u sound like hearded animals

The problem is, all the jobs are in the big cities, so youll end up going to uni (in a big city prolly) and then live and work there until you have children and they are school age and you move back ouf to the country.

you were indeed very lucky that he made the right choice.

My father put his fist down and told them he would not move unless it was another house. Another house we got, it just took a few months longer.

Just think, if your dad had moved you in there, and used Maggies right to buy, you'd be a fucking millionaire now.

*....Bla bla bla bla....*

Steve Bano 🤣🤣🤣

Nice

@@Isleofskye his response was meant as a joke..... Yours? Nasty

Auntie Millie is the one bitching about the children? I bet nobody living there would miss her 😠

It's not the buildings that cause them to become slums, it's the people who inhabit the buildings

The doco was great. I've watched it couple of times but it also had an agenda. How was the sense of individuality when people lived in terraced housing, sharing bathrooms in the middle of the street? The people in the doco made it sound like their old neighborhoods were idilic. They weren't. They were crime ridden, filthy slums. They moved those people from terraces into high ride flats and surprise surprise the poverty and crime followed them.....

Look at life in high rise apartments in more affluent areas in the UK, US and Asia. They aren't crime ridden slums. It's people not buildings that are responsible

@@realtruth4804 wrong. u understand nothing. the flats do not foster community because they lack communal areas. in a street with terraced housing the road was the communal area, and the kids of the homeowners would play together in the streets; people socialized with their neighbours. The design of the flats discourages community, and without community you have vandalism and delinquency.

@@BOZ_11 I understand nothing huh? Manhattan apartment buildings don't have "communal areas" and they aren't crime infested. These days regardless of where you live nobody interacts with their neighbour's anyway

That was very sad.

That was terrible 😢 weren't there nurses in those days or social workers to help the lady?

Tory Britain 2023 is same

@@minixtvbox 💯 true. Don’t get me started on them 🤣

@@julesdymond8728 There were community nurses, meals on wheels etc. But so often elderly people saw it as charity and they had been raised not to accept charity. It was a struggle to get them help because they couldn't see it as their right and entitlement, they just saw it as a handout or charity.

It is good to hear that. She seems so wise and kind. I am glad to know her name, and to know she lived a good long life.

Aww bless her heart.

Love Amy Brown..Hope the Councils are watching.

So true her words, that when you live in a house you are free and in a flat your are not, especially with children .. or elderly people , at young age we usually busy working , but when we are kids or old we rely o our home to feel good ....

Fair-Play.👍 (RIP/Bless) + Can relate to her saying she never felt like she owned or the Flat was hers etc!

TheGodParticle He looks very odd with that.

😂😂😂😂😂

It's a real doozie.

Vic Reeves the comedian

That's commitment! It would take ages to maintain it every morning

Its the government fault.they are evil.the council are the other evil.they shovel people in those monstrosities....today its 2023.and the governnent is still chucking people into these monstosities.

The architects and planners she mentioned were pretentious ladder climbing idiots - whose only consideration was for their immense egos. Maintaining the social structure according to class. Disgraceful.

how soft can you be, get a grip lol

Give your head a wobble mate.

Oh I know. It’s so sad. No one cares for the average person. They want the image of something nice and geometric to hide away from the suffering of the average person and their mental state.

Your observation is correct, but more so than this being well produced (which it is) it's unfortunately the case that media today is choc full of uncessary production shite. Whether silly camera angles, music, lighting or other shit that the directors and producers use to make themselves seem so fucking 'cool'. This old film is great because all it has is well conveyed, well shot content, a classic case of function rather than empty form. It used to be dicks at C4 on Sunday mornings with the dumb production, but these days its every fucking outlet, just dire.

This was the rolling out of the human version of the "Mouse Utopia Experiment" (KZfaq it). This post war (and still ongoing) project was designed to destroy western society. Its astonishing listening to the lamentations of the folks in this video. If the mice in the experiment could have talked, they would have verbalised the exact same things: increased isolation, unhappiness, decreased social cohesion and increased friction and violence. Just astonishing.

@@happysunshinydays6349 Will have a look at that thanks...once I get through the queue of youtube things I've yet to view.

The cinematography are very well done, just judging from the first few minutes. Impressed.

