“For my last birthday, Dad bought me a pocket-sized Collins English Dictionary. It would only fit in a pocket that had been specially designed.”

“Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner.”

“Thursday morning. I usually let my Mum wake me up but today I have set my alarm for seven. Even from under my duvet, I can hear it bleating on the other side of my room. I hid it inside my plastic crate for faulty joysticks so that I would have to get out of bed, walk across the room, yank it out of the box by its lead and, only then, jab the snooze button. This was a tactical manoeuvre by my previous self. He can be very cruel.”

“We asked our Welsh teacher, Mr Llewellyn – who is young, to tell us the Welsh sex words. The Welsh word for sex is ‘rhyw’. It sounds like coughing. He said that, in general, Welsh-speakers use English words. When pressed, he gave us a couple of examples to show us why this might be. ‘Llawes goch’ means ‘red sleeve’. ‘Coes fach’ means ‘small leg’. The phrase would be: ‘Put your small leg in my red sleeve’.”

“I don't know if I've come of age, but I'm certainly older now. I feel shrunken, as if there's a tiny ancient Oliver Tate inside me operating the levers of a life-size Oliver-shaped shell. A shell on which a decrepit picture show replays the same handful of images. Every night I come to the same place and wait till the sky catches up with my mood. The pattern is set. This is, no doubt, the end.”

“I bought a packet of Trojan® Ultra Pleasure Extra Sensitive condoms: ‘No. 1 in AMERICA’. They smell nothing like a positive first sexual experience.”

“My mother tells me I do not chew my food enough; she says I am making it harder for my body to get the essential nutrients it needs. If she were here, I would remind her that I am eating a blueberry Pop-Tart.”