Lulu’s now at the stage at school where she’s being fought over by a number of boys. A thirteen year-old, fun-loving teenage tomboy? Surprise! Charles Darwin could really have saved himself a trip to the Galapagos. 

Now she’s in it, perspective is a rare luxury. A week ago, the boy on the school bus got his hopes up. That was partly Lulu’s fault. I mean, if you tell somebody that you love him back after three whole minutes of going out with him ( and you’ve known him for a grand total of two weeks) he’s probably going to get a little disappointed when you break up with him twelve hours later.

But it’s not entirely her fault. He’s only known her for two weeks as well. So to be claiming great hurt and disappointment – come on. And she did say sorry. The Instagram masturbating messenger now also has designs on her. This means the masturbator and the bus boy are at odds. Fine. This is teenage life. For a previously sofa-school educated Lulu though, it’s a little confusing.

It seems she’s being used as a pawn between these two young, rutting stags. Within this evolutionary roleplay, she could do with some backup support. Indeed yesterday, she came home and said another boy had asked her out to town – one of the more feral kids (if this is possible). Right now, walking Fin around the empty splendour of Welsh boggy nature, it’s obvious that she should just have said no.

‘Because I don’t want to,’ she should have said. Instead she gave some negotiated premise. Just as my two feet are carrying me around this bog, I know the kid is working on her. 

‘What day?’ he’s insisting. ‘You know you said you would!’

I shouted into the bog, ‘Tell the twerp no!’ By the way the birds shrieked, I think I might have given out a few avian heart-attacks. Sorry.

Everybody is different right? Not everybody needs friends or at least, not so many. Turns out Lulu needs lots. Still, here she is with every thirteen-year old boy bearing their antlers at each other. This makes me wonder; where are the girls right now? They’re sitting and watching, it seems.

Even if you don’t wanna use the word feminism because it conjures up some sort of bra-burning, crazy lady – surely Lulu should have some female help right now? And yet when Lulu goes to sit with the girls in her class, she says they mostly ignore her.

‘It makes me not want to hang out with them,’ she says. ‘They whisper to each other and I’m sitting right there! Sitting with the boys means that they may stupid, but at least they’re relatively normal.’

This comes from the kid whose dad showed off his bleeding sinus snot as she tried to eat breakfast this morning. Scrap the maturing husband/father blog I wrote yesterday. 

When she was doing sofa school, her friends who came round at the weekend could be who they wanted to be. They didn’t have to deal with the pressure of joining in or being harassed. Well, minus the bleeding sinus snot.

‘Oh well,’ Lulu sighed as she rose from the kitchen table, making her way to catch the bus, ‘at least now I know what reality is.’