Low life | 11 May 2017

I was sitting between mother and daughter on the sofa, and we were having a ‘wee night’ as Glaswegians put it. Having a wee night roughly means ‘celebrating’. Yesterday the daughter finished the final exam of her English degree. On the low table in front of us were three gin and tonics, two packets of fags, a souvenir ashtray from Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, a packet of transparent French cigarette papers, a plastic syringe with hash oil rammed up one end, a disposable lighter, a portable Bluetooth speaker, and an open laptop. Mother and daughter were taking it in turns to choose music videos on YouTube. So far we’d enjoyed an hour of ‘girl power’ classics — Gloria Gaynor, Miley Cyrus, Whitney Houston — during which the conversation was about babies, perfumes, bras, depilation, the pleasures of the companionship of gay men, and the sheer silliness and gullibility of heterosexual males.