Okay, she "played" in London last night - 5 songs in 20 minutes to a deliriously select audience - so I figured I might as well post a couple of pieces I wrote a week or so ago, just to get them out of the way.

The first came to me as I was writing a letter to friend. I was bringing him up to date with recent personal events, more specifically, what I had been up to the past weekend. I'd travelled to Hampshire to spend a couple of days with my Ma in a cottage she's looking after during the winter while the owner takes off on some extravagant journey across the Americas. My mother has always had deep affection for the countryside; she was born there and spent what was, for the most part, an idyllic youth playing in its fields and lanes. And having lived in the city for all of her adult life, she now sees the countryside as a retreat from concrete drudgery while insufficiently enamoured of it to move lock stock and barrel. To compensate for this, whilst there, she makes the best of its pursuits. And one of the most evident examples is 'The Hunt'. Being pro-Hunt marks you out as 'real' country as opposed to merely a 'weekender', usually considered a balsamic-drizzling Leftie quite happy to eat meat as long as it comes shrink-wrapped or potted in a hand-fired terrine. And being 'real county', for at least the time that she spends there, is something my mother is quite keen to be.

However thanks to a recent ban on hunting with dogs, a law vigorously opposed by the self-appointed 'Countryside Alliance', yet swept into the statute books by a majority of urbanite MP's, those participators in what some might see as a fundamental component of country life, have since been forced to accept a less compelling, less thrilling and less rewarding version of a pastime they have always held so dear.

To those unconnected to the true nature of The Hunt, such as myself, this is neither here nor there. But 'the pursuit', now replaced by a trail laid by a couple of farmers on four-wheel bikes dragging a sock filled with the remains of a 'humanely' slain fox (hence the term 'drag hunt') remains a pursuit. Of sorts. What once was a chase is no longer… it is merely a following. And unlike orienteering there is no stopwatch to time it. Even if there was, it would mean nothing to the dogs. At the end of the day the only element that provokes one dog to run faster than another, is the waiting prize… usually edible.

The hounds seem to sense this. Deprived of their quarry, they meander silently towards the direction of the smell left by the pongy sock, following a line only a man-made contraption could create. No leaping over ditches or burrowing through hedgerows, the path left by the dangling scent takes a more leisurely route. As did the pack of hounds. It all seemed faintly anodyne, an afternoon stroll rather then a full-nostrilled gallop. Eliminated of its blood-lust, the experience for the dogs seemed almost pointless, and I think in a deeply subconscious way, and even though they'd be loathe to admit it, the same sense of lack filled the hearts of the ensuing riders.

Which brings me to Madonna.

Last night I found myself watching her latest video, the evergreen 48-year old prancing around in pink leotard and leg-warmers. There never seems to be sufficient time between Madonna leaving our consciousness before she's up and at us again, bombarding us with that gap-toothed smile and latest half-baked philosophy. Having re-invented herself for the gazillionth time, she succeeds in making those of us who have watched her career evolve for all of the last 20 years wonder what on earth we’ve been doing with our time… clearly nothing like enough.

But watching her, I found myself wondering what it is that keeps the woman going in such a determined, often demented manner. And I thought … perhaps it's the smell of the fox. While the rest of us have to make do with no more than a pongy, government-approved sock, Madonna still has the scent of fresh meat to spur her on.

And where does this meat come from? Why, "Youth" of course… a never-ending generation of youngsters willing to be convinced, cajoled and brought into the fold. It's the stink of fashion, the fear of obsolescence, the never-ending quest for immortality and the eternal flame. The rest of us, with lesser aspirations to drive us on, simply meander, much like the disappointed mutts of the hunt, bored, bemused and bewildered.

Madonna, however, horn pressed hard to her lips instead cries, "Tally-Ho!" And as long as she maintains a firm hold on the reins all shall be well in her world, leaving the rest of us mere mortals to watch her gallop away… "Madge-isterial", supreme, if strangely alone, off into her shimmering 'Real Country' sunset.

