In Praise of DELINQUENT MOTHERS
A summer night on Southport beach in the 1960s and my mother, Audrey, is driving our sporty car in big circles across the wet sand. The windows are open to the still salty air and she shouts into the wind ‘Bored! Bored! Bored!’ I’ve heard this before, along with her cry that Southport, the town where we lived, was ‘Dead! Dead! Dead!’ and I would sigh, knowing there would be trouble ahead.
Audrey was all the things a mother shouldn’t be – flighty, self-absorbed, amoral, unable to cook and committed to keeping me off school. Our curriculum was how to flirt,
