Madam, - My grandmother was wont to aver that "eaten bread is soon forgotten". How right she was - in the light of latter-day treatment of our older citizens.
Those people of her generation were the progenitors of recycling, long before the word was ever used, and eons ahead of the birth of green politics.
They darned and sewed, rebored belts and mended braces. Clothes were not taken to the "bring centre", but were taken to the cousins. Glass milkbottles were washed and put out again, while Cidona and TK bottles were useful for claiming back the valued tuppence deposit. They took shoes to the cobblers, and got their wet-cell wireless batteries recharged every other week. They did not have the luxury of food left-overs, but skins and peelings were brought down to augment costly pig-meal. Stamps, bottletops and - courtesy of the foolhardy and dissolute - silver paper from Gold Flake or Sweet Afton were deferentially donated to the local nuns. In return we got Dairy Milk bars for our philanthropy.
Every household had its own drawer that one had to heave out, for it contained a bewildering trove of nuts, screws, washers, wires, bolts, and such like. -One's own DIY store in situ. Many people cut their own turf and, in the hot hayfields of high summer, the farmer and his wife twisted from the hay itself the securing hay-ropes.
Oh, they were a resourceful lot - wilful waste made woeful want, they taught us. And now that they are in the autumn and winter of their lives, what is their reward for such resourcefulness and thrift?
It is this: one size fits all. They are given refuse bins that they cannot fill, and refuse charges that they cannot pay. Surely to goodness it is not beyond science and compassion to give them half-size bins, and a national waiver on refuse charges/flat fees.
If, as a barometer of our civilisation, we put a weather eye on the value and respect given to older people, the glass appears to me to be truly at an all-time low. - Yours, etc,
Cllr JOE CONWAY, Roselawn, Tramore, Co Waterford.