The other night I succumbed to one of those blank trawls of the channels that take approximately 25 minutes now that I’ve shelled out for NTL’s digital service. In between blurred clips of Hitler barking on the History Channel* and wildlife mating/killing each other on National Geographic, I came across the usual nostalgiafest on VH1, covering the 1980s. U2’s “A Sort of Homecoming” came on. I’ve always affected an eyes-raised-to-heaven distaste for U2’s stadium rock, with Bono on stage in Topeka, Kansas, sweating for all of humanity’s sins. But I have to admit that while watching the video (footage of the band travelling through a supine Western Europe�and what a strange, exotic territory that seemed in 1984 to us Irish trying not to fall off the edge of the world), I was moved against my will by the song�s irony-free grandiosity. Through mentally gritted teeth I muttered, “This is a bloody great song.” I’m worried such epiphanies indicate the blunting of any critical faculties I might still possess, that this head-bobbing acquiescence to the music denounced in my youth–even if I disliked it more on the grounds on principal than on actual aesthetic revulsion (it’s not like U2 occupy the same circle of hell reserved for, say, Phil Collins)–might be a signpost on the downhill road to middle-age.But I know things will have gotten out of hand when I find myself dabbing my eyes during a Dido video.*This makes me think of the cartoon in The Spectator: a couple are watching TV and the caption is “I don’t know why they get so worked up having the British National Party on the programme. Hitler’s on the telly every night.”