WHY MUST I BE A TEENAGER AFLOAT?

摘要

I moved onto a narrowboat with my mum when my parents split up in 2010. I was 14 at the time - a little too old, I felt, to have it sold to me in terms of a "great adventure", as my mum, with all the best intentions I suppose, tried to do. I was sore about the divorce, obviously, but just as upset about being turfed out of my room so they could sell the house. I liked that room - a double bed, my own TV, a wardrobe that I'd saved up and bought from Ikea only a few months earlier, with two full-length mirrors on the double doors and a rack inside for my shoes. It probably sounds petty and materialistic, but to me that single item of furniture represented my first foray into 'adulthood' and making my own choices. I'd covered one of the mirrors with photos of me and my friends, gig and cinema tickets and other stupid paraphernalia that I displayed as badges of a normal adolescent social life and my growing friendship circle. My two best friends, Lauren and Chloe, had scrawled dorky messages to me with lipstick when they'd stayed over one night, and I kept those on there too.