“Hello, Auntie,” I said to Polly, who hobbled out of the front room with the aid of a stick, “If I texted you ‘L&Ks4DnRNXT-SNDY??’ what would you think I meant?”

Polly frowned and thought for a moment, her prunelike forehead rising in a folding ripple like a festoon curtain. She was over ninety and looked so unwell that she was often mistaken for dead when asleep on the bus. Despite this she was totally sound upstairs, with only three or four fair-to-serious medical ailments, unlike my mother, who had the full dozen—or so she claimed.

“Well, do you know I’d be a bit confused—”

“Hah!” I said to Mum. “You see?”

“—because,” Polly carried on, “if you texted me asking for Landen and the kids to come over for Sunday dinner, I’d not know why you hadn’t asked him yourself.”

“Ah…I see,” I mumbled, suspicious that the two of them had been colluding in some way—as they generally did. Still, I never knew why they made me feel as though I were an eighteen-year-old when I was now fifty-two and myself in the sort of respectable time of life that I thought they should be. That’s the thing about hitting fifty. All your life you think the half century is death’s adolescence, but actually it’s really not that bad, as long as you can remember where you left your glasses.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” said my mother. “I got you something—look.”

She handed me the most hideous sweater you could possibly imagine.

“I don’t know what to say, Mum, and I really mean that—a short-sleeved lime green sweater with a hood and mock-antler buttons.”

“Do you like it?”

“One’s attention is drawn to it instantly.”

“Good! Then you’ll wear it straightaway?”

“I wouldn’t want to ruin it,” I replied hastily. “I’m just off to work.”

“Ooh!” said Polly. “I’ve only now remembered.” She handed me a CD in a plain sleeve. “This is a preproduction copy of Hosing the Dolly.”

“It’s what?”

“Please try to keep up with the times, darling. Hosing the Dolly. The new album by Strontium Goat. It won’t be out until November. I thought Friday might like it.”

“It’s really totally out there, man,” put in my mother. “Whatever that means. There’s a solo guitar riff on the second track that reminded me of Friday’s playing and was so good it made my toes tingle—although that might just have been a pinched nerve. Wayne Skunk’s granny is Mrs. Arbuthnot—you know, the funny old lady with the large wart on her nose and the elbows that bend both ways. He sent it to her.”

I looked at the CD. Friday would like it, I was certain of that.