Never trust a hippie

Why is it that whenever you see boats - canal, river, harbour, whatever - there’s always one that’s been named after a character in Lord of the Rings?

I fought the lawn (and the lawn won)

I always thought that when I got to a certain age I would stop wearing T shirts with writing on. OK, I still have a few band T shirts that I wear to do the gardening, but it wouldn’t really be dignified to be seen wearing them in public.

But I was quite tempted when I spotted this on holiday (courtesy of jivingjellyfish). It sums up a lot really... not least, my despair at the state of my garden.

PS I am the proud owner of ‘I fought the law’ by the Clash AND the Bobby Fuller Four. Does that make me cool, or just a bit of a saddo?

Anarchy... sponsored by BT

The Sex Pistols have been playing at the Isle of Wight festival. Why?? I’m watching it on the television, which seems the sensible thing to do (because I’m pretty sensible these days). They’re playing Pretty Vacant. Four fat, fiftyish geezers singing a young men’s song. To people who weren’t born when they did it the first time round. There’s something very wrong about this. I’d be taking myself far too seriously if I used the word sacrilegious. So I’ll use the word ‘irrelevant’ instead. John Lydon is not Johnny Rotten. To his credit, he doesn’t pretend to be. When he talks sweetly to the interviewer about getting nervous before he goes on stage and wanting to put on a good show, I know it’s not the same person. When he says they are there to have a laugh I wonder whether, actually, he is. That’s ‘having a laugh’ as in ‘taking the ****ing piss’.

"You don't look it"

Tim Dowling in the Guardian is 45. He says:

I realise that 45 isn't any sort of particular milestone, that it doesn't count as old to anyone older, and that it doesn't count as young to anyone. It's just the age when you know for certain that anyone who says you don't look it simply isn't looking hard enough, or under bright enough light.

Welcome to the club, Tim. I’ve been bluffing people about my age for years but I’m starting to realise my bluffing days are drawing to a close. It’s a pity. I’d got used to hearing ‘you don’t look it.’ And believing it.
I could start wearing gloves. That might buy me a few more years...

The new rock'n'roll is... rock'n'roll

A few years ago, at a better than usual works Christmas do, we were asked to write down our top ten Desert Island Discs as a party game – then guess which list belonged to who. I was mortified when someone put my name next to the list that included Joan Armatrading. Mine was the one with Elvis, T Rex and the Clash.

It’s strange how much your sense of self is wrapped up in the music you care about. And I mean ‘care about’. Not just ‘like’. I thought I’d grown out of all that. I was wrong. It’s nothing to do with trying to impress, or nostalgia, or even the soundtrack of my life. (I was in nappies when much of the music I love was being made.) It’s about what makes you feel alive. And what makes you feel alive isn’t necessarily the same for the next person.

For a while, I’d forgotten what that felt like. Then I heard something on Mark Lamarr’s Redneck Music that woke me up. It was probably nonsense. It was almost certainly primitive. (Both are, of course, two of the criteria for the best rock’n’roll.) It made me laugh with joy. And again, more recently, I was watching Later with Jools Holland: normally last bastion of the boring muso, but suddenly good again. And I heard Glasvegas and hung onto every note.

I realised I hadn’t stoppped caring about music. I’d just been listening to the wrong sort of music, and thought I didn’t care any more. There’s the music I used to like, and think I ought to like now because it meant something to me once. There’s the music I used to like and would like still. Except it makes me feel the way I felt the first time I heard it. And I really don’t want to be 15 again. There’s the music I like because it’s the sort of music I like. And the music I like because I know quality when I hear it. That’s what happens when you get middle-aged. And then there’s the stuff that makes you feel alive. It doesn’t have to be ‘quality’. It doesn’t have to be approved by anyone else. It just has to connect. That’s what’s worth caring about. That’s worth forgetting how old you are.