Backdated guilt and other boomer bummers

To boomer bummers in a moment, but first…I’ve been thinking about the past a lot recently. I guess that’s what you do when you’re kinda old (as well as gardening, which I never thought I’d get into. Bloody hell – next thing you know I’ll be poring over recipes!!). Specifically, I was thinking about my dog Coffee – the first pet who was all my own. Kinda.

Right from the start I knew he had a sense of humour. He bounced up and down in his cage at the shelter and grinned and I thought, he’s the One! And then I took him home and realised why he was in the shelter in the first place. He was a Runner-away-er. NOTHING would keep him in. Not fence extensions, not barbed wire, nothing! Sometimes I’d catch him taking himself for a stroll and he’d look at me like ‘oops’ and make a run for it. When I managed to fling myself on him and collar him, he’d give this surprised squeak and then just – laugh. He wasn’t really ‘ mine’ of course – one living creature should never belong to another. He was his own person, and we were friends. So, anyway, I wrote a song about him.

So, to backdated guilt. My daughter’s been reprimanding me recently on the sins of the Boomers. She tells me her generation are massively cranky with ours because ‘we’ll never be able to afford a house’. That is, she will, because she’ll inherit mine, but she’s pissed off on behalf of those who don’t have home-owning parents (which is nice – guess that’s down to my great parenting).

It is weird to have – so I hear – a whole generation pissed at you for something you didn’t really have much say in. Ok, so I got myself a house. Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do? Can I help it if the price went up? And yeah, we’ve got climate change, but I didn’t vote for the cretins who are running the country! I feel like an aristo in the French revolution – I didn’t ask to be born a Boomer but I’m going to get my head chopped off anyway. 

Well hey. Maybe we’ll all get lined up against the wall when the Revolution comes…