To be frank, something’s got to be good to liven up a wet Sunday night in Oxford.  When lazysundayitis creeps up on you, it’s hard to resist.  Warm dry room or a 50 mile trek in the rain?  Good book and a glass of red or two emerging bands and lager in a plastic beaker?  Well, you’ve got to practice what you preach!

In the classic mod anthem, Pete Townsend of the Who wrote, “I hope I die before I get old.”  I’m 43 now, enjoying life to the full and, with all due respect, have a message for the original modfather.  Why don’t you just f-f-f-fade away.  As an angry young man, Townsend was merely repeating a recently-created mantra, “young is good, old is bad.”  It was an invention of a media and culture which helped create the teenager, a new consumer for the great American Dream.

I realise that it’s taboo for most people to talk about matters relating to death, let alone a forty-something Englishman, but I must have nonconformity in my blood.  While I think of it, I could never understand, in a nation which shuns objective discussion of death, why the bookshops have whole sections dedicated to grisly true crime stories.  For those readers who fear any emotional turbulence or are not at a good place in life to read such things, please feel free to leave the page but I wish you well nonetheless.

When William Wallace cries freedom near the climax of Braveheart every libertarian fibre in my body responds in perfect unison with the hairs on my back (a true urban gorilla) and my wayward male tear ducts.  Suddenly I want to fight the powers that would dictate our freedom, to stick two fingers up at those who tell us we should respect them simply for who they are and I want to rage against the machine which would make us dumb compliant cogs. 

To the kid in McDonald’s or the nominated driver in the pub, it’s almost predictable that they will order a coke drink.  It’s part of modern life, coke as shorthand for soft drink.  Worried about your weight?  Diet Coke (strangely often ordered with a large lardburger and huge fries).  Fancy a change?  Try Cherry Coke.  In fast food chains and motorway service stations, there is often little or no choice apart from drinks from the Coca-Cola or Pepsi family.

The venue was a long hall with corridors either side, separated by swing doors.  I decided to stay just inside the doors to finish my pint during the first few numbers.  Comfortable?  Yes.  Naïve?  Most definitely.  As the first track kicked in, I found myself out in the corridor, nursing a much smaller drink.  So energetic was the crowd’s response that several of us had been ejected by its momentum.  I gave up on the watery beer and joined the heaving throng inside.

France may have thrashed England 31-6 in the Six Nations rugby union tournament but there is another activity in which the French have been ahead of all the British for some considerable time – and that is protesting.  Huge numbers often rise up as one to protest, sometimes escalating to civil disorder and riots, and once to national revolution.

A friend of ours once travelled up an escalator at a major London tube station during the rush hour with the back of her skirt pinned above her knickers (courtesy of one of her colleagues at work).  And all this was years before the introduction of freeview.  When some kind soul finally pointed out the situation, she was no doubt mortified but also relieved that the rest of her journey home was slightly less revealing.