If you’re the kind of person who gets annoyed by teenagers on buses, you just shouldn’t get a bus at 3.15pm, especially if you live next door to a secondary school. And I know all that, but there I was, on a bus at exactly the wrong time, getting annoyed.
The sharper-eyed reader will know I have teenagers of my own, so I should lean towards infinite love and forgiveness for the whole generation. I also remember what it’s like to be the annoying teenager, against all the odds because I can’t remember much else from the 80s. My sister and I got a coach once from London to Leighton Buzzard – we were about 13 and 15 – and as we were getting off, this guy exploded: “Thank God! I couldn’t have taken one more minute – they’re like a pair of chipmunks.” We didn’t even realise he was talking about us until our mum said: “Try living with them.” We were just thinking, ooh, where are there chipmunks?
