WordPress Daily Prompt: Let It Be

A restaurant that removed your favorite item from the menu, a bad cover of a great song… Write a post about something that should’ve been left untouched, but wasn’t. Why was the original better?

I grew up here in a house where my mum was born. There were at least 50 houses on this small strip of green lawn forming a square.The houses had a small toilet in the garden, no bathroom and no running hot water. They were demolished some time in the seventies, being classed as not fit for human habitation. This was a change for the best perhaps, but for my family about fifty years too late. I can assure you that although the original was picturesque it was better that it disappeared. Actually the whole area (the parts that were not destroyed in the war) disappeared and it has now been replaced by so-called high-rise blocks. They have their own toilet and bathrooms. They are basically owned by the London council. Some can be bought, but not to a price that any normal working class person could afford.

You ask me about originals being better than the new modern version? Am I going to stop so-called progress? Did WordPress listen to me (and others) when we told them their new super grid system was not super, although it was new. We screamed “Bring back the Pingbacks” and were ignored. Reflecting on this situation, I find it typical of the daily meaning of progress.

Since I have been a member of the dreaded Facebook (whose name we should not mention) I have lived through so many changes, I do not even remember how it was at the beginning. I even had the cheek to complain, with some others, but to no avail. Mr. Zuckerberg was too busy shovelling his millions into his bank account to listen to one of the members of his faithful addicted disciples to reverse to the old state of affairs. 

I visited my dad at the beginning of the year. He now lives in his own apartment in a care home and is well looked after and satisfied. My dad has a savings account but never had a bank account, which would facilitate matters somewhat in his new situation. A good friend picks up his pension money from the post office once a week and sees to paying his bills.

“Dad wouldn’t it be better if you had a bank account with a cheque book?”

“I don't want a bank account and no cheque book. Don’t need one, never have.”

I tried to explain that in today’s world people have things like bank accounts, it is not just for the rich few, but it fell on deaf ears (he really does not hear so well). So what happens when friend arrives with the money? He gives her money to pay the bills and the rest goes - in his trouser pocket, with the result that he walks around with his pockets full of money. I believe he has been persuaded that the money he does not immediately need should be deposited in his savings account, due to worries that he has too much cash in his apartment and pockets. We think we have problems with change, ask a 99 year old person. They can really have problems, they still live in the world where wages were paid in cash weekly and food was warmed in the oven. Thank goodness his new living quarters has no gas supply, so he had to buy himself a micro wave. That was another battle.

“I don’t want to press buttons and turn dials for my food to warm up. The oven does me.”

Now he manages very well with the buttons and dials and finds it a super invention.

The television became digital. My dad does not understand digital. We bought him a new super modern TV for dummies with an extra large remote control. He loves it and quickly got the hang of it, but does not tell us that he prefers it to the old TV where he had to stand up and use his walking stick to prod the buttons to change the channels.

I have no big problems (except for the new WordPress super grid system which - let’s face it - does not always work as it should) with change in the world. I had to adapt when I moved to Switzerland to a metric system of weights and measures, a different language and a different way of life. 

My biggest problem begins in the morning. Instead of springing out of bed full of life and walking to the kitchen with a light step, I sit on the edge of the bed, think about it, and stand, ensuring that my legs still carry me. The walk to the kitchen is similar to The Green Mile, but luckily it is only my breakfast that awaits me at the end. This morning I cleared my hostas away from the garden. I always wait until the leaves are almost in a state of decomposition because I can pull the king sized leaves out with no effort. However, when I finished the job (and I have two mega sized beds of hostas) I had to check that my legs were still attached to my body and that my back could still find the hinges in its many bones. I think it is called old age, but I just call it a nuisance. My super streamline body full of energy should have been left untouched, the original was better, perfect. Having grey hair does not bother me. It even suits me, but that is just a colour.

I have not seen Wordy for some time. I hope he is still on the job. He knows no real changes, they just put a new programme into his metallic brain.

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