Sinclair on life: The joy of being uncool

By PETER SINCLAIR

In what has become a British yardstick for the triumphantly in or abysmally out, the annual UK "Gatecrasher" dance-party is assembling the coolest of the cool.

You really have to shed a tear for poor Jon Bon Jovi, former Spice Girls Geri Halliwell and Victoria Beckham, and girl-group Atomic Kitten - all have been tumbled from their pedestals and informed they are banned from the event on the grounds they are no longer cool enough.

What happened? Only yesterday all were the epitome of coolth. The in-crowd was spilling blood to be present wherever one of them was even rumoured to be appearing.

But Jon, Geri ... as you're discovering, there comes a time when you don't have to be cool any more; the weight just slips from your shoulders (I should know).

I have mentioned Joy Robinson in this column before - she was technical production assistant (ie, did more or less everything) on Let's Go!, this country's first television music show in the early 60s.

By chance we've been having an e-mail discussion on this very subject, triggered by an experience of hers in a Wellington mall where a rock concert was screening.

"I stood there transfixed, tapping my foot, until I noticed a couple of young yuppies staring at me very curiously indeed. I realised then I am simply an old rocker ... "

She went on to enumerate the advantages of being ex-cool: "Never having to bother going to an opera again, however light; never having to sit on the hard floor with a cushion on the Last Night of the Proms (last time I thought I'd never rise again); and especially never having to go to boring plays such as Waiting for Godot in French, a low, low point in my life. So here's to Buddy Holly and rock'n'roll ... "

I'm with you, Joy! The delights of not having to be cool any more are endless.

Uncoolness is a way of life which offers two great freedoms: the freedom of youth and the freedom of age. In other words, you can go right ahead and do what you want without a corresponding obligation to do what you don't. Being uncool means what goes around doesn't necessarily come around any more.

Being uncool means not having to wear anything baggy or anything tight. Former fashion slaves may now live their lives in the certainty that fluffy slippers go on forever; and that after wobbling about for years on fashion statements, they can achieve catharsis in a $2 pair of thongs from the Sally shop.

It means reading kids' books and loving them. It means still adoring Footrot Flats. It means not being able to tell one Japanese import from another, or caring.

Now you can admit you actually hate trendy restaurants, and that the food which really does it for you is your mum's roasts.

Being uncool also means that not only do you not have to take Ecstasy, you can gobble as much chocolate as you like without having to be good first. It's admitting you really loathe surprise visitors, especially when you're wearing tatty shorts and a gardening T-shirt with random ventilation and pink Warehouse gummies (this is Joy), especially the ones convinced they're doing you the favour.

It's admitting that you now have to plan trips around the geographical location of comfort stops. Joy swears she has a sort of mental map of the lower North Island imprinted on her forebrain. Carterton, Kapiti, Khandallah ... by their loos shall ye know them.

It's accepting that diets never work, and the stranger peering at you from the mirror is telling you there is no longer the slightest chance your gut will repay what it has borrowed from your chest over the years.

For you will know that the only really cool people are like Joy's neighbour John, who is wonderfully content with Jack the cat and his massive pumpkins and cheap beer at the RSA; who has never had a phone, a washing machine or a PC, and who has never flown in a plane. I mean, how cool is that?

And when you know all these things are true, you will have come to realise that the out-crowd was really the in-crowd all along.

* pete@ihug.co.nz