Morning:
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First it was our money, now it's our men. Not content with saddling us twentysomethings with mountains of public debt, the over-40s have started pinching our boyfriends too.
There will be slim pickings left on the dating scene after Sam Taylor-Wood, Demi Moore and the rest of the so-called "cougars" have had their fill.
In fact, the middle-aged are stealing our entire lifestyle. We keep hearing how "50 is the new 25".
Clubbing, younger lovers, gap years: being alive for half a century certainly isn't the cocoa and slippers story it used to be. What no one has noticed is that 25 is the new 70.
Through little choice of our own, the under-30s are turning into a generation of Saffys.
We look on as some of our Ab Fab-esque seniors fall out of nightclubs and jet off for some "time out" to return, no doubt, with bleached locks and those silly bead necklaces from a "little market in Phuket".
Even Luminar, Britain's biggest club owner, is abandoning us. Boss Stephen Thomas says he is now pursuing an older customer: the "divorced, desperate and dumped", because the young are "suffering".
He's right: the one group not responsible for the financial meltdown is hurting the most. Youth unemployment is rising rapidly, with the number of 16 to 24-year-olds out of work hitting 943,000 in September - very nearly one in five, a record.
Graduates leaving university with mega-debts are standing in the dole queue as they scratch around for work.
Those of us who have a job are either struggling to pay the bills or saving to get a mortgage.
House prices remain so ludicrously expensive that most people under 30 have little hope of getting on the property ladder any time soon, barring a generous donation from the Bank of Mum and Dad.
As one of my friends put it: "Saturday night now is a stir-fry and The X Factor. When did we get so old?"
Meanwhile, the economic legacy we have been handed is debt, debt and more debt. Plus, we have paying for the baby-boomers' retirement to look forward to. That and working well into our seventies. No wonder we're seething.
I am definitely a Saffy. In a cab the other day - it was pouring with rain and late at night, or else I would have been on the bus - the driver suddenly twigged that I was old before my time.
Switching on the light in the back of the taxi, he shrieked: "My God: you're in your twenties! From the way you were talking, I thought you were in your late thirties, at least. You still have spots!"
When one newspaper proclaimed the death of middle age this week, it just wasn't looking in the right place. For some of us, it started at 23.
Fashion needs a bailout, Mr Brown
Can I have my money back, Gordon? You know, that £4,000 of mine that you pumped in to save the banks? I've thought of a better use for it.
Let's copy Italy and help out our clothing industry. Luella is the recession's latest fashion victim. The sector often dismissed as trivial is the UK's second biggest employer.
London Fashion Week will be all the poorer without Ms Bartley's contribution. Gordon gave my cash to bankers. I would rather he had invested it in shoes and bags.
I'm not buying into Lara fever
So Lara Stone is Vogue's “girl of the year” and we are urged to celebrate.
That's because, my size 10-plus sisters, she's not your typical clotheshorse: she's a “real woman”. In other words, she has breasts.
“[The fashion world] went through an anorexic phase but now we have Lara,” Mario Testino tells the magazine, as though Stone's success is a new dawn for womankind.
In fact, her figure is probably even more unattainable than the waif look.
Yes, she has a bosom, but it rises above the same coltish legs and flat stomach every other supermodel possesses.
If I ditched Dairy Milk and doughnuts, I could shrink to a size six. But the pound of flesh I would pay with would be around my chest.
It smacks of Vogue's “shape” issue a few years ago. Its attempt to show different body types went something like this: thin, tall and thin, short and thin, pregnant and thin, then one slightly curvier woman, as though someone said at the end of the shoot: “Oh, better throw one porker in.”
A pair of 32Ds does not a revolution make. Vogue: give us some bellies and a few juicy booties too.
• Building sites may not sound like the most promising theme for an exhibition but the Courtauld has assembled a brilliant collection of Frank Auerbach's paintings, inspired by the rebuilding of London in the Fifties after the war.
Now, though, it is the empty spaces left by the projects mothballed by the recession that are making Londoners creative.
Yesterday, art gallery owner Rebecca Hossack won her campaign for the former Middlesex Hospital site in Fitzrovia to become temporary allotments.
Fitzrovia residents are likely to become so attached to their pop-up garden that they will want it to stay. A shame that the green shoots of economic recovery will put an end to greenery on the site.
Reader views (4)
Why not make Noho Square into a permanent park, square or garden? It would be a great legacy for future generations.
- David, London, 17/11/2009 12:10
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Oh my god - get a grip 20 somethings!!
I AM a 40 something & guess what I've been through the 1970s recession which meant high unemployment for many including me. I've been a sole parent juggling work and kids and put myself through university as a post-grad and have only just finished paying off those massive fees.
I don't see myself as a baby boomer - I was in nappies during the 1960s and certainly never reaped any benefits from the 'flower power' era!
I don't have any pension to speak of as have had to negotiate a fragmented career like many women of my age so I need to keep working.
But guess what?! I do have a younger partner - not because I'm a 'cougar' (what's the equivalent for older men/younger women partnerships? or are those ok?) but because I've finally met someone that I love, respect and am on the same page as - age has nothing to do with it.
20 somethings have the world at their feet - so get out there and take advantage of it.
- Joanne, London, 12/11/2009 22:18
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Thank god! I am so fed up of reading 30 or 40 something female journalists whingeing/boasting about their lives. Its about time someone wrote from the perspective of being in their 20s. We have been left with mess to inherit and personally, I blame the Babyboomers.
- Jw, London, 12/11/2009 13:28
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As a 26 year old man who has been through considerable turmoil as a result of the credit crunch (lost my job twice) I'm pleased that someone is sticking up for our generation Rosamund.
Our generation made the smallest contribution to the mess we're in but yet we are expected to pick up the tab through a lifetime of higher taxes! All the while, we've been disproportionately hit by job losses and the ridiculous state of the London property market means we still can't afford to own our own homes.
However if Jennifer Aniston turned up, that would solve a number of problems and I would be off in a flash I'm afraid!
- Sb, London, 12/11/2009 10:52
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