Now, here's a question for you. Why do the young have to spit so much? And I'm going to single out young men here as, during my extensive studies of the subject, I have rarely, if ever, seen a young woman doing it. I hate it and I'm absolutely certain that it's not some sort of physical necessity. Speaking for myself, I've never had a problem dealing with my own saliva. If it accumulates I swallow it as that seems to be the natural and hygenic response. I have never been tempted to deposit it on the shoe of the nearest passing stranger. It's disgusting, both to witness the act and to encounter the results on the pavement, so why do they do it? Is it some weird demonstration of manhood? If so it doesn't impress me, I just assume I'm looking at a neanderthal yob who hasn't achieved any of the niceties of civilised behaviour. I blame footballers. They don't seem able to put one overpaid foot in front of the other without gobbing all over the pitch. I've even seen that nice David Beckham doing it and it's setting a bad example to those who hero worship men who can run about a bit and kick a ball, though I've never fathomed why that is either. I think there should be a card that the ref can wave in the face of excess expectoration of mucus. Three spits and you're off. It'd improve things no end.
This is just one of the things that annoy me about young folk and, no doubt, mark me down as a grumpy old woman and send me into '...now, in my day...' mode, which I know to be annoying in itself, having sighed with bored irritation when my supposedly elders and betters said it to me, all those years ago. But I can't help myself. I have a longish list of such vexations, not least of which is the apparent need of the young, of both sexes, to eat all the time. Why is that, for goodness sake? We in the West are, by and large, overfed anyway so I'm sure there's no real need for this constant grazing on crap in between mealtimes. The cinema is one of the worst places to witness this modern phenomenon. There they all are, with a cardboard bucket, big enough to bath a baby in, filled to overflowing with tasteless, polystyrene textured popcorn and an equally gigantic container full of sugared water. Why couldn't they eat before they came? They will then crunch and slurp their way through this expensive feast of pointless, nourishment-free shit whilst the rest of us are trying to concentrate on the film. AND they talk! You're not supposed to talk in the cinema. We pay considerable amounts of money for cinema tickets, and we're paying to listen to the film, not Kirsty telling Sharon what Connor said to her last night and how Chris took exception to it and it all kicked off and Darren joined in and you know what he's like when he's had a bevvy? No! I don't! And I don't want to know. I want to watch the fucking film!! Is that too much to ask? I sit there, praying they'll choke on the popcorn and then fall face down into the Coke, to finish the job off. Harsh but fair I think.
But now, in the name of balance, I'm compelled to look back, to my youthful cinema-going days, when the only sustenance on offer was a silent choc-ice. Whilst quietly licking we were also permitted to smoke, which most of us did then, so the film was usually viewed through an atmospheric fog of ciggie smoke. On one memorable occasion, having applied a match to my Players No. 6 untipped (we were fearless in those days) I managed to set fire to a long, varnished fingernail at the same time. As my Persian Pink flared before my horrified eyes I hurled both match and fag into the air, the better to blow out the blaze at the end of my finger. The match went out, the cigarette landed in the aisle and glowed ominously. Too ashamed to leap to my feet and reclaim it I remained in my seat, weighing up the probability of its going out against the odds of it igniting a terrible inferno in which hundreds would perish. I opted for staying put and hoping for the best and, after a few very long minutes, the glow died. I breathed again and felt free to return my attention to the chirpy goings on in 'South Pacific' and a woman trying to wash a man right out of her hair. I lit another fag and relaxed. I know, of course, that a ciggie is probably more harmful to the human anatomy than a load of popcorn, though with obesity on the rise it's a close run thing. But I'll concede that it damages my argument, and the (very few) non-smokers in the audience probably hated us as much as I hate the snackers and slurpers so I'd settle for calling that one a draw, except I'm not giving way on the talking problem. We knew not to indulge in pointless verbal exchanges during the film. However, we did snog. Indeed, there were double seats on the back two rows of all cinemas for that very purpose, and they call this the permissive age! It's possible that the noises of adolescent passion were just as disturbing as vacuous chatter, if not more so, which leaves me feeling I might not have a leg to stand on with this one. In fact, I'm beginning to feel slightly ashamed of having raised it in the first place. But I'm remaining firm on the spitting issue.
