Sons and Lovers, (D.H. Lawrence) in the flesh...and a town full of Ladie Chatterleis Lovers....that was the gossip, and that was life!

Cessnock in those days was bloody hard work for most, plus a good dose of summer heat, freezing cold winters and multitudinous flies.

My father ran a business with branches across the Lower Hunter Valley Coalfields, including in Cessnock. My very smart mother insisted on living in Newcastle due to proximity to sand, surf, education and better hospitals... but still the routine of Monday washing, Tuesday ironing and 7 kids rings true.

The world is a very much larger place these days, but apart from the creature comforts, is it really much better?

I now live out of town, venturing in to the shops weekly and enjoying small things much more than while I was an employee.

Modern life is not called the Rat Race for nothing!

Our elite were not so hopelessly dim
And the rest of us limited our gullibility largely within the parameters of our religious beliefs
Now we no love longer have religious beliefs but have instead defied a limited number of ideologies plucked from the corpse of our Christian past - mutant and deformed
A society vacillating between being ditsy bored emtionally sensitive dandies or whip waving s&m leather wearing dandies

It's too embarrassing for words

Q, if everything is so wonderful then why is everybody so UN-happy?

in 1788 the gap between rich & poor began narrowing, in 1972 the gap between rich & poor began widening again.

By every measure the land of OZ is getting poorer, sicker, sadder & angrier.