Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to Death is a Photograph Culture at the End of History. I'm Chase. And I'm Sam. And it's currently raining mortgages. Yes. The Bank of America, NetWest, Santander, they're up in the clouds. They're throwing mortgages out. They're falling on my head.
Speaker: There's mortgages, the easy credit, easy marriage, and easy times in mid-80s Britain. So it would seem. Of course, we're doing 28 Up. This is a follow-up, the next one in the series. It's 1994, ominous year.
Speaker: Yes, the year of the Apple commercial is what I call it. But Sam is saying that because this is the one where virtually everyone just kind of gets married and has children immediately. Yeah. It's sort of just 21, half of them are like eating day-old cheese off of like kitchen tile. And by 28, they're all like, I have a stable career and and a child. I'm a family man.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, to To give them a little bit of, don't know if credit is the right word. a Well, clearly they're being given being given a lot of credit, am I right? but Well, this is the thing that this generation always reached for is that actually, no, because interest rates were really high in Britain at this point in time. Because of Thatcher's monetarism, right? it So actually, interest rate, like if you talk to my parents are a little bit younger. They were 10 years younger, but you know they remember it.
Speaker: sort looking at older people, they'll go, oh, interest rates in the 1980s were up like 12%, 18%, and they were. So it wasn't easy credit, but what was easy was just like assets didn't cost anything. It's like you're paying 18%, but on a house that is like, you know, heart likeness one year's salary.
Speaker: So it doesn't matter. They say that at one point. I'm trying to remember who it is. But they they say he's making, i want to say, i want to say it was $11,000 a year, but he gets a house for $30,000. Yeah. and then just And they don't even say anything more about it. It's just sort of like, yes, obviously that's enough to make it make sense, and so he moves on. you know So you know it wasn't an easy credit era, but it was very much like a cheap assets era. So...
Speaker: so There is the, I mean, we'll get into more detail later, but the one of the three sort of more privileged boys, I can never, is it Charles that we see? is it Andrew?
Speaker: Charles disappears in this one. So it's Andrew, who is now a solicitor, as he said he would be, and he's married and blah, blah, blah, blah. And and seems actually like he reminds me the most of like...
Speaker: So I did, you know, I had the the privilege of going to private school growing up. And so most of my friends, I would say, in retrospect, were probably better off than I was, although I didn't realize that at the time. Were you a scholarship? ah Not at the school I'm talking about, which would have been my, like, grammar, not grammar school in the British sense, but in the American sense of, like, first through eighth grade.
Speaker: But... you know it it was partly like a financial thing. like Obviously, we were not quite as wealthy as some others, but also just a cultural thing. like My parents' backgrounds were extremely working-class hardscrabble, so I think that just meant that even if my parents did start to make more money as they got older, they retained a certain kind of I-will-watch-endless-Archie Bunker-type sitcoms and like it is gay to eat vegetables sort of mentality. Yeah. But anyway, i just he reminds me, Andrew, the most of like some of my friend's dads growing up. like He just seems kind of like a well-balanced, happy guy who's like relatively well-off, and he's got his hobbies. You see him gardening and sort of things quite a bit. Yeah, but he doesn't quite have the pretensions of John like grandeur.
Speaker: No, not knowing that's kind of what I mean. is he's He's kind of well-off and seems kind of contented with his well-offness. And by 28, well, they say he's bought the house a few years ago, so probably by like 27, he's got two houses.
Speaker: ah A flat in London and a farmhouse in Sussex, which I was trying to find out whether that was close to where I grew up. I had the same thought. i was like, is this Sam's house? Well, it must be close because in, I think, the latest one...
Speaker: when they interview him when he's like 60, he's like, there's a shot of him like on a family walk with all the dogs and his like children. And it's like, they're in front of, oh, not Ardington, sorry, Arendon Castle, which is maybe 20 minutes from where I grew up. So it's got to be close. You could find him.
Speaker: You could find him. It's pretty round. Yeah. I could, I could hunt him now. But i yeah, I brought him up for specifically that reason, that he, by 28, is sort of like already seemingly planning ah sort of a country escape-based lifestyle. He's effectively retired, yeah. Yeah, he's he's like already an 18th century gentleman, you know? Yeah. by 28 years old. And he kind of, i have to admit, from a for a very like just, I guess, a middle-class perspective, I can put it that way. like He kind of does have it the most together of anyone else we see in this in this documentary. like He seems to have a job that is reasonably boring, but also well-paying.
Speaker: then expends that money on sort of having um nice but not sort of too overreaching and pretentious things. Like he just has his little house with his garden and it's kind of in the countryside. He's got his wife.
Speaker: I believe they they don't yet have kids if I remember but are planning on having kids. Yes, and she's a sort of Yorkshire lass. Yeah, so so he's you know he's not too stuck up to not be with northerner. He sort of has the most, I don't know, there's something kind of idyllic about him. i mean, especially when you especially when you compare him to... um Oh, God, I always get the first names mixed up. all these All these damn Christian names that make make it so hard. um But our other Liverpudlian, who is not Neil.
Speaker: Hi, Pisa. Peter, who by this point is sort of living like the Reverso Dark Evil version of his life, ah where like he has a wife...
Speaker: but is sort of like employed as a teacher in a way that he finds clearly pretty alienating and boring. and like, it basically seems like him and his wife are going to kill each other soon is how I would describe Yeah. Something like ah Michael Apten asks if she loves him and he, she kind of goes, love.
Speaker: it's It's truly that. it It does feel kind of like vindication. Well, we'll get to Neil later, but it is like mild vindication for Neil insofar as in 21 up, they're paired very closely and Neil is in the squat and Peter is, you know, being the guy who plays FIFA 23 hours out of the day in his dorm right at college. Yeah. um And now, like, again, we'll get to Neil, but Peter is now...
Speaker: I would say, like, reaping what he has sown in that respect. Like, he hasn't really managed to go anywhere and seems very unhappy about that fact. Yeah, he's playing in a band. He's playing in some cool, like, i did early sort of post-rock bands, we're assuming. um But that's not really going anywhere. He's got a house.
Speaker: He's Leicester, I think. Yeah, he's in Leicester, which is a weird place to end up. Yeah. That's kind of what I mean. like he's a he's just like a guy. like he's a He's a guy I would meet. It's very nice garden. They have a very nice garden.
Speaker: They didn't take it in, unfortunately. ah it was It was nice. It was quite like um you know what people like rewilding kind of style. That's what we have at at my house. yeah Yes, that kind of garden. It was nice. I like the garden.
Speaker: um ah yeah i mean Doesn't it feel sort of like... If You you know how in the 90s we made... We talked about this a little bit with the Gen X season. and The kind of like evil suburbia movies, you know, where like... Yeah. You kind of take the 1950s and you go really big with it and you you know you turn into a slasher. or you meet You know, Stepford Wives or the movie um pleasant Pleasant Hills or whatever that movie... Pleasant Valley, whatever that movie is called. Yeah. um But...
