What were you doing at 17?
I had belatedly discovered boys after 16 years as a horse girl and was making up for lost time.
It’s fair to say the looming Higher exams weren’t consuming quite as much of my attention.
But I’d passed my driving test. And had somehow convinced my parents to buy me a souped-up Ford Escort mk2 for £100 at the Kinross motor auctions.
It would later end up wrapped around a road sign in “mysterious” circumstances.
Looking back that was probably the safest outcome, given its speed and my conviction that I was invincible.
I thought I was so grown up. We all did at that age.
But we were still just silly kids.
And isn’t that the way it should be?
Fleeing your Ukrainian home – a different kind of 17
Ukrainian Dasha Nitskevych is 17 and no longer has a home.
She’s living in a house in Germany with strange men, whose language she doesn’t speak.
She and her sister have already been targeted by people traffickers in Poland. Now they are having to barricade the doors to their room in order to stay safe.
The pair have fled their home in Irpin, near Kyiv, leaving their parents behind.
Dasha wakes up every morning not knowing if her mum and dad have survived the night.
Editor @davieclegg was on @SkyNews last night with @Ommasalma.
They discussed today's papers, including our Perth edition splash.
Read it here 👇
Ukrainian sisters fear for their lives as they face people traffickers in desperate bid to reach Kinrosshttps://t.co/q3PRIJnRln pic.twitter.com/C1tNVbAnB4
— The Courier (@thecourieruk) May 6, 2022
But here’s the thing.
She has a safe place waiting for her. Near Kinross, where I was crashing cars and thinking I still had all the time in the world to start revising.
Care home manager Sally Jenkins has been matched with the sisters through the UK Government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme and is moving mountains to try to get them here.
Big sister Anastasiia’s visa has been approved. But after two months, and more than 200 calls to the authorities, Dasha’s is still nowhere to be seen.
And Sally is beginning to fear for the teenager’s life.
She told our reporter Emma Duncan: “She said she is frightened, scared and doesn’t want to live any more, which is horrible and not something a 17-year-old should say.”
If you have a 17-year-old in your life – or if you remember the giddy ‘anything is possible’ freedom of being 17 yourself – it’s a story to break your heart.
Widespread problems with Homes for Ukraine scheme
And Dasha’s story is all too familiar.
There have been so many reports of individuals being granted visas while other family members are not that some commentators have questioned the Home Office’s motives.
It couldn’t be a deliberate stalling tactic, could it?
Not even this Home Office could be that cruel.
This time last month though, more than 200,000 Britons had registered to become sponsors.
Ukraine is on frontline of fight for liberty & democracy.
But the Home Sec has somehow turned the inspiring generosity of the British people into a bureaucratic nightmare.
Many stories of children denied visas, preventing families coming. Cock-up not conspiracy, apparently? pic.twitter.com/yDWNf26k9A
— Stephen Kinnock (@SKinnock) April 28, 2022
Yet less than 3% of the Ukrainian people who had applied for visas under the Homes for Ukraine scheme had been able to get here.
Boris Johnson acknowledged the delays when he appeared on Good Morning Britain this week, and said 27,000 Ukrainians had now made it to the UK.
It’s progress but it’s still a drop in the ocean.
More than 12 million people are believed to have fled their homes in Ukraine. Four million of them have left the country.
And now potential sponsors – people like Sally – are threatening a class action lawsuit against the UK Government on behalf of hundreds of Ukrainian refugees who have been unable to find safe haven here.
Never forget the people behind the numbers
It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers game.
All those hundreds and thousands and millions are dazzling.
But they deflect from the real story.
There’s a 17 year-old girl, who should be obsessing over boys and ponies, who doesn’t want to live any more.
And there are 17-year-olds – and younger – in even worse circumstances, who are being denied the compassion that the British people have offered in their droves.
Anyone who’s been 17 and survived with their heart intact should be asking how and why our government has got this so wrong.
Conversation