And you kept us awake with wolves' teeth

I still indulge regularly in a pastime that grows quainter by the day: buying CDs. I use an iPod and that kind of thing, but I still like the hard copy of something in my hand. It's why I doubt I'll ever take to using a Kindle, or such things. Given that any music you like can now be found for nothing if you know where to look I've recently taken to viewing the exchange of money for music as almost an act of charity or benevolence. More grandly, I am a patron of the arts rather than a consumer these days. But the other day, teaching a class of 15 and 16 year-olds I said something about buying a CD and they were genuinely astonished, and then confused. They saw it as having no more point to it than collecting stamps, or trolls. And maybe it doesn't.

These were Peruvian students, but it's a pretty universal thing. Current 16 year-olds are unlikely to have had an interest in music that began in a time before pervasive internetness. The only teenagers you really see in record shops here are in HMV and they're in the games section. It's funny, you think you're moving along with the world just fine (albeit at your own pace) and then, suddenly, you're not.