Speaker: In this case, it's sort of like if you had Mike Lee make that movie where like it was about how suburbia like destroys you or sort of the suburban lifestyle destroys you, but instead of being big, it was kind of like just a quiet drama about how his soul was being sucked out.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, he's not really living in suburbia in the British sense of the word, I suppose. I mean, he yeah he's living like it' in a sort of residential, the industrial city. So probably quite... de mean Suburbia here being used symbolically for the dream of living in your you know in America, be a detached or a semi-detached house in the UK, and sort of like having a decent income and having your kids, the post-war dream.
Speaker: Yeah, he i mean he's doing more of a kind of... I don't think it's... Yeah, because it's it's ah it's an old Victorian tourist house, probably in like in a Leicester, probably... in an area where, like, is majority India. Leicester is, like, heavily, I think it might be, like, 70-80% Indian. So, at this time, less so now, then, probably less then, but still substantially Indian, right? So, yeah, I mean, it's kind of quite similar to my, um well, of different class background, but remember what my uncle and auntie did in the, sort decade later in the 90s, moving to Sheffield as teachers and sort of living in a terrace house in central Sheffield, um which is,
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's slightly a different trajectory to like yeah living in a 1930s semi-detached and driving everywhere. I see what you mean. i I suppose maybe it's worth comparing him to Bruce here because like you hear a teacher and you might think, like I don't know, do-gooder or someone who's like taken on that role specifically because they have a desire to you know i don't know affect the lives of young people. And that is, in fact, where Bruce has ended up. like He has sort of...
Speaker: followed on his like Fabian convictions and sort of like joined the public schooling system, moved into a council flat. like he's like true He's like an ideological teacher, whereas with Peter, it feels very much like he's sort of stumbled into being a teacher. yeah and Just like, well, I've got a history degree. I don't really know what to do with it. He could have kind of gone and converted it into a law degree, but that's not maybe a bit the bit too much of step for him, too much work for him. Yeah, he seems fundamentally...
Speaker: you know You could have gone into journalism, you could have gone to journalism but again, you kind of it would have taken a lot of graft. and yeah Effectively, being a comprehensive history teacher is just like it's quite easy. not Easy easy iss wrong, because it's not an easy job, but it's um the steps are laid out for you. i think they're pretty constructive.
Speaker: Well, and I will say, you know, at the risk of working myself in a school, my wife works in a school and has worked in other schools, I've worked in other schools. There are teachers who are, I would say, like that to an extent to this day. i mean, i at least in the U.S., especially in the public system, you know, their union jobs, they pay, at least in New Jersey, like reasonably well. I mean, you're not going to get like super wealthy, but they're,
Speaker: They're not bad given the economy that we live in, ah you know financially speaking, and they are relatively protected. like ah in New Jersey, for example, if there is like a complaint of of malfeasance of some kind, whether it's you know sexual or financial or you know physical harm,
Speaker: they actually have to like put you in what's called ah a rubber room, which is just like a place they send you while your case is adjudicated because they can't fire you right because of the the strength of the union. So like ah not that i'm and that I'm commenting on that. I'm just saying if you're looking for job security and like a starting salary in like the mid $60,000 range, which is not like super great, but you know over time grows to be more than that,
Speaker: um you will you know you'll be fine. It'll be okay. So I see a bit of that in Peter. I'm trying to think. well i mean I think even now, comparatively, like teachers are paid yeah much less well than American teachers. So $60,000 would be what? $45K maybe in you in pounds. So I would say starting teacher's salary now in the UK is probably thirty So maybe about 40,000 US dollars.
Speaker: That would be true if you were teaching in like a local private school, like ah like a local parish-based Catholic school. Yeah, yeah. um i Peter is interesting. He's probably the one who is most willing and interested in talking about the Thatcherite sort revolution is ongoing at this point in time.
Speaker: Bruce spruce sounds in a little bit on that, I think. Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. But if he's kind of the only one who really wants to bring it up. right And it's a massive shift between the 21 episode, which is 1977, where you're at the tail end of the sort of second bout of labor. So Wilson and Callaghan. You get the winter of discontent in 1979 where like effectively just everything breaks down, the economy stops because of trade. There's inflation, stagflation, there's stagflation because of the oil crisis ongoing. And the unions obviously are...
Speaker: pushing hard for wage increases because, you know, people need wage increases when inflation's running high, understandably. But the, you know, it ends up basically being that like, so someone can correct me on the the proportion of the workforce that ends up on strike in 1979, but it's it's a large proportion of the workforce, especially like, there's like a small union that is like, kind of like,
Speaker: deals with like rubbish collection and grave diggers and stuff like that. So they go on strike. In fact, if there are bodies rotting in the street, they like like it's it's it's winter, like rubbish hasn't been picked up. There are unburied bodies. but the whole like just Everything's melting down. And then i think the IMF have to bail the UK out.
Speaker: And Callaghan, the Labour Prime Minister... basically starts doing neoliberalism. He's a bit like Carter, right? He starts, he's like, neoliberalism avant de l'Etre. He like actually starts doing neoliberalism before Thatcher even gets there because like Britain's fucked.
Speaker: And then, yeah, you get the great sort of Thatcherite revolution starting in late 1979. So by 84, we're deep into that. We all trans, like can the kind of Keynesian social consensus of the law, which all of these people grew up in, right? None of them would have remembered anything else. um It's being like entirely dismantled around them.
Speaker: But I think the key thing is that like none of our cast are actually in any of the industries that are really deeply affected. It's not that like teachers' unions weren't being attacked by Thatcher and the do that you things weren't being liberalized. and There was the institution of the national curriculum under Thatcher, which I think Peter probably would have hated.
Speaker: Can you say more about that? Because I don't i don't know anything about that. Yeah, i'm obviously not an educational specialist, a UK educational policy specialist. But I think basically, like, prior to the Thatcherite government, there was a lot more discretion to each, like, county council to set slightly different curricula. And then so even, and then, like, through that, like, some teacher discretion in terms of what was taught. um And yeah, like, Thatcher was...
Speaker: basically very anti the kind of like institutional privileges of schools and universities um and like yeah did sort of take a slow shower to a lot of that um and tried to centralize things in Whitehall so yeah instituted a basically a national curriculum that had there was a lot less discretion I think in what could be taught effectively it's It's so funny because in the U.S. you have a similar thing with um Common Core, which is the sort of attempt to do something similar.
Speaker: um i mean, obviously substantially later, it's 2008. So it's you know sort of ah this Bush era moving into a Obama era sort of thing.
Speaker: But i it's funny that in the U.S., conservatives have generally speaking... or Or generally speaking, want to abolish the Department of Education as a source of centralization because they but like, well, if local groups in Oklahoma can set educational standards, not to pick on Oklahoma, but, you know, then they're going to maybe maybe we can, you know, basically re-adjudicate the Scopes Monkey Trial or whatever. um Whereas if it's centralized, then they're going to have to teach some of these things that we don't want them to teach um that are basically like cowards in style woke propaganda, although obviously they wouldn't have used that terminology ah you know during the Common Core period.
