Pint of bitter, please, landlord.

For some reason, now unfathomable, I once thought that I would not only be aware, but at the forefront of popular culture well into my seventies. Unlike my father, I would be picking up the latest #1 hit album on the way to the pension office (if such a thing still exists after the Cameron debacle has finished its reign of terror). Then I would go down the local club and dance the night away, a bottle of toxic florescence half-finished in one hand, the change from a £50 note in the other.

Alas, it has taken but a few years to realise that I would prefer to sit down the local pub (no music, preferably nobody else under the age of 50, a sour faced barman) with a pint of ale. I now look at disgust at the 'buy 2 Wkd's 4 £10' signs that I would have loved maybe even just two years ago, as I sit down by the window and complain about a child riding a bike outside. Bastard.

The moment of change came this weekend - I was reading the Guardian website, when I came across an article about the Libertines and their recent headline performance.

"You might wonder if this dated-sounding guitar band who fudge every solo and talk nonsense inbetween songs had in fact lost their way to the BBC Introducing Stage. But then you were never going to get it. Those of us who've ever invested even a sliver of emotion in this band, however, were paid-back 10 fold, the willing of the crowd emotionally auto-tuning out the musical mistakes."

I was never the greatest fan of the Libertines, but I would readily shout along to 'Don't Look Back Into The Sun' on a dancefloor filled with similarly intoxicated people. But the comment 'dated-sounding' was the wake up call - things had changed, and I had fallen by the wayside. One of the first comments about the piece read:

"I'll never forget the first time I heard The Libertines perform Don't Look Back In To The Sun on the NME awards, it was my first step towards falling in love with music."

When the first Libertines album came out, it was September 2003. I was starting Sixth Form and I remember reading an article, probably in a shoddy tabloid, about how Metallica were headlining the Reading/Leeds festival. One of the lines read something like, 'When I was younger, Metallica were the greatest thing I had ever heard - back in the 1980's, they were the thing that made me pick up a guitar.'

I remember thinking that I would never get in a position when I would need to reflect on things, as things would never pass me by. Yet, the music that I had grown up with has been confined to a period of history, to replaced by, well - I don't know, I don't listen to it. One glance at the Top 40 confuses me to the point I wonder if I have dementia. Even Oasis have split up.

It seems, with The Libertines in tow (a questionable companion, if ever there was one), time has not just caught up with me, but sprinted ahead. Shit.

-Phil Seaman