the times | Monday July 27 2020 1GT 5
times
Lockdown kids will be all right
I know that school is
important and that education
is the key to self-betterment,
and I believe that what
happens in your formative
years paves the way,
obviously, for your future
professional life. But I am
nonetheless struggling to
accept the findings of
a new Royal Society study
on the negative impact that
lockdown will have on
the earnings potential of
today’s pupils.
According to the study, the
present crop of students will
suffer from lower earnings for
the next 50 years because of
the intellectually deleterious
consequences of missing so
many lessons. Apparently,they will have lower skill
levels, be less academically
able and be released on to
the jobs market at a lower
optimal earnings point than
previous pupils.
To which I can only say:
“Oh, for God’s sake! They
missed 12 weeks of school!
They weren’t forcefully
lobotomised! It’s not as if
future employers, at job
interviews, are going to look
down through their CVs, nod
ruefully and say with a sigh,
‘Ah, I see. You were one of
those lockdown kids! That
means you probably missed
the second half of Macbeth,
some linear equations and
four hockey matches. Get the
f*** out of here!’ ”Ritchie antics drive me mad
Pity Guy Ritchie. He was
caught texting at traffic lights
in his black Range Rover by
a camcording super-snooper
and now he’s off the road for
six months (six points on
top of his existing nine).
I don’t use my phone in
the car (once, before it was
fine-worthy, a policeman
caught me texting in a
traffic queue and duly
lectured me into compliance),
but I identify with the
impulse. I also identify with
the super-snooper.I see crazy road behaviour
all the time and wish I had the
gumption and the technical
competency to film it, upload
it and globally shame the
culprits. Believe me, I’ve tried.
A 4x4 — coincidentally
also a black Range Rover —
recently drove down our road
on the footpath (to avoid a
queue). I was walking the dog
and by the time I got the
phone out, flicked it on to
photo mode, then video mode,
he was gone. Still, it’s the
thought that counts.S
he may have sold more
than 50 million albums.
She may have been
included in Time
magazine’s list of the 100
most influential people in
the world in 2010, 2015 and- And she may have
136 million Instagram followers and
more than 38 million subscribers to
her YouTube channel. But Taylor
Swift meant nothing to me until
she released a soft white cable
knit cardigan.
This fabulous fashion standout is
available from Swift’s official website
for a relatively modest $49. It features
heavily in the video for her new single,
also called Cardigan (do I sense some
merchandising synergy here?).
In the video the 30-year-old former
Nashville-based folk-pop warbler
turned modern feminist “squad”
leader can be seen climbing in
and out of a magical piano and
complaining: “When you are young
they assume you know nothing.”
After almost drowning in a fantasy
ocean Taylor finds comfort in finally
wearing the eponymous cardigan and
crooning thoughtfully by the fireside,
Val Doonican-style: “I felt like I was
an old cardigan under someone’s
bed. You put me on and said I was
your favourite!”
Point being, the mere mention of
poptastic cardigans plunges me back
into the summer of 1988 and my
knitwear obsession. I had fallen hard
for the dreamy allure of the Smiths
and was especially beguiled by the
sight of the singer Morrissey, in the
video for his solo single Suedehead,
sitting in an Indiana hay barn reading
from the collected poems of James
Whitcomb Riley and wearing
a chunky black zip-up cardigan. As
Yet, thanks to the excavational
powers of Spotify, they daily mainline
music that would have horrified me
back then and still does now. Orinoco
Flow by Enya. La Bamba by Los Lobos.
And, worst of all, St Elmo’s Fire (Man in
Motion) by John Parr (there are few
things more blood-curdling than the
sound of that mid-Eighties anthem
pumping out of the bathroom first
thing in the morning).
They don’t like Taylor Swift, though
(too cheesy). And until now I’ve found
her music just a teensy bit bland (kind
of, “I loved you, you played me, but
watch out, boy, because me and my
squad are stronger than ever, ever,
ever!”). But if my kids can raid my
tacky Eighties past then I can have
their cheesy present. I can’t wait to see
their faces when I meet their friends at
the front door wearing my very own
branded Taylor Swift cardigan. The
jutting jaw, of course, will be optional.a shy, introverted teenager,
I thought: “That’s the vibe
for me! Hay barns, poetry
and cardies. That’ll make
me popular!”
After much pleading, my
slightly baffled mother
(“What, no drugs?”)
bought me a respectable
slate-grey cardie from
Marks & Spencer in the
vain hope that it would
double for smart family
functions. I wore it
religiously, with button
badges dotted down one
side (“Bruce Lee”, “CND”
and “Meat is Murder”) and
sleeve endings deftly
chewed into dramatic
Regency-era cuffs.
I posed in it for hours in
front of the bedroom mirror
(akin to live vlogging to yourself in
a pre-digital world) and jutted my
lower jaw dangerously far forward
to achieve Morrissey’s trademark
prognathous profile. I was quite the
catch. At school discos in the summer
of ’88 you’d find me in my own private
corner of the dancefloor, flailing
about spectacularly, yanking at the
seams of my cardie and thrusting
my face forwards, like an undershot
Neanderthal.
Time passes, of course, and
everything circles back on itself until
pop culture becomes a perilously
confusing place. My teenage kids
can’t stand Morrissey. They think his
singing voice is “moany” and they are
rightly appalled by his increasingly
disturbing political views (He’s a big
fan of the far-right For Britain
Movement, a random grab bag of
members who make Nigel Farage
seem like a pinko liberal).Kevin Maher
Taylor Swift meant nothing to me until
she put on her Val Doonican cardigan
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