Speaker: I think it's probably because the sort of teacher training colleges were seen as hotbeds of radicalism in the United Whitehall, as much as it could be a bit of a foe to the Thatcher government, there were good sort of Oxbridge men who could be trusted to sort of ah you know do what they were told and institute is some kind of more rigid ah national curriculum. So think that was sort of the the thinking there. But I just think it's interesting that... like um yeah This is a generation where you could have characters, participants, i should say participants like characters, who could be so really experiencing the deindustrialization of like coal mining, steel production, the docks, shipbuilding, right? Mm-hmm. Like, people one in the 50s are like yeah ah old enough that they could have actually feasibly gone into those industries. But just, I think, because of the selection effects that were going on, like, none of the... Probably because they' pick any working-class kids from the north. They're all from London. We don't actually have anyone really undergoing like the worst of that tourism in this series. There's no Dockers, there's no coal miners, there's no, like, car factory...
Speaker: It does haunt, sort of there is you know it is sort of a specter that haunts the program, though. because yeah Especially, for example, when we get to Neil, who, we'll just let it out, i mean he's basically a vagabond at this point, he's sort of just wandering around. his spaces You know the Simpsons bit where like Bart gets um psychometrically tested? it's like yeah yeah well it was ah It was like a margin of error between you being a policeman and a vagabond, but or a drifter, isn't it?
Speaker: And he imagines being a drifter. He pitches himself in like a trench case. Fuck. Yeah. there You know, like, meh, Carter. He's like... He's kind of got his like hobo bindle. He's like, you know, he's ah checking the hobo sign language outside to see if there's hot soup inside. like That is basically where Neil is. And he remains sort of this... um you know, almost ah outsider are artist sort of figure, right? He still has this very, i don't mean to insult him because I kind of treasure him, but this kind of adolescent mindset that I think, at least i had certainly as a high schooler, which was, you know, sort of like,
Speaker: my brain is so big and I'm so sensitive. And some of these people's brains are so small and not so sensitive. you know like He definitely is. But you can also tell that he like loves his fellow man and like wants good for them, but also kind of resents them at the same time. But I bring him up in this context because he explicitly says, like well, Social Security pays for my rent when I need it and my food, and that's what allows me to sort of like live this lifestyle. And Michael Aptid actually asked him, like,
Speaker: you know well, be basically, doesn't that make you a parasite? and He's like, well, but I would just be doing crime if I weren't if if i didn't get this, so isn't this better? um and I guess we'll see where he lands next because i know watching that Thatcher is happening. So I'm like, well, this guy's in trouble. like you know the The lifestyle that he is living can't last that long, I would imagine, just because those kinds of robust benefits. Yeah, yeah an interesting conjecture. i mean, i'm not I'm not sure what the reform... There must have been some other reform under the Thatcher era
Speaker: Although, again, like a lot less extensive than perhaps you'd imagine. I think a lot of that stuff really got stripped out of the system in the twenty ten s Oh, wow. in Because it in the US, it's definitely the 80s and 90s. That's when that stuff really gets axed. I'm sure there were reforms, but i mean i do I'm pretty sure that like the Dole was you know a fairly you know it was still fairly generous and something that like you know bands and stuff would live on after art college, um well into the ninety s and Mm-hmm.
Speaker: ah yeah I do think, yeah, it passed Thatcher. I think a lot of it did manage to survive Thatcher. Like I know, yeah for instance, my dad went to university in the early 90s and he yeah he got paid to go to university.
Speaker: Wow. Yeah, no, that's that definitely was not. Yeah, there was stuff there was still like some bits of social democracy did get through that that period and out to the other side. And yeah, i don't want to give any spoilers, but yeah, Mule could potentially exist on the doll for longer than you'd expect.
Speaker: All right, well, you know good good for him. i was scared. i mean, I was genuinely quite frightened for him because he there's a sort of terrifying part later on in the interview with him where basically Michael Aptid asks him if um he thinks he can protect his sanity. I don't remember exactly how the question is phrased, but it's sort of like, aren't you afraid of losing your sanity?
Speaker: And then Neil... who seems you know off but like put together, i would say mentally through most of the interview, sort of says something like, well, there have been a few times where I frightened people and lost control.
Speaker: and you sort of don't know exactly what that means, but... you're worried because he's i mean he's somewhere in like the Western Scottish Highlands, I think, at this point. He sort of has spent years wandering. His last job was as a cook in like a children's home or something like that.
Speaker: He just is clearly increasingly isolated from the mass of humanity and is like seemingly seeking out more and more kind of isolated places, basically. ah So I'm worried about Neil. He's sort of shot on this beat. beautiful lock somewhere, or the mountains. And they're sort of like Nietzschean or Heideggerian kind of like musings on yeah consciousness. and That classic painting of the guy, it gets you it's it's such an internet-era painting of the guy whose back is to the, you know, sort of your perspective is you're looking his back as he stands at the edge of a cliff.
Speaker: Casper David Friedrich, is it Wanderer Above the Sea of Clouds? Yeah, he's he's he's doing that, perhaps without realizing. But I think he is important here as a as ah as a mirror, a foil to the rest of them, very strongly. That like...
Speaker: It shows you that even in the old kind of boomer system of of welfare, but also that just the kind of psychic world set up there, it still did produce its, you know, like, quote unquote, refuse. I mean, not that I think of Neil's refuse, but you know what I mean? Like, it still produced that, but it also created more opportunities for that kind of person to exist and survive. Like if Neil were here today, at least in United States, he would almost certainly just be on like Skid Row in San Francisco or Los Angeles or something, right? Like he would be, yeah he would, and and almost certainly drugs would be involved in a way that does not seem to be the case here at all.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know with Neil whether drugs, even now, drugs would be involved because of his personality type would be something of a condition against that. In a sense, he has a kind of, my reading of him is either sort of like low church Anglican or kind of a Methodist or something. Like he's got that like earnest sort of low middle class respectability thing about him, even when he's homeless.
Speaker: Yeah, I can't see him, yeah, even today turning to drinks or drugs so much. I mean, it is interesting. I do think that even post-austerity, mean, the UK's got a lot of problems, but one of the one things I would say for us is that there is a higher floor than in the US.
Speaker: There's probably a low lower ceiling um in terms of like how successful you can be as a graduate. you know Our graduate premiums are massively below the US. But I i think that, yeah, that there is despite austerity, there is...
Speaker: you know more more of a social safety net even now um than those in America. That's not a hard comparison to make. I mean, there you you can get unemployment, you can get certain things, but the benefits have been so stripped and are so closely tied to work. That's the thing in the US. The big reforms of the 90s really come down to making you have to be working in order to get anything, unless you're on disability.
