The June meeting of The Bewick Lodge was opened by the WM in due form, the WM had the sad duty to inform the Lodge that W. Bro. Tom McKitten had passed to the Grand Lodge Above on the 25th May, after which the Lodge welcomed W. Bro. John Watts APGM accompanied by W. Bro. Paul Farrell PAGDC. W. Bro. Watts accepted the WM offer to take to chair and it was on with the show!! Not a rendition of a script from Life on Mars and there was to be no music accompaniment of David Bowie music! However the evening did without doubt have have a strong Police connection, W. Bro Bob Miles being a retired Police Officer it was only fitting he was presented with his 50 year Long Service certificate by W. Bro. Watts who is also a retired Police Officer, W. Bro. Bob gave us all an insight into his life from leaving London to seek his fortune further North, surprising W. Bro. Ian Silcock by informing us all that was once a telecoms engineer and that was how he ended up in the North East, something which despite knowing Bob for nearly 40 years, Ian was completely unaware of, bearing in mind that Ian has only recently retired from BT having spent most of his working life in the telecoms industry. The WM closed the Lodge and the Brethren retired to the festive board where a fantastic evening of good food and many tales of Bob’s 50 years in Freemasonry were regaled, below are pictures from the evening and at the end a poem that W. Bro. Bob read from one of his NARPO magazines which was well received by all and how true it wa
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own shopping bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologised and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”
The cashier responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”
She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. We refilled writing pens with ink Instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every shop and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right.
We didn’t have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 240 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right.
We didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen, not a screen the size of the county of Yorkshire . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the post, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine.And burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right….
We didn’t have the green thing back then.
We drank water from a fountain or a tap when we were thirsty instead of demanding a plastic bottle flown in from another country. We accepted that a lot of food was seasonal and didn’t expect that to be bucked by flying it thousands of air miles around the world. We actually cooked food that didn’t come out of a packet, tin or plastic wrap and we could even wash our own vegetables and chop our own salad.
But we didn’t have the green Thing back then.
Back then, people took the tram or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mothers into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest Pizza joint.
So isn’t it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?