Kids today will never get it,
and I know that sounds proper old,
like I’m one bad knee away
from moaning about the cold.
But fuck me, life was different then,
Hull was rough and full of graft,
we had fuck all in our pockets
but still found ways to laugh.
No phones glued to our faces,
no WiFi having a fit,
if you were bored you went outside
and made your own dumb shit.
A bike with one dodgy brake,
a football flat as sin,
some lad shouting, “Block’s on,”
and everyone piling in.
Kerby in the middle of the road,
knock off ginger at some poor sod’s door,
then legging it like bank robbers
though we’d only knocked once more.
Street lights were the warning,
not a text saying, “Where are you?”
When they flickered on, you knew,
best get home before you’re screwed.
My first computer love was Alex Kidd,
Master System, proper pain,
lose your life on the last level
and the bastard made you start again.
No saves.
No mercy.
No little cloud in the sky.
Just me sat there raging
asking pixels why.
You’d blow the cartridge like a genius,
slap it back in with hope and fear,
then sit there for another three hours
like that was a career.
And we loved it.
Because we didn’t need updates,
or battle passes, or paid skins,
just one controller that half worked
and a brother shouting, “I’m in.”
Then the teen years came in filthy,
all bad plans and louder tunes,
raves, sweat, disco biscuits,
and getting home sometime near noon.
PlayStation memory card in hand,
walking round to someone’s gaff,
SmackDown on the tiny telly,
four lads threatening to scrap.
No online chat.
No headset abuse.
No twelve year old calling me trash.
Just your mate cheating with The Rock
then denying it, the daft twat.
My first phone looked like a calculator
that had lost the will to live,
then a Motorola brick came next,
you could use it in a fight and it’d forgive.
Then Nokias, little legends,
bouncing off walls and floors,
no internet, no weird apps,
just Snake and texts that cost more.
If I wanted to see my mate
I had to actually move my arse,
walk half an hour in the rain
just to hear, “He’s gone out, Chris.”
So off I went again,
round parks, cut throughs, and estates,
looking for smoke, cheap cider,
and the usual useless mates.
Half the time you never found them,
just wet feet and a mood,
but somehow that still felt better
than watching life through YouTube.
I weren’t an angel either.
Let’s not chat bollocks here.
I did stupid shit, nicked motors, bikes,
twocing round with no fear.
Not proud of it, not bragging,
just telling it how it sat,
we were thick, wild, bored and broken,
and trouble knew where we were at.
But it was outside.
It was real.
It had rain and roads and smell.
Not some bright screen feeding kids
a brand new kind of hell.
Because yeah, I lost childhood early,
and that bit still makes me sick.
Mine weren’t taken by the internet,
mine was taken by adults being pricks.
Adults who should’ve cared.
Adults who should’ve known.
Adults who took safe places
and turned them into shit you don’t outgrow.
So I’m not pretending it was perfect,
it bloody wasn’t, not for me.
There were laughs, yeah, but under them
was stuff no kid should see.
Still, I’d take those streets again,
those bikes, those knocks, that rain,
before a world where kids sit quiet
while strangers crawl inside their brain.
That’s the bit that gets me.
We had dangers you could point at,
a dodgy bloke, a rough estate,
now danger comes with usernames
and tells them, “Trust me, mate.”
Kids know too much now,
but somehow less as well,
they can find the whole world in seconds
and still not know themselves.
They don’t know the sound of boredom,
proper boredom, thick and slow,
the kind that made you build a ramp
then nearly die for the show.
They don’t know knocking for someone,
and waiting while their mum checked in,
or hearing, “He’s not coming out,”
and taking that one on the chin.
They don’t know being unfindable,
not lost, just gone for a bit,
no map, no tracker, no blue ticks,
just freedom smelling faintly of shit.
And maybe I sound ancient,
like one of them old lads in pubs,
but fuck it, we had something
even with the knocks and scrubs.
We had bruises.
We had stories.
We had daftness in our hands.
We had miles between each other
and still somehow made our plans.
Kids today have got everything
pressed flat behind a screen,
but they’ll never know the madness
of the world before it went clean.
No filters.
No likes.
No perfect little life on demand.
Just Hull, old games, bad choices,
wet trainers, smoke, street lights,
and mates you had to actually find.
Kids today will never fucking understand.