The news is depressingly predictable, or predictably depressing, that I can't stand to listen to it in the morning. I've taken to listening to Radio 3 instead. I can't pretend that I understand or enjoy all of it, but I've made a few discoveries.

There's a sequel to the film "Clerks" in the cinema now. The original film was taken, among a few other things, as indicative of the mentality of "Generation X". People like me- in their 20s in the early 90s, a bit arty, a bit lefty, University educated but mouldering away in service sector jobs through a mixture of economic recession and personal inertia.

I didn't see the original til about 5 years later, by which time my card was marked as an EFL teacher. As it is mostly a fairly scatalogical comedy involving, variously, rooftop hockey games, tobacco-inspired rioting, the finer points of hardcore porn and the revelation that your girlfriend has fellated 32 other men, it shouldn't be treated as too profound. There was one thing that made me wish I'd seen it at the time though. At the finale, the main character's best friend loses patience with his constant "over-compensation". He reacts in an absurdly defensive manner to everything- probably the defining characteristic of adolescence, as you might also see in Catherine Tate's "Am I bovvered ?" If I'd seen it then, that revalation might have genned me a little quicker into growing up. Or maybe not.

I doubt if I'll go and see the sequel. Apparently all that's changed is that the characters work in a corporate franchise rather than the local 7/11. I've left that behind, thank God. Hopefully I've done the same thing with a few attitudes.