Very passable this, eh, very passable.
Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?
Aye, you're right there Obediah.
Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier, eh?
In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
A cup ' COLD tea.
Without milk or sugar.
OR tea!
In a cracked cup and all!.
We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
But you know, we were happy in those days, although we were poor.
BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, 'Money doesn't bring you happiness, son.'
'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'.
We used to live in this tiiiny old tumbled-down house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
House? You were lucky to live in a HOUSE!
We used to live in one room, twenty-six of us, no furniture,
half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
You were lucky to have a ROOM! We used to have to live in a corridor!
Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us.
We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip.
We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
Well when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.
We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
You were lucky to have a LAKE!
There were a hundred and fifty of us living in a shoebox in the middle of the road.
Cardboard box?
Aye.
You were lucky. We lived for three months in rolled-up newspaper in a septic tank.
We used to have to get up every morning at six o'clock,
clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out, for sixpence a week,
and when we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
Luxury.
We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
Well we had it tough.
We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues.
We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'
But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
[All] Nope, nope...