Motherload

I was watching teenage boys the other day. Don't worry, I'm no cougar, although I was abstractly looking at their just-formed musculature, their flicky hair, their sulky pouts, and thinking how beautiful they were, these young animals, as they hopped and flew on their skateboards. Our seven-year-old boy was trying to keep up with them on his trick scooter — half their height, without the fuzzy facial hair on his upper lip, and with upper arm muscles that look like tiny chicken dippers. He tried to zoom up the board they had leant against a block in the skatepark, and didn't have the oomph to leap over its lip, so kept sliding back down, bringing the board with him. They stood in a row, a frieze of beautiful youth silhouetted against the setting Spring afternoon sun, calling to him not to bother, to stop trying. Boy picked up his scooter and carried it off the piste, through the grass to sit behind a nearby tree. I sauntered casually over, to find him moodily staring i...