No spacetimebrainless. Shooting and miking were being done to todays standards for longer ago than 1971.. Child.

like they would care. It's more efficient to build flats so they make more money

@@garnhamr Yes they certainly do not care about people,cram them in mouldy concrete high rises and collect the rent knowing full well they would not live in such deprived squalor themselves,it makes me sick to see children pale and lifeless dossing around filthy landings .

Its your goverment and councils that set the building standards. Sadly your councillor can overide this to build bloody horrible things and they are never held to it.

Chalet N It’s the capitalists’ plan, yeah.

Studied planning. Got a nice little degree that I don't use in work today - why? Because even though students are warned about what happened when people were crammed into flats without adequate social space, shops or places to go, the people who employ us don't give a shit. They want to keep on building soulless suburban housing estates and tiny little flats. I'd love to be able to do something about it, but it's going to take decades for recent crops of students to get into positions where they can actually sway decisions - and even then, you have to hope they remember this stuff instead of just chasing profits.

Cause there white

She woulda been 100 years old in this filming in 1971!!!!

@@riat360 89

@Adam Battersby how

And this last Xmas noone would have come to see her either!

@@corinlanser 💀💀💀💀💀💀

nothing ever changes somebody in mainland china is probably moaning about being forced from his home and moved to a flat right now even when you riot all you get at most is a little more money you still got to move

Tory Britain

Same here, man all it takes is a little heart. You never know when you could be in her situation...it's just really sad.

Me too just wrote a comment about who's cried seeing her story 😢

Yeah it was awful to watch, and its funny because there are those that keep saying these were the good ol days, well clearly not.

@@randomuser4201 it doesn’t matter what decade it is, there’s always going to be old age pensioners who need someone who cares enough to have a cup of tea with them and just LISTEN.

@marilyn but she didn’t see herself as a victim, she did what was required of her, and she got through. A remarkable woman, with strength and resilience

I agree. She was amazing, and her faculties were intact

She sounds just like my mother.

Most of those people were just moaners. The same people they lived with in the terraces lived with them in the flats. I bet they didn't really socialise when in the terraces. Just lazy, poor people complaining regardless of their situation

Can’t afford to be self centred .

Amazing yes Should not of have had to suffer.Not everyone as strong as her too

This.

Well said middle class planners haven't a clue!

That rarely happens, I wonder why? 🙄

@Sara I’m sure if they could afford it they would have bought a house somewhere nicer.

@Sara Many people were forced to live there - that's the point. Their terraced homes were considered to be slums and were subject to compulsory purchase orders, the tenants and owners evicted by the government and then given homes in these tower blocks, destroying their wel-established communities.

Zelda Fitzgerald fascinating to see people from that era alive and hearing their stories. My great great grandfather was born in 1882. Worked as a farm hand and in a coal mine until 1924 when he lost three fingers and a thumb in the mines. He lived until 1962 when he died. I have pictures from his funeral when my great grandmother and her sisters were crying. Such a strange tradition take pictures of people grieving.

very proud lady....

My grandfather was born in 1888.

@CARDEAN ROSS shocking is it not darling, going from a slum to a high rise , the poor should be gratfull. Ugly bitch.

No airs or graces, gratitude, realism is what she learned early on. A bath every day is a luxury and these so called small pleasures are taken for granted. Good solid inspiring soul she was!

1971. 3 years before my late mother was born. Looking at this. What have we come to?

100%

COMMUNIST STYLE SOULESS DRAB MISERY

They could buy a house if they wanted to. Get a job and stop moaning about free accommodation

@@WeanerBeaner69 AND MANY DID JOBS WERE PLENTYFUL AND HOUSES WERE DIRT CHEAP

I concur. She articulated with accuracy, brevity and depth. Sad she never reached her full potential.

100% What a marvelous, dignified lady

That will always be the case

The geezer with the 'tash looks like a he could be a Vic Reeves character.

I agree this is likely (about the women) but it's also possible she was raised middle class & married into the working class (which my grandmother did) or fell into the working class through career choice or misfortune etc. Either way there are still barriers in the modern world when it comes to financial/social status but I'm glad things have & are improving

@Tom Ward I agree she was brilliant! A natural in front of the camera. It breaks my heart to see those beautiful houses. They survived WWII but were demolished in error. If they had been cleaned up, upgraded.. No doubt they would have ended up belonging to rich people but.. it is a real pity that they are gone.

