London Letter: Saluting the energy of the youth

THE two brats are currently on University holidays and living at home. The most noticeable thing about this is that I haven’t had a dry towel for the past two weeks.

Not to mention that there is never any food in the fridge, no matter how full it was 10 minutes before, and the TV is always on either a sport or heavy metal music channel – at full volume.

The sink is always crammed with dirty plates and management spends much of the weekend either piling stuff into the washing machine or ironing it.

I heard her on the phone yesterday saying to one of her friends, ‘At the moment, Cameron is driving my car with my debit card in his pocket and Paul has my credit card.’

Having said that, the house has never been so noisily alive.

They also do pull their weight financially and both have strenuous holiday jobs to save for the next academic year.

The one had a job at the Wentworth Golf Club, one of the poshest clubs in England, and had to wear a tie all day. That wasn’t so bad, but they also instructed him to shave off his beard.

Today beards are hip – which is a laugh as I’ve had one for 30 years – and so to tell him to shave his off was a fashion crime.

The other is working at a butchery making sausages and hamburgers and skinning chickens. He’s on his feet for nine long hours. When I pick him up at the end of his shift, I’m stunned watching him mopping floors and scrubbing counters – two things he would rather die than do at home.

He has now persuaded the other brat to leave the posh job at Wentworth and come and help him. The money is better, but more importantly, beards are allowed. That latter argument swung the day and they are now known as the Fabulous Butcher Boys.

Night calls

But what impresses me most is the energy of youth. They both work hard physically – in fact there is not even a chair in the shop – yet one phone call from their friends is enough to get them out for the night. And when I say ‘for the night’, I actually mean most of the early morning as well.

A night out for them usually means meeting at a pub called The Gig House in the nearby village of Wokingham, and if that goes well, they go clubbing in Reading, the largest town. They are seldom home before 4am and pile into bed, dead to the world, until we bang on their doors at 7.30am.

In fact, apart from wet towels, the main downside to having them at home is when you wake at 4am to find their bedrooms still empty.

Management can’t go back to sleep, and like most moms imagines the worst until we hear the front door slam. At least when they are at university we don’t know when they are out. And believe me, we don’t want to.

However, this is when I truly admire the energy of youth. After three hours of sleep, they grab a bacon sandwich to wolf down in the car as I rush them to the butchery for a full shift at the coalface.

I imagine myself going to work in those conditions, without even having a chair to sit on. I have a daily news conference at 11am and can picture myself trying to concentrate with three hours sleep and a hangover. I shudder at the thought.

But hang on; maybe I was in that league once long, long ago. I do vaguely remember pitching up to work with just a splash of cold water on my face after all night parties.

I do remember times on Durban’s Daily News when I started work at 6am and would doss down on the floor so as not to fall into too deep a sleep beforehand and miss the alarm.

However, all I know is that I could never do that now. And certainly don’t want to.

But ah – the energy of youth.