This may be the first time anyone has seen Black Sabbath and Mary Berry together in the same sentence. Crazy perhaps - but in my daughter’s
life they are the most natural of bedfellows.
She represents a new
generation – freed from the rules that I had at her age which still clung to
our grandparent's views hanging over from the war. My 21 year old is that rare thing – a female engineer . And that alone is something to celebrate.
Her life isn’t easy. She
works hard – far harder than I did at her age.
She is growing up without certainty of employment – the shadow that
hangs over this generation of which we were blissfully unaware. But she has the freedom to mix it up in a way
I don’t remember us having – whether due to ignorance or a lack of
imagination.
She relaxes with an evening
of heavy metal – spending all her spare cash on gigs watching bands that I
thought were already dead – Iron Maiden, AC/DC (but no, they are all back on
tour and still alive), or with titles that make you feel faintly sick (Slayer, Megadeath),
or are just plain weird.
 |
| The head-banging, brownie-baking engineer |
But once the hangover has
worn off, she indulges herself with her other hobby – baking. Her role model is the septuagenarian Mary
Berry – she asked for a food processor for her 21st birthday – and
she told me last week she made bread,
despite having an oven in her student house slightly less effective than a
calor gas stove.
This
generation of women won’t have to be told to lean in. They’re making up their own rules.
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