When I was a kid I was sparky.
What I mean is, I was into everything (but not drugs because I don't think they'd been invented when I was a nipper), I questioned everything, I was reading books about Marx when I was 11, I had three failed relationships behind me by age 12 (when I say failed I mean they failed to go out with me) and I was going on protest marches by the age of 14 (I can't remember what I was protesting about but it was fun walking along surrounded by coppers) and I talked and talked and talked.

But what has happened to the youth of today? I'll tell you. When you go into just about any shop they're lounging around like they've just come in on the bus from Zombie Land.
The other day I rocked up at Bakers Delight and waited until the three of them behind the counter could decide - by using grunts and shrugs - which one of them would deign to serve me. Eventually the tribe chose a girl who looked like she was depressed and would soon go to school and shoot everyone - well, if she could be bothered moving to the US of course, which is doubtful.
"A wholemeal block thinly sliced, please," I said cheerily.
She looked at me as if the message was still trying to get through to her brain and then slouched off and came back with a white loaf.
"I wanted wholemeal," I said.
"It's bread, aint it?"
I looked at her. "Are you familiar with the difference between white and brown, or do all loaves look the same to you?"
"You wanna nuvver loaf, then?"

Honestly. Then I went to Woolies to do the food shopping and I'm going through the checkout, being served by a boy who clearly wanted to be back in Zombie Land slow as the bus could take him, and half-way through the checkout he held up some fruit and said, "Know what these are?"
I thought for a mad moment he was going to give me a jocular rundown on the history of the fruit, or maybe its importance in Greek mythology, but no, he just had no idea what it was.
"That, " I said, "is a plum. In fact if you raise your head and look across the aisle there you will see a whole barrow-load of them. They are the ones that look identical to this fruit and have the word plums written in those big white letters a blind man on the moon could see." Of course I didn't say this last bit because it would have been too long a sentence for him to have grasped.

But really, these are people who expect to go out into the world and do, what exactly?