What the hell is a Yappy anyway? Amy Swales finds out…
Label alert! There’s a new acronym in town and although it sounds a little like an unfortunate disease - “Whoops, I got a dose of the Yappys” - we’re actually talking about Young Aged Pensioners.
Now, Smaart isn’t suggesting blue rinses are gracing the pages of Vogue, and frankly it’s still a bit wrong to discuss soap characters as if they’re real people, but there are elements of the OAP lifestyle creeping into the 18-25 age bracket.
Young people are knitting, gardening, growing their own vegetables, and getting addicted to Sudoku. Where on earth have all the beer-swilling mega-students gone, who like nothing more than to fill a Daily Mail page or two with their puking antics?
Well, they’re all at Stitch‘n’Bitch sessions apparently. That is, if they’re not tending their allotments and pulling a trolley on wheels round Lidl. Stitch’n’Bitch knitting circles are incredibly popular in America with more than a few celebrities taking up the pastime, and now there are groups springing up all over the UK too, where like-minded people gather, chat and bash out a few scarves while they’re at it.
Apart from the obvious financial benefits of creating your own accessories, you can feel smug about your credit crunch-beating handiwork while socialising at the same time.
www.ravelry.com is an American website, but a great introduction for anyone to the world of knitting and crochet. While you may associate it with the memory of smiling tightly at the puke-green mittens your Gran produced every Christmas, Ravelry shows that it can be a young person’s game too, and has the feel of a social networking site.
Well over 250,000 members share patterns, techniques and pictures of their creations, and meet-ups have been organised off the back of it – with one group visiting a salon to get beauty treatments and sip cocktails while knocking up a few jumpers.
Here in Britain, there are ‘knitting weekenders’ that offer workshops, entertainment, fashion shows and parties, and we’re pleased to report that a healthy number of meetings are held in pubs. Visit www.iknit.org.uk for London-based groups, and www.stichnbitch.co.uk for other parts of the UK. While the bitching is optional, it’s surely a whole lot of fun.
Meanwhile, some are more interested in donning gardening gloves than knitting them, and keeping an allotment is becoming more and more popular amongst students.
Allotments can be shared between a number of people and combine money-saving with healthy eating and a sense of personal fulfilment – what’s not to like? For details on how to obtain an allotment, visit www.direct.gov.uk and search for your local council’s services. If you really fancy the idea of growing your own food, www.allotment.org.uk is a great place to start: a website set up by an enthusiast that has quickly grown into the best place to find hints and tips, recipes, an online shop and even a brief history of allotments if you’re really getting excited.
As well as being a bit easier on the pocket than buying pre-shredded lettuce in a plastic bag from the supermarket, growing your own also gives you an understanding of seasonal eating and tasty food free from pesticides. The extra effort is a small price to pay for these benefits.
So with this in mind, essentially what a Yappy boils down to is a young person aware of the environment and looking to save money. So… students then? The fact that we are in the grip of a so-called credit crunch seems to have spawned this latest label, but in fact, the slightly hippyish, ‘deep pockets long arms’ student concept isn’t really all that new, is it?
At the end of the day, why should students be any easier to box and label than any other section of society? We’re as varied as any other generation, with some who are sensible with a tomato plant in their porch and some who like to be purple-sick in bins after too much snakebite and black. And some who swing between the two. The truth is, in these times, everyone has become a bit of a Yappy, only now we can visit a website to learn how to make real booze at home rather than nicking deathly ethanol from the science labs (no really, don’t do that.)
So, Daily Mail and the rest of you: don’t tell us you’re so shocked at the notion of a responsible student that you invented a term for it? Oh, you did. Nevermind, you’re in the recycling already.
| Yappy Profile |
| Christine Dyson, 24, De Montfort University, Leicester |
| ‘When I first started knitting, a lot of my friends laughed at me. In fairness to them, it was probably fairly difficult to work out just what I was attempting to make when I first took up the sport, but it’s getting much easier now and my stuff resembles actual clothing now! I’ve been doing it for the last 9 months and have to say I find it really therapeutic as it helps me to switch off from my job, which can be quite stressful. Now that I’ve been knitting for a while, I’m able to make my own jumpers which I’m really proud of. I’m aware that makes me sound like I walk around in an Arran sweater that wouldn’t look out of place in the 1970s, but you can get really up-to-date pattern books nowadays, thank you very much. It saves me a fortune on over-priced knitwear in the shops, and it’s a bonus that I don’t look the same as everyone else in a cardigan from Topshop. It’s also nice to be able to make my friends presents – I made one of them a hat a couple of weeks ago, and she hasn’t taken it off since. Some people might say that I’m old before my time, but I like having a hobby that’s a little bit different from everyone else. If nothing else, at least it always gives me a great conversation starter, instead of relying on the old “So, whereabouts did you do your degree?” I’d recommend it to anyone.’ |
Elderflower Champagne
Join the Yappys by making your own homemade alcohol: cheap, satisfying and, er, alcoholic. This recipe takes commitment, but your main ingredient grows on a bush. Bonus.
24-30 elderflower heads (in full bloom)
2kg sugar
4 litres hot water
Juice & zest of four lemons
1-2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
A pinch of dried yeast
- Stir hot water and sugar in a (clean) bucket until the sugar dissolves, then top up with cold water to 6 litres.
- Add lemon juice and zest, vinegar and flower heads. Stir gently.
- Cover with clean muslin and leave to ferment in a cool, airy place for a couple of days. Take a look at the brew at this point, and if it’s not foamy and starting to ferment, add the yeast.
- Leave covered with muslin for a further four days, then strain through a sieve lined with muslin and decant into glass bottles.
- Seal and leave in the bottles for a further eight days before serving chilled.
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