Speaker: right That's the only one that really doesn't function that Disability is doesn't function that way the UK either, and sort of because of that has exploded in the percentage of people. The rates and payments have just gone up massively, because I think it people like logically, rationally see it as way of navigating that yeah it means testing.
Speaker: ah that's going on in any other sectors of of of benefits. But um yeah, it's it's an interesting one. um Yeah, I mean, I think that it would be substantially, it would be true to say it would be substantially harder now, ah but probably not as hard as in America.
Speaker: i'm just I'm interested, and and don't tell me, but i am most I am interested to see what happens to Neil in large part because... It feels like with a lot of the others, and this is probably wrong, but it feels like with a lot of the others, there are maybe like two or three different paths I can expect. You know, like if I go to the three kind of girls from London who are now in various states of remaining or not remaining in the East End, married or having children, right? Like... At this point, I think all three of them, what's it, Sue, Jackie, and... Lynn.
Speaker: Lynn are all... I'm sorry, i apologize to them. It's just that they are, yeah along with ah so along with Peter, can be the hardest for me to remember the names of, but um you know they're all sort of just, I would say, like very normal-seeming, like...
Speaker: East and London people caught up in the social changes of the later 20th century, where like a lot of the conversations with them are about, like do you or don't you want to have children?
Speaker: um Do you think getting married too young is a problem? ah Do you think you miss out if you get married too young? Is it worth remaining in London or should you move to Kent, which I think is where one of them has gone off to now?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, is you are starting to see the shift of the white working in class away from London and towards Essex and Ken. This is the birth of, um ah God, what do they call them? Like the the Essex sort of person, Essex man, you know, more or less. Yes, well...
Speaker: we should, what one of these people people really is like the, uh, you Essex guy really, um, which is Tony, obviously. Um, at this point he is still in the East end though, in 1984. He hasn't quite left. No. Um, think there's a picture of him in a kind of terror, Victorian terrace somewhere. Um, which now is where I like, I'm just finding it on the YouTube thing. It's got like a nice red door and like, uh, a gabled step going down with iron railings. It's probably now like, yeah, I don't know, like the the senior partner, like a graphic design. Um,
Speaker: I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. I'm looking at it. It looks it looks like a nice sort of like maybe like Bow or Hackney kind of house. Yeah, it's probably like worth like a million pounds. Jesus Christ. um I mean, do you said in a previous episode that like I was trying to explain to East End why he would vote conservative. And I think you kind of came down, oh, he's kind of like a Tony Soprano style New Jersey figure. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Did this episode kind of explain that to you a bit more? Oh, 1,000%. No, no. Now that he's like... you So he he is a taxi driver. I guess we should just give that update on the, you know, because he was retraining in that in that way last time.
Speaker: And now he just loves being a taxi driver. Gabby and I love talking about the fact that he, his accent seems to have gotten stronger than As he's become older, like we find him easier to understand as a child than we do as an adult sometimes, especially when he's in like full taxi mode. like There's that scene where he's so excited about telling this story in that very like you know the classic move where you like you land in Kuala Lumpur and you need to get a a taxi and you get a guy who like tells you that the center of the earth is full of seamen.
Speaker: and like you know like you know like You get like a little bit of that from Tony. I mean you know or he i had like a proper East End Cockney cabbie last year. He told me a very literal story about like a saving Tory minister's like daughter from my getting sexually assaulted. This is exactly what I'm saying. like these you know Either they're full of like conspiracy theories or they tell you the tallest tale you've ever heard in your entire life. and you like There's like a chance this is true.
Speaker: But it like it could be, but I don't think it is, you know? Because you you also seem like the kind of guy who would have a deranged life or something like this would happen. So, like, I'm not going to totally discount it, but ah Yeah, and he is giving a really strong Tony. i mean, there is some kind of spiritual unity between New Jersey and Essex.
Speaker: Because it like to Tony is giving strong... Sorry, Tony. Tony Soprano. They're both called Tony. who Jesus Christ. He's giving really top strong Soprano's vibes. He's like lounging in front of this like Georgian country home in like a striped golf shirt.
Speaker: And he's taking up golf, which is a very... like it's it's it's I don't know if this is true. I don't mean to interrupt. It's just my um so many of my like friends or or parents of my friends who are like you know maybe like culturally similar to Tony love golf. like I don't know what it is about golf being the sport for that kind of guy, but it it often is. Yeah. um it yeah and Which is odd because it also, of course, is like, at least in the US, a very sort of maybe not like aristocratic sports, which I imagine it might be in the UK, but more a like upper middle class driver sport. Like a, like a guy who's made his money as like a car dealership owner makes, know, $1.2 That guy's probably golfer.
Speaker: Yeah, I would say like golf probably bottoms out of the upper and commercial upper middle in the UK. You wouldn't see someone like John, for instance, or Andrew. may Andrew maybe, be because he's commercial sister. He might play golf because he'd be good for business. um But I would say, yeah, Charles and...
Speaker: John probably wouldn't be called dead on a golf course. um I would say that the split is more like kind of, you like Piketty, the French economist, uses the term Brahmin left and merchant right.
Speaker: Like, um I would say that the sort of Brahmin upper middle class, say like John, who's a barrister, and um Charles, who's a journalist, we should say it becomes journalist. We haven't said that. would Yeah, they wouldn't be playing golf. But I could see Andrew, like Andrew and Tony would play golf.
Speaker: And then also, I suppose, Peter wouldn't play it because he's a kind of left-wing teacher. So, again, wouldn't want to do that. Would you say tennis is the substitute? I feel like at a certain point in the United States, if you're like an upper-middle-class guy, you make a choice between tennis and golf at a certain point. I feel like John, know what John likes. He likes hunting.
Speaker: But in the US, s we don't we don't have that outlet in the same way. you know That's not really an option. um ah Yeah, tennis is probably more so like cricket. I mean, you'll find out about... i don't think this is too much of a spoiler, but you'll find out how much Bruce is obsessed by cricket in later episodes. I think that's awesome. Bruce is... If I could hang out with one guy here, it might be Bruce only because i find him so sweet.
Speaker: he's He's so clearly like just a sweet man. And i I hope... Yeah, what do we make of well we make it Bruce's trajectory? So he's now, he's somewhere like Beau. He's in like a 1960s council flat, which, again, is like unthinkable to me because now and you can't get a council flat in London if you have an income of any sort, even if there's low income.
Speaker: It's just impossible. Like, you effectively have to be like destitute. um So that is like a real historical relic for me. I'm like, what the fuck? yeah i I am not... I guess I was surprised to you know to remind people, last time we saw Bruce, he was finishing up his degree in math at um at Oxford. i don't remember which college.
