I’m always trying to keep up with my teenage sons’ slang. They use it to befuddle me and say cheeky things right under my nose. By the time I’ve worked out that “moist” is a deadly insult and “Marjay” is me, their mother, and that, therefore, I am being disrespected, they’ve scuttled away, cackling like crazy jackdaws.

I was excited when the two girls got on the bus and started talking in the same sort of vernacular as my sons. They were discussing whether a boy at their school was peng or butters.

“Nah, he’s bare hench, fam,” said one of them. But her friend had spotted someone she knew out of the window and changed the subject.

“See that girl over there?” she said, with biting scorn. “She thinks she’s so prestige, just cos she’s got a job.”

When I got home Felix was in a great mood. He said he had a new girlfriend and she was 15. So I looked at Simeon and said “Ooo! Get him! He thinks he’s so prestige just cos he’s got an older woman!”

And both my sons looked astonished, then laughed with genuine amusement.

“That was actually bare funny, mum,” Felix said, sounding quite affectionate.

I enjoyed the moment.

Then I asked them if they’d done their homework yet and Simeon said “Oh allow it, Marjay, you are so jarring.”