The old should envy the young; it’s part of the nature order of things. When I was young, I was gloriously aware that old people (anyone over 30) envied me; though I was a virgin until I went to That London at 17, my mum and her mates thought I was up to all sorts – and as soon as I was able to escape from my poor-but-honest home for the fleshpots of the capital, I was.
Two poems by Philip Larkin sum up how old people used to feel about the younger generation. First ‘Annus Mirabilis’, written in the 1960s (‘Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three/(which was rather late for me/Between the end of the Chatterley ban/And the Beatles’ first LP’) and secondly ‘High Windows’, written in the 1970s (‘When I see a couple of kids/And guess he’s fucking her and she’s/Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm/I know this is paradise/Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives’). What would the equivalent poems look like now? They certainly wouldn’t shimmer and drip with visceral envy, as this prurient pair do. Maybe a modern ‘Annus Mirabilis’ (now Horibilis) would look something like: ‘Sexual intercourse ended/In twenty twenty-three/Between the end of the pandemic/And Ed Sheeran’s fifth LP.’
Naturally a non-drinking, sex-avoidant generation is not interested in nightclubs
Age of virginity loss up, teenage pregnancies down; it’s amusing to consider that the same types who used to fulminate about gym-slip mums are now fuming about the low birth-rate and the death of western civilisation. Mind you, it’s not just a western thing; ‘Japan has now recorded a full decade where sales of adult nappies outstripped those of baby nappies,’ according to Philip Patrick in The Spectator last week.
As youthful sex is often encouraged by the taking of strong drink, it’s not surprising either to find that drinking alcohol among young people has markedly declined over the past two decades. Naturally a non-drinking, sex-avoidant generation is not interested in nightclubs – or what the teenage me referred to as ‘discos’ – where drunkenness and sex are likely to happen. And so the Coalition Club on Brighton seafront – which accurately described itself on Tripadvisor as ‘A haven for music and mayhem’ – will be replaced by something called ‘Players Battle Bar’ this month, featuring shuffleboard, beer-pong, axe-throwing and a ‘rage room’ which is apparently a ‘space’ where punters wear protective clothing and set about breakable objects with baseball bats.
The owner Albie Saliba told the Brighton Argus: ‘It’s moving with the times and is a completely different concept that covers everyone.’ I’ll say – but not in a good way; the ongoing war on nightlife, and indeed hedonism generally, is remarkable here in Sodom-and-Gomorrah-on-sea. Not just clubs but pubs are being wiped out; one of my locals, the Paris House, is under threat of losing its licence due to the fact that, quoting the Argus, ‘local residents have been concerned about loud music being played inside the pub, comparing the spot to an open air venue with customers gushing out onto the pavement to watch the bands inside play.’ The Paris is a jazz venue and the patrons tend to be on the mature side; I can’t swear to it, but I’d wager that the complaining snitches are on average younger than the revellers. Yes, jazz can be annoying when there’s too much of it, but I’ve never heard anyone complain that it keeps them awake – if anything, the opposite.
It’s not just jazz these killjoys don’t like, it’s tunes generally of the peppy, good-time kind, house music as much as New Orleans trad. Since 2020, a whopping third of British nightclubs have closed – and youngsters don’t seem to mind a bit. Neil Davenport wrote in Spiked last year:
In the past, enterprising young people found ways around burdensome costs and restrictions imposed by the authorities, hence the rise of field raves. Punters who were particularly hard-up would smuggle supermarket booze into clubs. Once, nothing could stand in the way of young people’s determination to have a good night out… now young people are increasingly suspicious and fearful of being out in the world. There is a flight from freedom, and from risk-taking. For decades now, there has been a steady move from wanting to be out with others to being reclusive at home. It is this retreat into bedroom isolation that keeps young people away from clubs. The Covid lockdowns only reinforced a kind of curfew existence among Generation Z. For young people coming of age today, there is no longer an expectation that socialising in clubs is an important rite of passage. The narrative that friendships, romances and lasting memories can be forged in a heaving club is on the wane. Surveys reveal that youngsters often find pubs and clubs ‘daunting’, even scary. This lack of confidence among the anxious young is exacerbating the trend towards nightclub closures. Lockdown has fuelled a culture of safetyism and a retreat from the social sphere.
