2007-07-05 - 10:04 p.m.

Every once in a while, I try to write something other than diaries - and end up, over and over, writing out solitary teenagers, obstinate and desperate and already over. A teenager waiting at a railway station at night for a train to take them away. A teenager on a coach, head pressed against the frozen window. A teenager pacing the streets, a bottle in either fist, circling a friend's old flat. A teenager setting light to press cuttings in their bedroom. A teenager flailing against the wall in the back garden, their neighbours’ children peering out at them through the net curtains.

Trapped and revolting and doing their best, one and all. Who knows why.