Speaker: He does a year in the city, doesn't he? As like an insurance broker or something? Yeah, he tries something like actuarial or whatever sort of you know crazy stuff you do with a math degree. He hes sort of goes through all of that and then comes out as a teacher. And I, um honestly, the main surprise to me was like, they had computers in classrooms as early as 1984 in a public school. and I was going to say, oh I was waiting for your ed tech, your ed tech round. I was like, what the fuck is that? Like, I mean, in a way, I'm not totally surprised because obviously I would have been in school, i don't know, about 15 years later.
Speaker: and we, computers are ubiquitous by that point. We just didn't use them that much, if that makes sense. Like they were sort of, omnipresent, but mostly used for computer lab. Like we had a discrete class that we used computers in. Yeah, so yeah same, same. We had like the ICT, ITC, ICT, ICT. Sky TV, Sky News. Yeah, why not? I mean, I thought maybe it was like,
Speaker: I do you think there's ah a bit of a legacy of like, um this is not the case now. It's like actually done a 180 reverse, but the time, like in the eighty s and nineteen maybe they into the early 2000s, the inner city school, especially London inner city school, was like shorthand for like the worst schools on earth. um And so I wonder if the case of the computer being so prominent was like a kind of like, a lot of those schools ended up being like trial runs for like educational innovation because it was like, we're going to, you know, fix it. Like try and give this, deep yeah, fix it and try and give the most innovative,
Speaker: methodologies and products to like the poorest kids. um So I wonder if that... And it's weird because now those schools are like the best in the country. um This is the... the No, you're you're probably right because in the US that's certainly true. like My wife is teaching a Title I district as I may have said in the podcast before.
Speaker: And yeah that is basically just like a big dark hole for federal and state money. Meaning like you get all of this money and you have to spend it.
Speaker: And the easiest way to spend it that looks good, like where you can kind of produce metrics that don't mean anything, but that, you know, sort of convince your higher ups in this chain of bureaucracy that something good is happening is you do ed tech contracts. So I know a guy who teaches in a local, also title one,
Speaker: school where they got rid of the library and replaced it with some sort of Verizon lab because they did some sort of big ed tech deal with Verizon. and I think it was Verizon. um So they just don't have a library anymore, but they do have some sort of like, you know, Verizon data center like inside the school, like, you know, God knows.
Speaker: You know, the classic example of this was the kind of mid early twenty ten s mid twenty ten s like, one-to-one laptop programs for urban students in the U.S., like inner-city school students in the U.S. We're like, oh, no, like yes, the school building is falling apart. Yes, ah every single teacher here like wants to commit suicide, but your kid will have an iPad.
Speaker: and they you know what i mean? Or they buy the curriculum, which ah they're sold by these awful companies. I could literally rant about this for like two hours probably. Yeah, I mean, it's it it went in a very different direction with inner city London those schools. I mean, actually, we just had the PISA results out.
Speaker: Yeah. We're getting very educationally wonky here. It is quite irrelevant. We had the PISA results out, which is the, for listeners that don't know, it's a kind of um OECD comparative between different countries. Educational testing that happens at 15. I don't know, does the US take that? I don't know. Yeah, we do. yeah yeah Yeah. So the UK is now in the top 10. Not the UK, sorry, England is in the in the top 10 globally for reading and maths.
Speaker: which is like ah one good piece of news that we've had in like 40 years. ah It really is. um But like Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have all done terribly. they've like dropped They've like plummeted over the last couple of years.
Speaker: um And a lot of people put that down to wow a lot of educational reforms that happened under Blair. ah Again, don't want to give Blair credit for much, but I will give him credit for this. And Michael Gove, the Tory educational secretary, again, don't want to give that generation Tories credit for much at all, but...
Speaker: I will say that the a lot of the focus wasn't this, what you're saying with title on schools in a city district. It was very much more like, um how do we... that It was like very strict, like massively but like behavioral strictness, recruiting...
Speaker: like recruiting teachers for like five years since from ah Oxford and LSE, all from like the army. um a big focus much more on like knowledge and exams rather than coursework and skills. um And yeah, just sort of like a lot of it was like appealing to kind of second generation, first generation immigrant parents like ambition for their kids. Yeah.
Speaker: and trying to like maybe spread that ambition to like um poor poor performing demographics, often white working class kids being the ones who are the poorest performing. And yeah, they've done... like A lot of the inner city schools now get 30, 40 people into Oxford. State schools get 30, 40 people into Oxford a year. We're not doing that in the US. We just got rid of sight words, which is where they... which You know about this already. that you know Columbia... like you know, oh, what if what if they learn to read by memorizing what words look like? And somehow this, you know, they used every fake education statistic under the sun to convince people this was a good idea.
Speaker: so i this is the one thing I will give the Tories credit for is that they they did sort of stage a revolution against that in like 2010. Yeah, well, we need we need a cultural revolution against that in the United States. Yeah, we'll find out what... We need barefoot teachers. Yeah. I mean, barefoot teachers.
Speaker: it just Bruce and Peter who end up as teachers? i I think so, yeah. And I find it, that's kind of what I was trying to highlight earlier, though, is how different their attitudes toward it are. Like, they're both kind of left-leaning. They're both probably our most overtly left-wing sort of people, right, I would say, amidst the groups that we have.
Speaker: They both become teachers. I suppose Charles charles is kind of going his left wing, but they're more sort of liberal. Charles, to me, is like increasingly becoming the most evil member of this grouping. Self-indulgent. Because, okay. Well, he doesn't appear in this. No, he doesn't. And neither does John, which is why we... Basically, like John gets married. it in It's like announced in the Times or something. I don't remember exactly. you know But he's he doesn't want to be interviewed. He's a barrister. He's a chancery official of some kind.
Speaker: And then ah but it Charles is now an editor at – he works at the BBC. He was previously in a newspaper and now he's at the BBC. And Charles, is to me, is increasingly evil-seeming, which is probably unfair of me. And if you listen to this, Charles, I'm sorry. But like you were right when you said on the last episode that he's going to Durham and it's actually kind of more insular and like even less sort of open to the world and its experiences. Because, you know, I don't know, I was sort of expecting him to maybe become a Trotskyist or, you know, I don't know, have some kind of actual like outlet for himself, but he just sort of becomes John, but like liberal.
Speaker: Like, in in the sense that he's immensely privileged, obviously uses those connections to get himself, like, tough-to-get job, and then refuses to participate in the documentary. Which, with John, there's a kind of, like, imperiousness that allows me to accept that. Yes. Like, you know, and not that i was happy to see him not there, but it's it's in keeping with who he is supposed to be. He's supposed to scorn me as the viewer. Like, that's his job, right? Whereas yeah our BBC man here is not supposed to. He's supposed to be this, like he's producing things for the people. he's ah
Speaker: He chose, he didn't go to Oxbridge. you know he's He's more liberal, he's more open. And then he still closes himself off. I don't know, there was something that rubbed me the wrong way about that. And it's just a deep irony that the one person who ends up in basically the same job is Michael Apted.
