Growing old Early

Although the old Wembley Stadium, with its Twin Towers, had more charm, the modern home of English football is not bad. The arch is visible from miles away, the stands are close to the pitch and there is a proper bicycle shed. There’s only one drawback. The hand dryers in the toilets make a deafening noise. For someone with sensitive and damaged ears, like me, these machines, which are increasingly replacing soft paper, are a devilish invention.

Fortunately, I am not alone in my aversion to this modern phenomenon. Years ago, I bought The Young Fogey Handbook: a Guide to Backward Mobility, and it was a real eye-opener. On page eighteen is a list of things that the Young Fogey hates, despises or distrusts. The present, for example, but also the Sixties, electricity, psychology, The Guardian newspaper, abstract art, rock music, the postcode, the EU and yes… noisy hand-driers in public spaces’.

Anyway. What is a Young Fogey? This 1980s term - coined by Alan Watkins in The Spectator - refers to young men (15-40) who dress and act like old people. Examples of these precocious gentlemen include the journalist Charles Moore (former editor of The Daily Telegraph), the writer A.N. Wilson and the late architectural historian Gavin Stamp. The poet John Betjeman was a Fogey avant-la-lettre.

Anyone who wants to get an idea of ​​this type of person should watch the series Brideshead Revisited. The main characters, Charles and Sebastian, are typical examples. Suzanne Lowry's handbook, published in 1985, was the male answer to The Sloane Ranger Handbook in which Peter York described the upper-class and upper-middle-class ladies who lived in the vicinity of Sloane Square and the King's Road. The mother of all Sloane Rangers was Lady Diana - who married a Fogey in the person of Charles.

The typical Young Fogey reads books by (Catholic) writers such as G.K. Chesterton and Evelyn Waugh, subscribes to The Spectator and Country Life, works as a banker, architect or curator, wears tweed (by day) and striped pyjamas (by night), rides a horse or a bicycle (with a basket), studies at Oxbridge colleges such as Peterhouse, Magdalen or Corpus Christi and gives daughters names such as Mary, Arabella and Cassandra. Rowing, croquet and tennis (on grass) are among their sporting activities.

Forty years after the publication of the handbook, Fogeys still exist, although they are out of fashion (a position in which they feel at home). Within the Conservative Party, Young Fogeys such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rory Stewart have achieved prominent positions, although the latter has long since distanced himself from Fogeydom. Soon the Young Fogeys - and the Sloane Rangers - will be taking to the basket bicycle, or the penny farthing, en masse for the annual Tweed Run.

Incidentally, anyone who wants to buy the handbook (forty years after its publication) will quickly spend a hundred pounds. It’s second-hand, but that is right and fitting.