Just to let you know - her name was Amy Brown, and she was wonderful. She was in the Land Army in WW2. Thankfully soon after this documentary she moved to Ethelburga Tower block overlooking Battersea Park and she lived there very happily till she died aged 94 in 2015. She was loved by everyone here, and I miss her daily still.

they did it to the people on PURPOSE you clearly are MISSING that!

The City planners are destroyers of spirit. On purpose.

So sad to see a community destroyed. Density could have been added gradually. Divide a house into apartments here, add another story to a house there. Maybe on the odd corner there would be room for a taller new building.

Truth Hitman porridge n boring mornin telly🤗

Said she was 89 so born in 1882

Agree 100% she was a precious soul

Randal P McMurphy hahahaha

That was quality.

Hahahaha

See him springing off through the window.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

What a wonderful lady. Her Christmas Day story was so heartbreaking. Totally inspirational and very humbling. Hope you are living like the queen you were, in Heaven xx❤

Blame it on predictive programming, for which read: just about everything you see on TV. People copy what they see in programmes like Eastenders and Coronation Street, whose story lines are completely interchangeable: infidelity and murder are the norm. They adopt the attitudes, behaviour, language and even the dress sense. I believe that this is ultimately why these programmes are made, and to think that they are made purely to entertain, strikes me as very naive. Just look at how TV adverts have changed over the last 30-40 years. It's all part of the deliberate erosion of society and the community spirit. We're living in frightening times.

Totally agree,, The people who had jobs were safe,many boss's still of age that served during the war,,people lived with realistic aspirations and saved for things,,,,,I loved growing up in the 70s the toys,TV were great,,,,

And those are the working poor from areas deemed to be ghettos.

Thats just what i always think too.I was born 1974 but knew lots of old folks,my Great Nan born 1885,Nan 1909 etc etc,and they were a different type.My Nan said to be genteel was what people wanted to be when she was young.I wonder if they said that about old folks that were dying in the 1900s being different?

leigh pierce I agree even the way they spoke. Proper English. Pleasant polite manner.

Not so. Visit Park Hill, Sheffield.

In that case David Sherman, the government failed.

The heck? I live in a low rise flat with two tower blocks next to me, and I used to live in a ten floor block. All you need is greenery, local shopping, a few tennis courts a couple a sandboxes and a set of swings. It's parking lots and potheads that are pure murder... Don't build the first and evict (preferably via the balcony) the second.

That's literally what they're designed to do...

@basil fawlty All the same to me.

Should write off to ITV or let me see if I can get it organised, a lot has changed with the estates from the 70s some defiantly needed to go but others are Prime Real-Esate now and I have a few friends that bought theirs in various parts of London and believe me when I tell you best thing they ever did. Sent a IM to Brother who works in media you never know 🤷🏾

All dead 50 years gone

After 52 years a lot of these people wouldn't be alive today.

After more than 50 years, most people in their 40s and above are likely dead or very old, the old lady showing you how she crawls around her flat at around 30 mins in- said she was 89 on Xmas day just gone (1970) this was filmed in ‘71, so she was born in 1881, equivalent to 1934 now. I don’t imagine she lived much longer than when this went out, but a lot of the kids and young people will be around, in their 50s,60s and 70s now though, my father would’ve been 18 when this was filmed, he is now 70.

Agreed!!! And I bet the planners got plenty of back handers in the process

Not that, in order to push an agenda, the film producers would advise people on what to say?

YNWA probably because they were!

@I'm sorry About that! Probably due to being allowed to have their european culture and not being shamed for it.

YNWA they don't take themselves so seriously which is a good thing

👍

Depressed**

Same here I grew up in Columbia rd Bethnal Green through the sixties loved it

I think no matter what era you are at 14 it is gonna seem "wonderful" , for me it was the 90s but , there were some very selfish people in this era it would seem but would be the same as any other era. People never change.

"Survership bias" drastically distorts what the conditions at the time were really like. This leads to overly optimistic beliefs and incorrect conclusions.

That's the point. A house on a street, not a box in the air.

​@@alexfenton229what's wrong with tower blocks? Theyre lovely.

...that was likely the long term plan

yeah all them people you see in that documentary took up their right to buy when thatcher came in 1979. they all bought their flats on the cheap and sold them to rich foreigners for a bundle so dont feel sorry for that old 1970s mob.

