Teen pain stays mainly in Spain

Charlie Brooker thinks heaven on earth is the San Junipero he created in Black Mirror, but the villa we stayed in Tenerife last week trumped the ending to arguably the best episode of the greatest TV show ever made – times 10.

Huge, modern, air conditioned, beautiful gardens and its own pool, with a nearby supermarket selling lovely Rioja at €5 a bottle and a small resort a 30-minute walk away.

And it’s for sale! We did some quick sums and worked out if we sold our house and got our neighbours to give us theirs for free ... we’d still be more than a quarter of a million quid short. Still, we can all dream. Sounds great, doesn’t it? And it really was. And it cost us (checks bank balance) about two months’ salary. But like Shania Twain said, that don’t impress teens much.

Your correspondent prides himself on his pin-sharp hearing. But a conversation with a teenager is as frustrating as poor old Basil trying to get some sense out of that deaf old battleaxe in Fawlty Towers.

Low, inaudible mumbling is a teenager’s mother tongue. You find yourself shouting “WHAT?” from different rooms while asking what they’d like YOU to make THEM for breakfast.

As a kid, my mum always warned me that one day I’d have children just like me. And she was so right it hurts.

Daughter #1 is a fluent Spanish speaker. So when I asked her to book a taxi one evening and then order a takeaway on a night we were staying in, she shook her head and said, “No”.

Not for any reason, just because she didn’t feel like it.

Petty? Not as petty as yours truly when me and the boss nonchalantly walked past the Desperados she asked us to get at the supermarket the following day. Brutal family arguments on holiday. You can’t beat ‘em.

But then daughter #1’s boyfriend turned up for the last few days and our truculent, spiky, outraged teen was abducted by aliens and replaced by a vivacious clone who was the life and soul of the party for the rest of the holiday. Well, that’s the only explanation I can think of.