A few days later I received an email from a friend telling me he was "lovin' her album". Last Saturday night, Madonna appeared on Parkinson (a UK chat show). My thoughts continued…

It's been an interesting weekend; England beating the Argies in a friendly that for once was a genuine sporting fixture, the Jordanians finally up in arms about a fellow countryman, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Madge hogging 'Parky' on Saturday night - an old wrinkly all hot and bothered over a parent of two.

Despite some quarters - one of my mates obviously got Parkinson's disease on seeing the Kaballah-Momma astride a boom-box - it still seems Madonna's album is one purely for the disco-sluts (no major-ly bad thing in itself). But it is people's reaction to her that is, as ever, proving the most interesting. Not for the first time in her career it seems, it is her behaviour more than her music, which has becomes the focal point of people's interest.

Madonna has always got folks hot under the collar, usually because of her overt sexual presentation whether in photographs or performance. Nowadays people are no longer shocked by the fact that she flaunts herself, the pop firmament is stuffed with far more licentious women - any notion of Feminism has seemingly been banished, women now feeling empowered by their bodies, they get to sell product, while the men running the Record Labels keep smiling all the way to the bank.

No, what seems to be at the heart of the debate is ageism. Is Madonna too old to be carrying on the way she is? Admittedly there's a sense of envy at what great shape her body is in, but it seems to be tinged with a puritan negativity, a thought that at 47 she really shouldn't be worrying about such stuff as sex or looking good in a leotard. She should be at home, doing the school run, baking cookies and doing all the things that proper mothers have to do at that age. Which is of course nonsense.

But while she may be alienating women of her own age, she retains the hardcore support of her gay audience - the album has been tailor-made for them after all with his its swooping strings and Moroder-like sequencers. And there is as ever, a method to her deliberation. In her early days, Madonna was championed by the New York queer community way before little girls picked up on her bare midriff and finger-less gloves. Like so many who move to Manhattan in search of their dreams, she was an outsider re-inventing herself. And of course making these Ch-ch-changes is something Madonna's been doing all of her adult life.

But the world has moved on. She now finds herself in a position where even if she re-invents herself a thousand times, a younger audience will still see her for she is; a 47 year-old divorced and re-married mother of two. Put Madonna next to 'The Pussy Cat Dolls' and she looks like a veritable grandmother. In fact it was only by playing the Dietrich-like dominatrix that she could get away with performing next Britney a couple of years back.

But while the young audience see her as mutton dressed as lamb, the gay audience, for whom the beauty of youth is a well-worn obsession, are far more understanding when it comes to the fight against age. The fact that Madonna might have a portrait of Dorian Gray in her closet is something they can all understand as so many have one themselves. The Diva, re-moulded, re-designed, from Judy to Liza is also something the gay community has always found fabulous. And it is this postponement of the inevitability of life… of Death even… that Madonna taps into so determinedly. As long as the Glitterball keeps glittering, casting in its sparkle, fragments of beauty before the house-lights reveal all, then the dream can survive, if only for one more exuberant night.

Yet Madonna's attempt to remain other-worldy, to be something more than herself, at least in the public arena, is something to be commended. There was a ton of Pop on television this past weekend (heck, most of the footage has been paid for by the record companies - they get a free plug, the TV networks get to fill their schedules). There seemed to be about three hours dedicated to Britpop alone last night. What struck me while watching it, other than how damn parochial, irrelevant and full of itself the movement all seems now, was how much the programme makers - white, educated and middle class - seem to completely ignore what was really going on both musically and culturally during the 90's. Which of course was 'Dance'. It dominated both the charts and the airwaves and it infuriated the journalists, the documentary-makers, the aforementioned sociologists because there was so little for them to write about. For starters most of the songs had no words and those that did were perfunctory. You could almost hear the wail of relief when Underworld's 'Born Slippy' came out with its reams of verbiage. "At last! Something for us to discuss."

