Me, Father Christmas?

Back in 1962 with three A’s at A Level I went to college. It never crossed my mind that when my parents were eighteen they had no such opportunity. In fact by eighteen they were both experienced mill workers. Somehow by eighteen one has grown into the current circumstance as one’s launch pad for the years to come. This hadn’t really struck me till quite recently. My own three sons had all turned twenty three in 2008 and had followed my own progression, a degree and a job earning decent money: My step kids are younger. Now a few nights ago I played at an open mic gig in a student pub full of eighteen, possibly, to twenty year olds. They were all delightful apart from one who, on seeing me said, “Oh look it’s Father Christmas.” I smiled and drew my stomach in. That aside I sensed a seed change in this post 2008 generation. Born into this different world they seem to be integrally aware of it. Where I may think they’re not going to ‘have it so good’ they are in the midst of enjoying it for what it is. They’re not yearning for their first clapped out banger with bald tyres, that turns left if you touch the brakes, they walk and cycle. They’re not looking for a career ladder, they’re making the best of a minimum wage job serving my Father Christmas generation. Their future as I see it is austerity but as they see it, it’s just the future. In Lancashire there’s a saying, “Clogs to clogs in three generations.” It’s as if my generation, the middle one, took the advantages given them by their parent’s clog generation, squandered it on ourselves and presented our own children with a brand new pair of clogs; shameful but understandable. But the kids in the pub were happily making the best of it and in a sense I envy their different set of challenges. I don’t envy their television upbringing and its irrelevance to reality but they’ll grow out of it. But I’m grateful they’re somehow less ageist than my generation, more accepting of us Father Christmases than I ever was.