PERHAPS it has something to do with being around for 1,932 years, but York can be horribly middle-aged.

If the city had a face, it would wear a permanently censorious frown and have a pipe protruding from somewhere between Acomb and Fulford.

York's attitude to young people could be summed up in two words: whipper snappers. We spend our time in a permanent state of harrumph.

Why do these so-called teenagers spend eight hours a night playing Ninja Death Driller Scum Hedgehogs on their so-called Playstations when they should be out in the fresh air? How dare they hang around on street corners every evening, intimidating their elders by speaking to one another and laughing? Haven't they got homes to go to?

Such ambivalent, and sometimes downright hostile, attitudes have emerged again in the last couple of weeks. Take the proposal to stage a summer music festival, Air 2003, on Knavesmire. The Evening Press put this on the front page the other Saturday.

Was it celebrated as a wonderful opportunity for the city to do something different and fun one weekend? Not exactly. By paragraph four, our report was comparing this first-time event with an unrelated one in Leeds in which "drunken revellers went on the rampage".

This prompted a letter from a South Bank resident who feared the Air 2003 festival would cause intolerable disruption to local dog walking routines, and turn Knavesmire into a pin cushion of drug-users' needles.

Other readers wrote in to support the idea. Good. We should be throwing as much support as we can behind Air 2003. At the very least, it would make proper use of Knavesmire, which presently hosts the occasional circus, the odd tent sale and not much else.

With plans for stand-up comedy and an arts area, Air 2003 will provide a welcome addition to the cultural calendar of York which, let's face it, is hardly overburdened with must-see dates. Who cares that most people would not know York rock band The Yards if they called in for tea? Most residents ignore Bootham Crescent from one week to the next, yet there is widespread support for the campaign to save York City.

The Air 2003 festival will bring a little youthful vigour to old man York and as such should be seized on immediately.

Which brings us to the university. There are worthy reasons to back this institution, not least because it is giving those snobs in the dreaming spires of Oxbridge a wake-up call. And no one whoops with more energetic joy than me when we read of the economic benefits of Science City.

But the real reason the university is so good for York is it brings thousands of young people here. That, I fear, is the very same reason why so many oppose its expansion: all those undergraduates from elsewhere invading the city with their brash opinions and noisy pastimes.

Here they come, intent on learning the skills which will ensure the future prosperity of Britain while having the time of their lives. Well, not in this city, they won't. Harrumph.

WHAT a wonderful story: Russell Crowe flies in from America to spend a couple of hours getting to know the Poppleton grandparents of his bride-to-be. At once, tough-guy Mr Crowe is revealed to be a real nice guy.

Our Russ dropped by because the couple cannot make it to his Fiji wedding. That must mean there are a couple of spare places. Does anyone have the number for Mr Crowe's agent?

Updated: 10:18 Wednesday, March 05, 2003