Thread 19 - TalkLair: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 18)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

In the TalkLair, the fairy lights are festooned on the mantlepiece, the tree is twinkling with baubles, the mince pies are in the oven, the MN legendary chicken is ready to feed the hordes. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

Here is a live ongoing situation just begging for a thread, but I'm putting it here because I know My People! A neighbour's daughter (20) flew to Japan early on Sunday morning to visit her "boyfriend" - a perfectly nice lad of 18 who she met online through a shared interest in Japanese Heavy Metal. She is basically obsessed with Japan. They have met once, here, for about 4 days, with his mum in tow.

So her mum took her to Heathrow by taxi, at crack of dawn on Sunday. By 10 o'clock this morning (Tuesday) she had phoned her mum 4 times! First she was at the gate and couldn't find her boarding pass. Then she was in transit in Singapore and lost, in the wrong terminal, and there were NO SIGNS to the other terminals (of course there are!) and NOBODY TO ASK. Then she had arrived in Osaka but her luggage had been left in Singapore. Okay, that happens and SIA will sort it out as they are competent and have multiple daily flights to Osaka. And finally, although she had done whatever was necessary to set up roaming on her phone, It Wasn't Working - though mysteriously it had up until then.

And it's only Tuesday evening ...

Sounds like she shouldn’t be allowed to the corner shop unsupervised leave alone making a solo intercontinental trip!

The no roaming thing does remind me of a field trip with students though. New boss had decided that on no account should students have our personal mobile numbers so phones were rented for us. Why yes, that would be phones that weren’t set up to work abroad. Perfect!

Poor neighbour’s mum is undoubtedly having conniption fits right now!

NO SIGNS to the other terminals (of course there are!) and NOBODY TO ASK.

We call that "teenage vision" in our house. And we should probably also name the "teenage not wanting to speak to people" thing.

It was our biggest concern when DDs went off on a short trip to visit friends in London a few months ago - not that they'd have any problems navigating the trains and public transport and streets (because they're perfectly competent at that) - but that if anything did do wrong, they either "wouldn't see" what was happening/information/directions/etc, or "wouldn't dare to ask" others for assistance/explanation.

It's weird hearing about 'youth of today' and comparing their experiences with my own and other kids I knew. I was in a boarding school support group for a while for people who had a hard time there and needed somewhere to vent with like minded others. There were kids who were sent away very young and many describe having to travel from overseas on their own, some as young as six. Thankfully, they all got to their destinations but it must have been pretty mind blowing travelling overseas alone at that age. The girls at my school were always plotting to run away and quite a few did but they usually got picked up by police in the middle of the night at railway stations and brought back. I suppose it's just a very different world now.

Quite a few of my junior school friends travelled as UMs for the holidays from the age of 8 or so - mainly to the Middle East. They had cabin crew keeping an eye on them on the plane, but I'm not sure how much supervision there was between check in and gate, or when they disembarked. For shorter holidays they were usually popped onto a train to stay with a UK relative a mere 100 or 200 miles away.

I can't imagine anyone doing that with such young children now, but I do find it a bit odd that my and my parents experiences as older teenagers are now so far out of line with modern expectations.

At 17 I was dropped off in London to catch the boat train alone to Paris, then a connecting train to a tiny station the UK travel agent insisted didn't exist (it did) to work on a farm owned by people I'd never met.

At 18 my dad celebrated finishing his A-levels by catching a train to Italy (with a school friend the same age) and cycling home through the Alps to England. The next year he did the same but to Yugoslavia - only realising part way through Germany that he'd left his Serbocroat phrasebook on the dining table at home.

At a similar age my mum saved nearly enough money for a solo train trip to Austria and back - running out of cash in her last week. She had already bought her tickets, but had nothing left for food or hotels so spent her last few coins on a bag of birdseed and worked her way back via towns with summer festivals, so she knew there would always be plenty of people awake and around at night. At the time party all night, sleep on trains during the day, and eat only sunflower seeds wasn't that unusual a plan.

My youthful travels weren't quite as exciting, but I got myself to/from school, after-school classes, social occasions (except late at night) on public transport. And I moved to a neighbouring country to do my A-levels. My parents waved me off at the train station, the "college seniors" met me at the other end. Subsequently if I wanted to travel home for holidays or whatever, it was up to me to buy my own travel tickets and get myself there. And of course all this before the internet.

Whereas there are a fair number of DDs' friends who apparently have never gone on a bus or train by themselves. There was a certain amount of surprise amongst some of them that DDs were allowed to just take the train to London, get on the Tube, stay with friends, and take the train back. Which I think is a very basic barely-even-adulting skill.

DH and I were discussing where to send DDs off on a plane, for the next level adulting skill. We had a thought of just sending them to my parents, but as recent events have shown, things can go very askew.

Having said all that, I'm sure many of DDs' friends will be learning to drive now. Which DDs won't be doing because they're not interested (we offered) and we don't even own a car anyway. So that's a fairly basic adulting skill which they won't have, unless they decide to learn later on.

