I was sat in Pret yesterday, surrounded by tissues, cough medicine and my trusty ginger and apple shot (surely this would make my hideous cold disappear? Update: no it didn’t – tastes good, though.)

It was a sight for sore eyes: messy half-dried hair, spluttering and coughing, swamped by a blanket scarf, sneezing at one-minute intervals, hiding behind my new glasses (the Cambridge reading load has wrecked my eyesight) and attempting to read Foucault. It had been a long day. It was only 3pm but I was so close to giving up, cycling back to college and napping until dinner time. I felt a tad broken if truth be told. My essay on ‘power’ had left me feeling powerless.

Then, as I was packing up, a little boy, no more than five or six years old, bounced through the glass door, holding his mother’s hand. The pair scanned the shelves for a post-school snack. Mum opted for tea and a cookie, son opted for grapes and a packet of crisps. They sat down not too far from where I, the broken mess, was slumped, and started to chat about their day. Their conversation went a little like this:

“So how was your day, darling?” asked Mum, taking a swig of tea.

“It was ok. My friends and I started a band.”

“Really? What sort of music are you hoping to play?”

“Rock,” he replied, completely seriously, popping another grape into his mouth. Either this kid was a dead-pan genius or he had some great taste in music. Either way, his mother completely entertained the prospect of her five-year-old son being in a rock group, and continued to quiz him on the matter.

“So, do you know which band you’d like to sound like?”

“No…”

“What about Queen?”

“Queen?” The little boy looked puzzled.

And then I saw the most tender of moments, a moment I want to relive again and again. I watched a five-year-old boy, so innocent and content, listen to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ for the first time.

They sat there, for the full five minutes and 55 seconds, her son in a state of amazement. His face went from ecstatic to scared, perplexed as the rhythms and motifs adapted and evolved. Then, in the middle of Pret at maybe 3.15pm on a Thursday, the mother and son began to head-bang. They rocked out to their hearts’ content and then stared into each other’s eyes as the music faded out to “anyway the wind blows”.

“Wow,” he said.

Wow indeed. For the first time, after years of longing to be older and wiser, I wished to see the world as he did just one more time: to hold my mum’s hand as I walk back from school; to create rock bands and listen to 'Bohemian Rhapsody' for the first time; to return to the time when the days were long, and stretched out like oceans filled with play, adventure and novelty, when I danced in the school yard to Grease and High School Musical feeling the summer sun kiss my face and making my green and white gingham dress sparkle in the light.

“His face went from ecstatic to scared, perplexed as the rhythms and motifs adapted and evolved”

I wish to return to when my hair was tightly plaited either-side of my triangular fringe and I longed to see my grandfather at the school gates beckoning me home to Ribena, peanut butter sandwiches and Tracy Beaker, to when I transformed into a Snow Queen for a school play as my dad stifled tears and my voice filled the halls with its youthful ardour, and to when my mum kissed my dad at the dinner table and their love wrapped around me like a blanket protecting me from all things bad.

I want to feel that again. A part of me wants to feel naïve with no comprehension of the bad, to be like that little boy in Pret: fearless, confident, head-banging to Queen and seeing good in everything.

Big Brother: The college edition

If I can see the good in others, then surely I can see that good in everything. It’s so easy to let the bad consume you. The illusion is shattered, the spell broken and I now see the injustice and inequality that plagues our world – but with this knowledge comes an opportunity for change.

In that little boy I saw perfection, purity and goodness. But it is my own imperfect view of the world that drives me forward. We should all want to play our part in making it perfect – or as close as it can be.

So, open your eyes, look up to the skies and see the world for what it is. And change it. Take its imperfections and create the world the little boy sees.

“Let’s go home, Mum,” he says.

“Sure,” she replies, as they share the last crumbs of his packet of crisps. “I can show you ‘I Want to Break Free’ next.”