
Christopher Howse has narrated this article for you to listen to.
We’d been told it would be a ‘brat’ summer, characterised by its inventor, the singer Charli XCX, as ‘a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra’. It hasn’t worked out like that for me, so I was glad to discover a counter-culture valuing matches over throwaway lighters.

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