Things I wish my mother had told me ...

I was sitting in the sunshine in the market square yesterday afternoon drinking a coffee as the two year old talked to a patient little dog, and a red Renault Five drove past. That was my first car - a red Renault, and I loved it with a passion. I remember driving it at breakneck speed down the coast road to see if the top speed really was a 100mph. It was a joint present - 17th and exam results and the way I drove it it's amazing I lived to see another birthday. I drove thousands of miles in that car, to beach parties in Cornwall, house parties in the South of France, runs to the cash and carry for the gang (I was never ID'd - always old for my age!). It was like a handbag on wheels bursting with perfume (Obsession, Opium - you could smell it coming for miles), half a wardrobe of clothes and shoes scattered on the backseat and always, always the pint sized love god Prince, Aerosmith or Ricky Lee Jones on the cassette player. (There are only two emotional speeds at teenage I think - high octane party mode or languid emotional wreck). My father always predicted I'd end up like the girl in the Golf adverts (ditching fiancee, diamonds and furs but hanging onto the keys of her car). However, I always preferred Nicole and Papa. As that little car pulled up outside the cafe yesterday, it looked a little faded since its late eighties heyday, a bit rusty round the edges (rather like me), but damn it looked a lot more fun than a big old estate full of empty juice boxes and dog hair.

It is exam result time in the UK, and the town was full of coltish gorgeous teenagers in their cute cut off denim skirts, ballet flats and grey sweatshirts that are oddly like the clothes we wore twenty years ago. What is it they say - if you can remember it from the first time round, don't go there? There was a buzz of excitement in the air - young guys carrying crates of beer off to celebratory parties, girls in the dress stores holding up cute cotton printed prom dresses. I was in France that summer - I remember staying up all night talking by the fire with a group of friends I thought would last a lifetime. I remember bumping along dusty tracks to restaurants in the middle of nowhere where we ate honey off the comb and drank eau de vie spiked with snake venom (with Mr Snake encased in the bottle for good measure). It all seems oddly quaint now - Kid Rock's take on Sweet Home Alabama that seems to be on the radio all the time this summer has made me feel pretty nostalgic these last few weeks. Remember a time when there was no internet? (We were a pretty romantic lot and actually wrote letters to one another when we weren't constantly on the phone). Remember when you could just sling any old thing on and look fabulous? When you could stay up partying all night (drugs weren't even really around then - it was pre-rave scene) and just bounce out of bed as fresh as a daisy? When you and your friends fell in and out of love on a weekly basis and the future stretched ahead of you? I realised yesterday that my little girl is closer to this magic summer of limitless possibilities than I am - but just for a moment as I watched that little red car pull away, I was there.

TODAY'S PROMPT: There is an excellent book by a British fashion journalist 'Things I wish my mother had told me ...' So, what do you wish your mother or father had told you at eighteen? What were your dreams, passions, hopes for the future? Perhaps imagine a conversation between two characters in your work - father to son or mother to daughter (or vice versa). Pulling off an authentic teenage voice in writing is really hard to do - we've all read passages that stink where the author has tried too hard to sound 'down with the kids'. Think back. Wear both hats - can you remember what it feels like to be a child/(wo)man and can you empathise as a parent? What would you want to tell your children? What has it taken you a lifetime to learn?