Old Vs Young. Grr.

 I don't meet many young people and I'm quite old. That's probably why I don't meet many young people. Also I never leave the house and my girlfriend, the only person I ever see, is of a very similar vintage to me. 

But yesterday, while waiting for my friend Graeme, whom I wanted to hold my hand while I bought a domain name and scaled the inexorable, horrible slopes toward BUILDING A WEBSITE, there were some young people in my proximity. 

I find them quite odd. 

There was a girl next to me in the cafe, and I couldn't tell if she was American, autistic or just modern. All three were plausible, of course. Everything she said was shouted. She had a vocal fry and baby-talked. She said "Ew." at the idea of drinking tea. She thumbed her phone, both thumbs blurred as bees wings, while she sat there. She was wearing a Harajuku style dress - a honeycomb of distressed fiberglass - and had pink hair, pink glasses, and a pink nose ring (through the septum, like a bull). Everything she said was barked, none of it was funny, and all of it was about her: what she thought, how she felt, who she was. She was, at the very least, confident. Good for her. 

The boy she was with, sat opposite, thumbs whizzing, was a standard oatmeal nerd. He too sounded American, so maybe they were just American. They left as soon as she finished her smoothie, the dowdy boy caught up in her hyper-feminine slipstream. 

They were replaced by another couple, also young. The girl had pink hair, glasses and a collection of tattoos up her arms that looked like leaves on a breeze. Another nose ring. She had a local accent but also spoke in a baby voice. He had a beard and was going bald. He wore an anorak, jumbo cords and was reading The Voyage of the Dawntreader. Which is a children's book. 

Yes, I'm old. Yes, they would have sneered at my clothes, my white hair, my strata of my chins, a heftily stacked ham sandwich with no bread. Turn ups, Adidas, and amusing socks. There was a sensibility gulf. But at least Graeme and I talked to each other, like grown ups, in grown up voices, too. And made each other laugh. That said, we've had rich lives. If I was 18 today and saw the horror unfolding across this benighted planet, maybe I'd want to cling to childhood. Maybe I wouldn't have much to laugh at. Maybe a sense of humour is a luxury in the face of impending, obvious, unearned doom. 

Poor young people. 

We left Waterstones cafe because the WiFi was shit. At 2Rooms Belfast the WiFi worked, they sold beer, and Michael Smiley and Miranda Sawyer were swanking around the foyer, looking mature and distinguished. Which was much better.