I remember being wildly envious, as an adolescent in the 1970s, of the demographic that the Club 18-30 holiday company targeted in their commercials. The average age of their holidaymakers was 19, with a third embarking on their maiden holiday without parental supervision. Club 18-30 was explicitly selling holidays fuelled by booze and sex. By 1995, the company’s billboard ads, crafted by Saatchi&Saatchi, found themselves the subject of an investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority, becoming that year’s second-most controversial campaign. These adverts used cheeky wordplay like ‘Beaver Espana’, ‘Be up at the crack of Dawn… or Julie… or…’ and the tongue-in-cheek, ‘It’s not all sex, sex, sex. There’s a bit of sun and sea as well’. But the one I remember most was shown at the cinema, as a lusty male voice growled ‘If you’re under 18 – it’ll stunt your growth; if you’re over 30 – you’re past it.’ The first plane took off in 1968, the last one came home in 2018; the great half a century of youthful sexual liberation was over.
Anyone looking back at old photos of themselves – even people who considered themselves plain, let alone teenage cuties like me – will be struck by how beautiful they were. It’s still true of youth generally – but their endless legs and flawless skin doesn’t make me envy kids today. What’s the point in being beautiful – which should make you bold – when you are part of a generation which is intimidated by full stops? As Simon Ings wrote in The Spectator recently in his review of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: ‘What’s not to like about a world in which youths are involved in fewer car accidents, drink less and wrestle with fewer unplanned pregnancies? Well, think about it. Those kids might not be wiser; they might simply be afraid of everything.’
When I think of the young generation, I think of Alasdair Gray’s mutant heroine Bella Baxter, recently played by Emma Stone in the hit film Poor Things. They have babies brains in adult bodies – but unlike Bella, the product of a less anxious age, they find little joy in this big, bad, beautiful world of ours, at a time when they should be the most keen to see and savour it; the changing of a nightclub into a playpen is the latest symptom of this. If rock and roll was invented today, the kids would be the ones burning their parents records – and I say that more in sorrow than in anger, as someone who yearns for the day I can feel envious of the younger generation once more, the poor things.
Youth is wasted on the young
10
12
03.04.2024
The old should envy the young; it’s part of the nature order of things. When I was young, I was gloriously aware that old people (anyone over 30) envied me; though I was a virgin until I went to That London at 17, my mum and her mates thought I was up to all sorts – and as soon as I was able to escape from my poor-but-honest home for the fleshpots of the capital, I was.
Two poems by Philip Larkin sum up how old people used to feel about the younger generation. First ‘Annus Mirabilis’, written in the 1960s (‘Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three/(which was rather late for me/Between the end of the Chatterley ban/And the Beatles’ first LP’) and secondly ‘High Windows’, written in the 1970s (‘When I see a couple of kids/And guess he’s fucking her and she’s/Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm/I know this is paradise/Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives’). What would the equivalent poems look like now? They certainly wouldn’t shimmer and drip with visceral envy, as this prurient pair do. Maybe a modern ‘Annus Mirabilis’ (now Horibilis) would look something like: ‘Sexual intercourse ended/In twenty twenty-three/Between the end of the pandemic/And Ed Sheeran’s fifth LP.’
Naturally a non-drinking, sex-avoidant generation is not interested in nightclubs
Age of virginity loss up, teenage pregnancies down; it’s amusing to consider that the same types who used to fulminate about gym-slip mums are now fuming about the low birth-rate and the death of western civilisation. Mind you, it’s not just a western thing; ‘Japan has now recorded a full decade where sales of adult nappies outstripped those of baby nappies,’ according to Philip Patrick in The Spectator last week.
As youthful sex is often encouraged by the taking of strong drink, it’s not surprising either to find that drinking alcohol among young people has........
© The Spectator
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