IT IS ONCE again time for my teens to launch their annual Autumn rebrand. Back in the day, we used to call this ‘back-to-school shopping ’, but apparently that is now ‘cringe’ and ‘very much a 90’s thing’. Feelings are hurt, but we persevere.

My younger daughter recently announced that she had made a list. Already, I was filled with worry, because she has never once made a list that was in any way grounded in reality. I obviously knew we needed some things. She is starting the senior cycle, for example, and therefore needed a new uniform. That’s fair. But surely we would approach this with a degree of common sense, I mean last year’s bag and shoes are still functional, and it would be such a shame to just bin them.

Functional, it transpires, has no place on her list. She cannot be seen in anything that she was seen in last year and wants to buy all new. She even has a theme for this year (pastel, in case you were wondering), and a vision board on Pinterest. I don’t know where kids get these crazy notions from. I mean, I do, it’s from TikTok and the never-ending way that influencer culture sweeps across our young, but it’s definitely not from me. I am entirely blameless.

My back-to-school preparations in the 90s were significantly less exciting. I used to think getting the books was the most exciting part (probably because it was the only part) and then we would bring them home and cover them in brown parchment paper. One year my granny gave us some leftover wallpaper from her house, the thick padded floral pattern kind, and thinking back, it might have been Ireland’s first fidget toy. I spent many classroom hours pressing the little raised flowers back down with my fingers instead of listening.

This likely explains some of the gaps in my........

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