Speaker: Yes. Good point. Good point. And she's like, kind of like, I would have the most insight into the dynamics of making the show. It could possibly like add like a real level self-reflexivity to Could actually like discuss the journalistic ethics of producing this. which you know are i think should be commented on more because it is kind of fucked up in some ways uh he's absent right um it's a bit like i think of it is it was there a catholic experiment where they found like a homeless boy and like enclosed him in an eve and in a monastery and then he didn't see if he developed human language or not ah not to my knowledge not to my knowledge pretty on this There was an experiment on a boy. They found like a sort ah a savage boy in the French countryside or something and put him in a... Refused him all human contact like 10 years to see if he'd develop his own language.
Speaker: I won't be completely imagining this. but um Same as hallucinating anti-Catholic prop. This is like some black legend shit that's being... Turns out that that part is part of Blair's reforms were removing all of these like black legend stories that were still in the British education system. Yeah. It's drummed into us at my Anglican school. um But yeah, I do feel like, or even just like ah a Janet Malcolm style, you know, is it the merger and the journalist style? Maybe like philosophical reflection on the process of this film being made and whether, you know, the power dynamics within it. um I think he'd be the most interesting person to comment on that stuff. And yeah, he just ducks out. And apparently he was, Michael Aptid had phoned him up and they just like, he just lost it. Apparently this is what happened. He just starts, Charles just starts like screaming it. Which is, odd wish of all the characters, you'd kind of least expect from him because he's quite mellow in the other.
Speaker: i just think it's that it's it's knowing where he comes from and seeing him, i don't know, sort of like play up his difference to John and to Andrew, like, you know, especially in the 21 one. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah Although also to some extent in the 14. Yeah. And you kind of, I guess he just didn't live up to my hopes for him. Do you know, I really wanted him to rebel, you know, if that's who he was going to be.
Speaker: And, you know, actually that allows us to talk about Susie, who does participate and who is just totally domesticated now, has just like collapsed back into where she's come from basically entirely. um Yeah, but i would but I would say that that sounds negative, but actually it's probably quite positive thing for her. Oh, yeah, no, I... She doesn't seem... try i It's not like a domestic... At 21, she's really miserable. Yes. And I think a contemporary or someone maybe who's slightly anti-family or very easy progressive might go, oh, this...
Speaker: the process domestication that she's undergone is kind of patriarchal or a kind of entrapment. Um, or she's become this like miserable posh housewife, but it's not that it's like ah a stabilization. It's a sort of clearly her family background is actually quite unstable, at least in not economically, but interpersonally. This is a kind of ballast.
Speaker: It feels like that. She's suddenly, it's a very, i mean, she's probably the most transformative of any of them in this easily. And I think that... And I agree with you that it's it seems to be a positive transformation, but mostly because it doesn't seem like she ever really... i don't know. My wife got very mad at her 21 Up because her rebellion is sort of just to go... She just kind of goes to Paris and smokes a lot of cigarettes. like It's not really clear that she...
Speaker: even knew what she was doing in her rebellion, if that makes sense. It's not very, it's not substantive. No, it's not as if she sort of had some kind of ideological conversion that led her to like break with her family and upbringing, which is what it seems like Charles is having, which is part of reason I'm so mad at him. Like I said that he would see, he seemed like he was going to become a hippie and he kind of moves in that direction and then just becomes like, you know, Beto O'Rourke or something basically. And I don't know. I just, I find that sort of, He even goes to Oxford, doesn't he, for master's? He just reminds me, have you ever listened to any Slate podcast?
Speaker: Like a podcast made by Slate, the the website? Oh, of course. Was Ezra Klein in part of Slate for while? he was Vox and then New York Times, but... the Similar, similar. I know Slate, there's that meme, isn't there? It's like the most, ah every other couple, and it's like the most racist man alive. Yes, yes. And ordinary woman. It's like, hey, have you all read that Slate article sent around? Yes, and that's like, so Slate has a podcast that I would occasionally listen to years ago called Decoder Ring, which as an idea is like a decent podcast. It's basically like some sort of pop culture or cultural object that they sort of like trace the history of. So some of these are, i remember they had one on like truck nuts, which are those weird like testicles. that men attach to the backs of their pickups. like you know like It was interesting, ah but whenever sometimes it became extremely annoying because i was listening to this in 2017, which culturally was a you know a time where I think we different a different time and we we overreached in some ways. um not that Listen, the Cultural Revolution is not complete.
Speaker: I'm not saying that it was bad. I'm just saying that we didn't always apply our efforts in the right ways. so It's still a phrase. or it's you know We're still we're still sort negotiating the contradiction. to still ah you know Google Isabel Fall if you want to know a little bit more about how things could go too far. Anyway,
Speaker: Yeah, so Charles is, ah hopefully he comes back. Maybe it's time we talk about Paul, our Australian sort of gentleman, who, i am sorry, has become Australia incarnate. like i and i And we all know how I feel about Australia.
Speaker: They ask him a lot, do you feel you're better off in Australia than the UK? And he says yes. And the answer does seem like it's probably yes. like He has so fully given himself over to the sort of like Australian lifestyle that I cannot imagine him as just like... There's that great thing when they ask him at 14. They say, what do you remember of the UK? He's like, it seemed to have been raining all the time. you know that's That's his only memory. And now half the shots are like him.
Speaker: and he's sort of like... ah his his sort of but a wife who seems to have been cut from the stone of the Australian outback somehow, like wandering in a van all the way to Darwin on the West Coast.
Speaker: Yeah, there's like there's like slightly racially insensitive, like kind of like anthropologically incorrect, or well correct, you know, world music. but Yes, no, it's like... as a Paul is a is a is is a dying breed of man, which is like...
Speaker: Just a guy who... if Okay, well, actually, backing up here, I came to like Paul more. The first part of this segment of him is literally him just being a van life guy with his wife.
Speaker: And that... Yeah, they like doing it before it's here. But that made me want to wring his neck because, again, anything like ah truly Australian upsets me. um But in the latter half...
Speaker: they're asking his wife all these questions about him. And he really just does seem kind of like a beautiful, sensitive, kind of humble soul, and like a nice man. you know like he's he keeps She talks about how he keeps saying, whenever you ask for his opinion, I think, oh, I'm just a bricklayer. you know what do I know about anything? And like it's not that that's necessarily the best thing, but that humility is so fundamentally missing from like anyone or anything I encounter in my daily life that I was like, including myself, I'm not pretending to be any better than ah than than the average person in this respect, that I was just like, wow, like a guy who actually just is just like wants to live his life and raise his kids and is not, you know, ah immediately, i don't know, taken up by like the Pizzagate conspiracy the second he turns like 41 years old. Like, I don't know. Yeah, he's also...
