Speaking up

My boy and I have fallen out. It happened like this. He decided to drive his newborn son, his partner and his partner’s three kids up to the Outer Hebrides, where his partner’s mother lives. The mother wanted to see the baby, and my boy and his partner were keen for her to see him. They wouldn’t all legally fit into my boy’s saloon car, so he tried to hire a seven-seater for the journey. But the car-hire companies won’t hire to the under-21s (even the under-25s have to fork out a whacking great premium) and my boy is 20.

Why not buy an old seven-seater for the trip? I said. If you aren’t worried about the state of the bodywork, I said, you might pick one up for less than it would cost to hire one for a week. The next day he rang to say he’d seen one advertised.