don't go all the way / get off prior to blackpool

Roy R. Behrens, Clockwise (©2026), digital collage

ANON [English woman from the 1920s about preventing pregnancy] We were on the bus and Harold knew the conductor and he asked Harold if we were married. He said "Don't forget, always get off the bus at South Shore, don't go all the way to Blackpool." That was how they kept the family down.

what old age is really like / illusion & despair

Roy R. Behrens, Automaton (©2026), digital collage

Doris Grumbach in "What Old Age Is Really Like" in The New York Times (I November 1998), Op Ed Section—

The most lamentable loss in the elderly spirit is the erosion of hope. The climate of the old country is pessimism. Oscar Wilde's mother wrote: "Life is agony and hope, illusion and despair, all commingled, but despair outlasts all."