"Life is about enjoying every sunset with the one you love and waking up alongside them every sunrise. While you are beside me, my love, that is where my happiness can always be found. When you have left me for another life, I shall still feel you sitting beside me on the gateway to my future.
It is important for everyone to have a sense of 'future', especially those who have lost the love of their life and feel an emptiness and void that can never be filled again.
A sense of future is also important to students who are about to go to university in the knowledge that though they may graduate with more wisdom than they entered university, they will most certainly leave it with a mounting debt they may never be able to repay. Those who choose to marry can no longer expect to look forward to ever owning their own home with the extortionate rise in property values which takes a modest house well beyond the aspirations and reach of most folk. As for having a job, even if one is lucky enough to have one, there is probably more chance that it pays less than you could probably receive on the Social Welfare! Either way, it will be less than is required to live. And as to having children, this is now beyond the aspiration of most parents who would wish to pay for their offspring's upkeep themselves and not expect the State to foot the bill. Even those parents of an older generation can today look into the bedroom of their child, who though now 35 years old, is still sleeping there because they cannot afford the extortionate rent demanded elsewhere! Is any land where the mother and father becomes a lifelong landlord, a land of hope and glory?
The young face far more uncertainty in their world today than I ever faced. In my day, there was no question about being able to achieve essential things that the young can no longer take for granted. All who wanted to work could get it. If you were dissatisfied with your job, you could leave it in the morning and acquire another by noon. Going to university was determined by intelligence and grant, not lifelong loan. Working class youths wanting to marry their sweethearts worked over for a year and had quieter weekends saving for their bottom drawer and the deposit on a modest starter home. In 1957, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan proudly boasted that 'Britons have never had it so good' and while most working class lads like myself thought he was telling big porkies, when I think of today's prospects for the young, I'd have to admit that old Macmillan was probably accurate in his assessment.
Today is my daughter Becky's birthday. She is in Spain with her brother Matthew soaking up the hot weather there and relaxing on the beach. Over most of the past two years Becky has been without both a job and her own independent accommodation that she had to give up and for a large part of this time, she moved back in with her mum. A few months ago she got another good job in London and is now the proud renter of a flat once more. As for marriage, owning her own home and being the mother of children, like many a Yorkshire lass living down south, In your dreams! Happy birthday Becky. I am very proud of you and love you dearly. Love Dadxxx" William Forde: February 6th, 2016." February 6th, 2016.