Smells like teen Kenergy

Ken vs Oasis

I am, I admit, clinically nostalgic, but this week I have been looking optimistically to the future; a not-too distant future with a teenage son in the house.

Our son’s school held a Battle of the Bands competition, which we went to with outward enthusiasm (just the right side of understated. I held back from making a banner), and inner breath-holding as he took to the stage with his fellow 11 and 12 year old bandmates and opened the show.

His rehearsal descriptions had led us to believe it was going to be a risky performance - We haven’t managed to play it all the way through more than twice - but it was great.

We then watched progressively older boys take to the stage with their varying degrees of confidence and swagger, and I felt explosively maternal. I wondered which of these boys would move our son to think I’d like to be like him when I’m older. I asked him at the end, and I liked the answer.

Recently he’s been asking me if we could go on holiday outside Europe. He’s never left Europe, and is talking about it with an increasing urgency like he’s close to a stressful deadline he’s going to miss.

I dug a bit, and it turns out he wants to experience faraway with us, his parents, but thinks - or rather, thinks he knows - that as soon as he’s a teenager he will be grumpy and won’t want to spend time with us anymore, and then that’ll be that.

I hate the narrative around teenagers. Stroppy, secretive, unhygienic. I mean god, aren’t we all. I hate that our son thinks that he will become somehow unpleasant, and that it’s an inevitability over which he has no control.

The boys I saw on the stage on Tuesday night demonstrated all the most valuable things about life: camaraderie, awkwardness, risk-taking, courage, mistakes, recoveries, humour, relief, flair.

Teenagers are blazingly glorious.

And looking round the audience at their Mums and Dads in their 40s and 50s quietly mouthing the words to She’s Electric and looking a bit wistful, I could see we’ve all still got those teenage embers glowing, however old we are.

A chilling side note here, which occurred to me on the drive home: Us humming along to She’s Electric now is exactly the same musical time difference as my parents - who were always very old - in the 90s humming along to Day Tripper.

I pointed this out to our children in the back of the car. They enjoyed thinking ahead to sitting in their own children’s Battle of the Bands audiences, nodding their heads and politely humming along to I’m Just Ken, being played ironically by the kids of 2053.

Varying degrees of Kenergy

Porridge pancakes in under 6 minutes

I’m delivering a bike load of these porridge and honey sourdough later today. Distressingly I haven’t held one back for us this week, but the process of making them does leave me with an excellent by-product courtesy of a recipe from Julie Friend - porridge pancakes.

Here is the recipe for easily achieved happiness. So easy my children can do it, and if you’re efficient you can have six pancakes from zero to golden in 5 minutes and 43 seconds.

Leftover porridge blob (about two heaped tablespoons)

Two heaped tablespoons self raising flour (I use wholemeal)

Half a teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

Milk

Add a splash of milk to the rest of the ingredients and whisk with a fork. Add more milk until the mixture becomes the consistency of thick porridge.

Melt a knob of butter in a big pan and drop in spoonfuls of the batter.

Turn the pancakes over when holes have started appearing and they have enough structural integrity to flip.

Cook the other side until golden, and serve. We like them with blueberries and maple syrup.

sub six mins, including finding all the ingredients, two of which were not where they should be

Cultural digest

This is what I have been digesting, other than pancakes, this week:

Read

Good Material by Dolly Alderton I am really enjoying this break up story, set against the backdrop of the comedy circuit. I spent 4 summers working at the Edinburgh Fringe, and despite not being a 35 year old man, find Andy’s narrative very relatable.

I have been reading this whilst, annoyingly, the children have been trying to talk to me, leading to a weird reverse-policing. I’ve had two warnings, and now my Booktime for the rest of the week has been severely curtailed.

Listen

Saoirse-Monica Jackson on The Dish. What a turn of phrase this woman has; it makes my heart flip. A highly enjoyable listen, plus they eat lasagne, which is my Last Supper of choice.

Watch

I have been rewatching W1A, and have realised the uncomfortable truth that Will Humphries reminds me of myself in my early career. Constantly lovesick, and professionally hopelessly out of my depth to panic-degree levels.

If I was having a wand made for me at Ollivanders on Diagon Alley, it would 100% have one of Will Humphries’ wrongly addressed envelopes scrolled up around the core.

Like Will, I was accidentally hired. Not into the BBC, but perhaps more preposterously, onto the newsdesk at the Scotsman. I was 22 and had written a nice letter explaining my complete lack of journalism experience but willingness to make tea, and was invited in for unpaid work experience.

After 3 days the editor asked me in passing if I was on the payroll yet, and when I said Not yet in a voice that managed not to betray that the only payroll I’d been on to date was a cinema’s, an email went to HR with my bank details, and noone ever mentioned it again.

For the next 5 months I submitted terrible copy that was then edited beyond all recognition, and I barely blinked or breathed for fear of discovery.

Algorithm stress

This week I have been metaphorically jabbed in the eye daily by adverts for Victoria Beckham’s satin kajal eyeliner pencil, and I have thought - at least 20 times - about buying one. I have even spent some of my precious time on this planet narrowing it down to two colours (cinnamon, olive).

Which is of course what VB’s advertising bots want me to think. AND I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. It glides so beautifully! What a flattering range of colours!

The only thing stopping me is that it is £30. And also I can’t narrow it down to one colour. Because I really can’t spend £60 on two pencils.