Recently I have been enjoying the delights of the Yorkshire Dales, as you should know by now. I have been staying in a cottage owned by my Great Uncle, who is 88 and owns a smallholding that is now no longer productive apart from a few apples in the the orchard and a few rusty tractors in various sheds, alongside many pieces of furniture.
So on this summer trip up to the cottages to build a kitchen and other traditionally relaxing things like that, I have spent a lot of time bobbing about with my Great Uncle and one of those trips was a morning in the local co-op, followed by a trip down to the local MacDonalds.
Now you need to know a few things about this chap before I tell you the rest of the story or else it is not really that funny. He has lived in the same village all of his life, and has been working since he was 11. Because he is 88 that means he lived through the war and also because he is from Yorkshire that means that he is even more traditional and set in his ways than anyone else in the country. This however has proved to be something that he doesn't mind breaking once in a while.
So off we went to MacDonalds, with an 88 year old man who could brick-lay, rewire a house, plumb in an immersion heater, build a tractor from scratch and pretty much tell you anything you would ever need to know and more about farming, but has never had a fast food meal in his life. Born and bred on meat and 2 veg, he is now sat opposite me in MacDonalds. Firstly there is what he should have. Basically the extent of this was: "I'll 'ave what you're 'aving lad." And then there was the lack of cutlery .. that really got him. But for the entire meal, he just sat there giggling about the whole experience.
I suppose it makes me think that us, as a generation of young people, have grown up with MacDonalds and technology and these type of things, but they really are weird. I mean what kind of an establishment is one that doesn't even provide you with a knife and fork? To eat a meal? Yet to us it is normal. And I am not criticising anybody, because I am just as accepting and take these things as much for granted as the next man, but for somebody who hasn't been brought up with it, it is really something alien.
We joke about our parents being useless with technology, they are so slow about it and don't understand error messages and think it breaks all the time when really it is them who can't use the things, but if you haven't know it your whole life, how are you supposed to understand it? And this works both ways. There are lots of things that we will never be able to do because we have never known it. I have a classic car, so I have had to learn about mechanics to a certain extent, but to most people, anything more than the pedals, gear stick and steering wheel is alien to them. They don't know how a car works and how to fix it if they go wrong. And how are we supposed to understand about rationing and "make do and mend" when we live in such a throw-away society.
The one thing I can say though, is that when your Great Uncle's parting comment, in a broad dales accent, is: "I might have to go again..." then you know you have achieved something!
Thanks for reading!
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