Young People Today

 Good evening all. I hope that you are well. I am ok - a bit cold but ok. I made the mistake of going to church in a linen shirt this morning because IT IS STILL SUMMER - YES IT IS and I will not give in quite yet. This morning, the preacher thought it was hilarious to point out that it is four months to Christmas. Ha Ha Ha. Four months is a third of the year. A third. I don't care what they are doing in B and Ms - I am not partaking in this nonsense. I am expecting a beautiful tail end of summer (No evidence forthcoming for this, I know) and we have a break booked in Tenby. We were thinking of flying for a last-minute break abroad but both of us have been influenced by 

• Queues at European airports which apparently have nothing to do with Brexit
• Planes being diverted from Bristol to Birmingham with the sum of customer service being a man sweeping up in the airport at 2am being happy to give you the number of a local taxi firm or a Holiday Inn - or both.
• Planes dropping 150 feet in ten seconds and passengers having to give air stewards plasters for their head wounds.
• Residents of European resorts walking up and down outside your hotel shouting "Tourists Go Home" but taking your money for a nice piece of splatterwear pottery because it is the least you can do.

I think if it was the main holiday we would do it but, I don't have the wherewithal at the moment. Also, I have never been to Tenby and apparently, there is no such thing as bad weather - only bad clothes. I don't really want to test that theory to the absolute maximum though. Anyway, it's a couple of weeks off yet. 

I was listening to the radio this morning and the news was about Kirsty Allsopp who had allowed her son to go Interrailing in Europe at 15 years old. She was then reported to Social Services by someone who, I suspect, was less interested in a child's safety than they were in bringing a posh bird down a peg or two. I suppose that once the Social get a referral, they have to act on it and that caseworker must have been pleased as punch to add this to their caseload. 

Can I confess that I was an overprotective parent? Do you mind me saying? A girl has to know her weaknesses. I mean I am a lot better now obviously because if I chase them too much they threaten to change their phone numbers. However, I am not sure how I would feel about them, at 15, dragging all over Europe, sleeping in the overhead baggage compartment and begging tramps for change for the Tony Chocolony machine. However,  when I was young, things were very different. On school holidays, a group of us - certainly primary school age - would get our bikes, decant some cream soda from the big bottle the Alpine man had delivered earlier in the week, make ham sandwiches with piccalilli and disappear for the day. The last thing my mother heard was "We are off up the Diggle-Daggle" and she would warn us to be back in time for tea. (The Diggle-Daggle was a local area of scrubland and trees. Sometimes children would arrange for big fights to happen there after school. It's the kind of place you see policemen in BBC4 serials finding children's bodies.)

The thing was that we were ok. In the main. My friend Denise had a burn mark under her jaw because she accidentally set fire to the house because her Mum and Dad didn't feel that a babysitter was necessary the night they went to Blighty's Nightclub to see Showaddywaddy. That was obviously too far. Although thinking about it, I do have a memory of my Dad going off to the pub during the Miners' Strike in the Seventies and leaving me with instructions about where to find the candles when the power went off. Different times I suppose.

My kids' gained a lot of independence through church youth away weeks. A leader friend once confided in me that it was better that parents didn't know just how much independence. I do remember sending a shy son off on a coach somewhere or other (possibly Tenby come to think of it) and, seven days later, carrying the case of a suntanned kid wearing a bead necklace, twirling a cricket bat above his head and singing "I'll be your dog." along with twenty other similar looking children. Church has a reputation for being a bit namby-pamby but I think it has a good understanding of what young people need  - friendship, independence, spiritual challenge and compulsory acoustic guitar strumming. Certainly better than Tic-Flippin-Toc. 

Our younger children are in the midst of a mental health crisis. Tell me if I am wrong but I don't remember child suicide being the issue it is today. So many children seem to be best friends with anxiety. I'm happy to point the finger at social media obviously but, one of the reasons that it has so much power is that children depend on it so much for their actual lives. So many of them seem to have very little else. Cuts to youth services by councils must also be having an effect. These kinds of cuts are easy to make because the impact takes a long time to filter through, giving politicians plenty of scope to say that it didn't happen on their watch. 

I admire Ms Allsopp to be frank - although I am willing to bet good money that her son is at boarding school and maybe not quite as much in need of a shot of independence as a twelve-year-old girl in her bedroom scouring the Internet for some kind of connection with - well anyone really and we know how often that goes horribly wrong. I am an old person. There are disadvantages obviously (I'm a martyr to my back I'm telling you) but at least I am not dealing with the minefield that is sending out a young person into the world. All the best if you are.

However just to prove how hypocritical I am about all this. The photo above is from my son - on holiday with his mates in Greece. He knows me too well and for a quiet life, texted me three rings when he got home. He’s a 31-year-old teacher. I can only apologise

Have a good week.