Since 2005, the number of 16-24 year-olds who are teetotal has risen from 19% to 27%. Which initially sounds like good news. And it would be if the young were replacing quality binge drinking time with line-dancing, five-a-side football, shagging each other senseless, sitting in gangs in the park all night drinking water, but they’re not. They’ve replaced drinking with more time spent on computers, social media, internet games. Just what they fucking need. Solitary time at one with a sodding screen. Binge drinking may be the most anti-social of social activities but at least it is a social activity. Facebook, twitter, first-person-shooter games aren’t. Ok, nor is blog-writing, but its the future I’m worried about. I’m beyond hope. I drink while I write. Hic.

And anyway, its my birthday. Today. And with age comes the right to employ hypocrisy. To indulge in it, embrace my inner hypocrite.

So if the ‘kids’ are no longer going to the park at night to drink, to socialise, to take the first forays into fumbling, regrettable sexual advances, how are they ever going to learn such essential life-skills? By staring at their phones? I fear not just for the young of this world but for the future of all mankind.

So next time you find your child alone in their room on a Saturday night, sending fucking emojis all around the world, drag them out by the scruff of their necks, give them a half bottle of vodka, a packet of condoms and a sharp knife and throw them out onto the streets. Its time we used some ‘good parenting’ to avoid the complete loss of a generation.

Don’t remember if I mentioned it but its my birthday. Don’t remember much of anything these days. And I won’t say how old I am, because its a woman’s right not to, and I’m nothing if not full of equality, but next year I’ll be 60. Fuck. Me!!! Or, what my father calls ‘the new 40’. Though he’s 90 (the new 88). And quite frankly, I was perfectly happy with the old 40, I really don’t need a new one, thanks all the same.

So tonight I’m going to get rip-roaring, blind drunk, then collapse in the kerb in just a pair of shorts and a bikini top and probably wake up tomorrow speaking with a Geordie accent. Although Mel says we should do something different as its my birthday.

Happy Birthday

A xxxx