AND FINALLY
Oh, to be young and revolting!
I’VE heard from jolly people that my reminiscences in last week’s column (wild days on Nova magazine in 1971) reminded them of their own youth, and they loved it!
Naturally, age is very much on my mind this week, since another birthday has just gone — and watching the reports of Extinction Rebellion demonstrations reminded me most of us get grumpier. (By the way, I omitted the word ‘climate’ there, because from what I can see the aim has shifted to a blatant ‘smash capitalism’... good luck with that, guys!)
When I was 17, I wore badges for CND and the Movement For Colonial Freedom. Then in 1994, I became involved with a road protest, and experienced the red mist of obsession that cuts you off from other points of view. So I do understand why young people protest, even if I don’t agree with their ‘why’ and ‘how.’
It was ever thus, as Shakespeare said: ‘Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.’ And I bet you don’t know who wrote this: ‘Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter their room; they contradict their parents... gobble up their food and tyrannise their teachers.’
A newspaper columnist 20 years back? Or a Tory politician 200 years ago? No, it was the Greek philosopher Socrates — articulating the perennial moans of the older generation, all of 2,000 years ago.
I’m just reading the classic detective novel Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, published in 1935. Some female teachers at a women’s college in Oxford are moaning about students — who ‘don’t want responsibility’.
‘Before the war’ (meaning World War I) says one teacher, students threw themselves passionately into ‘debates and drama’, but now ‘they won’t be bothered’ — because all they think of is ‘young men’.
Older people always complain about the young, while the young dismiss us as old fogeys. So relax, because the world turns and everything passes.
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.