The
hall’s full of bike bits, there’s a ton of washing (make that two
tons) scattered across the floor and a well-thumbed copy of The Cyclist’s Training Bible is propped
up on the kitchen table.
It
can only mean one thing. Yes, my son’s back from his first term at university
and I couldn’t be happier. I don’t know why, but I was worried he might be
different. But he isn’t. He’s a bit skinnier (too much cycling by half), but
he hasn’t changed a bit.
And
sweetly, he is pleased to be home for the Christmas holidays too. The novelty of doing
all his own shopping, cooking and washing seems to have worn off pretty fast
and now he’s thrilled to open the kitchen cupboard and discover stuff he always
took for granted before. Like bread, biscuits and his favourite Krave cereal.
Actually,
for the last week of term he existed on a diet of lentils and rice. His credit
card got nicked at a club and the bank said it would take up to ten days for a
new one to arrive. He managed fine, going into the bank on campus to take money out every day. Except everything went wrong last Sunday night, when he staggered
in from a 60-mile bike ride and realised he’d completely run out of cash. Worse
still, the cupboard was bare and none of his flatmates were around to borrow
from.
So
he rang me. The only problem was that I was in Paris for the weekend, staying
with my daughter. I panicked, wondering what the hell to do. And then my
daughter hit on a bright idea. “I know,” she said. “We’ll order him a pizza.” And
so that was how the pair of us, sitting in her flat on Paris’s chic Left Bank, found
ourselves busily (and incongruously) hunting for a Domino’s in South Wales.
But
guess what? It worked. Within 20 minutes flat, my hungry son was tucking into a
Pepperoni Passion. Result!