@@trinihammer Bullshit, a minimal portion did if they were lucky to have consistent employment, because without that they couldn't attain a loan (& only if you were a man as most women couldn't get loans & then only if they were working, married & had their husbands permission) this was a time of great social upheaval in poor & working class employment, when tens of thousands lost their jobs due to mechanisation, there were fewer women in the workplace to fill in financially because they had bigger families & so we're stay at home mums. Then later, Thatcherism swept in & as some of her fellow ministers recently admitted (after lying & denying it for years), she wanted to smash workers & their entitlements & the trade unions (especially in Liverpool) because they were making her government look ridiculous & ineffectual. Try again.

They built hundreds of these blocks in the 1960s ..nothing but blocks of Concrete and an Eyesore ..should never have been built !

Couldn't agree with you more

@Mike J Very true.

@Mike J spot 9n mike

The destruction of people's sense of community, humanity and decency towards wach other, was by design - social engineering at its most nefarious, slowly but surely over generations is how its done by stealth so that the people who are being subjected to it, dont even feel or notice what is being done to them or realise until it is too late and hey are living entrenched for a couple generations or so, in community breakdown and poor mental health and daily struggle, which is then normalised for each subsequent generation, who grow up not knowing anything different, because thats all they have ever had a chance to experience. These environments are just containment camps for the masses of low income or working class families, who are then squeezed and destroyed on the economic front through dead end hopeless jobs, which dont earn enough to live a a fulfilling life of hope and promise, the best they can hope for is just hand to mouth from one pay check to another, which causes demoralisation and social breakdown of families, through divorce due to financial pressure, which in turn leads to mental and social deterioration, which in turn leads to children growing up in a state of breakdown not knowing any better, and this in turn leads to generational dysfunction which gets passed on and gets worse from one generation to another, until you get a situation, where the dysfunction is so entrenched that anti social behaviour, crime and violence become a reality, because the disregard and breakdown of community values and togetherness has been deliberately broken down over many years by design. This is social priming of the masses so that later on, ie, now, when people are so broken down and hopeless, that they can be demonized and alienated by wider society, and then they are ready for even more social and totalitarian control, because their ability to resist tyranny and come together in their own interests and humanity, has become eroded and depleted over generations of policies and environments that have socially engineered their economic, social and mental dysfunction and human community values, by design.

@Mike J he has a good life in Surrey. Wants more multiculturalism. Says it all.

Thatcher was right to allow people to buy.. The flaw in her plan was not reinvesting the money into building more government built housing.

Meanwhile they flood our country with 3rd worlders

I'm working class and I decided to buy a cheap house in the north of England instead of being shackled to rent and paying into someone elses pocket. The only thing holding people back is their own perceptions of persecution and past mistakes, work hard, save and don't have kids in your teens and you'll be fine.

Very true

Except perhaps that the "men are at work all day". Probably not so much any more.

Exactly what I thought especially when they talked about the teenagers not having any where to go or things to do which then leads to anti social behaviour. 50 years on and the same concerns are raised by parents in social housing today. Its shameful that no progress has been made.

No better idea except gentrification

Yeah probably because people are living in the exact same grotty flats to this day.

Their solution was to splash a bit of colour here and there and call it a revamp. Same problems & issues are still present, just looks a bit more colourful. It's all about saving money. Best way for them to do that is cram as many people into one space as they can. They wouldn't be seen dead living there themselves though. Disgusting really that nothing has really been addressed deep down 😩

Frazzle Face She must have been born in the 1880s.

1882 if she was 89 in ‘71.. same year I was born (71 that is) ;)

She’s got First World War photos on the wall. She’s the type of Brits I loved best. Two world wars, disease, no pot to piss In, and no complaints

Indeed she was talking about the work houses for the poor which I guess would still have been a thing when she was growing up! She wouldn't have had electricity, running water, central heating, or any of the modern amenities, so for her generation the facilities in the flats would have been unimaginable! But even she remarked on how nobody seems to help each other in the flats and how there is no community. Proof that facilities alone are not enough. Community and friendship is a human need.

Bless her soul. She reminded me of my Nan, resilient cockney lady.

You're right. My Dad worked on the Man Alive Report and 40 Minutes. Now fly-on-the-wall means Love Island and Big Brother. What a waste.

watch some john b calhoun mouse utopia

They do know better pretty sure the effects you're seeing are intentional

I mean, it's a pretty basic equation. You have a limited amount of land and an ever growing population. You cannot build more houses without destroying rural areas. So you have to build up. It's true though, they should have been better designed.

