Liberty / apathy border goes up in smoke

“…and then he apparently rubbed his tobacco in the other student’s hair.”

Right at the end of a lengthy chat about my son’s progress at school and what needs putting right, his teacher mentions a skirmish that he’s supposed to have got into while on the school bus.

Even more than the fact that he hasn’t been smoking for the best part of a year, I’m struck by how the reference to “his tobacco”, is made purely in passing. Time was when it would have been item 1 on the rap sheet.

But now? A 16-year-old is supposed to have smokes on him and his school act like it’s a bunch of pencils.

I can imagine all sorts of reasons I could be offered for this.

Young adults needing their space.

Personal liberty.

And, of course, the overbearing imperative to avoid judgementalism.

No doubt I should rejoice that he and his generation are so free. So why is it I have this nagging sense of young people not being looked out for quite as much as they once were?

And why doesn’t it feel remotely like progress?

Shop-bought tobacco a pipe dream

It seems it’s no longer just my vynyl album collection that dates me.

Three times today, I try to buy pipe tobacco in a convenience store. Three times I end up being looked at by the proprietor as if I’d asked for a sachet of ground unicorn hoof.

Only as I’m trudging on to shop number four does it hit me.

Oh my God, I’ve become JR Hartley…

[To any fellow pipies feeling my pain, I can recommend these guys to take up the slack.]