en-uk Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:37:29 GMT Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. custserv@timesonline.co.uk http://www.timesonline.co.uk Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:11:38 GMT Newspapers 144 21 http://www.timesonline.co.uk http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,116979,00.gif India Knight Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT 2009-07-11T08:00:57Z After his GCSEs last month, my eldest son, who is 16, headed off to Glastonbury with a bunch of friends. From Glastonbury, they went on to Cornwall. I’d written out a cheque to a backpackers’ hostel some weeks previously, smiling to myself at my memories of InterRailing round Europe when I was 17. My son is a keen surfer, so I assumed he was going to hang out with mates, catch some waves, lie in the sun. When I asked him what he actually planned to do, he said he wasn’t entirely sure, but that all of the above were probabilities - “and, you know, a bit of partying”. India Knight Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:30 GMT 2009-07-04T11:19:24Z Of all the clichés about the British — revolting food, marvellous sense of fair play, stiff, cold exteriors masking absolutely filthy minds — the only one that remains absolutely irrefutably true is the one about the weather. India Knight Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:03 GMT 2009-06-27T10:46:08Z There was Michael Jackson, milling around somewhere at the back of my consciousness in a box labelled “top tunes, disturbed person, poor old thing”, and I’d gone out to supper last Thursday and came back at about 11pm, made a cup of tea and logged on to Twitter, as you do, whereupon I found hundreds of people were posting about Jackson being taken to hospital, being in a coma, possibly being dead. Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT 2009-06-20T07:15:07Z So farewell then, GCSEs. You shall not be missed. As I write, my eldest son has just sauntered home from his physics exam in a state of hysterical joy – not at the brilliance of his performance but more at the idea of the bonfire of the textbooks tonight and Glastonbury next week.