This includes an average of 30 lessons at pounds 13

This includes an average of 30 lessons at pounds 13.50, plus a provisional licence (pounds 21) and the test itself (pounds 28.50) – pounds 454.50 if they pass first time. (Parents avoiding two expensive teenagers could, of course, have the whole sheep.)An earlier report by the same team concluded that a baby’s first five years of life would cost parents an average pounds 20,000 and warned that having a child “could be the most expensive decision of your life”.But as children fly the nest, parents may have been forgiven for thinking that the approach to adulthood would equal financial independence.Maybe so, but there are some significant expenses to be got over first.The cost of the food that teenagers will crunch their way through in that time comes to pounds 5,463, with the more generous parents spending pounds 7,259. What Price a Child Volume II, commissioned by Asda, looked at the costs of keeping a 16- to 21-year-old, including food, transport and education and concluded that for more wealthy parents the cost over five years could be as high as pounds 66,990.
Parents blanching at the thought may like to reflect that the same sum would have bought them a quiet country cottage instead; or 30 round- the-world flights; or 11 Versace dresses; or half of Damien Hirst’s sheep suspended in formaldehyde. Bringing up your adolescent can cost nearly pounds 67,000, according to a new study, because of the rising costs of everything from education and driving lessons to CDs and mobile phones.

Even for parents on average incomes prepared to face down teenage tantrums, the cost is still likely to average pounds 25,000. Teenagers are not only rude, rowdy and rebellious But now they are also, it turns out, very expensive. He writes with an apostle’s admiration for the people, places and lifestyle of this musical scene Like all cults, it is proud of its totems. Food in the form of the Ulster Fry (which can include up to eight different fat-saturated breads) is sacred; cigarettes and strong drink de rigueur.

Pedantry is welcomed, and the author can match any musical reference with ten more. The “folkie or young fogie” Carson spent the Sixties learning his craft: the way one man might play his fiddle with a cigarette burning down between his fingers, or the players’ various body languages which signify a move on to the next piece. Later, he married Deirdre Shannon, from that family of traditional musicians, and they have played happily together ever since.There is an innocent, Father Ted quality about all this, as well as a tinge of regret. Is it deliberate? It is hard to believe that the ironic intelligence which won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry with the coruscating Belfast Confetti does not bring a colder eye to the culture of traditional Irish music. Carson argues well against the growth of folk museums, the way the things of Ireland’s past are being suffocated by preservation.