Glad your kids are being allowed to travel independently, Kuc. It makes perfect sense.

I went away to school at 10, absolutely loathed it and came home at 13, after which I couldn't settle and was always off out on my own and would regularly take a train up to Manchester to see friends. Half the time no one even knew where I was. By the time I was 15 I was independent enough that I'd have happily left home if I'd had the money and it had been allowed. As it was I left as soon as I was 18.

DH was put on a train in Portland, Maine, at age 5 by his mother, with a suitcase and a brown bag lunch, and instructions to the guard to make sure he got off at St Lambert, Canada (near Montreal) where his uncle would meet him. So he crossed an international border and a change of guards and arrived as planned for a summer with his grandparents. This was 1947 mind you! He doesn't remember being at all alarmed by any of this, and remembers loving being on the train, but it makes me shudder!

Having said this, my DD flew to Denmark from London on her own to stay with a friend of mine for a week and had her 10th birthday there. It was very safe though - I handed her over to a flight attendant and the flight attendant handed her over to my friend at the other end.

I was put on a train from Newcastle to Bishops Stortford, aged 8, to visit my gran. My mother gave me to a conductor, who sat me with a middle aged couple, who chatted to me till Peterborough.

I was Then put on a train to Ely and sat with another couple, till the next change. The man told me of Hereward the Wake and Eel Island.

Another change and sat with a family, until I reached Stortford. 1978.

I never had such adventures as a child, but, as I may have said before, I took my DS , sged 9, to France on the bsck of my bike, with the surprising approval of his DM. And more than once, Belgium too. A different world back then.

I never realised this was a "thing" for some:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/holidays/5499798-do-you-buy-everyone-new

We used to get new clothes for holidays as children but, looking back, it was so we looked half way respectable. I've never bought new clothes for going away as an adult, except maybe a pair of boots or sandals.

I tend to look through what I want to take with me and maybe buy one or two new things if what I already have is not quite enough for the weather or for whatever I’m going to be doing, but all new clothes would be hideously expensive.

I've bought special new clothes for holidays when going somewhere with an extreme climate, but otherwise just wear what I have. I'm quite fussy about clothes so if I find something I like that fits I want to get as much wear out of it as possible, which for hot weather clothes means they have to be worn repeatedly on holiday, because it's always too cold here. I will sometimes buy new things while on holiday, if I spot something different from what's available at home. And I'll then wear it for the next 15 or 20 holidays.

What you've all said! 👆🏼

Children would need new clothes as they grow, so I can sort of see that the mental milestone of "going on holiday" would be a time for buying some new summer outfits. I can also see that you might take an inventory of the adults' summer clothes and notice (e.g.) the elastic died on this swimsuit, etc. so will need a new one.

The OP (and a couple of others) seems to mean an entire new set of things, per person, per holiday! To me, that is a mind-boggling concept.

That OP is bonkers. I bought a heavy black and white cotton print skirt in Turkey ... it must have been in the mid-late 1970s. It was circular, no seam, just a circle cut out for the waist and a zip. It came just below the knee and was A Thing of Beauty. I finally admitted that it was past its best when we moved here in 2013 and gave it to a charity shop ... it was gone within a week!

My mum died in 1989 and I kept a short-sleeved blue and white striped M&S blouse of hers that was big and loose. I finally parted with it a couple of years ago.

The OP seems to have got rather pugilistic overnight on that thread

But actually one thing that was interesting was the idea (amongst the wardrobe buyers) of not wanting to look like they hadn't "made an effort" on holiday. Which made me realise how very very different my idea of a holiday must be!

Obviously, I don't want to look like I've slept in a bin or haven't washed since the turn of the century, and ideally want to look as nice as is appropriate for the occasion - but (1) that's just normal daily life whenever you're out in public and (2) that's not quite the same as worrying that other people will be judging my "level of effort" ...isn't it?

I was brought up by my delightful mother to understand: "Nobody's looking at YOU!" The tone of voice was scornful and it really wasn't necessary as I was a shy and self-effacing child (I grew out of it), but it has sort of stuck as an assumption to live by. If the level of self-obsession these days is anything to go by, it probably had some truth in it.

I think the new clothes for holidays is quite a working class thing, like spendy trainers and blingy label gear.

We are also of the "as clean and tidy as the situation warrants, no more" persuasion. I have cousins back home with a lot less money who will tend to look a lot smarter and have much dearer clothes.

I suspect there's something in that, Bez. And linked social insecurity. Probably not wise to say so on that thread, though.

This made me laugh.

Love the concept of “entertaining cheese”!

I didn’t really make big train journeys on my own until university open days and interviews I don’t think but got the bus to and from primary school on my own and the bus and tube to secondary. Plus from early teens I went most places by bus (because it was much cheaper than the tube) with friends and to visit friends. That was just normal really.

I signed a provisional driving licence application for my next door neighbours son recently. I think he’s 18 or so and isn’t actually learning to drive but wanted it as ID. From what he said, none of his friends are learning either as it’s too expensive so I don’t think it’s the adulting prep it used to be, at least not in London.