Speaker: He's also probably the best, like, know, I'm a heterosexual man, but I think I can say this about another heterosexual man. Probably the the best looking. he Yes. ah but He has a bit of a guard because he's yeah he's a weird looking guy when he's 21 and 14. Yeah, but he grows. He's a weird, weird looking guy. I told, he just he's pretty, it's pretty hot. I told my wife that he's the only one I can see as an actor. Like if I saw him in a movie, not as like a leading man, but he would make a great character actor because he has such a distinctive face that like you could really... Yeah, the mustache is good. Yes, and the mustache. like
Speaker: If I saw him in like, oh, what's that frigging movie, the Sam Peckinpah movie, I think it's Sam Peckinpah in the UK... ah Straw Dogs. You know Straw Dogs? Do you mean John Gray's magnum opus about Confucian? ah is if If you told me he was like one of the guys in Straw Dogs who's like coming in to murder the main character in the house at the end, i would do if he was like a backcountry English hick, I would believe you. And I mean that with love in my heart, not with...
Speaker: Not with any negativity. He's an aesthetic looking guy, yes. And I think his wife, she's just like, oh, think he's really attractive. I like his little bum and his little shorts. They're hard not to like because of their just sort of like goofy Australian, like earnest humility. I don't know. There's something there that I find... ah Yeah, nice. Yeah, I also like that they kind of the hippie thing that Charles doesn't do, but they're not self-conscious or annoying about it. Yes, yeah. They're effectively doing the dropout tune, was it dropout tune off, whatever it was, the Timothy Leary 760s, but they're effectively doing that, but they're not like...
Speaker: They're not ceremonious about it. No. Well, and he's just a bricklayer who seems to enjoy... He works with one other guy, then his wife's like, i'll die feelock he's getting and i can't fuck it i I can't do it. But I don't feel like he's getting enough social stuff. So she like kind of makes him play basketball, which is really funny to me. like I don't know.
Speaker: Paul has really grown on me. um i And I think... He is a good representative. It really is amazing how it worked out for this series of, like like you said, the people who left the UK in the 60s and 70s for these sort of Commonwealth countries. And in many cases, I think, made the right decision. Australia remains, like, all things considered, a kind of bizarrely stable country to this day ah compared to a lot of what's going on in Europe in the US.
Speaker: was saying to my mum the other time, I never think about Australia. She's like, there, underneath us. just sort of looming, it's like a, ah like the the black bit behind the mirror that makes the mirror work, you know? It's just like it's just disconcerting. It's like disconcerting that it's just there. don't know.
Speaker: I've got a few... I've got a mate who's married to an Australian. Yeah, like, what? And he goes down every once a year because her family is still there. And I'm just like, I don't... They might as well be going to Mars. Because even with modern travel, it's days and days of travel away. There's no easy way to get there.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's interesting that he is probably the only one really brings out the colonial legacy of England in that way because you could kind of see maybe like Andrew as a lawyer, right, like a corporate lawyer ending up in Hong Kong or something or Singapore. Yeah.
Speaker: But as far as I can tell, he does it that doesn't that doesn't happen for him. so It is interesting, though, to see them, if we want to talk about just generally like how the 80s differs from today, because part of the point here, I guess, is to think about the scope of the 20th century, at least the mid to late 20th century into the 21st, is, again, how easily each of them just kind of gets set up and Yes, we should discuss this, yeah. And also, even though they get set up easily, how that doesn't necessarily translate into a lack of malaise.
Speaker: So we kind of touched on this earlier with um with Peter, and we've touched on it to some extent with Susie, not Susie, sorry, Lynn, Jackie, and Sue, Susan, um who all sort of are now...
Speaker: kind of in like potentially loveless, at least in a couple of cases. Jackie says she doesn't want to have kids, seems to resent marriage, um but also like have home lives and worry about money, but aren't like arent on the the edge of destitution, it doesn't seem like, and are not renting, as best I can tell, um although they might be.
Speaker: And Paul is similar. i think one of them maybe has a... Council House, one of them mentions a mortgage, i think. Yeah. But yeah, it's it's sort of unclear. But it's not like a topic of conversation at minimum.
Speaker: Yeah. And the only one who really has the most kind of precarious job is is Simon, right? Yeah. ah he probably has the sort of lowest, most unskilled job. But even Simon, he's not like... He five children. He probably has what now would be considered the most precarious job. He's somehow like, not like that's just about money.
Speaker: Yeah, right? Yeah. it's No, he's got five kids. he Now granted... part of it is that Simon has like achieved stoic apatheia. There's that moment in the interview where he where he says to Michael, you keep asking me if I'm worried about things. Why do you use that word? And then he changes to, does it concern you? And he says, there's a different word. No, it doesn't concern me. like like he just He seems to just be able to, everything just flows right off his back. He has mastered the way of the Tao.
Speaker: Yeah, like he's constitutionally incapable of being worried, basically, it seems like. um Even if he was constitutionally capable, like the wages bought enough at that point in time, but he probably still wouldn't pay that point, I don't know.
Speaker: Because remember, you know, he's still at the same job as last time. They actually kind of do him dirty on this where they have him saying like, in the last one. Oh, I kind of hope I'm not still working at, again, it has a specific name, but to me, it's just the Iceland, like, warehouse where he moves around frozen foods. um I think it's, wall that's Wool's Sausages.
Speaker: yeah exactly he's just He's working in like the sausage cooler, basically. And he's like, oh, ah I definitely won't be there in seven years. you know it's just it's it's i hope I think beyond that. And then they just kind end like, yeah, still there. It's fine.
Speaker: like you know kind of like that I know what to do. And they ask him, do you want to move up the chain? He's like, yeah, not really. i don't really want the responsibility for all that. He just is like imperturbable. he you know he He's like, I like routine. My kids go to bed same time every night.
Speaker: do you think that's a product of... him as a person or is it a kind of defense mechanism against like disappointment and sort of you know, the structural potential disadvantages that he does experience, like, you know, as being simultaneously, know, not to be too woke here, but like, you know, simultaneously like, you know, Afro-Caribbean, you know, single parent household, working class, all those things. Yeah, and raised by his white mom. Yeah, and out of wedlock as well, and obviously their children's home much longer than Paul was. I think Paul was there for one or two years, and he was there for, was it 18? No, 13. leaves at 13.
Speaker: um that's it Okay, say but so a considerable amount of time. like Yeah, is it? Because obviously Atraxia, like Stoical Atraxia, is kind of like a a response mechanism the Romans to like a a chaotic empire, right? You can't really feel about the things that are outside your control. It's almost AA, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, I wonder whether his poise, his kind of tranquility and poise is cultivated as a kind of defense mechanism. I think you're probably right. You can see some of that in, i think, the way he's changed over the series. Early on, there was always an element of what you're describing, but there's a kind of like indignation on behalf of his mother that we see in some of the earlier episodes, as I recall.
Speaker: um a certain degree of... Not, again, he always has a certain like a wisdom about him, but there's There's a little more desire beyond what he has early on, I would say, and he kind of states that, or you see it in his affect.
Speaker: Now, you don't see that. i did One thing I do find interesting about him, though, is first of all, he seems to have adopted more of a Jamaican accent now than he had as a child, is something I feel like I noticed, um which may just be a product of him...
