My mum and dad popped over this morning. It was a lovely little visit, spent chatting over some coffee and toasted sandwiches made with my brilliant new toastie maker. My parents visit every few weeks or so, and it’s always good to see them. I know I have probably said something like this on here before, but once again I can’t help reflecting that if someone had told my teenage self that I would one day be living independently in south east London, and that mum and dad would be periodically visiting for coffee, I wouldn’t have believed them. Back then I just assumed I would always be living with them, effectively never having grown up. Now, instead of being reliant on my parents, they now visit me for morning coffee just as they occasionally visit my brothers, and just as any other parents might drop in on their forty-something-batchelor-son.

I thus take great pride in having got to where I have, living on my own in one of the world’s greatest cities like any other Londoner. More to the point, by writing this, tapping it into my iPad sat in Greenwich Park, I hope I can tell young people in similar positions to the one I was in that it would be wrong of them to assume that their futures are somehow limited, and that they can achieve anything they put their mind to. It might have only been a fairly regular coffee morning with my parents, but at the same time, in the context of the timid young man I once was, it is in a way also rather significant.