As well as there being no lyrics, there were no stars. Superstar DJ's? Forget it. The only one who did provide any crossover copy was a former drummer with an top-selling Indie band who happened to have a children's TV presenter for a wife. The rest of the crew; Brandon Block, Judge Jules, Danny Rampling… they had nothing to say. They played records and took drugs… not necessarily in that order.

But when you look back at the legacy of Britpop now, you'd struggle to put together one whole album of gold-plated songs from all the bands involved. Certainly nothing you'd choose as a 'Desert Island Disc' unless it was there to remind you of something you were listening to when a truly memorable event happened. Yet while these feeble half-stars - with the exception I have to say of the bona fide treasure and sadly wasted Jarvis Cocker - quickly disappeared from the pages of the Media, it has to be said they were replaced with something indescribably worse.

Thanks to the sudden democratisation of Pop… the design of cheap digital-cameras enabling fly-on-the-wall 24 hour documentary, the talent show as a way to make huge amounts of money using premium rate phone lines, round the clock MTV and its various cable spin-offs, digital radio, Internet radio… Pop not only reached saturation point, there simply wasn't the talent to fill the acres of space which now needed to be filled. Instead there were Wannabes. Thousands upon thousands of them. What's more, there were now hundreds of producers, choreographers, stylists, make-up artists… an entire panoply of parasites and hangers-on who had grown up during the 1980's and without whom no music career was seen to be able to exist.

Back in the early days, it was a band and their manager… end of story. Colonel Tom Parker, Brian Epstein, Andrew Loog Oldham, Peter Grant… "This is what my artist's about, this is what we’re doing… now sell the fucking record." But the egos of the record companies and all the attendant independent promotions and marketing companies weren't happy with that. They wanted to get involved. They wanted to be part of it. For some reason they had got it into their heads that they were as equally creative, that their ideas were equally as valid. So they began swinging their weight. It was their way or the highway and once certain individuals had risen to the top of their respective departments, they split from their employers and formed their own private companies… primarily so they could decide on their own salaries. Thus the rot set in.

As more and more of these companies came into existence they needed more product to work on. Even if the product wasn't out there - certainly not what you’d call quality product - they had to keep working. So their job as promoters and marketers was to convince the great-unwashed that the product they were selling was something worth buying. But as music fans, traditionally teenagers using music to define themselves, became jaded and disappointed with the fare being served up to them and stopped buying in sufficient numbers (remember the dark days of the mid-80's and that despite the introduction of CD's - re-selling the public all the music they already owned) the companies had to find a new market. So they did… Mums and Little Kids. And that is, by and large, who determine the biggest selling records in the UK market today.

Frankly, it doesn’t bother me at all. It simply means the charts, the pop industry, the whole culture of Teen Music has been reduced to the environment of Woolworth's and Toys R' Us. One simply ignores it, much as one ignores an Argos catalogue should one come sliding through the door. How long this trend will continue doesn’t interest me either. There will always be Mothers and there will always be Little Kids. And what it says about teen culture, what it says about rock and roll 50 years on from Elvis, probably isn't all that important either. We've killed the fatted calf. But then we've been doing the same thing in far more significant ways. We've sexualised children, we've gone to war over lies, we're heading towards nuclear conflagration… if only through belligerent errors.

So the fact there are no decent Stars any more seems hardly important. Nevertheless it does strike me, when faced with the usual wall of noise pumped at me from all angles; dumb and relentless rappers telling us nothing, girl groups whose inspiration seems to stretch no further than Page Three, bleached punksters best left in the playroom, that a 47 year-old woman, giving it large, fixing the camera with an actually believable "trust me, you couldn’t afford it" stare, and yes, even humping that damn ghetto-blaster like a semi-possessed cowgirl, seems like an entertaining ray of light in what is a dull fog of mediocrity… if only for the four minutes at a time in which she enters our lives.