And then there is litter. I was brought up never to drop rubbish in the street, and so firmly did I drill this maxim into my own children that they all say they could still no more drop a sweet wrapper than fly to the moon. When they were small and we were out and about they dreaded seeing others committing this heinous crime as they knew their mother would scoop up the plastic bottle, sandwich wrapper or whatever, catch up with the litterer and shove their rubbish in their chest whilst pointing out the nearest bin. Now, I might just have been lucky, but I never came to any harm during these crusades, probably because the louts were too surprised to react very quickly, but it embarrassed the hell out of my kids. It may well have scarred them for life. But they don't drop litter and that's the important thing! It's definitely a worsening problem and it's hard to walk anywhere without having to wade through the detritus of cans and bottles and cardboard food cartons. It disgusts me, but I am grown old and cowardly and no longer pursue the perpetrators with my youthful zeal. Instead, I content myself with glowering at them, in what I hope to be an intimidating manner, but I have been told, by one who has witnessed my glower, that I just look like a mildly irritated gerbil. I'm not sure what prompted the gerbil analogy, but I was not best pleased with it. And, obviously, if that's how I'm coming across then it's hardly likely to strike fear into half a dozen six foot tall youths who are full of lager and testosterone.
There again, I have been known to make misjudgements. I know! SO not like me. But I have been guilty of assuming a gaggle of young people, meandering along a pavement and, perhaps, giving me a gentle-ish buffeting in passing are doing so with malice aforethought. Yet, when I have turned to give them the full gerbil treatment I've been met by an anxious little face looking into mine and a steadying hand, accompanied by an, 'I'm so sorry,' completely taking the wind out of my sales and reminding me not to be so quick to condemn without real cause. The truth of the matter is that, although I might find fault, I genuinely like young people and find much to admire in many of them. As my children headed into the supposedly difficult teen years I got the usual sympathetic comments and pitying looks from friends, and dire warnings about how they would turn from sweet natured, pliable little things into the spawn of Beelzebub, but I was delighted to find that I actually liked them very much as they made the transition from child to adult, and I liked their friends, too. I might sometimes have got a bit cross about the amount of noise they could generate but there again, after they'd all grown and flown, I'd have given anything to be woken at four in the morning by the sound of half a dozen pairs of Doc Martin's clattering up the stairs as daughters, plus mates, arrived home from a night out. Oh, and I just want to point out that the DMs were worn with the hooped tights, floppy skirts and beads of the gentle grungers. They were not of the skinhead leaning. Anyway, it seemed to me that theirs was a much more compassionate, engaged generation compared to mine. They were aware of the wider world in a way I never was, and they cared. They struck me as a lot less selfish than us sixties kids, as they stood in the rain in the city centre with their petitions against various injustices. I liked the way they supported each other, through any difficult patches, with a love and loyalty that was touching. I saw that they were just thoroughly nice, reasonable people, and not at all the demons I had been led to expect. They were also warm and funny and great company and I've no real reason to believe that the current batch should be any different. Oh, of course the media, in all it's forms, will focus on the bad ones, and I suppose that's what I've been doing here too, but I'm sure there are an awful lot more of them out there who are good, responsible, decent young people and I should probably allow them a bit of slack on the popcorn front, etc.
So where does that leave us? I appear to have started out in high dudgeon and then gone on to demolish most of my own argument. But not all of it. There are still some things I wouldn't have dreamed of doing, and still wouldn't. For example, young mothers in the supermarket who placate their demanding little monsters by giving them things to eat, before they've been paid for. They're not dishonest, they'll supply the crumpled, empty wrapper at the till for scanning, but what sort of an example are they're setting their kids? Is it ok to encourage instant gratification? Might it not be prudent to teach them you can't have something until it's been paid for? And what the hell's wrong with just saying 'NO' from time to time? I could shake them. But I don't, of course. They just get the gerbil look. As do gangs of school children, looking so lovely in their uniforms, whilst yelling the foulest of language at each other in the street. And the shouting thing itself gets me going. Why can't they just speak, for goodness sake? We don't all want to know that Shelley's a cock sucking slag do we? No, we don't. And they put their feet up on the seats on trains, and wear those stupid trousers that display their saggy undergarments, and stare at their bloody mobile 'phones all the time, even when you're speaking to them, which is SO rude, and ride their bikes on the pavement and don't wear enough clothes in cold weather. So there! And, worst of all, they sometimes assume that those of us with grey hair know absolutely nothing about anything, overlooking the fact that our age means we've had time to get up to a hell of a lot more than they have thus far, so maybe, just maybe, we might not be completely stupid.
And breathe. I feel better for getting that off my chest. And what's the conclusion? Probably that every generation is annoying to a previous one in its own, particular way. I wore my skirts offensively short so I should be able to tolerate those glimpses of dingy y-fronts. Those lads wont be wearing their silly pants ten years from now, anymore than I went on wearing minis. They'll probably be suited and booted and trying to pay the mortgage, poor sods. There may be years between the old and the young, but not much else, other than some nuances of manners, maybe. It has ever been thus and a spot of tolerance, on both sides, is probably all that's needed.
But there's no need to SPIT!
