growing up – A Boy Named Stew

I’ve got a new complaint

Kurt Cobain died 20 years ago today.

Nirvana were an important part of my youth. I could list all the reasons why I felt they were important and the sort of connection I had to them but it’s the sort of thing that has probably been done over and over in the 23 years since Nevermind was released.

What is more of interest is how long ago that seems, how old it makes me feel and the reducing significance that their impact has had on me over time.

I wonder if this is how our parents generation feel about the Beatles. They’re a band that I dislike for possibly the most stupid of stupid reasons. I don’t see anything original in them because everyone who has come since has ripped them off. So I find their music uninteresting. However, for my parents generation, they were the defining band. They were the ones who changed the way the world worked, which is how I feel about Nirvana.

For my 18 month old niece (and any children I hopefully might have someday), by the time they reach adulthood, Cobain would have been dead for about 40 years. That would mean he’d have been gone two generations. So much could have changed in that sort of time period.

It’s not just the next generations who won’t appreciate the significance of Nirvana. There was a period when I probably didn’t go more than a day without listening to one of their albums. Now, I could easily go a year without doing so. What seemed to be the most important thing in the world at the time is clearly no longer so. I just don’t feel as strongly about them as I used to, although I recogise the effect that they had on my life.

There was a time when I thought that owning every Mansun EP ever released was the most important thing in the world. A couple of decades later, I can’t work out why I had that line of thought. The significance of these events has faded into the past.

When you look at children of today with their obsessions with the heelies and The One Directions and the pogs and the Spongebob Squarepantses, it is difficult to criticise them for being silly and just following fads and having stupid obsessions, as I did the exact same sort of things. I bleached my hair to look more like Cobain, I called my first guitar Mavis after a fictional character from a Mansun song and several other things that I have either forgotten about or am now too embarrassed to admit.

One of the things I find uncomfortable about with growing up is not that I have discarded interests out of choice, but that they have slowly lost their significance.

Past Stew wants to know what the hell is up with Present Stew and why he has sold out on his punk rock values. Future Stew will want to know why Present Stew even cares about this.

Present Stew just wants a dressing gown and a nice pair of slippers.

Living on my own

This is one of those posts I meant to write ages ago but then got distracted by many things.

There are lots of things that have been distracting me since I lived on my own in fact. I seem to get caught up in awesome but largely meaningless projects, such as playing through all of the Pro Evolution Soccer games based on a pun or watching all of Battlestar Galactica so that I don’t accidentally kill people for playing in character when we play the board game.
I have been living on my own for coming up to two years now. Initially I thought the best and worst things about it were:

Best – No one steals your milk
Worst – There is no one to steal milk from when you have run out

As time went on, I realised that this things changed and that Tescos is only 5 minutes walk away so if I can’t be bothered to walk that far for milk then I clearly don’t want it enough. Which is a lot actually, but that’s largely due to laziness. However, I have also learnt that if I wake up and there is no milk for my fake Frosties then I get exceptionally grumpy.

For around 10 years after moving out of home, I had houseshared with between 1 and 4 other people at various points. There is always someone hanging out for a chat or to play a game or to “banter” with, as I believe the kids are calling it these days. I used to just call it “picking on Lewis because he was ginger*”

This is one of the things that I have missed most about living on my own. There isn’t someone around to get me out of a slump if I get into one. I have spent a lot of time just doing very little productive (see the aforementioned projected) on my own and being quite anti-social.

As part of my new year’s resolutions mentioned on my bucket list, I am going to try to reconnect with people I haven’t spoken to enough recently and also spend more time with those around me. This is what you need to do to prevent yourself going completely crazy.

I would say that is the main downside of living alone. The other downside I’ve found is due to having bought my flat, when things go wrong is that you have to be a Grown Up and work out who it is that you have to call or how to fix it yourself. There is no landlord to phone up and tell to fix things.

However, having spoken to a few people who lived on their own before I did, they all said they couldn’t go back to sharing and I can see why. Having your own space is awesome. You can do whatever you want. These are some of my favourite benefits to living on your own:

You can go to the toilet or shower with the door open. I have no idea why this is good but it is. It makes you feel a little less enclosed, I guess.
You can wander around naked. Admittedly I don’t do this very often, partly because my friends Amanda and Ian moved in directly opposite me (personally I think they were stalking me very badly) and could see directly into my flat.
You can put up the Christmas decorations whenever you want. You don’t have to wait until Lewis has seen the Coca Cola advert or for it to be December or any other silly conventions like that.
You have complete control over the TV. This means there is no-one to get annoyed that you’re watching The Muppets for the 15th time.
No-one will take the mickey out of you when you want to listen to Avril Lavigne.

So in conclusion, I don’t think I’ll go back to sharing a home until I get married to Drew Barrymore.

* Please note that there were many other reasons why I picked on Lewis other than just his hair colour.

I will not grow up

It is my birthday next week. I am going to be old. But I will not be grown up.

Earlier this year, I got my dad to dig out some old bits and pieces that I could use for my brother’s best man speech. He found this little gem that was in our local newspaper, which I have scanned and uploaded.

Essentially, it says: My name is Stewart, I am 8. I like football and Batman.

My name is Stewart, I am about to turn 33. I like football and Batman.

Sometimes it amazes me how little I have changed. Okay, so if you read the excerpt from the newspaper in full, it also says that I support Liverpool which as I have discussed on Unbelievable Jeff is no longer the case.

It also says that I like swimming which whilst true, is something that I have managed to forget how to do. It’s not like riding a bike. I have over the course of the last 3 years or so tried to learn again but I get the feeling that if I really wanted to, I would have done so. Partly my lack of progress is down to Dan Johnson trying to teach me and being mean and making me put my head under the water all the time. Anyway, I digress. I’m talking about growing up.

There are times in my life when I’ve been keen to grow up. When I was about to leave primary school and when I wanted to get a job where I had to wear a suit are two that predominantly stick in my mind. What I have found is that once I have grown up, I slowly become more and more child-like again. Which personally, I think is wonderful. I wrote last month about how I thought that this was influenced largely by Roald Dahl and his general kids vs. grown ups philosophy and how I am glad that I can still class myself on the kids side of the fight.

Dahl writes in Danny, the Champion of the World: “Grown-ups are quirky creatures, full of quirks and secrets.” And I think this is true. Grown ups often feel that there’s things they can’t tell children because they wouldn’t understand. I think that grown ups underestimate the power of children to assimilate anything into their world whether t be fact or fiction.

The thing about being a grown up is that you have lots more responsibilities, lots more stress, lots more worries and lots of social dilemmas. Children have none of this. They don’t think more than a couple of hours ahead and any arguments and problems are quickly resolved. We could probably learn a lot by being more child-like in our approach to the world.

Grown ups are often world weary, whereas children will see things with a sense of wonder all the time. One of my favourite things to do when I go on holiday is stare out of the taxi window on the way from the airport to the hotel. Not only does this make me feel like I’m in a movie but I am always interested in looking at the little things that make that place different from any others.

The places that I enjoy going on holiday are those which are quirky and unusual and different and exciting. I can’t stand going to the same place over and over or having the same beach holiday just in a different location.

I am proud that the things I like now are the things I liked when I was a kid. It makes me feel that even though I’m getting older that I’m still not one of the dreaded Grown Ups.