"The days never change and you're three years late, so how does it feel to be three years late, and watching your youth slip away?" - Idlewild, You held the world in your arms.

This week's column is a continuation of sorts from last week (that's why I quoted the same song, see? You should listen to it, you know). Last week I talked about changing your ways often, charging into trouble headlong and making the most of the good and bad things that happen in your life. This week continues in a similar vein, but first I am going to say something that will make me sound like your parents (perhaps).

I'm pretty sure that many of the people that read this stuff regularly are younger than I am. Some of you may well be still at school, maybe finishing their first year of college, or perhaps bumming around in an effort to avoid entering the so-called real world. now for the parent - statement: "Treasure your youth, because it disappears fucking quickly". As you get older, the years start to fly past. Before you know it, you're another year older and wondering what you've accomplished since you left school, college, your job. 

The really irritating thing about all of this is that when you're younger, you never take anybody's advice. A year? That's fucking AAAAGES!! I'm gonna fuck about and watch TV all day, you think. There's plenty of time to do other stuff. And a year down the line, you haven't done any other stuff, you've fucked about and watched TV for a year. OK. Perhaps a rather extreme example, but when an adult says to you "Treasure your youth", you think, pfft, yeah right! And then you get older. And you start to think about how you could have accomplished so much more in your youth.

But not me. I am about to tell you a story with a bit of advice thrown in (as always), but taken at face value, it is the poorest choice anyone could possibly make in their life. When I was 17 years old, I started skipping school. It was piss-boring, and I had better things to do. So I stopped going to school. Most nights I'd get a phone call from my best friend (then and now), Rayner Coss, which usually went along these lines:

Me: Hello?
Rayner: Errr..... You wanna come to school on your bike tomorrow
Me: Cool. See you tomorrow.

This was a code. It meant: "If you come to school on your bike instead of the bus, you can stop off at my house on the way, we'll walk round town until my parents have gone to work, then go back to my house and paint, or possibly go back to yours and play Warcraft 2 on null-modem link up." And so that's what we did. We hardly went to school at all. It was total dogshit. We were the best fucking Hookey players in town.

In my A-Levels, I was predicted to get straight A grades. This would have earned me a place at Birmingham university, where I would have studied Psychology with Artificial Intelligence. Thanks to my school-dodging malarkey, my actual grades were a paltry B in Maths, C in Physics, and E in Further Maths. All A-Level passes, but I "could do better". I was the biggest disappointment ever (no change there), and my university place was out the window. However, I managed to get a place in a different university, studying Multimedia Computing (which I also skipped an awful lot of, and got a 2:1 instead of the 1st class I could have got if I had been bothered), which eventually landed me a job in the video games industry. I was set up along a path I had wanted to tread since childhood, and best of all, I hadn't wasted my youth.

School may be the best days of your life, but in my case it was only because I didn't go. 

So where the hell is the advice in that story? It just looks like I lucked out, doesn't it? Possibly, but look closer. I skipped school, because Found the lessons boring as shit. I spent my time painting Miniatures, playing computer games, BMXing and generally enjoying life. When other people were stressing over exam revision (for my views on this, check Cataract Resin #9), I was out at the local Metal club, or popping all night sessions of Quakeworld (remember that?) or catching the late night showing of bullshit horror movies on BBC2. OK, when the exams came, I fell short, and I could have done so much better if I tried? But so what? Making the best of a bad situation, I phoned round to see if any University would have me, and got onto a course at DeMontfort. it wasn't the course I wanted originally, but it turns out it was better for me. If I had the chance to go back and change everything, I could max out all my grades, become a star pupil, whatever, but I wouldn't.

Of course, there's the chance that it could all have gone wrong and I'd be a junkie on the streets, injecting bleach because I can't get my hands on any skag. That's what my parents would have me believe. But how many of you can see me doing that, seriously? As long as you're sensible, you can control the chaos that comes with performing the unexpected.

Many of you will denounce my "advice" today as the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard. Don't take it at face value. Read between the lines and you'll find what I'm getting at. go back and read last week's column, then read this one again. If you can find the message contained, you can follow it. If not, and you'd rather play it safe, that's fine, just remember that in 20 years you'll be telling your kids not to waste their youth like you did.



DISCLAIMER: I will not be held responsible for any grades lost as a result of following my advice today, nor will I take the rap for any idiots that end up as fucking junkies because they cut school but didn't take the time to actually learn anything on their own and now the only thing that gets them through the day is a skinful of brown and the only furniture they have is a mound of blackened spoons in a council flat. Just stay fucking sensible, kids. And remember, your decisions are your own, nobody is to blame for anything you do. Word.