Dear Mum and Dad and your respective therapists
I’ve got a couple of unscheduled minutes between dulcimer trio and applied algorithms so I thought I’d answer some of your questions about breakfast, the universe and everything, and ask one or two of my own. First off, that Arctic Monkey bar I scoffed in one tenth the time it took you to chop guava into your macadamia muesli is not, actually, junk. It’s organic Faroe oats rolled in fairtrade Kyrghyz honey delivering an unbeatable initial kick combined with best-in-class slow energy release for up to eight hours. Yes, it’s slickly marketed, which is why I’ve twigged to it and you haven’t. And yes, it’s not conducive to the type of family breakfast where we all chortle over our boiled eggs and soldiers as if no one had to get to school. But it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing (as is junk, btw).
You use the same word about my favourite DVDs and websites, when you’re not calling them my frame of reference. And I know you’re worried sick that having so little time to climb trees and play cowboys and indigenous peoples might make me depressed. Well, I’m just as worried about your frame of reference. What made the pre-broadband, pre-multi-channel Britain that you seem to wish I was growing up in so perfect? The fish fingers? And, statistically (we do statistics as part of algorithms) I’m still not likely to become depressed. You might mistake fashionable moroseness for depression, but that’s your problem. It used to be called adolescence. You people are putting yourselves under far too much pressure. Grow up.