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June Slater on Boomers
General Interest / Fri, 20th February, 2026 / 5 minutes of reading
Boomers!
This was a Facebook post by June Slater on Boomers. I’ve seen similar before, several times, thought the same many times, probably wrote about it a couple of times, but this time it struck a chord. Or maybe, as I get older, reminded me of all we’d lost in the race to gain!
What people forget is that it was our generation and those before us were grafters and innovators.
Boomers get mocked relentlessly for being technophobes and ‘ignorant’ – but folk conveniently forget that it was ‘boomers’ that created and pushed the computer age, the internet, and everything you now consider ‘normal’. And we did it without calculators, without computers, without Google and Wikipedia.
If ‘boomers’ like me hadn’t been early adopters – for computers, for the Internet, for mobiles – hadn’t build and sold them, hadn’t created networks and games and websites, hadn’t been the ones supporting and pushing the tech, passing that interest and passion to the next generation, you’d never have reached ubiquitous, mass market of today. (Though whether we should be thanked or cursed is open to debate!)
We neither had nor needed social media “likes” to do stuff, we just got on with! We also didn’t need vacuous ‘influencers’ and ‘celebs’ (famous for being famous and nothing else) to tell us what to do, what to like, how to act, how to vote, we just got on with life.
We also didn’t need the education system – including university – dumbing down so that people didn’t feel hurt or “offended” at failing, while other with useless paper degrees convinced themselves they were the ‘educated elite’, the “grown ups in the room”. (My own experience of university was being told that critical thinking is not required at this level. Okayyyy.)
[My additions].
I’m often called a boomer, it’s meant as a slight and usually comes from younger males who think we had it easy.
They’re posting from their double glazed homes with the heating on Fridges, multiple TVs, gym memberships, and they love playing on their X Box keeping their working hours under 21 per week so they can claim benefit
The reality of being a boomer:
We had parents who served in a war and suffered a further 10 years of food rationing so
breast milk was scarce due to malnutrition.
Being born in a cold damp house heated by a coal fire, your dad’s army coat was used as surplus bedding.
Vegetables were seasonal as were childhood diseases. We fought them all off Measles, Mumps, chicken pox and even scarlet fever.
The countryside was a world away, and you only saw grass if someone in The street had a car and took you there as a weekend treat.
We didn’t need a computer to occupy our Sunny Delight hyper-active minds, the journey, looking out of the window was the treat.
We walked everywhere.
We usually had just one fat kid in school not a full class of them with their allergies and syndromes.
We had one special outfit known as our ‘Best Clothes’ and these were looked after like the robes of an ordained dignitary.
Hygiene wasn’t even a thing, there were no bathrooms, the toilet was at the bottom of the yard heated
by a paraffin lamp to stop the pipes freezing.
The only hot water was the kitchen sink with a water heater known as a geyser, used frugally to keep costs down. [If you even had one, not everyone did].
Teachers smoked in schools, everyone smelled of nicotine.
Windows weren’t opened till May as heat was precious.
Often the bills outweighed the income and were juggled for payment.
No automatic washing machines or dryers, mangles were in the back yard to squeeze out the excess water after a dolly tub wash. [I also remember us having a room-length drying rack on a hoist, also known as a creel or ‘Edwardian clothes airer’].
You might have to research these items.
If you wanted to learn you had to read books, there was no Google short cut.
Communication was someone five doors down who might have a phone you could use as long as you took a threepenny bit to pay for it. The operator would put you through!
You didn’t follow your dreams, you didn’t dream, you just took a job to bring money into the house and tip up to your parents to help with the bills.
No spa days, no film star beauty treatments, no weekends away or hen nights abroad, two weeks in Blackpool [or Towyn] once a year if you were lucky.
This went on till you could afford to start your own dreary journey of a life as a working class Brit in the very early 60s.
This is the same generation now helping fund kids and grandkids education or house purchases because you’ve blown it on take aways, tattoos, designer clothes, [smart phones], stag nights that last longer than family holidays, and other such self-absorbed bollox.
Boomers have usually contributed at least 50 years of a 42 hour week so they can have time to themselves before some health issues steals what’s left of their lives.
So if choose to use social media mind your own business and get up your own end!
Ice on the inside of your bedroom windows, no central heating and walking to school in deep snow. We coped.
Absolutely true, my grandson is fascinated by the fact we had an outside toilet and a tin bath.. I enjoyed reading a blast from my past thank you ?
Oh god those outside loos in winter ? not to mention the spiders ?
About sums me up, big moment in my childhood was when we had a kitchen wall knocked through to the outside loo, meaning we didn’t have to venture out into the small back garden, still had to use a bucket of water to flush the toilet though…
Thank you, took me right back. Tin bath on Sunday nights, in front of coal fire, from water boiled on gas stove. [One bath, one filling, for the family, getting in the same water, one after the other, or two at a time for kids…]
