTube or its future equivalent on our personal screens –  not the communal tvs of today. If there is enough money in the ever decreasing pension pot.

What will we be watching….?