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Past-it old bastard includes you when referring to 'people our age'

A FUSTY old geezer seems to be under the mistaken impression that you and he are in some way contemporaries.

Nathan Muir, aged 39, was approached by acquaintance Norman Steele at his town’s local festival and was happily engaging him in conversation until Norman dropped the bombshell that he believed the two of them to be alike in decrepitude.

A shaken Nathan explained: “I honestly don’t mind talking to the elderly. I used to have a grandad knocking about, so I know what they’re like.

“I know Norm from swimming and we get along fine discussing the state of the roads, teenagers with their speakers on the bus, these bloody e-scooters, neutral topics like that. Then he goes and ruins it.

“I mentioned how I’d done my back in running – running, being active, like young people do – and he says ‘Aye, well it happens to people our age.’ Ex-f**king-cuse me?

“He’s got no hair and wears tweed. I may have a few flecks of grey but I’m positively youthful. He wears a gilet. I wear big jeans and have tickets to Pinkpantheress. We are not the same.”

Steele, aged 55, said: “I remember that age, when you’re still pretending you’re in touch. I’ve seen how big he has the text on his phone. Next time he puts his back out, it’ll be from yawning.”

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Parents of pretentious teen wish he'd get into beer and football

THE parents of a teenager who opines on Bertolt Brecht and Brutalist buildings wish he would drink cider and vomit at bus stops like his peers. 

Martin and Sue Cook hoped their 15-year-old son Julian, who refuses to be referred to as ‘Jules’, was only going through a phase when he began blasting Shostakovich’s 7th through his speakers while ostentatiously flicking through books about Kandinsky.

Sue said: “We were prepared for vaping. We weren’t prepared for him wearing a black – sorry, charcoal – turtleneck while lecturing us on power structures in colonialist literature.

“When we worried about him mixing with the wrong crowd, we didn’t think it would be the attendees at a seminar on Composing Sonic Futures at the Barbican. We blame ourselves for calling him Julian.

“He downs a double espresso before school. He calls football ‘bread and circuses to pacify the proletariat’. He’s 15. He should be unconscious in a hedge, not telling the neighbours that their hedge is an outdated expression of English class anxiety.

“He scoffed at a man wearing Stone Island on the bus for ‘performing masculinity through consumer branding’ which is risky when he’s built like a bookmark.

“I was cleaning his room when I felt something under the mattress. It was Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation. Annotated. Colour-coded tabs. I sat on the bed and wept. You hear about this stuff as a parent, but never think it’ll happen to you.”

Jules said: “Mum and Dad have suggested a lads’ holiday with my friends. A Bauhaus walking tour in Berlin beckons.”

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