This Week - Flags & Fred

We're back.

As of late I’ve been worried about getting old.

Now to some of my friends this might seem laughable, implausible and a little bit tedious. However, it’s not without due cause.

I’m in my early thirties and for the first time I’m feeling pretty disenchanted with it all. The world feels infinitely worse in the present than when it did whilst I was growing up or during the ‘heyday’ of my ‘best years’.

And don’t get me started on the soundtrack.

What is perhaps most scary is that for the first time it’s become hard to make light of it all.

A little while back I used to write a weekly column which poked fun at things - mainly belligerent politicians, social cues, faux pas and whatever topic de jour was doing the rounds in the office that week.

It was all jovial, good natured craic - the world was a funny place, at times horrific, yet there was a sense that in the end some some sort of greater good would eventually lead us all hand in hand along the yellow brick road and up toward the great big festival in the sky.

These days not so much.

These days the great big festival in the sky looks a lot more like a Fred Again show surrounded by 50 million camera phones whilst some 18 year old kid waxes lyrical about how back on earth Four Tet’s set at All Points East was a spiritual awakening and asks if I have a spare Zyn he can ‘borrow’.

Oh and there’s a bloke on a floating cloud halfway up a lamp post outside trying pin his flag up with blu tack.

So what’s to be done about it?

This summer has been all about nostalgia - from Britpop to the revival of some of the worst 90’s dance music imaginable and to be honest… it does make sense.

Why wouldn’t we all long for a simpler, easier time? Especially when the time we are in is more than a bit shit.

However, we can’t keep looking backwards. That’s why I hereby declare an end to the summer of nostalgia. We owe it to ourselves because quite frankly we’re all too young for that.

This Week is back, let’s push things forward.