You had one bath a week whether you needed it or not. You knew with iron certainty what was for tea on any given day of the week. There was every possibility that grown-ups, known to you or not, might clout you. But being a child of the 1950s endowed you with privileges that could only have been dreamt of by previous generations. Free secondary education and health services and, for a while, a booming economy and full employment - not that you knew much about that as a kid. Did the baby-boomers, the beneficiaries of all of this, build a better world on the back of their advantages? Did they turn out to be progressive or just self-satisfied and selfish? In this series of essays that range from politics to education to sport and bits of silliness, a boomer paints the world. You can judge if it's a pretty picture.