| Children of the sixties, children of the seventies,
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| you’re still here, you’re not old.
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| You talk as though you’re old, but you’re not old.
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| I remember even back then I felt like I was getting old,
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| but now when I see the photos from then I look so young.
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| I remember sitting cross-legged at a Christmas party,
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| such wide-eyed hope — that night we really felt we could change the world,
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| we really felt that anything was possible,
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| like after one more drink anything becomes possible… but in the morning we felt
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| different,
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| in the morning we came to our senses.
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| Children of the sixties, children of the seventies, what happened to us?
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| Now the kids are grown and we watch TV list-shows:
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| Talking heads talk Talking Heads… when Bono climbed off that stage I wished
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| he’s never got back up,
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| I wish he’d walked off into the crowd with his cockatoo hairdo. |
| On the dole,
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| dancing to Rio with your umbrella hair… This isn’t what you dreamed of…
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| We’d gather round the radio, and when we were unhappy,
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| a song said it for us |
| I turn back to the typewriter and my cassettes, as VHS played Betamax,
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| now all the cassette tapes are wrapped round trees, or lying in a charity shop.
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| 1981 wasn’t like 1980 or 1982: each year had a different personality.
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| We all moved to London, we all worked in Our Price, we all moved to London and
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| lost a decade or two, cried London tears, politics got blunted until we felt
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| shy about how principled we’d been.
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| We’d gather round the radio, and when we were unhappy a song said it for us
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| We were so sure we could change the world
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| Our principles escaping us like slow punctures
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| Our friends in the north: we got so drunk, so wasted, reined in by America,
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| infected by American angst; |
| the smell of caps fading away, flared and peaked
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| with New Labour — how did we get to where we are now?
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| It’s like finding an old letter you wrote: so full of passion, so full of fire,
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| like a stranger to yourself — it’s time to rise up, you’re still here,
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| you’re still the same person, rise up!
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| Inside you’re undimned, I will not be restricted, I will not accept this apathy |
| — every little decision you make changes everything. |
| We’ve so much to rebel
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| against — they make it so that good news becomes no news in no time at all.
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| We’d gather round the radio, and when we were unhappy a song said it for us
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| We were so sure we could change the world
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| Our principles escaped us like slow punctures
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| Children of the sixties, children of the seventies, we made the very mistakes
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| we vowed we’d avoid. |
| Breaking rules angrily, then breaking rules quietly,
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| then breaking rules from within, then not breaking anything.
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| And what would the person you were then think of the person you are now?
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| Conclusion of the foregoing. |