Hope for the future

At secondary school, most of the teenagers around me had one thing in common – we wanted to change the world.

We weren’t all sure about how to go about it but we were pretty sure the stuff going on in Vietnam had to stop, our parents were annoying and we were unanimous that the school cook should be burnt along with her vegetables.

We didn’t agree about the means, I remember Darren Wilkins quoting to me from his Conservative Party membership card whereas I was more inclined to follow the International Marxists – but we were sure we wanted to change things.

Tim, a friend is a child of the fifties too, wrote yesterday and invited me to sign up for the Guardian Newspaper’s 10/10 campaign to reduce carbon emissions before we all expire.

I don’t know how he is going to achieve this – he is already as skinny as a rake, eats only raw food, cycles everywhere and wears two pullovers instead of using a radiator in his single light-bulb flat.

But I admire his optimism.

I Initially was put off when I read that the Conservative Front Bench had signed up en masse – I have a reluctance to align myself to anything the right wing are doing that throws back to the Darren Wilkins days.

I noticed with interest that Tim’s favourite football team, Tottenham Hotspurs have also signed up and I wondered if he had written to them to.

(I momentarily imagined they should change their name to Tottenham Coolspurs in recognition of the 10 percent required cut in global warming emissions that the initiative is targeting.)

I also wondered how many teenagers are signing up, because around me now the teenagers seem only to be interested in changing their mobile phone.

Back then we wanted to change the model of society, back now they want to change the model.

Ok, a selective survey of two resident teenagers at the same address as me does not constitute a statistically sound survey but it could be a relevant one.

Does any one have more information?

I don’t REALLY understand the need to have a mobile phone, especially when it isn’t used as a PHONE and the owner NEVER answers it when you call them.

I’ve been sending my son texts all week, trying to ascertain that he is still alive and AT school but all I get is – Ignored.

When he returned from school for the weekend he “explained” that he had no credit – again.

Weird – I thought the whole argument used to convince his mum to pay for it was that there was a special offer of FREE texts.

Maybe his 10 percent cut is me?

Another friend rang and suggested that the youth of the village, my son included, might like to take part in a Bio-festival.

Ha!

You should see our fridge – Homemade Tofu burgers, fresh alfalfa sprouts and cobwebs on one side, Coca Cola, microwave pizza and scratch marks on the other.

Interestingly, though I don’t know what it proves other than the fact that a father is biased; there is hope for my daughter.

Ok, she has the same mobile phone but she says that for Christmas she wants a typewriter and she leaves me messages on paper written in pencil.

Then again, I had better investigate the carbon footprint of paper and pencil before I follow through with my decision to start my 10 per cent’s worth by culling the, now 7, phones that this household is/are running.

Rounded up.


ps.watch this video