Sep 13 2013

Are you plentysomething?

This blog has been on sabbatical for the last few months while we moved to a new server.

During this time, I have turned plentysomething.

I know this, as I can identify with the plentysomething characteristics as outlined by Richard Glover.

Are you plenty something?

• Plentysomethings can no longer read the menu in any Sydney restaurant. This is because the lighting is turned down to a level so dim you feel as if you’re dining in some sort of al-Qaeda cave. The aim, presumably, is to hide the tomato sauce stains on the waiter’s apron. Perhaps they also realise the phrase “served with a decadent sorrel sauce made in the traditional artisan manner” looks less ridiculous if rendered in eight point. Operating in this Stygian gloom, most of us just point to the third dish down and hope for the best. This is the reason we end up eating so much offal.
• Plentysomethings know to buy the second-cheapest of everything, except when it comes to shoes.
• Plentysomethings can no longer hear anything that’s said in any Sydney restaurant. That’s because they’ve ripped out all the curtains and floor coverings so the whole thing is like an echoey box. Every dining experience is spent like a startled meerkat, sitting bolt-upright and alert just in case you manage to catch a passing word from someone at your table, from which – using your massive and experienced brain – you can usually reassemble the whole conversation. Lucky, huh?
• Plentysomethings do not understand the whole bottled water thing. We come from a time in which people would commonly attempt a 20-minute walk in the park without needing to take the sort of water supplies usually associated with Rommel’s North African campaign. It seems remarkable to say so, but in 2003 and 2004, human beings could often go for a whole hour, maybe even two, without what is now called “rehydration”. On Sydney’s more popular walking tracks, people now take a sip from their multiple bottles every three or four steps. What’s going on? Have they left a valve open? Could it be that, in the past six or seven years, the human race has sprung some sort of leak?
• Plentysomethings know that a coffee past 10pm is not worth it.
• Plentysomethings, by and large, are not dogmatic in their thinking. They have been around long enough to have heard both sides of most arguments. I myself hold three mutually contradictory opinions on the burqa, which, I believe, is merely a sign I’ve been paying attention.

See Richard’s full list of the other plentysomething traits.