Coolth

As you will have worked out, the Guru, as well as mediating between the Wizard of Cyberspace and me, at the moment also serves as tester of ironing, taster of meals and replacer of dud light bulbs. This means that we spend a certain amount of time together, giving me the opportunity to learn a little bit about how life is for the young in 2010. It seems very clear. Life is divided in to 'cool' and 'boring'. What is more difficult is how to tell which is which. Obviously, I could give you a dry list. It would be seriously truncated. Why: I haven't fathomed the criteria which put an item or an event on to the one column as opposed to the other.

However, I will have a go. A list, in its limited impact, might look like this: rice is boring, pasta is boring, sun glasses are cool, no coat is cool, (well, in autumn and winter it would be wouldn't it). St Tropez is cool. West of it is boring. Salad is boring. Stir-fry is cool. To be fair, I wouldn't want you to think I am actually quoting the Guru. My examples are drawn from the wildness of my imagination doing its best to work out how to work it out and not disgrace the elderly whom I am obliged, via anno domini, to represent. But simply not being too sure what does qualify may be boring in itself. I suspect the elderly are, per se, more boring than cool. I do try my best. For instance, does eccentric qualify as cool? No, you don't know either. Since to-day is my birthday, I am in a specially good place to think about the importance of cool as an influence on developement. Perhaps it is a factor in the search for identity. Birthdays do bring up the question of who-am-I, or who have I become, don't you find? I have come through many trials, fire, water, you know the kind of thing, and I do have a feeling of recognition in the mirror of my inner world. What I can't know is who I might have been (whom?) had I grown up in the Now. Manners are different, for instance. I've been mystified, and even complained, about this before. I can't get used to letters that start "Hi". Mine still start "Dear X". Come to that, there are no letters. I should have said emails that start "Hi". It must be cooler, surely, to keep up with current idiom. People don't stand up when you introduce them to one another or are introduced to them. However, by the time I've creaked to my feet it would'nt be surprising if the introducee was already bored out of his or her mind, anyway. You know what? I'm thoroughly confused and bored with the whole cool/boring thing.

Reflecting on my several more than three score and ten, I do understand, however, that, even when I was young, I didn't follow the dictates of cool and boring. Eccentricity was more my style then, too. Perhaps, the answer is that the real criterion for what is cool is not to be cool at all. And it is boring to go on about it. Back soon