I cannot believe that I am the proud owner of a 17 year old.  How did that happen?  My friend rang me and said “Happy 17th Birthing Day – where were you this time 17 years ago?”  I was in Melbourne in a huge amount of pain after 36 hours of labour – it seems about five years ago.  I remember it so clearly.  I remember being given the best cup of tea I had ever tasted after the event, which was almost as memorable an event as meeting my little wrinkly very over-cooked, three weeks late first born child.

He had his first driving lesson today and has already turned into a car bore.  ”I had no idea how sensitive the clutch/brake/biting point was, I didn’t realise I couldn’t swivel the driving wheel like you do, I only got in to second gear, I had to give way to a large lorry, bla bla bla”,  followed by what sort of car he could buy/borrow/steal to practice in followed by what he was going to do when he’d passed his test.  I am obviously hoping that like me he will fail at least three times and not ever be able to afford a car and not have parents who are kind enough to buy him one so that he will never have an accident.  According to his driving instructor (who arrived at our front door in a rather bloody mess having fallen over in the snow, which I have to say didn’t fill me with a huge amount of confidence about his driving ability), the national average for number of driving lessons needed is 48. Great.  So if he’s an average candidate it’s going to cost in the region of  £1,000 which is a bit bloody scary.

Whilst he was delighted with the bulk of his presents being made up of driving lessons, I heard him say to his mate that his best present was his Cheryl Cole 2010 calender.

Typical.

I came back from a friend’s birthday drinks about 11pm. The house was worryingly quiet and dark. PITCH BLACK in fact. I walked into the kitchen to find them all huddled together looking slightly worried. There had been a power cut down the whole side of our the street. We found candles and they all spread out a bit more as I annoyingly shone a torch into each face to see who was there…..obviously teenage son tried to remove me as quickly as possible from the being anywhere near his friends.

I went out to see what was going on in the street. Quite a few people were milling around. Very strange electrical contraptions attached to lamp posts that looked worryingly Heath Robinson. I mean look at this – surely not right?:-

Finally we found a man wearing a glow-in-the-dark jacket. “Can you please hurry up and get the electricity back on. I’ve got 25 teenagers about to shag in my shed unless we turn all the lights back on….”.

I had reluctantly agreed to my teenage son having “a few” friends round whilst I was out. He knows the rules. Nobody allowed upstairs, no more than 10, be responsible bla bla bla. I obviously hadn’t provided any alcohol, but expected them to have a couple of beers each. As they have just finished GCSE’s and could frankly be in Newquay or Portugal or a music festival, I felt allowing him a degree of freedom was going to be OK. He’s training for his rugby tour. He’s generally fairly good at moderating his own intake.

The text I got at 00.32 should have pre-warned me:

“What time r u bac? Don’t come bac till like 2 ish pls. Like sleep on the floor somewhere xx”

WTF??

Followed at 2.57am by

“T is in living room. G is in A’s room, me and O are in my bed. Problem with shed door as someone ran into it but I’ll fix it tmw am. Love u xxx”

So, when we got home, a little worse for wear and tiptoed about in a slightly drunken manner to my bed, imagine my horror on finding my bare foot encased in a pile of vomit BY MY SIDE OF THE BED!! Efforts had clearly been made to open my window and I suspect that whoever was doing something in MY BED tried in vain to vomit out of my bedroom window (which perhaps was just as well because it would have landed on top of my new soft top car).

This morning, I came downstairs to find very guilty looking teenage son who had cleaned up the kitchen ridiculously well and mended the shed door….. he said he didn’t realise anybody was upstairs…..yeah right. He is in so much trouble.

It is a very difficult issue this kids and alcohol thing. If we were in the States I would be held responsible should there be any disasters. Same in France – the owner of the house providing alcohol (be it restaurant/bar or private home) is responsible. When I asked him where all their supplies came from he told me that most shops sell them alcohol because they look 18 and they don’t ask for any ID. I think this is shocking, but perhaps it’s more shocking that I went out and left them to it. Perhaps I made a mistake and shouldn’t have trusted him and his friends. They managed to buy a keg of beer without any problem. The girls were drinking vodka. Some of them use fake ID’s.

I am now about to go and do a HUUUUGE supermarket shop because my 8 year old has his birthday party this afternoon for 22 friends. What a nightmare. I’m not sure how I’m going to get through it.

Help.

He has however, in my absence organised a party at a local venue with some friends in which he expects to make money. I’m not sure if I should be impressed with his entrepreneurial skills or worried that he’s got in above his head. I found out about it last night when he said “mum, what’s an invoice?”.

I then established that he needs an enormous deposit both for the venue and for wrist bands and when I asked where that money was coming from he looked surprised that I would think it was coming from anywhere else but me.

Next he showed me the invitation. “We’re going to have 250 people there” he said. “Oh – and how many tickets have you sold so far?” I asked him. “Six”.

On the invitation it says “There will be adults present for supervision”. “Oh. That’s good” I said, “who have you got so far?”.

“Well. So far only you” he said.

This is not good.