Speaker: culturally identifying and living amongst more kind of like Jamaican immigrants or people from the Caribbean immigrants. um yeah Yeah. he's married to a Jamaican, sort of African-American. Yeah. And so that's obviously part of it.
Speaker: It's just, it's interesting, much like with Tony, where his accent has become actually like more cockney over time. In this case, Simon has kind of I just find it we don't, it's not covered in the documentary at all, but it would be interesting to know more about and think about because he really is part of the first generation of like larger scale mixed race, you know, British people. Because i think, as you said recently, the first group of Jamaicans is this boat docks in what, 55, I think you said, you know, based on how old these kids are.
Speaker: he would have only been born a few years later, right? Like not very much later than that at all. And he's raised by is his white mother, but now as an adult is choosing to live seemingly predominantly among and certainly is married to black British people, right?
Speaker: So he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would like talk about that very much. And he certainly doesn't in the documentary, right? But there's got to be something there, and it's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, I think the last thing that we should do, just because it's a become tradition here, it might be worth my musing about where I think some of them might end up. Although, it is sort of fundamentally less interesting as they get older, just because...
Speaker: It feels like the universe of things I could guess are fewer, you know minus... Last dependency, right? Yeah, because it's kind of just like, you know what am I going to say? One of them is going to get struck by lightning? I guess it's possible, but that wouldn't really be the point, right? So I do think, and I don't know if this will happened happen by 35 or if it'll be 42, but there are few people where I i think divorce is like a real possibility.
Speaker: like Certainly for someone like Jackie, she just doesn't really seem that happy. with her life and says she, and I kind of appreciated this actually, she says at one point that she doesn't want to have children because she's selfish. And like, I know that is sort of a bugbear thing, but you know, as someone who has like a million animals and it is extremely exhausting, i think that, very often that is just the reality. And I don't mean that in a judgmental way. It's just that like you lose a lot of time to taking care of anyone or anything, whether it's a child or an animal or whatever. And so I think Jackie very like honestly in a refreshing way to me, was just sort of like, no, I kind of care about doing my own thing too much. And i may not that may not be me, but I at least can sort of respect that honesty. But even in that, she sort of is talking about money problems, marriage is kind of a scam, especially getting married young.
Speaker: yeah she just doesn't seem all that happy. So it's hard for me to imagine that she will stick around in that way. But who knows? And then with some of the others, I mean... Again, it's like, what what do you say? am kind of interested to see how they're able to carry on some of this prosperity into the future. It's like someone like Paul, for example, is he just going to be able, because he himself says, like you can't be a bricklayer forever because it's very physically taxing work.
Speaker: So I'm a little curious to see what he does with that because he's clearly not like a very ambitious person in in a kind of a commendable way. um but the kind of work he does probably he can only do for another couple entries, really, like realistically, because he owns his own company at this point, right? Yeah, bricklaying is tough on the air tough on the body.
Speaker: Yes, and you know i ah many of them, it's like, I kind of hope John comes back right I hope that Andrew comes back, or sorry, that Charles comes back. Neil, well, based on what you said earlier, I assume he'll still be wandering, though it's hard to know as the Thatcher years proceed what that may or may not mean for him.
Speaker: Peter is another character, sorry, there I go, participant, who you're sort of I don't know what to expect from him. I mean, him and his wife do not seem to care about each other all that much.
Speaker: They have not had kids up to this point and don't necessarily seem that interested in the idea. um But not for the stated reasons that Jackie gives. He's clearly quite miserable in his career and as well.
Speaker: So yeah, he's one of them where like there's kind of this question of will he or won't he continue to be a teacher? And I fear he will only because it is such a classic teacher trap to be a miserable teacher who does it to get to the pension.
Speaker: um but Who knows? um Maybe he'll be like an ardent playwright by the mid-90s. Do you still think Bruce is going to come out come out as gay? No, that is... Well, it's possible. I mean... Fetching little polo shirt. He's wearing a very fetching white polo shirt. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly possible. um But it's hard because it would only really be, I think, in the next entry that that would, you know, because obviously people did come out as gay long before 1984. I don't mean to suggest that's not the case. But it does feel to me like, especially in the wake of the AIDS crisis, that that's when the move to towards like owning the identity became...
Speaker: more central um for for, I guess, obvious reasons. So maybe it's certainly possible. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if Jackie but came out as gay either, just because ah she just seems to hate her husband so much. and i slept the short hack She's gone with the 80s short hair. She seems to just detest her husband. I don't know. that That's just me spitballing. Yeah.
Speaker: you are it' ah Did you notice anything interesting about John's wedding ah notification the Times? Anything that you could... Any clues? No, unfortunately it shot across too quickly, so no, I did not. I didn't pause you mean Was it a Catholic church? Is that why?
Speaker: no, it wasn't. but um there's a ah You'd have to do some digging to maybe figure out where that's going to go, but there's there's something about this little Easter egg as sort of annoying film clips.
Speaker: ah And then, oh we you know, whoen sort of skiate we don't have time now to talk about him, but we wish we should at least give prediction because we also didn't talk about Nick, he's now in America. um Oh shit, I totally forgot about Nick entirely. Yeah, he's in your end of the neck of the woods, so he's over the bottom, dude.
Speaker: Yeah, Nick is now a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He's a physicist. He's worked on nuclear fusion, which is kind of great because that is the classic like mid-century like hope for nuclear energy thing that guys did, which is is fine. He's in a relationship with like a woman who seems like she should be on Sex and the City, or he's married to her, in fact. Yeah.
Speaker: What I mean by that is that they both seem sort of like very professional and independent and kind of chafe against each other in that way, but also that seems to bring them together. Yes. um They're like the maybe the most like yuppie-ish in some ways of the couples. Yeah, they're very well-dressed.
Speaker: Sort of like lounging about Madison, like watching the... day Yeah, and and i'm I'm interested to see if he gets sort of like more American over time, right? Because if he lives the rest of his career... In the US, there will be a point at which he'll have been there longer than the UK, and that has to, you know, he's only been there a couple of years by the point of this this particular entry, right?
Speaker: So he hasn't really been there that long, but give it another 14 years, who knows, you know? Yeah, I felt for his kind of like, I know I've sort of been trained by the English educational system, came up the other end and they just didn't really want me.
Speaker: There was no place for me. i feel I feel that. As someone who's kind of considered moving to America many times, yeah, I do understand that that that instinct. um Yeah, it'd be interesting see if he ends up like working for the Pentagon or something.
Speaker: Ends up working for Lockheed Martin. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's everyone. So, and you yeah, yeah. Adieu, dear listener, until next time. Yes, until next time, check us out on patreon.com slash deathphotopod.
Speaker: Twitter, deathisafotograph at deathphotopod and deathphotopod at gmail.com. With that, I wish you all a hearty bye-bye.
