Living the small-town cliche

I come from a town with a missing genration. When everyone hits 18 they up and leave. Sometimes they return, debt-ridden and with their tails between their legs, after graduation for a few years, where they skulk about, moan about how nothing happens round here then speed away again as soon as they've cleared the credit card. Of course you get a few who never leave, who stay in their little childhood clique forever and think that moving out of home at 25 is, like, sooo young. They also work awful, mind-numbing jobs thanks to the lack of creative industry and graduate opportunities round here.

I am one of those people who was forced to come home after graduating. I work in an office pushing paper around in a job that I am far too over-qualified for, where everyone my age seems to to have getting a mortgage as their main priority in life and has a live-in 'partner', and just love to gloat at how I'm a graduate in the same job as them ('look where your degree get you!'). I also work for satan's nephew - my boss is possibly one of the rudest and most repulsive men I've ever met, and I spend enough time complaining about him anyway so I shouldn't really start typing about it in my evenings.

But despite this test of strength, I have been trying my damndest to make it slightly more bearable. I work on a local arts magazine where I try to scope out local talented creative types (guess what? there's not many) and write what I hope to be inspiring articles, urging the local yoof to get up off their arses and make something interesting happen here. I brought women's rights to the locals attention with our Reclaim the Night march. And now, along with my significant other, have started trying to promote some experimental electronic nights. But, unsurprisingly, people just don't want to know. No venue owners want to take risks in putting us on, and most punters shy away from anything that's not the same tried'n'tested formula. Even the local so-called 'alternative' shops wouldn't put up our posters and flyers, probably as they weren't advertising bland emo/ nu-metal shite. The fact is, when you try to do something different and creative here, you just find yourself up against a brick wall. Anyone who wants to pursue anything interesting heads to london pretty quick, leaving the rest of us hicks with our six-fingered friends and plenty of tumble weed.

All I can say is - thank fuck I'm leaving this hell hole for good in a month's time.