Dear LPG,

I can now boast a little because I am able to get through to friends for a group video chat and lockdown is responsible for four of us having our own regular discussion sessions. It all feels a bit like those mid-morning chat shows that many of us have become used to seeing on those current affairs television programs and, while I am not sure about the others in our group, I feel quite privileged to be part of something so modern and electronic.

There is something special about preparing for an appointment and having to be on time even though leaving the house is not part of the process.   I often wonder if we will run out of things to talk about but we never have so far, and we are now so close a group that we have learned to be quite candid with our opinions. 

The other day we got onto the subject of the younger people in our lives and how so many of them do not repair things anymore. For our 20, 30 and 40-something-year-old relatives, the internet is there and, even more so in this world where high street shopping has become a thing of the past, when something goes wrong they just get a new one. 

We got onto the subject of how, even during the short period of the world’s existence since the 75 or so years that most of the group have been a part of it, things have changed.  It is surprising how gradually, yet how quickly, younger attitudes have changed towards recycling and mending things that are broken as opposed to just ordering a new one. 

We agreed that so many things that they have, need to be state of the art and that these things are much more likely to be tossed out or recycled by our younger folk whether they work or not. 

Fashion dictates that clothes get old all to quickly and even the adverts are all about not appearing ‘shabby’ because you have last year’s model of iPhone or car.  Today the manufacturers have persuaded our youngsters that they have to be seen with the right accessories as they go about their business.   

We then moved onto the fact that young people appear to need to be seen in the right places and doing the right things to be successful and it is all about appearance.  One of the group then expressed her thought that if throwing things away is so easy, perhaps that extends to the way that our grandchildren and children perceive us sometimes. 

Perhaps we older family members are becoming parts of their lives that just don’t fit.  Our chat revealed that  members of our group all have varying relationships with the youngsters in our families, but we all agreed that the feeling of being written off is one of the worst that you can feel and, though one size does not fit all, that need for the young to accessorise with modern trappings, together with the fact that perfect houses, jobs and evening pursuits (which are often found so far away from where they grew up), might just be part of the reason why, even before this pandemic started, our grandchildren have so often become so distant from us.

Our video conversations can get quite deep sometimes but this one got me wondering how a few more of our generation feel, and if what we talked about that day is indicative of what the rest of our age group think, which is why I have written it down and asked LPG to post it…

TG, Downham.