A Sweet Thought

The Scots diet begins with sweets.  Daily the kids would fill the local shop buying the delicacies and destroying their teeth.  In times past, when such as those pictured were bought for a penny, some four for a penny, or maybe a half penny depending on when you went to school, in times past no-one wrote long diatribes in the press grumbling about fat lids and potential diseases.  Well the dentists did but we ignored them!
In 1956 I started school, how frightened I was and much more so when I discovered I would have to continue there for the next seven years!  Each day I had threepence to spend on luxuries such as these.  I chose carefully and my teeth rotted at the normal rate for the time.  However I was miffed for may years as the 'Walnut Whip' was fourpence and as my spending money grew so did the price of the 'whip!'  There was little in the way of tinned drinks then we did buy large bottles of juice form the shops or occasionally from a lorry selling them around the estates. (Note: in those days referred to 'housing estates,' not 'schemes' as portrayed by fans of 'Trainspotting' that vile film of the eighties (filmed in Glasgow by the way.)) Cola, Dark Kola, and the usual run of juices were available to rot the teeth but there were still no whining in the media (which I did not read anyway).
Why then were we not fat, sick, and subject to the 'nanny state?
For a start our mothers cooked!  Potato Soup made by my mother was better than anything bought in a tin.  Far too many chips, along with fish, spam fritters or other home cooked grub.  Many of which were fried in the big pan fryer.  I was skinny, and indeed remain such except for the pot belly.
We played outside and this was a reason we were healthy.  We played all sorts of games as kids including violent ones based on the recent war yet none of us became deranged killers (except for that unfortunate night in Mussleburgh which I canny mention).  As we got nearer adolescent age we played football every night, as well as in the playground, and did not suffer any problems.  We started smoking at that later adolescent age all do and most have long since dumped that.  
So why the change?
For a start false equality entered the playground. Instead of boys developing alongside boys and girls beside girls they were all mixed, and that ruins a football game.  The gender lie attempts to make them the same, they are clearly NOT the same and require a great deal of separate development.  The absurd belief that guns caused violence removed army type games from young children.  Even cowboy guns, once common, were banned.  Violence comes from the heart, not guns!  The people most likely to oppose any war are soldiers who have served in battle.  They know what it is like!  Such men also oppose selling guns to anyone who asks!
Quite why football stopped being played nightly in Edinburgh in the eighties remains a mystery.  Was it homework?  Then why are so many from that time dumb?  Why did they buy the awful music from Duran Duran, Wet Wet Wet, and other spangly hair coiffed numpties?
Could it be computer games?  They began then, did they kill off football?  I know only that all the places I once revealed my outstanding goalkeeping are no longer used this way.  How sad.  Could this be responsible for Scotland losing its place in world football?  
If mum's cooked properly, if food manufacturers did not put so much muck into food, if the nation was less wealthy and could not afford needless amounts of fattening rubbish the nation might be healthier.  It certainly would be fitter if more boys kicked a ball around each night than played computer games and kicked one another around.
And another thing Mars Bars were always to expensive for me also.