*in which fi realises how much she likes her father, then becomes her father, then hates on the upcoming generation a little bit*

Today I had a wonderful conversation with my father. I realised that I am very much his daughter. I can see it in the way he likes to watch people, how he observes them and their behaviour, how he sees everything that happens to him as an opportunity for a funny story, his irreverence and his love of well-timed swearwords. There goes my brother's theory about my mum and the milkman.

Having found reassurance in my lineage and spent a mildly productive afternoon with Kate in which we killed an earwig, talked Jilly Cooper and did about half an hour's work, I then decided to go to a gig. I heard tell that my lovely Emilie would be playing in a pub in Egham tonight, so off we went down the hill to give her some long overdue sugar. The gig was in a small venue called the Underground, at the back of the Railway pub, by the station, funnily enough.

We knew it was the right place because of the people. Oh my days the people. When I was fourteen it was all about baggy jeans and being slightly unkempt, very gothic, dog collars and fairy wings and spikes and studs and chains... now they're all wearing drainpipe jeans, bleached streaks in their hair, kohl-ringed eyes and stripy t-shirts. Yuck. I wonder if people hated greebos as much as I hate emo kids? I do hope so. Chances are we deserved it.

This is where I start to turn into my dad, and lose all respect for those in this world who are younger than me. Sorry.

Realising I'd missed Emilie's band, I managed to sweet-talk the bouncers into letting me in free to find her (to be honest, I just think they wanted some adult supervision in there), so I waded in. I use 'waded' in the most literal since, the greasy little buggers were chest deep and unwilling to move lest I get closer to the stage than they were. I tried playing nice, saying 'sorry' and 'excuse me' but after being told to piss off for the fifth or sixth time I resorted to the 'do your parents know you're smoking pot?' card and started kicking ass.

I found Emilie right near the front and was so relieved I could have popped. After a terribly touching reunion in the emo-pit, I couldn't seem to turn round so I just grabbed her ethnic ass and started reversing. I may not have sixteen piercings in my bottom lip but I'm hard enough to part a crowd. Make way for my backside bitches, I'm leaving. It was fun. I definitely didn't swear like that when I was fourteen.

It's not so much that I felt old, although I really did, it's that their whole rebellion thing isn't nearly as good as ours. It's just so disappointing. These guys are the upcoming generation and they're not a patch on us. Everyone hates the world at fourteen, at least we were vocal about it. We had t-shirts with rude words on, we had spikes and wore actual dog collars, we considered personal hygiene to be more of a quirk than a necessity and we moshed, dammit, we moshed! We'd push each other around and listen to music so angry you could shave your legs with it.

Compare us to the emo-punks, their stupid stupid haircuts that took so long to style, their perfect make-up and their stitched on drainpipes... What do they do, once they've got their strategic fringes gelled carefully over their eyeballs? They go and look sad about stuff, that's what. They don't mosh, they don't scream, they just sort of sit there and glower. They're more like pissed off looking wall ornaments than teenagers. So disappointing.

And that they had the cheek to look us up and down. Screw you bitches, I used to listen to Slipknot, I've moshed to Marilyn Manson and one time, my grandma met the Corries. I'M NOT SCARED OF ANYTHING, LEAST OF ALL YOU! Sod off and go home, whack on some My Chemical Romance and wait for puberty to hit. Maybe it'll knock some sense into you.