Heavens to Betsy now we're late twentys...

I know I hark on about it, but growing old has been on my mind a lot.

Something Craig and I have discussed often is that we would get better with age. The early twenties didn't fit me right. Maybe it doesn't fit many people right. I found my own niche, had fun, hard tough times, struggled with what this blue and green ball was all about...but it didn't really feel like I was a part of things. i think they call that 'Indie'.

One of my life's greatest heroes, Tim Rogers of You Am I, told me once that he never wanted to be younger, always older. I feel the same. When he sings about watching old men in pubs and the respect and sadness of age really hits me.

I've also been listening to Tim's first, brilliant solo album What Rhymes With Cars And Girls, a lot. It's a very mature work for Tim, and written and released at a time when he had broken up from the major relationship of his twenties, and just past his first flush of success. It's reflective, funny, and sad about growing old, all those drugs he didn't take anymore, but he doesn't want to go back either.

I am, however, really loving the twenties, which is what I wanted to write about anyway. Is it me, or does it feel like this is our time? Sure you get the odd exception where young-uns like the Arctic Monkeys still set the scene. But it seems like our culture's youthful voice isn't actually that youthful at all.

There are many reasons for this. We are staying in school longer for one. Society is so fragmented it's harder to start a scene. Or maybe, I'm just older now, and very few 19 year olds have much to say to me. But it does seem like we a target market of our own. You look at things like Word magazine, movies like Little Miss Sunshine. We, the Bourgeois children of Woody Allen.

A friend of mine made a movie. I saw it last night and it was fantastic. Another friend of mine made a fantastic album, of richness and depth and actually sold a truckload of it too. Another is a leading scientist in his field. I've been meeting matte painters, novelists, actors...all of us in our early twenties, here in London, living it up.

Things are going really well right now, and I feel like I'm taking the biggest gulps from the cup of life I ever have. And as much as I'm happy and how I feel like this time in my life is a really important one, I look at my friends, I see them sitting around my living room, at the pub, us out in the streets of London, and I think - this is their time too. It's a strange feeling, and someone needs to give it a name.

I love all the songs on What Rhymes With Cars and Girls - but one of my current faves is the duet with Sally Datsey of Tiddas, a song called Up-A-Ways, about travelling. The line is

Those wandering dues sound oh so good in a tune
But you need some place to waffle all that mud off your boots.

Danny Yau
London

ps. Paris, AGAIN, this weekend.