Bouncing up and down in a field of more than 30,000 people hollering along to Pulp’s Common People is not something I expected to be doing at the age of 31. But if there was one thing I didn’t feel, when scanning the crowd at the Park Stage at Glastonbury on Saturday, it was old.
It seems to me that I am part of a generation (according to the sociologists I am on the cusp of X and Y) for whom adulthood has warped. What was I expecting — some sort of revelation, in my twenties if not my late teens, that I’d crossed a threshold and become a “grown-up”?
If so, I’m still waiting. And I think I can confidently say that many of my friends are too. It is not that we haven’t matured: most of us hold down jobs, some, like me, are married, a handful even have babies. But something about our mindset is very different from that of our parents. Perhaps it’s to do with placing a heavier emphasis on seeking pleasure and fun?
To me, festivals are the ultimate high. The weekend before last I went to Winterwell, in which 1,500 people dressed up in a board-game theme and danced all night to DJs (a guy called Rory was the high point).
I know plenty who struggle to afford the tickets but get there somehow — perhaps through volunteering to pick litter or work for charities.
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Then there is the desire for holidays. My mother recently suggested I put some money aside for my unborn children, while I daydream about travelling to Argentina. It is about fulfilment too. My husband has taken a six-month sabbatical to volunteer for a brilliant charity, Action for Children in Conflict, in Kenya. Both sets of parents were supportive, if bemused.
The state of the labour market when you first enter it has a powerful impact on your outlook. We poured out of school and university into an unprecedented boom, when credit put the unaffordable within reach. That embedded an attitude into a generation of minds: our parents said “save”; we said “spend”. For me it is not so much about possessions (I couldn’t care less about a £600 handbag) but buying experiences.
Paul Hackett, director of the Smith Institute think-tank, talks of the “age of entitlement”. This generation (which arguably stretches from those in their forties to new adults today) , he says, has heavy expectations, not just demanding state provision such as healthcare and education, but also a long list of other things, including “respect, holidays, fun”. A reality check is coming, he suggests. He may be right.
Research to be published on Tuesday by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation will reveal just how much a person must earn in 2011 to secure a “minimum acceptable standard of living”. It is uncomfortable reading.
Rising prices and stagnant incomes are applying a painful squeeze. Many will argue that holidays, festivals and parties will become a thing of the past with basic goods so tough to secure. How can the age of entitlement possibly survive a period of austerity?
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To some extent reality is biting. Have you filled your car with petrol recently? Gone to the supermarket? We’re trying to buy a property — when interest rates start going up I’ll probably stop surfing websites about Argentina and listen to my mum.
I met Phillip Blond, the “Red Tory” director of the think-tank ResPublica recently. He agrees that a generation of “kidults” who never grew up can no longer appreciate the basics or enjoy the mundane. Some, he says, cannot form meaningful relationships.
My friend Roisin, who used to be a ski instructor, agrees. She talks about friends who never left the hedonistic life of the mountain resorts and are lost and unfulfilled. But these experiences can be the key to building the relationships that are so important.Sure, watching Jarvis Cocker from a distance won’t make me happy. But spending the weekend in a Somerset field with a friend amassing memories that will last for ever (I hope) might help. So will the pleasure-seeking continue in tough times? I think so.
Take my friend Alice, 32, who works in the public sector. She and her boyfriend are working part-time since becoming parents a year ago. Money is tight and holidays abroad are now a distant memory. But Alice doesn’t think she has to forgo fun altogether.
Last weekend, she and 20 friends camped in Epping Forest for £7.50 a night. “We had a bonfire and created our own festival,” she said.
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Roisin, who is now a teacher in Brighton, has given up her car because petrol is so expensive and shares one with her partner. They sacrificed that before the holiday to Vietnam that they spent almost a year saving for. Despite the financial struggle, she recently snapped up a cut-price (£20) kite-surfing lesson, and has taken up crafting and foraging. Once she broke off from working in Spain to be chased by bulls in Pamplona.
“In the past I felt it was my right to be able to do these things. Now, I’ll still do it but I’m much more appreciative.”
Perhaps one outcome of changing economic times will be to make that sense of entitlement ease up. My husband reminds me that in most of the world — not least where he is in Kenya — it never existed. There, people are struggling to survive.
Of course. However, in Britain a glimmer of the hedonism lit in the heady days of the boom will survive even the toughest austerity. And there is nothing wrong with that.