The doomed children of Generation Rent by Town Mouse Tom Hodgkinson
The younger mice in the household are starting to think about whether to leave the nest. Furious debates have ensued. Mrs Mouse is keen to let them live at home for as long as possible, but Granny Mouse’s advice – unsolicited – is different. She thinks they should stand on their two feet. ‘I couldn’t live with my parents – just couldn’t,’ she says. ‘I moved out as quickly as I could.’ I have some sympathy with this view. Yes, the young should be independent. When I remonstrate with the younger mice – now in their early twenties – for asking for money or for being generally babylike, I tend to compare them, perhaps unfairly, with Alexander the Great. ‘At 16, Alexander the Great commanded a vast and mighty empire!’ When I was 21, I tell them, I came home from university to be told by Granny Mouse: ‘You have...
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