Once more he stept into the street,
And to his lips again
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.
Music, shouting and laughter fill the function room of The Fishpond Hotel in Matlock Bath. The lights are down, but the sound is up! Parents are standing uneasily at the back near the bar, trying to think of something to say to each other and in any case unable to hear the replies. In front of us, the girls are bopping, boys and couples crowded round the flanking tables. On the temporary stage are successively indie bands, singer-songwriters, death metal groups, jazzy all-girl singing combos, folk fiddlers, fluters and saxophonists. Impressario and teacher Jim lugs the amps about and wires everybody's mikes - in the corner Wendy adjusts the equaliser knobs to balancing instruments and voices. Apart from this dedicated couple and us parents, everyone in the room is between 14 and 18 years old. What a joyful scene - a celebration of youthful talent, enthusiasm, industry and vitality! (not a single case of obesity in sight!) All MUST be well with the traditions of the popular music scene and all must be well with Young England, at least round here in the Matlocks, our busy little towns spread out along Derbyshire's wooded Derwent Valley. All around Britain, in pubs and small halls, you can be sure that similar scenes are being acted out.
A joyful scene - but also poignant. In five years at the outside scarcely one of these lively young people, our children, will be left in our town. Already many are preparing to take flight on a great migration; I have seen a multitude of their kind this very Summer, draped in happy lunchtime circles on the lawns of Birmingham University, attending the open day for prospective students. Yes, soon the PIED PIPER OF TERTIARY EDUCATION will have drawn them all away.
The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood
As if they were changed into blocks of wood,
Unable to move a step, or cry
To the children merrily skipping by,
And could only follow with the eye
That joyous crowd at the Piper's back.
The gap year on the other side of the world, then three or four years at a University a hundred miles distant, then... It is most unlikely they will ever come back to Wirksworth, Darley Dale, Matlock or Cromford to work or to live. The Wanderjahre, if they ever end, will end in some other town, full of strangers. It used to be only about a tenth of each generation who were piped away like this, now it's more like a third. Most can't wait to leave. There's nothing to do round here!
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
Robert Browning could well have been describing the Backs at Cambridge or a Campus at York, Norwich or Brighton.
Since our own Matlock College of Education was cynically (or realistically) run down and shut down, the best and brightest of other towns no longer come here to replace each lost generation. Higher Education is a SOCIAL DISASTER for small towns -and for many of the young people involved. Boy and girlfriend couples are parted just when, in a previous age, they might have looked to settle down and start a family. Maybe they'll wait four years, more likely they'll soon be looking for new partners.At least the Universities do have a more balanced sex-ratio these days, though the genders are still partially segregated into technical and arts departments, but many campuses can feel like anonymous crowded deserts, where after the first two weeks it's too late to talk to strangers. And, as if coping with pulling up roots once was not enough, only three or four years later a second exile will be thrust upon the students - thrown off the comfortable campus and out into the world to find a job. Those jobs may well be abroad - personally I have a daughter in Japan and a son in China - but otherwise they will be in London or some other big city. Out here in small town England, the heads to be seen in the streets and supermarkets of Matlock, Belper, Ashbourne and Bakewell are mostly balding, greying or remedially dyed. The age group twenty to thirty is conspicuously absent, removed by economic as well as educational migration - even the few jobs round here will not pay well enough for a graduate employee to compete for a house against us well-established oldies! A journey into the lunchtime streets of Sheffield or Nottingham is a revelation. So THAT'S where all the young people are! I try to re-elasticate my knees and take three steps at a time, as I did when I lived in Birmingham myself forty years ago. How do they live now, I wonder, how do they make friends, establish networks, find partners?
Many don't, not just in Britain but in every "advanced", "low fertility" country in the World - typically Sweden, Australia, Germany, Japan - women in particular have on average far fewer children the longer they stay at school and college; they are more likely to be childless or to start smaller families later. We are all familiar with these effects among our friends, and are aware of the effort, and good luck, that is needed just to live what used to be thought of as a normal family life. I know so many beautiful single people and salt-of-the-earth childless couples. In my generation, if we do have any grandchildren, we may soon grow too old, as well as living too far away, to enjoy and help with their upbringing. Why do we so encourage our children to have education, education, education? Shouldn't we be intoning: Don't put your daughter up for Uni, Mrs. Worthington!
When I was cast out of the we-all-have-lots-in-common and we're-all-the-same-age world of Universities into a JOB, it was still possible to afford a house in a country town and there were still lots of young people in College and County Town Matlock, though even then one of my colleagues conspicuously opted for moving to Nottingham, with its much greater pool of young graduates and its Inter-Varsity Club branch. Even without the IVC, my generation found plenty of ways of making friends and networks and finding parties. Go along to the folk club, the climbing club, BTCV (Conservation Corps as it then was), the choral society, the Naturalists' Trust. Go rambling, caving or digging out canals. These groups had lots of members in their twenties and thirties - we met afterwards in the pub and everyone came to our wild parties. These groups still exist, and I am still a member of several. Thirty years later the other members are still the same too, now in their fifties and sixties. I gather that much the same thing has happened to VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), many participants nowadays are retired rather than in their gap-year.
So what are young people doing, what are they joining, how do they find a social circle when they move out of University into a strange town? I don't know, because, as I have said, you, my children, don't live here any more - you are to be seen as the style-conscious city-street people I observe from such a social distance when, occasionally, I venture into the Big City. Out here in the comfortable sticks of the country towns and villages, we, the middle-aged and oldies are getting OUR acts together, still supporting our great causes, singing, organising the village festivals and film clubs, writing the local history books, working in charity shops, conserving the vintage railway lines, the mills and the mines. So far so good, we've got a decade or two in us yet. But what will happen then - where ARE the young people and what causes and enthusiasms are they, are YOU, espousing? Please let me know, I might want to come along as an elder statesman, or, at any rate, a mascot!
And I must not omit to say
That in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people who ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band.
Postscript:
Two of these outlandish ones, but far beyond Transylvamia, are my Rosie, a linguist facilitating the marketing and testing of Toyota and latterly BMW cars in Japan, and, based in Southern China, Oliver , an engineer organising Design and Manufacture in China for Western Companies. Click on CHINA TQ PRODUCTS.
So I have a personal emotional stake in the above one-sided view which I have deliberately not hedged about with ifs and buts. The young need to fly the nest, and the rookery now spans the world. As for socialising, they do it on the net. As for children, we need fewer, don't we? And what do I propose as an alternative, eh!?