Books that defined my generation. Or not.

My generation.

Douglas Copeland is getting a lot of publicity at the moment. His novel Generation X is 30 years old. Cue lots of nonsense about generation theory. Again.

The Guardian Review carried a piece called The books that defined a generation. There are two things wrong with this concept. 1. Generation theory is nonsense. 2. Generations don’t define themselves by books.

When did you ever see ‘wisdom’ on a job description?

This time next week I will be unemployed, or workless as our politicians like to say. It’ll be the second time this year I have left a job and both times I was glad to do so. The first time was redundancy after several years in the same place, some good, some bad, so I left with mixed feelings. It felt very much like a divorce. The job I’ve been doing for the last six months was only ever supposed to be temporary. It feels like the rebound relationship that you know all along is not going to last.

Don’t call me a baby boomer

Newsnight ran a slightly pointless ‘generation gap’ feature this week blaming baby boomers for the current woes of young people.

Don’t blame me. I voted for Michael Foot. I believed there was such a thing as society. I worried about my carbon footprint before it got fashionable.

But what I find really offensive is the suggestion that because of when I was born I had a charmed ‘never had it so good’ life. No: it's because of when I was born that I missed out on all that.