The White Stripes are blasting from the stereo with drums pounding and guitar screaming.

There you are in your car, revving the engine, also disturbing the neighbourhood. Your casual confidence in the driver’s seat is both reassuring and mildly terrifying. It’s Tuesday evening, and you’ve been cleaning the interior: scraping off stubborn gunk, spraying the console, wiping the trim.

Suddenly, you’re a motorist and a car owner.

How did this happen? And why did we get here so quickly? Childhood, for the helplessly watching parent, is a succession of joyous and heartbreaking moments so fleeting, so enormous—that most of us are forever exhilarated and exhausted.

Regardless of these thoughts, your 2012 Ford Festiva will soon carry you away into your newly made world. And this is how it should be.

On Wednesday, you and Max are side by side at Pastagogo— or as I prefer to write it, in full Vintage Vegas style: Pasta-A-Go-Go. It’s been hugely positive for you both and you’re learning about hard work, the value of money (not quite there yet), teamwork, flexibility, and much more that will be useful across, let’s say, the next fifty years! In the meantime, go gently with the gnocchi.

I’ve a profoundly moving image of you on the back lawn, in the beanbag. It’s a summer’s morning during the last holidays and you’re reading a book. Not any book but the 500+ page magnus opus that is Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Reading celebrated literature is hard. But the cognitive struggle is rewarding and has benefits in many different ways. It might take you a while but persevere, finish it and you’ll look back with an enduring sense of achievement.

Even more important than cars, pasta, and weighty novels are relationships. In these I see you growing in skill, self-awareness, and respect (mostly). Relationships are the beginning and ending of all the things in this life that are of value. I notice you learning and applying this to friends, work, love, and family. It makes me proud.

So, dear Alex, on your seventeenth birthday, I’m grateful for this moment, wistful about your fading childhood, and hugely excited for your future. Enjoy your last birthday as a secondary schooler.

This time in 2026 we’ll be looking back on Year 12. This will be a deeply significant event for you and I’m confident you’ll shape it into a remarkable one, bursting with learning, memories and life-changers.

Love Dad