Published: Thursday, 31st July, 2008 09:00
Help, put me in the real jungle away from the screaming kids
By Maurice O'Brien
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Maurice O'Brien
THE ordeal of an unavoidable shopping expedition into the jungle that is Reading town centre is never for the faint-hearted.
Apart from the craze for selling men’s shoes that only fit someone with feet and curled-up toes shaped like those of a clown’s apprentice, there are the shops where staff apparently sink into a catatonic trance at the sight of a customer, contrasting sharply with those where the assistants are so clinging you almost feel obliged to invite them home for the weekend.
But to someone for whom tolerance isn’t a strong suit, there’s one straw certain to give the camel spondylitis, and that’s children.
Routinely guaranteed to bring out the raging misanthrope are those permitted to use the supermarket as a playground, but the crying tantrums top everything.
Last week in Broad Street the screams, even at 100 yards’ range, had the intensity of a fire siren. Approaching M&S I located the source. A teenager, her fast encroaching obesity barely concealed by her choice of summery haute couture, lolling on the handle of a pram, inside which bawled an infant of indeterminate years.
As I passed this scene of maternal bliss, the girl thrust her face close to the baby’s and shouted: “Oi, stupid! Shut it!”
Now I confess the last time I possessed any in-depth knowledge of the psychology of children, I was one myself.
But during a period in our history when it would be easy to believe we are watching an unhealthy portion of a generation develop as sullen, monosyllabic savages who’d rather stick a blade into each other than exchange a civil word, then surely the art of communication is paramount.
And lest you think my research on this matter is sketchy, the evidence is mounting.
On Monday, in Tilehurst’s tree-lined Overdown Road, I drove past a howling child, mouth agape, strapped into a front-facing pushchair, and apparently unaware that its transport was being propelled one-handed from behind by a mummy.
Whether either was conscious of the other’s presence is only a guess, but the woman was talking animatedly into the mobile phone being pressed to her ear with her spare hand.
One day soon that child’s going to find itself addressed by a strange woman and will surely wonder: “Who the hell are you?”
And when it grows up and communicates exclusively in grunts and eruptions of attention-seeking violence, should we be at all surprised?
HOME Secretary Jacqui Smith’s faux pas over having knife criminals visit their victims in hospital might have been quickly stifled, but the jokes linger on.
Take the cartoon showing a heavily bandaged woman on an intravenous drip with a nurse standing at her hospital bedside saying: “There’s a Norman Bates to see you.”
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