Lifts stopped working, so that even if you were lucky enough not to be trapped between two floors, you had the unpleasant task of finding your way down hundreds of flights of stairs.
Raising 6 children during the difficult times of the Great Depression took its toll on my parents' relationship and resulted in their divorce when I was 18 years old.
Moreover, even though humans have been upright for millions of years, our feet and back continue to struggle with bipedal posture and cannot easily withstand repeated strain imposed by oversize limbs.
The life is hard for my father: my mother died years ago, and now his children are far from home, our selfish choices taking us from one end of the country to the other.
Men, on the other hand, often struggle with the turn their lives have taken, especially if they find themselves moving into a small flat or even back in with their parents.