Youths' pier pressure was a reel eye-opener

The lost art of lads in their twenties

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THE last time I had a conversation with a lad in his twenties I was a lad in my twenties.

After that, I departed my youth with just hopes and dreams and some CDs - which were the future of music - and set about building a generation gap that would stand the test of time.

I still have the CDs. They're scratched, they stutter, there's bits of the cases missing, but they still work. Like me.

This column is now a similar age to what I was back then. If this column was a young lad, it could have a pint with me on a Boston J1 without needing a fake ID.

The chances of me having a pint here now are never great: I'm a working man approaching half a century, so I'd struggle to afford it.

But this week I did have a direct encounter with a lad in his twenties - the first in living middle age memory. And my oh my, how we've changed.