The Start

11.35pm and Johnny my 13 year old son has just come down stairs in a spaced out, sleep walking fashion in order to use the loo downstairs. There's one closer to his bedroom but sometimes if it is really late he comes all the way to the ground floor - maybe to check if his parents are still alive. Maybe he just likes roaming around.

I look at Johnny and I feel both proud and sad. Sad because I've fallen into that mini-me ego trap of thinking he is like some sort of re-run of myself and he's about to make all the same fuck ups and mistakes that I did. And because he doesn't even have the same freedom that I did back in 1973. This is car dangerous, paedo 2008 and nice 13 year old boys just can't roam around and take chances on the streets. Well, I think I'd let him but to his mum such an idea is tantamount to offering him a crack pipe in the back of a 1 star safety rated car without a safety belt on.

It seems that some young teenagers are allowed out alone to have fun in Lewes, our home town, but they are apparently broken family, working class fuck up kids. When me and Johnny see them however, they simply look like kids who are having a bit of a laugh. Albeit in often a vaguely anti-social way: Riding those daft dwarf stunt bikes the wrong way down a one way street; shouting; chucking chips at each other. Fun stuff if you're 13. Fun stuff at any age if you're a bit pissed.

Soon Johnny will be 14, 16, 18, 21 and hopefully he'll be able to make some fun for himself without us being able to do anything about it. In a nice, caring middle-class way, of course. Perhaps shouting slogans about global warming in a Peruvian shepherds hat whilst getting drunk on fairly traded Chardonnay.