“How did we come to live here, Mum?”
“Well. We were living in the Kalahari as you know … and we needed to leave because the secret police kept giving us hassle”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Once they were tailing your dad in his Hilux and he stopped. They stopped. And he got out and walked back to them and said ‘Look. Can you stop following me. I know you’re the secret police. Which means you’re obviously … like, really crap at your job.’ It probably wasn’t the most sensible thing to do, in hindsight.”
“Dad hates tailgaters though. Anyway …”
“Well, we needed to choose where to live, so we got this big map of the UK out and I said, no – we’re not going back to the Isle of Wight, because I always feel trapped on it – and you’re at the mercy of the capitalist monopolistic ferry operators. Plus I thought that’d it’d be the sort of place that the government would first test out some sort of sinister tracking app.”
“Oh, let’s not talk about the sinister tracking apps again…”
“So then I said to your dad ‘Why not Dukinfield?’ And your dad said ‘OMG noooo – no, that’s too near the in-laws. And they do good cake and that but, no – is it really worth it…? I don’t DO family.”
“Right…”
“And we knew we’d need to commute to London a lot. And we hated city life. But we needed to be near the trainlines. Your dad always got travel sick on the Virgin West Coast pendulum coaches. So we plumped for Huddersfield. Half way between the two train lines. And the house prices were far cheaper than Manchester or Leeds.”
“So…you didn’t move here for the scenery?”
“Nope. And it was only half an hour’s drive from Grandma’s in Dukinfield. So that we could get free child care and dump you there as much as possible.”
“Wow. And I thought we moved here because the schools are brilliant. Did you not move here because of the quality of the schools?”
“HAHAHAHAHA!! Who the ‘eck cares about schooling these days? And anyway. Who needs an ‘education’ when you’ve got all of THIS??!”