Monty Python explained it best:
Eric: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier?
Michael: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
Graham: A cup o' COLD tea.
Eric: Without milk or sugar.
Terry J: OR tea!
Michael: In a cracked cup, and all.
Eric: We never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
Graham: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
Terry J: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
Michael: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."
Eric: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
Graham: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing and we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
Terry J: You were lucky to have a ROOM! We used to have to live in a corridor!
Michael: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
Eric: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpolin, it was a house to US.
Graham: We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
Terry J: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in a shoebox in the middle of the road.
Michael: Cardboard box?
Terry J: Aye.
Michael: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down the mill for fourteen hours a day week in week out, for sixpence a week. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
Graham: Luxury! We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hour a day at the mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
Terry J: Well of course, we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
Eric: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our Mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."
Michael: And you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
All: They won't.. End.
Englishman.
