Friday 17th May

Yet again my early morning peace is shattered by the sight (and sound) of the single mum and the screaming child.  Well, maybe she isn’t a single mum but she has no wedding ring so here I am jumping to conclusions.  And of course the screaming child is not reserved exclusively for mums trying desperately to bring up a kid on their own – there are plenty of well-heeled mums driving around in Chelsea tractors with a wailing banshee in the back.

Each generation I am sure bewails the indulgences of the next.  It is also true of course that we all want to give our ‘sprogs’ a better life than we had, so we all tend to evercompensate in some way.

This may be news to some of you but I was a single parent, not as some sort of lifestyle choice as is all too common these days, but through circumstances when my first wife eventually left me for a Sinn Fein activist when we lived in Holloway.  She decamped to Belfast in the early 70’s, no doubt seeking a more peaceful life and left me to bring up our son on my own.  And over-indulgent as I surely was compared to my own parents very strict ideas about child-rearing; I never had a screaming child with me.

I do find it hard to understand why so many parents (and it is mostly women I see) have no control whatsoever over their children.  There seems no communication except the child’s unrestrained desire for whatever and the parent’s inability to deal with it, constantly bringing out bottles and a variety of prepackaged foodstuffs and dummies and toys in a vain attempt to pacify the child. (All the while engaging more with their mobile phone than the child)

So, I have finally become an old person moaning about the young, and am officially a ‘Grumpy Old Man’.  None of which stops the brat from screaming until eventually at some point one assumes it will get what it wants and its mother can finish putting on her make-up and read her messages on her phone in peace.