​@WessexFox99 since the late 60's huh? That's a funny lie, since the late 40's would be far more accurate. Now why would Britain ask for large amounts of foreign labour in the late 40's. Maybe because of the war? You absolute cretin. And what are you babbling about with this "log cabins" shit, do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds, you clearly have no idea what infrastructure is, or the mechanics required to provide people with basic living standards. How are there this many absolute morons on youtube? Where do you come from? do you actually exist in real life? Are you capable of feeding yourself? "Lets all build log cabins, because i'm such a conservative i want to go back to the iron age, before we invented building with fucking bricks."

It’s all about money , still is today !! The only thing I will say is if these new estates had been maintained and managed properly they would have stood the test of time ! Now they have become the slums and are being demolished , history repeating !! and the people are being moved on again only this time the replacement estates are posh and expensive and for sale !!!

Being complete strangers with their own lives to live, and not giving a shit, are not the same thing.

Susan O'Brien lovely words Susan. Bravo - let you inspire future generations!!

Did you live with minorities or were your neighbors actually British?

​@@doctorsartorius You're asking a O'Brien. Big chance she was the daughter of Irish immigrants, but besides that yes people in that time already started coming in from former colonies and these were the projects they were placed in.

Susan O'Brien I was 11 lived in 509 France's Chichester way in 71 would walk to battersea county school never got taken in a car lol would be outside the eagle pub beginning of November with our guy asking penny for the guy 😁

I livved in Fulham and Southfields from 75 81. So many of my friends were in these blocks, they were so run down. I was lucky as my parents both worked and bought there own house at 18. My grandparents lived in one in Fulham

How are you now?

God bless you ❤️❤️

Take care thinking of you.

How are you,4 years later,Elizabeth?

I’ve never been so glad that I live in the country.

Now we have onlyfans and deliveroo.

& not a knife in sight.

well you're not supposed to take them out

I was 10 when this was made and the good thing about the 70s we had freedom, not like now.

Matthew L'Herault Yh looking back on it it probably does look depressing but I mean for me it’s happy memories

We had a play area like that where I lived as a kid believe it or not it was great fun 👍🏻

That moustache it's awful the fire suround is fire hazard same with those ceiling tiles

Jason Coleridge I’m sure this is Amy Brown, and she was wonderful. She did live a good life, a couple of years after this documentary she moved to the newly built Ethelburga Tower, over looking Battersea Park, and she lived there almost till she died aged 91. She was a much loved member of our community and she is still missed by us all.

@@tishsimonnet5376 awwww! Bless her, sadly missed this character of person.

Lol 😄 👍👍

things don't change

Except it's even truer now than ever.

@davidoffon wow - that would have made her close to 90 when this was filmed And she was living in her home and in good spirits!

They don't make them like her anymore. 🤧

@@paulking8235 so?

@@LonDonTaylor. I live in a town in the south and the blocks where I live are getting demolished

So those building are all still up?

@batty grrl oh ok thank you

You can add soundproofing. Look it up.

Why would you choose to stay there? Move out of London and come up north, where you can get a decent semi detached ex council house with a nice garden and garage for less than 100k. Unless you work in a really specialised job role there really is no reason to stay in London

Agree 100% ❤

This is when yo7 allow the government I. Your house, and let them decide what’s best for you and your family. When you ask them to leave. They refuse. I’m so grateful in America we haven’t succumbed yet to this Marxist ideology that pretends to be virtuous to the common man. They are evil.

@@larkatmic what about the high rise housing projects like cabrini green and many others. But I do agree with you. In the USA there are many high rise housing projects for the low income , it's a shame , thank you great comment

The slums these awful flats replaced weren’t much fun either, no running water, a tin bath filled from a kettle, walk through snow and rain to an outside toilet, mould everywhere, freezing cold.

It’s exactly how they want them to feel.

Well said thank you

So are you happy for the working class to be trapped in rat-infested slums? For, when well-maintained, do not housing blocks tend to provide decent homes? How people hold on to their rose-tinted specs

Tacitus Kilgore wasn’t she glorious? But then, seeing how she had to get out of bed, my heart broke. Old, lonely and proud...neglected by a generation that owed her’s so much.

She was 89 in 1971 imagine the changes she went through.

She was amazing, but it broke my heart to see her having to be so brave whilst being so alone.

