The news presenters have taken to calling these "worst floods for a generation." That, and a particular shot taken from a news helicopter showing the flooded fields that have transformed Tewkesbury into a beleagured island, reminded me of an old family cine film, captured on silent 8mm, of those self-same flooded fields a generation ago, in November 1960.
I've posted the clip here and on Arabella's new Movie Gallery - not for the flood pictures, which we can all see live on 24 hour news feeds, but for the interesting manner in which my family and their friends amused themselves in those biblical floods nearly 47 years ago.
Stay with the movie and you'll see what I mean...do you think they'd be allowed to do this in the Health & Safety-conscious Britain of 2007? With or without a risk assessment?
On an embarrassing note, the stupid yellow pom-pom hat sported by my older brother, back then in the Good Old Days before I was born, had an extended life and was regularly worn by me on the way to and from school, at my mother's insistence, as late as 1970. I'm pretty sure Social Services wouldn't allow that degree of mental cruelty to children in Britain in 2007.
