I was reluctant to leave home in my late teens. Whereas many friends were desperate to throw
off the restrictive shackles of parental control and take that breathtakingly
exciting step into autonomous adulthood, I’d negotiated tacitly a set of rules
with my mother which created a mutually pleasing symbiosis. In exchange for cooking my meals, washing my
clothes, letting me stay out for days on end, smoke in my room, drink in the
morning and wear and do what I wanted, I wouldn’t get needlessly arrested or
burn her house down. It worked for me. There didn’t seem to be too much in the plus
column of life to suggest that moving into a semi-furnished bedsit in a house
full of semi-educated labourers* was a worthwhile option.
I assumed this arrangement was working for my mother too,
but I suspect, with the gift of hindsight, that she was really just putting up
with me until I left to go to University.
Unfortunately, there was another point of complacently. I wasn’t in a rush to get to Uni. If I’d been middle class, I’d probably have
taken a gap year and gone to help the downtrodden and desperate in sub-Saharan
Africa. After telling everyone I knew endlessly that I was planning to do so,
and using it as a weapon to pull, because it’d show how I was, like, sooooo
sensitive and caring.
As it was I was trying to take a gap year in Manchester by
studying part time, living off the dole and drinking White Lightning/Special
Brew snakebites. I think this was probably
more educational for me than ten months in Burkina Faso ever could have
been. Did you know, for example, that no
matter how much you may think you’re the re-incarnation of Jim Morrisson, you’re
not. You’re just pissed and standing on a car shouting obscenities and minutes
away from a criminal conviction.
Eventually this happy stasis came to an abrupt end when my
mother informed me that I had to move out, as I was treating her house like a
hotel. Which I thought was a bit rich, as I hadn’t defenestrated any TVs, nor
sexually assaulted anyone with a baby shark**.
Fortunately I was able to procure
a rented room in Whalley Range. A basement in fact. Fully funded by the gift of housing benefit.
And it was here that I actually began to grow up***. I learned to cook for myself
(such classics of culinary class as Toastie
de fromage et ragu, haricots et
fromage, and petis pois avec de
margarine). I began to take
responsibility for my life, apply to Uni, learn to operate a washing machine
and, more importantly, appreciate my mother.
Because it is a massive learning curve and process of growth when you’re
finally kicked out of the nest. Until you’ve left home, you’ve probably never
really experienced penury. Without parental support you become more aware of the
difficultly of living, more sympathetic to those who struggle. A rounded,
feeling, human-being.
So when I hear that Dave 'Bury me
in a Shallow Grave while still Semi-conscious’ Cameron is considering scrapping
housing benefit for the under 25s, I can only think that either he wants an
infantile population who won’t question him, or that he want people to hate
their parents, crack up under the enforced proximity and kill them, thus saving
a fortune in pensions and care for the elderly. Or that he’s utterly fucking
insane.
He may claim it is a modest proposal, but for him,
living at your parents’ means staying in the East Wing pissing in the eyes of
peasants while the olds count their off-shore money in the West Wing, only
meeting over the breakfast table to discuss how to re-introduce feudalism, and who
was the better dictator, Adolf or Maggie.
However, with everything, you
should always read the small print. The arse-faced hooray plans to do this if
he wins the next election. This is his
version of If I Won a Million Pounds****. The only hope he has of winning the
next election is if something is put into the water which makes everyone a simple-minded
amnesiac. Surely even he wouldn’t do that?
Actually…
I’m off to stock up on Evian.
*For some reason, this is what I
imagined my first foray into the outside would be like. Though I preciously turned my nose up at it
at the the time, I suspect it would probably have been good for me if it had
turned out to be true.
** I’d never stayed in a hotel. Everything
I knew about hotels I’d learned from books about Led Zeppelin. I was extremely disappointed when I did
finally stay in a hotel several years later and it was NOTHING like I expected.
***Inasmuch as I ever have
****A game he can’t really
play. It’d be like my If I Won a Tenner…
