A man who described himself as “very traditional” has called for a return to “traditional values”, before admitting he could not remember which year those values were last available in the shops.
Speaking after reading three consecutive headlines and “getting a sense of things”, the man said the country had become “unrecognisable” and that the solution was to “go back” to a simpler time when everyone “just got on with it” and nobody had to think about anything complicated, such as other people existing in public.
When asked to clarify what he meant by “traditional values”, he listed a series of principles including “respect”, “hard work”, and “common decency”, then paused to check whether those were the ones that involved him being listened to without interruption. He later confirmed the tradition he missed most was “being able to say things and have them land the way they sounded in my head”.
Family members said the man’s idea of tradition appears to be a collage of television adverts, half-remembered school assemblies and a general sense that doors used to shut more firmly. “He says he wants the old days back,” said one relative. “But he also wants next-day delivery, cheaper petrol and for his streaming service to stop asking him if he’s still watching.”
Observers noted that the man’s nostalgia is highly selective, with enthusiasm for “bringing back” the parts of history that sound relaxing and a firm preference for forgetting the parts of history that involved damp, rationing and people writing angry letters about the weather.
He denied being opposed to change in principle, saying he was “fine with progress” so long as it took place somewhere else and did not require him to learn a new word. “I’m not against anyone,” he said. “I’m just for the way things were, whenever that was.”
At press time, he confirmed he would be willing to compromise by returning to a more recent era, provided it was “before everyone started making a big deal out of everything”, a date experts have placed at approximately 9:12am on whichever morning he first felt mildly inconvenienced.
