Drifting is now a way of life for my generation

In case you missed it, Lucy Mecklenburgh and Mario Falcone from The Only Way is Essex were last week enjoying a romantic sunset cruise in Marbella. In other news, Spencer Matthews from Made in Chelsea confessed to finally “sealing the deal” with girlfriend Caggie Dunlop, a columnist on this newspaper. All four inhabit the world of “surfaces, trivialities, and vulgarities” from which Lionel Asbo, the eponymous hero of Martin Amis’s new novel, is sprung. Like him, they speak for the state of England.

In idle moments I’ve wondered about pitching a middle-ground version of those utterly compelling shows to television executives. It would star me and my mates. Lost in Highbury, we’d call it. Islington, where I live, is smack in between Chelsea and Essex, both geographically and economically.

People who don’t watch these shows think they’re simple tours of the vacuous lives of twentysomethings — and they are. But they have a huge following because they capture better than any predecessors one of the great generational shifts of our time. Like most of my friends, Lucy, Mario, Spencer and Caggie belong to a generation bobbing interminably on the roiling seas of our twenties, with no purpose, responsibility or stability. I call our generation the Drifters.

Life used to be divided into uneven quarters: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age. Now there are at least six stages: childhood, adolescence, drifting, adulthood, retirement, old age. Drifting is the newest and least understood.

The Drifters have invented a whole new decade — roughly, the twenties — to wander and experiment. They try different careers, knowing the Bank of Mum and Dad will bail them out. They try living with mates, then move back home. They try different relationships. They float in and out of flocks of friends.

Partly, this is because they have to. The cost of a house and the paucity of jobs means it’s harder to get settled quickly. In the post-war years, young adults were much quicker to go into a career in which they stayed, won financial independence from their parents and settled down to a family. In 1981, British women got married, on average, at 23.1 years old. In 1991 that figure rose to 25.5. In 2009, it crossed 30 for the first time. In the same period, the average age of marriage for men rose from 25.4 to 32.1: a huge, sudden leap.

As such, the Drifters belong to all classes and none. The vast majority of my friends of the same age — 28 — are unmarried; many are on their fourth or fifth career since graduation. And the whole phenomenon is exacerbated by social media, which creates networks of friendships — flocks — that, being more transient, require less commitment than cohabitation or marriage. Flocks demand less of you than families. The Drifters are Facebook made flesh.

Naturally, it’s the parents we ought to feel sorry for, which explains why they make only fleeting appearances in Towie and Made in Chelsea. They must look on their financially and emotionally impoverished adult-children with despair. Alas for them, forces that are economic, cultural and ineluctable mean the Drifters are here to stay, their decade of meandering a swelling feature in the life of the nation. Expect Lost in Highbury on your screens soon.

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