Well, grudgingly I have to admit that is the first bit of real commonsense I've ever seen displayed on this site! For a woman (I think you are a woman, your photo is a bit stewed prunishly ambiguous) of 197 years of age your mind is still kicking goals on matters social and political.

Now if only you could just get over your blind spot about that layabout great grandson of yours you could be a role model for our generation. I know blood is thicker than water but your great grandson is just frigging thick, to the order of about 9 planks. All that bolshie stuff about those pinko firemen traitors makes my frigging blood boil. Pay?! They should frigging do it for nothing, it's a civic duty. More pay isn't going to put food on the table. Go to bloody Oxfam like the rest of the frigging working classes do! Those uppity bastards are getting too big for their size 15s. During the big firemen's strike in Australia in 1947 we lost about 4000 people in just one week. They talked about rights and privileges back then like these frigging communistic bastards are now.

Rights and frigging privileges!? Back in '47 old people were living in frigging terror. They couldn't so much as nod off in a comfy lounge chair with a lit ciggie for fear that next morning the milkman would pass by next morning to find just a pile of ash and a charred filter tip where once sat old Fred Henderson the legendary 5 packs a day man. Hang the bastards I say. And that great grandson of yours for good measure. Sorry to sound so harsh, but kiddies like him are the piss in the genetic pool and the dry rot in the family tree. Prune him now love.

Your Henry sounds one hell of a man. They broke the mould when they made men like Henry and my Bruce. Our Bruce put his age up when he volunteered for the Crimean war. He was only 7 years old but conned the army into thinking he was 11 by gluing some wombat fur to his tossle and forging a note from his mum. I still miss the old bugger even though he's been gone for nearly half a century. Well not really gone. I've got his ashes on the mantlepiece in a decorative jar that one of the local kiddies made for a Kalgoorlie fete that was raising funds to support General Franco's fight against the Commos. She had decorated a 10 pound Vegemite jar with glitter, icy pole sticks and wombat fur so I couldn't resist it could I?

I like to think Bruce is just sitting up there, at home with a jar as always. I occasionally pick it up, feel the soft warm wombat fur and I feel a little fire starting down below, if you know what I mean love. I can tell you that if that firemen's strike isn't nipped in the frigging bud there won't be enough frigging mantlepieces in the whole of England to house the innocent victims of those bastard's frigging treason.