Are your parents cooler than you? Welcome to hell.

'The daisy', said my father in law, sipping his tea in my sitting room last week, 'represented a vagina.' He paused for a moment. 'It was too obvious.'

This statement was shocking not for the casual use of the word that makes the world uncomfortable nor his confident assessment of a work of modern art but because it revealed one of the greatest divisions in modern society today and that is the fun our parents are having versus the fun we are (not) having.

Yes, the collective parental unit (‘The Unit’) has emerged from the sucking hell of its suburban bog, wiped itself clean on 400 count Egyptian cotton and reinvented itself as the curator of the modern zeitgeist. The Unit is living the Life of Riley while its offspring groan under the burden of their fin de siecle pension entitlements. And boy o boy, what I wouldn’t give to swap places.

My father in law's psycho-floral observation was made after an art ‘soiree’ (the organiser's word) he and my mother in law attended in Bognor Regis. Bognor is a small town on the Sussex coast with ambition, it seems, to be twinned with Hoxton-upon-Shoreditch. This particular 'soiree' was merely a teaser for a bigger, louder, more shocking art event planned for the New Year. In giving us a rundown of the event it became very clear The Unit knew a lot more about modern art than we did. The question is, how did this happen?

The change that happens to The Unit after retirement is baffling.

‘But they never went anywhere!’ my husband said as they drove away. 'I don't understand. A big night out used to be the Harvester on Grandma's birthday. What the hell are they doing at a 'soiree'?' He had the same problem coming to terms with his stepmother's superior grasp of phone text abbreviations in 2008, and his own mother's casual use of Facebook. He is being forced to confront the neo-social and cultural husk of his own life.

I'm sympathetic, but I'm struggling with the same thing. Here is a series of texts my mother sent me this week:

‘Thinking about buying a new car’

‘Bought a new VW today!'
'It's silver!'

‘Picking up the new car today! Oh, btw, happy birthday!’

‘Am drinking glass of wine in sun, with new car keys in hand. Smiling!’

Now, if I’d ever sent my mum a text suggesting I was drinking within 100ft of a new car while holding its keys I’d have my arse kicked from Sydney to Saigon. I'm almost certain it was wine from a bottle too. No more ‘Kaiser Stuhl’ in a cask for The Unit.

From extreme kayaking in the Ardeche, to summers in France and trips to Cairns for the lunar eclipse The Unit isn’t just on the local art scene or propping up the German auto sector. It’s going global Gangnam style. It's riding the credit crisis like a toddlers' merry go round. Its diary is jammed solid. It might be able to squeeze babysitting in between lattes with gym mates and social networking but don’t rely on it. The saying 'old age isn't fun, but it's better than the alternative' no longer applies. Old age is a laugh a minute and busier than a Manhattan till on Black Friday.

And it's not just about a busier social life and the flagrant spending of our inheritance. The Unit has built a richer role for itself in the community too. One of my mother in laws (I have two) retired a few years ago only to start working for three charities. Three! At the same time! I think, on average, she saves two lives before breakfast and one after lunch Monday through Friday. And that's before the big stuff like selling cushions to ladies with piles at the charity shop. She isn't part of the Cameron Government's 'Big Society'. She IS the Big Society - just her, alone! If Van Rompuy can't fish Europe out of its pond he knows who to call. 

Of course The Unit may read this, scoff, and say 'we did our time wiping your arses, now it's OUR time suckers.' Or they'll plead with us and say 'We were REAL PEOPLE too all those years, you just didn't see it!' Well to that I say it's hard to see the face of humanity when it's glowing purple over a missed curfew or loud music, or when it's hidden behind health & safety goggles and a clipboard. We are being forced to reassess decades of capricious repression of our own artistic identities and accept a new world order, where we are the slouches, the povos, the luddites.

As my father in law drove away last week, having taken pity and brought us up to speed on the symbolic associations between Romantic artist William Blake and she of the daisy, Georgia O'Keeffe, we were left slightly shaken and badly regretting we hadn't booked a table for dinner at the Harvester.

by Katherine Burgdorf