Swings & roundabouts

There appears to be some kind of school holiday in progress at the moment, which is great as it means half the usual amount of traffic thronging the roads in the morning. This in turn means precious extra minutes in bed.

Less great are the bored children, who instead of facing conscription or forced labour during the holidays are hanging out at the 'entertainment area' behind my house. It's quite hard to get to as you have to scramble along a steep and rocky path, and of course therein lies the appeal as they try to get as far as possible from parental authority.

During the afternoon it's the 6 to 12 year olds rampaging through the undergrowth, shrieking and ordering each other about in a Lord-of-the-Flies bacchanalia, tearing down branches from the mulberry tree to feed their silkworms. (Kids STILL have silkworms! Surely the most unrewarding pets of all time.)

After dark the feral teenagers emerge. Tranquil evenings on the patio are a distant memory, replaced by the high-pitched squawkings of the adolescents as they endlessly and stridently debate their oh-so-important playground politics, love affairs and tedious random dramas. I never liked teenagers, even when I was one myself. I now see less point in them than ever before.