The pursuit of the modern has been a sub-theme of my household for, well, quite a while. You see, there's a suggestion that I am not entirely contemporary. That my dress sense comes from the Fifties, my politics from the Sixties, my music from the Seventies, and ...well, that's it really. Even when late in life I grew a ponytail, it made me look like Fairport Convention's roadie rather than the latest in radical chic, it's alleged.
There is a grudging admiration from my partner on life's journey that I am not fareing too bad for someone who remembers when Huddersfied Town were in the old First Division. Christ, I was in my mid-teens when Town were playing host to the likes of Manchester United.
But talk about current and cutting edge - I read Courttia Newland, Iain Banks and Diana Evans (as well as Gissing and Macinnes and Baron), have CDs by The Streets and Kathryn Williams (jostling alongside Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell). And I've been on Facebook since year zero, accumulating more than a hundred friends (some of whom I know).
I won't detail the reasons why my wife is - in her devotion to forms of cultural expression such as the qawwali - a touch retrograde. Or classic, shall we say. But she has now, with the crusading enthusiasm of a convert, discovered social media. She's been on Facebook for barely 24-hours, has accumulated 53 friends, has joined groups of a nature too salacious to set down here, and has spiced it all up with a photo which was taken, well, when Town were probably a division or more higher up than they are now.
While we pioneers of the Facebook generation are now passed off as archaic and anachronistic, the newcomers believe they alone are the arbiters of what is 'new'.
Now, let me just settle down to watch 'Eastenders'. Anyone for an advocaat?
There is a grudging admiration from my partner on life's journey that I am not fareing too bad for someone who remembers when Huddersfied Town were in the old First Division. Christ, I was in my mid-teens when Town were playing host to the likes of Manchester United.
But talk about current and cutting edge - I read Courttia Newland, Iain Banks and Diana Evans (as well as Gissing and Macinnes and Baron), have CDs by The Streets and Kathryn Williams (jostling alongside Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell). And I've been on Facebook since year zero, accumulating more than a hundred friends (some of whom I know).
I won't detail the reasons why my wife is - in her devotion to forms of cultural expression such as the qawwali - a touch retrograde. Or classic, shall we say. But she has now, with the crusading enthusiasm of a convert, discovered social media. She's been on Facebook for barely 24-hours, has accumulated 53 friends, has joined groups of a nature too salacious to set down here, and has spiced it all up with a photo which was taken, well, when Town were probably a division or more higher up than they are now.
While we pioneers of the Facebook generation are now passed off as archaic and anachronistic, the newcomers believe they alone are the arbiters of what is 'new'.
Now, let me just settle down to watch 'Eastenders'. Anyone for an advocaat?
RSS Feed