Sublime

of

I’m a balding, failed comedian with no savings who lodges with a seventy-eight-year-old tinned soup collector.

Where I can be in the company of my teenage self and he can remind me of something about hope and youth and what it is to know you have things ahead of you that are new.

“And the truth is, I was only ever going out to find someone to stay in with.”

‘Thirty-five is the youth of middle age,’

In one brief exchange, the entire, exhausting day that feels like it began a month ago is almost worth it.

Every good night out hinges on discontent.

‘Okay, well, do you know who’s going to be the talk of the mum WhatsApp groups tonight? Do you know who’s going to get slagged off for being a plastic sugar parent?’ she asks, faintly demonically, as she opens a pack of the party bag sweets and starts chomping at them. ‘It ain’t you, Avi. It never is.’