One current hot topic amongst us twentysomethings is What Happens Now? You know the thing; you've graduated, you're reasonably secure financially, you've got a roof over your head (even if it does threaten to fall in and kill you any minute), career is just starting (only another five years and you'll be manager of the Burger King where you work), and so...what now? And suddenly you find yourself shopping for bathroom fittings, discussing the merits of kitchen drawer sliders, worrying about loft insulation, going to the weddings of old college friends and not getting blind drunk at the reception afterwards because "I've got to drive back", and working nine to five. And a long, slow decline into the swamp of middle age and mortgages beckons. In surburbia, no one can hear you scream.
Well sod that. Let's face it - one day you're going to drive down to the seafront and sit in your car with the windows up while you read the Sunday papers and mutter sweet nothings to your spouse such as, "Pass the flask" and "In't it luvely?" But don't go by the script. First of all, forget the Volvo parked in your driveway - steal the GTi that belongs to the kid next door; he's only going to write it off in a month because he's an irresponsible young idiot. At least you'll drive more carefully, and your insurance is better anyway. Besides, you do believe in abortion up to the age of 25, don't you? Secondly, park on a double yellow line and when the warden strolls along, push them off the pier. Thirdly, forget the flask - buy some soft drugs (makes a change from soft toilet tissue, eh?) because let's face it, you can afford far more now than you ever could at college. In fact, forget the spouse as well - pick up some young stranger on the way down, who reminds you of your eldest. And finally, do all this on a Monday when you should be in work.
Of course, all this doesn't hide the fact that you threw up the chance of potential rock stardom in your college band (yeah, right... "Barry and the Haddock" were really going to go far, weren't they? About as far as the audience could chuck them) for a safe career as a GCSE geography teacher and three hideous teenagers who treat you like an adult. But it is some comfort.
"Why oh why," I complained to Alan the other day (in a Points of View spirit), "do we have to work for a living?" This was on the way down to the Glen...for a few pints...in glorious sunshine...at 7pm...so I think you understand what I was getting at. And, indeed, why do we? There isn't enough work to go round; I'll happily share my job with someone else for six months, so long as the pay stays the same or (oh, go on then) increases. Privatised companies such as BT, Gas and the Water Boards (yes, the turds of your choice in six different colours, available where you see this sign: "To the Beach ->") are making vast profits. Where's my share?
To be blunt, I think I'm turning to communism in my senile old age. If I were running the country, the first thing I'd do is take all the private companies back into state ownership...and live off 'em! I believe this is known as old-style communism, as previously practiced in the Soviet ex-Union. It's a system that actually works fine until the starving mobs kick in the palace gates - but by then, you'll probably be dead and stuffed and on display in some creepy mausoleum. Who gives a monkey's gonads about your successors, they probably poisoned you to get into power anyway?
Don't get me wrong, I'd do some good with the dosh. Become an artist, for instance. The arts are fab, but they just don't pay at present. Why should I bust my gut to create something of beauty and exquisite metaphory just so that years after my premature death people can say, "Oh yes, isn't it marvellous?! He starved to death in a flea-infested bedsit in Penparcau, you know." Art for art's sake, money for ghod's sake, as 10cc once put it, although what any band who sang crap like "Ah'm not in lurrrve..." would know about art is a matter for the big trash compactor of history.
And Alan said, "Yeah, why not rob the rich to feed the poor?! I'm poor!!"
"Al, you're dead right!" I said as we left the bank. "Huh?" said Alan, because the alarms had just started to go off and the stocking had muffled my words. So there you are, kids; vote Communist, distribute wealth, then grab what you can and screw the rest - it's the true spirit of capitalism.
You may have heard recently that Phil Collins has left his old woman (yes, the one he mentioned in every interview for the past ten years) because the resumption of an affair with "an old flame" has caused "complications" (s'funny, that...). This shortly after including a picture of his new daughter on the inlay of one album, and dedicating said album to said wife and sprog. Phil, in case you missed the news, lost his first wife to a decorator and went on to whinge about her unfaithfulness over an entire album. Let us hope then that the ex-Mrs Collins enters a career in pop music and releases an album containing tuneful ditties such as "Phil, you bastard" and "Sod you, you two-timing hypocrite". News has reached us that Phil is already hard at work on his next oeuvre. A leaked tracklisting includes the following:
Side 1: Side 2: Long time no see Darling, remember old thingy? How about a drink? She's lying, of course I wouldn't Make mine a double OK, so we did, so what? Your room upstairs then, Right I'm leaving, you cow is it? Whoops, it just slipped in Money for old rope
The working title is, "But Honestly...".
It has, of course, been a bad year for rock stars with supposedly wonderful marriages. Billy Joel lost his uptown girl to a guy with a penthouse uptown. Chris de Blurgh dumped his lady in red for a nurse. And Peter Gabriel is still working his way through the entire young, beautiful starlet population of the western hemisphere. Honestly, if you were a clapped-out, forty plus rock star whose last album had done far worse than expected, would you start shagging a young nymphette in order to reaffirm your virility and machoism? Yes, that'd do it nicely.
Ade Rixon