Chilling or cool?

When it comes to chilling out, no-one can beat the sub-zero cool of a 14-year-old boy.

And of course, no matter what I tell him about actually being there at the birth of punk back in Blighty in the late '70s, nor his father's guitar mastery, the ManChild will only ever see us as old fogeys (albeit slightly eccentric ones).

In his eyes, youth has the monopoly on cool. We should really leave the serious chilling out - with attitude - to those that do it best, namely him and a select band of uber-cool friends.

He's got all the accessories - the shades, the 'do, the sullen gaze at the camera and the electric guitar (which he can actually play) to pump up his cool factor.

But to be honest, chilling out teen-style looks like just too much effort to me.
Even when I was a teen myself, I was blissfully ignorant of the nuances of cool-dom, bumbling my nerdish way through college with bad hair, ill fitting clothes and the enthusiasm of a hyperactive cocker spaniel on speed.

I was decidedly un-cool.

And despite my mantra of "It's good to be different, you don't have to follow the crowd to be liked" and occasional sheep-like bleets when I spot signs of him following the herd, the ManChild seems to be following his father's lead.

DaddyCool WAS one of the cool kids at school, had armies of pals and even knew all the words to the English Top Ten (a VERY BIG deal in Greece in the early '80s when the ultimate in cool was recording songs from the radio onto a cassette, then playing them in your room 3,000 times to learn every single syllable, before presenting it to the gang).

So, it comes as no surprise that he has appointed himself as ManChild's guide through the labyrinth of adolescence, determined to make sure that the fruit of his loins will be among the cool at school.

Me? I'm taking a back seat on the whole cool thing.

For a start, Kiddo would never take any lessons from me on the subject - he knows too much about me, including the fact that I used to be a young ornithologist, sang in a choral society and cried at Lassie films.

I'm just chilling out with the occasional glass of plonk and bowl of nuts, giving him a wee nudge now and then when he seems to be straying a little too far from himself.

And believe me, that kind of chilling takes much less effort than the tireless pursuit of cool.

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Not chilled out enough yet? Head over to this week's Gallery over at http://stickyfingers1.blogspot.com/