Most people are much better off now compared to then. In those days a lot of poor people looked about 20 years older than they actually were. That doesn't happen today even with the poorest people.

That'd be because less people smoke these days.

they could have built houses there instead, everyone wanted houses even back during post ww2 reconstruction, the areas may be poor today even if houses were built but nothing like what they are today as towerblocks and flats. And they should have built them in the 1930s style that is common across the UK which may have made the areas more nicer to live in

I can relate was born in that era what made it fun the mid seventies when I came to the UK at two months old and grew up there

sirkastic the corruption was set by then. When they killed Kennedy and greed took over. Divide the masses. Race.

Laura Molony More than ever, probably.

not at all

2022

2023....and didn't she have an amazing attitude to life! Bless her ❤

What happens is folk degenerate with lower races they don't bring them up to their level

We still exist! Not all of us have morphed into that odd fakery you rightly describe! But the destruction of many poorer uk city neighbourhoods hasn't improved that much since this documentary, the poverty has moved though, places like Battersea are really upmarket now. I fortunately avoided tower block living, instead ended up in low rise on quiet estates. Always found tower block types bloody cold & creepy. Especially those damn metal lined lifts!

You should read the book "Londonstandi". I live in Portsmouth & half the kids talk like they're mixed race. Even blokes my age talk they're from the west indies when they've never even been there. It's just where their absent father's are from. I'm 42 btw,I was married to a Muslim man for 11 years & they used to look down on the way we treat our elderly & needy. They also found it embarrassing that white youths were copying their accents (half of our mosque were African). I find it quite sad that youngsters can't be comfortable just being themselves. I guess that's why they join gangs....to belong, be part of something 😔

They would have had their accents slated by you if you were around back then too, just for other reasons.

My mum and nan still have the old London Accent ..I love it ❤

I live in a 1980s apartment and it sucks because of stupid rules we are all forced to follow etc and the rise in the price of the rent etc. I hope to get to live in a house someday.

@@MylarBalloonLover 🙏

Horrendous conditions, horrendous place everything horrendous about this - glad I have never had to live in those conditions.

@@MylarBalloonLover hoping for your move aswell🙏

better than living in a slum with no bathroom and the toilet outside.some people you just can,t please

i was thinking the same that would be cool

Maybe there's a reason no one talks to her... lol

​​@@Gadfly333and that's supposed to be funny?. As the expression goes, YOU don't know you're born!!!. Idiot. I bet this woman never had one carer visit her. She probably didn't live into the mid 1970s. My take is, she probably died alone. I hope this doesn't happen to you!.

I didn't know Vic Reeves was that old

Hahahaha ja aparte styl

Jock12366 No doubt😆

Quality. That moustache is a work of comic genius

Lmao😂😂😂

Yes I remember that too, there were the minority that had been raised to take pride in their dwellings, but sadly as Lenin once said "all socialism leads to Communism" i.e you don't treat a hire car aswell as the one you bought with blood sweat and tears.

@freebeerfordworkers Genius!! Hahah, gotta love Singapore =)

@freebeerfordworkers Or, as a last chance, try to behave your children...:-D

@freebeerfordworkers It is not normal to piss in a lift. It is a metter of education and upbringing. I've never met anthing like this in my country. If there is a needed people piss into a bush in park coz, you know, it is a nature and can handle it. But in a lift...?

@@tomfu6210 Anger and hatred. Those places aren't felt to be homes, more like a prison. It's a sign of dissociation.

It's not that old. I used to spend a lot of time there in 90s. It had improved a lot by then.

@@LilySaintSin its happening again now

Meanwhile the "honorable" architect that knows what is "best" for people, with HIS children lives in a victorian mansion.

And the mum "gaw on then...Tackawl"⚽️😅

@@emilemacdonald6277 yup

Me too. Kids just wanna run 😐

And his decorating style

😂

Well Oddy, from a high rise in the UK to Switzerland, a long winding journey no?

@@znentitan4032 It was indeed a long winding journey, because I went via Australia when I went to seek work and settled there aged 18 :)

@@ObsoleteOddity I should have known. But I did say your voice reminded me of Australian TV presenter Steve Dunleavy. We always seem to end up where fate wills us do we not? (You could do worse than the Alps)

@@znentitan4032 Fate with a little impetus and willpower from ourselves :)

interesting to hear some balance in the comments section (most thought they were terrible) perhapsyou were just an optomistic kid... though I guess your reasons were sound