Generation of the child-adults
I never once saw my father lie on the floor except the day I found him dead. In spite of that rather grim observation, I have come to the conclusion that I am of the generation of adults that have never quite ‘grown up’.
I am much happier eating cheerios whilst lying on the floor in front of the TV on a Saturday morning, watching cartoons than I would be sitting at a dinner table, wearing a shirt and tie reading the newspaper. This rather odd confession troubled me for some time until I accepted the fact that myself and my contemporaries (those born after the 1950’s) have an inbuilt up-growing mechanism which prevents us from being like our fathers (and mothers). Curiously, they embraced the ‘adult lifestyle’ and mirrored their parents as a matter of course.
I am sure that my dad held secret desires to let his hair down once in a while but he was bound by social conditioning that firmly encapsulated him in a a world of manly things and sensible trousers. If only he had been liberated perhaps he would be alive today and not have grown into the miserable, resentful, repressed adult of the 40’s that he was.
I am sure that many a sociologist, anthropologist and cultural observer could spin an entire conference around the subject but I can speak from first hand experience and say that the ‘old order’ is not for this particular adult and in some ways, I believe it is a spent existence in any case.
When I was a young child, men in their sixties (who were seen by me as - not surprisingly - ancient) used to bemoan their back problems, poor weather, the amount of work to do at the allotment and mysteriously incomprehensible issues of the day. Most sixty year olds I meet these days (now that I am considerably older) seem to be more upset by bad artwork on their latest tattoo or poor seats at a Def Leppard concert.
That said, I think the dichotomy occurs when you see just how grounded in the past this generation of child-adults are. You can see evidence of this in the proliferation of vintage memorabilia and faux-nostalgia. In everything from retro specialists on the interweb, selling boiled sweets, crap plastic electronica and space hoppers to the overwhelming proliferation of dewy-eyed references to how the ‘olden days’ were somehow ‘better’.
In truth, most of it was crap. Cassettes didn’t work properly (the tape used to tangle and there was never enough room to get an album on them). Television was rubbish, poorly presented and underfunded. I could go on, but amongst my derision lies a fondness for the paucity of finesse, which is a contradiction I am happy to live with. In many ways, it was the rubbish-factor which makes much of my past so fluffy and adorable. There was an innocence about it which made it somehow more accessible.
Dr Who, for example, wasn’t a cool dude in a snappy suit with fantastic accessories and gorgeous assistants. He was a bumbling old bloke on a cheap set with dismal special effects and a gawky assistant. But, he still scared the bejesus out of me on a Saturday teatime everytime some cornflake-clad antagonist blared at him through a project-kit voice transformer. I knew it was rubbish, but I forgave them for it and that’s the point.
Uncle Reggie’s Magic Radio sounds to my ears like every (so-called) children’s programme that was ever created when I was under twelve years old. Programmes that were hosted by the ‘adults’ - a slightly creepy assembly of authority figures - who stooped to entertain us (but on the whole: failed) by delivering a saccharine blend of the intensely weird and the hideously outdated, almost Victorian, segregation of being a child in the presence of the grown ups. I, for one, would rather have a Motorhead CD in my Christmas stocking, but even so Uncle Reggie’s voice makes me tingle with memories that make everything right with the world.
Perhaps the reason that ‘the past’ is so fluffy, is because it represents a time when I was young. So, beware - if you are young, the thing you love now will rattle all kinds of skeletons in your wardrobe way off in the future. Cherish them as they are but know they are rubbish compared to what will become of them
