Millennials have plenty of time to learn life skills
IWAS making dinner the other night when my husband burst through the door, delighted with himself about something. “Look at this amazing new app I’ve downloaded!” he announced, shoving his phone in my direction.
The app in question was from our bin collection service, and tracked the weight of each of the three bins – compost, recycling, and general waste – throughout the year.
Then it turned the data into a series of complicated-looking line graph charts and this was what all the fuss was about.
“You can see how sharply the volume of compost increased over the summer,” he exclaimed excitedly. “That’s because of all the grass cuttings, of course. And look how much waste went into the recycling bin over Christmas! That’s almost three times the usual amount. And see here, see this two-week period in August?”
I looked at it with interest. The line graph plunged downwards like an
Alpine valley.
“That,” he said triumphantly, “is when we went on holidays!”
Fascinating, I agreed, before going back to stirring the bolognese and taking a moment to silently mourn the passing of our youth, which now lies buried in the wasteland of banality that is domesticated middle age.
What happened to us? I’ve dived in coral reefs and water-skied in the Med at midnight. I’ve stayed up for days at faraway festivals. And once upon a time my husband’s idea of a nice restful holiday was a two-week jaunt in wartorn Afghanistan.
These days the closest we get to living on the edge is an adrenalinefilled late-night race to Tesco five minutes before closing to get a litre of milk for breakfast the next day.
“Phew!” we’ll say to one another afterwards. “That was a close one — I really thought for a second there they weren’t going to let me in. Better leave earlier next time!”
I was thinking of this trajectory when I read a study yesterday that showed millennials are unable to do many of the tasks that are second nature to older people.
Health insurers Bupa compiled the list and it was very, very long.
Millennials can’t tell how many pounds are in a stone; they don’t know how to get stains out of clothes; they can’t read an ordnance survey map; and they don’t know the collection times for their local post offices.
They don’t know how to crochet or how to make jam; they can’t lay a table properly. They can’t iron a shirt; manage money, or use an index.
They can’t polish their shoes properly or treat a burn; they don’t know how long food stays fresh for and they can’t make a cake without following a recipe.
They don’t know how to arrange flowers.
Many observers drew the conclusion that humanity is doomed thanks to the depths of ineptitude that young people are plumbing.
But on the contrary: it isn’t that millennials are clueless dolts who can’t figure out how to turn their ovens on. It’s just that they don’t need to know yet – and they have better things to be doing, like actually enjoying themselves.
Give them another 10 or maybe 15 years, and they too will be spending their Saturday nights perusing old Delia Smith recipes and stabbing their tulip stems with a pin to prevent them from wilting.
Domesticity is an all-consuming monster, which rapidly turns you into a crashing bore, so the longer you can stave it off, the better.
If I introduced my 20-year-old self to my nearly 40-year-old self, they wouldn’t speak. They’d look at one other in horrified, uncomprehending disgust. And that’s exactly
how it should be.
When there’s time to spare on home front
DOMESTICITY may have caught up with many of us, but clearly not with Glenys Stacey, chief inspector of the UK’s Probation Service, who has defended taking on a second job by saying she had plenty of time to do it because she doesn’t have any children.
Glenys was under fire from politicians who questioned how she could do her usual job as well as taking on a new role as head of a review into farm inspections.
The answer was in her lack of dependants. “Of course I don’t have the commitments a younger woman might have at home,” she replied. “So when the needs arise, for example should I be appearing at a select committee, then I may be doing extra work at the weekends.”
Hmm. We’ve heard much over the years about the stigma that childless women feel, but is this the start of stigmatising mothers? Are we supposed to feel incapable of taking on responsibilities because we’re too busy minding our kids?
I’m not sure, but despite having two small children, we have enough time to carefully monitor our waste output and then plot it on a graph and then analyse it at length. If that’s not having too much time on your hands, I’m not sure what is.
There are no words
THREE-QUARTERS of adults are now dependent on emoji to communicate with one another according to a new study by YouTube, raising renewed fears about the death of the English language and the general decline of civilisation as we know it.
I’d like to say something insightful about this statistic, but without a series of crying yellow faces at the ready, I’m not sure I can fully express my true feelings.