CULTURE SHOCK

My mid-life crisis has been cheaper that that of most people. I rejected a Harley or an inappropriate red convertible sports car for growing a beard, getting a pair of hipster glasses (vari-focals because I'm old) and buying loads of old band T-shirts.

I'm not one for keeping all my old band T-shirts in a drawer at home, so there I was in Millets buying a new rain coat when I struck up a conversation with a shop assistant of a similar vintage to myself. Having rejected a long green countryside number ("No thanks, it makes me look like I'm a member of UKIP"), I settled for the coat that had been discounted the most in the sale, mainly because it was cheap, didn't make me look like a tramp, and I had never knowingly seen Nigel Farage or flat-capped Britain First types wearing one.

"That's a great T-shirt," the shop assistant said, nodding towards my Joy Division Unknown Pleasures top.

"Oh, wow, thanks," I replied.

Nodding across to her hardly-even-out-of-his teens colleague: "Young Lance here wouldn't even know what it is."

"Hardly anyone round here does," I said, glad that I had - at last - found a kindred spirit, in the Fleet branch of the UK's third best camping and outdoor equipment store, no less.

"It's mountains isn't it?"

*FAMILY FORTUNES WRONG ANSWER KLAXON*

"It's Joy Division, that's what it is," said Lance, who until that moment had been trying to sell me shoes while I looked at coats.

 

"No, you idiot Lance, it's mountains. It's mountains, that's what it is."

 

*FAMILY FORTUNES WRONG ANSWER KLAXON*

Yep. Joy Division, and their famous unreleased album of yodelling and oompah music.

I paid, and fled.