Human Like A House

I can't find a better time to use this photograph taken when I was in Europe circa 2006. Better times? Perhaps not. It was quite a heavy hearted trip down memory lane as I skimmed through the photos - of course there were people inside them, aside from the strangers from a foreign land, there were those whom I had rather remind locked up somewhere in a fictional vault of the head.

One of my latest infatuations lie with the cryptic lyrics of Roscoe (2006) by Midlake:


The village used to be all one really needs
Now it's filled with hundreds and hundreds of chemicals
That mostly surround you, you wish to flee
But it's not like you so listen to me listen to me

Oh and when the morning comes
We will step outside
We will not find another man in sight
We like the newness the newness of all
That has grown in our garden
Struggling for so long

Whenever I was a child
I wonder what if my name had changed
Into something more productive
Like Roscoe been born in 1891
Waiting with my aunt Roslein

...

1891 they roamed around and foraged
They made their house from cedars
They made their house from stone
Well they're a little like you
Adn they're a little like me
We have all we need


Is the 'good old days' really a valid expression? What was so great about days past that the modern/current times cannot match up to? If so, where and when do we place the time frame marker?

Post-industrial revolution meant that people were already polluting the rivers and land with toxic waste as fumes rose up to the once clear skies.

Pre-industrial revolution meant that jobs were not quickly taken over by machines but people were less sufficed materially unlike the Victorian times onwards.

Everyone refers to something different when the expression is used - especially when intended with respect to an age far older than the conscious individual lifespan. Meaning to say that you were probably a kid then so how should you know better? It is probably something you have read, assimilated but not served with entirety and hassle of living in that day and age.

An often laughable speculative irony emerges out of such loose talk as we postulate the gloom ahead from relatively unknown 'past experiences'...