I was practically The Boy in the Bubble; all my autoimmune responses stripped bare by chemical representations of pine forests and summer meadows.

Grandma's house had the atmosphere of a Tupperware box left out in the sun. Like a tropical flower, she had to be kept warm and moist at all times, or she would wilt and die.

He had to be nice to me at the moment because he had to be surrounded by people. This was because boys like him were, essentially, pasta. Everyone thought they loved him because they had never been forced to experience the true blandness of him on his own.

But mum was tough. No matter how fancily she dressed, she couldn't hide her true nature. Everyone at school was scared of her. Especially the other mums. She once knocked out a man with a single punch when he barged her trolley in Sainsbury's.

Mum just laughed gleefully at his mounting frustration, like the villainous matriarch in a Roald Dahl story. I suspect a TV guide would describe her idea of comedy as 'dark', or, at very best, 'alternative'.

At their time of life they should be wearing trouser suits and baking cakes, maybe spending their days penning hand-written letters of complaint to newspapers. Not drinking alcopops with crude straws in them.