In grainy films of black and white

The weather’s always dull and cold.

The people, overcoated, hunched,

Appear, before their time, too old.

 

A mother, barely thirty-one,

Seems far advanced in middle age,

While flat-cap dad who spits and coughs

Has lost all sparkle and all rage.

 

It must have been a heady mix,

The wartime rations, fags and booze.

Pea-soupered air meant healthy lives

Were not available to choose.

 

The generation from these times

Was shrivelled by back-breaking toil,

In factories or down in mines

Or labour daily on the soil.

 

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With one exception: Wonder Boy.

A product of the darkest days,

His seemed a usual life’s employ:

Married, ten kids, set in his ways.

 

His neighbourhood and home were bleak,

He worked all day at forging steel,

Yet managed not to look antique.

Sometimes they whispered: ‘is he real?’

 

Most evenings, he would join the blokes

And swill into a drunken state.

Each day he puffed a hundred smokes,

Yet lived till he was ninety-eight.