did the boomers have it all good?

Daisy, 65, had an interesting discussion with a young man aged about 20 working at a convenience store who moaned about his prospects and when she told him how harsh early life was for her generation, too, he agreed that growing up in post-war Britain must have been awful but maintained that at least we had progress to look forward to – his generation doesn't.

"I tried to explain to him that we had no idea, at the time, that the good times were coming – and that's why so many of us turned to nihilism, drugs, sex and rock n'roll to ease our pain," says Daisy, "but he wouldn't budge from his belief that we 'had it good' and that somehow it was our fault that his generation is suffering."

"Our personal circumstances differed, but my generation, the post-war boomers, were all programmed to live in fear of an atomic holocaust; reds were crawling under our beds; and those of us who could afford a TV were bombarded with daily horrors up until the Vietnam War ended in the 70s," says Daisy. "Still, like zombies, we started families, trudged to dreary jobs, listened to the Stones and never thought about tomorrow."

"As far as we were concerned, the world was stuffed," says Daisy. "Today was all that mattered, and when the good times did come, we were middle aged."

"We had no idea that Margaret Thatcher was coming and that council houses would be flogged off for a song, giving us a chance to get on the property ladder," says Daisy. "By then, our kids were grown up, our parents were retiring, marriages were breaking up left right and centre and there was lots of unemployment and social unrest going on; but I still remember the 80s as the best decade ever because I actually felt hopeful and prosperous for the first time in my life."

"I may be wrong, but I don't think that this young man is going to have to wait until he is in his forties, like most of my generation, to experience the good times," says Daisy. "In fact, when you think about it, he has already had the good times – being fortunate enough to have been growing up in the fantastic 90s with the tech revolution, all of the information we took a lifetime to find through old books available to him at the click of a mouse – and although he works at a convenience store, he owns a car. We were lucky if we could afford a scooter at his age.”

"Under the capitalist system, we really don't know what cyclical horror is going to hit us next - and maybe things are due to get worse this time around, just like they did for our parents," says Daisy. "But let's hope not, because I feel very sorry for the hell my parents went through – a great depression, a major war and everything we experienced as kids in the post-war period – and by the 80s, when the 'good times' came, they were too old to benefit, but at least they were cared for very well by the welfare state before it broke down."