Let's do it for the kids

A few days in and its clear that 2021 is going to be what my Nan used to call a “buggers muddle.”  All hopes are pinned on the life-threatening pandemic being curtailed, to a significant degree, by a massive vaccination programme to protect the vulnerable and the elderly.  The news media describe the vaccine roll-out, jabbing 23 million over 50’s in three months, supported by 200,000 volunteers and 24/7 hour project management as akin to a “war time effort”.  Indeed, the programme is being run by Brigadier Phil Prosser, whose day job is “to deliver combat supplies to UK forces in time of war”.  So far, so good and the sunny uplands glimpsed at the end of tunnel, just round the corner,  are looking hopeful!

But, until the policy makers opine on reduced transmission rates, proven jab efficacy and falling ward admissions, then social-distancing will still be mandated, perhaps for years. So if you love a disco, singing in close harmony, shouting in stadiums, or have dreams of standing in your wellies waving your glow stick in a field, then at best, it is very unlikely that those joys will be allowed in 2021. Yes, this year is going to be the “buggers muddle” mix of being given some hope that it will soon be Friday, while having to wake to an endless series of gloomy Mondays.  

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If we can’t hope for normality in 2021, what about 2022?  Well by the autumn of this year, the UK government aims to give “every adult who wants it” a vaccination jab, and may well be on a second phase of boosters, top-ups and re-shots for the elderly, vulnerable and shielding.  So a year from now - what of the young?  What of the kids?  The students, the youth, the teenagers, the children, the rug-rats, and the graduates whose lives have been on hold?  Perhaps, in 2022, we should collectively make that year “pay back time” for the young?  If the chances of a healthy 19 year-old being killed by COVID-19 are already vanishingly small and the rest of us have the reassurance of a sore upper arm and a new-found sense of security, then surely we should unleash the kids?   In 2022, I propose payback time for the generation we “grown ups” have spent the past year making miserable, anxious and bored. 

For the young, rather than “shielding”, perhaps we should have a government policy of “unleashing”.  A minimum of four hours a day outside the home, not including School.  All feral teenagers will be required by law to meet up with at least nine other kids each week, even if it just to take a selfie and shrug wordlessly. Home-Schooling will be banned by law. Going to the cinema, ice-skating, playing “British Bull Dog” in the playground and hanging around outside McDonalds on Saturday will be part of the National Curriculum.  On Thursday evenings, there will be a media promoted ritual called “clap for parents”, where kids will pay noisy homage, while banging pots and pans. Freshers Weeks at University will be upgraded to a Freshers’ Month across the country, even in Scotland, and a full-on Freshers’ Term for those in Manchester, who were treated with such disdain by their University in 2020.  Older folk will be still be wary of attending football stadiums, so the Premier League will roll out a new scheme, where matches are completely free for kids to gather and scream, though the cost of a pie and a drink will remain usuriously high.  The underage drinking of cider will be banned in parks, outdoor spaces, and behind bike-sheds, and rigorously policed, so Wetherspoons profits will soar. Those fancy “Mark Warner” style holidays, where kids and parents are separated for eight hours a day, will be funded for all pandemic home-schooling parents by Rishi Sunak. Parents will sleep and talk about something “other than bloody corona”, while sipping ice-tea, as their kids learn to skateboard and face-paint, while developing a painful crush on an instructor they will never forget. For the “youth”, raves, underground house-parties and music festivals - with young people gathering together in huge festering clumps of hormonal angst will be celebrated nightly on the BBC.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in 2022, let’s do it for the kids.  

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Some Kind of Wonderful

Just back from seeing Peter Gabriel's Back2Front concert at the 02.  OK, seeing a Peter Gabriel gig is not quite in the category of 'guilty pleasures' yet, but the busy crowd was thoroughly pre-screened (not allowing anyone vaguely under 40 through the door) and the set was spaced and paced in a way that there were plenty of loo breaks. Peter Gabriel had Hamish Hamilton on site making a movie of the show, so much of the performance seemed to be played with the Blu-Ray release in mind, more than the old-dears down the front waiting for Shock The Monkey.  Unfortunately, Mercy Street was ruined by Gabriel on his back, cowered in pain, being persecuted by a dozen 3D cameras.  Still, at least he played some hits stood up and the best moments were stunningly played (with the original line up who played 'So' 25 years ago) and the gig ended wonderfully with In Your Eyes.  

Apparently when Gabriel played the show in Los Angeles, John Cusack made a cameo appearance, coming on stage to reprise his 'boom box' above the head routine from the Cameron Crowe move Say Anything.  It's the memorable scene in an OK movie and one of the best fusions ever of great soundtrack in lieu of wordy script.  Cusack stands in the yard and lets Ione Skye's character know everything she ever needs to know about how he feels, without, ahem, saying anything.  Crowe went on to make some good films, and in Jeremy Maguire a really great movie, packed full of memorable characters and lines ['you complete me,' 'show me the money', 'you had me at hello'] and  a rare likeable performance from Tom Cruise.  But Say Anything for me is less remembered as a Cameron Crowe film than as a close cousin of a whole series of 1980s 'rites of passage' movies like The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Some King of Wonderful and, of course, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Those John Hughes movies are rooted deep in the psyche and loved to this day.  Wonderful interwoven stories of just how awfully tough it was to be a middle-class kid from a decent neighbourhood, with your whole life ahead of you, chasing down a date with Molly Ringwald, set to a soundtrack of The Psychedelic Furs and The March Violets.  They just don't make them like they used to anymore.