Chill dude.....

It was clearly extremely unreasonable of me to expect 14-year-old Nick to have opened his curtains by 4.30 in the afternoon.

When asked why this languid lump reclining on his bed in boxer shorts wanted to spend his day in the dark clothes strewn mess of his room, his answer floored me.

With echoes of the sixties he glanced nonchalantly up from his book to declare lazily: "Dad, get off my case - it's just the way I roll."

The way I roll is to stop pocket money until his room resembles something a human being might want to live in.