Kids These Days
Hooray – I’ve made it through to the second day of my new job. I think that there was relief all round when I turned up this morning after yesterday’s run through of all the numerous tasks that had been allocated to little old me.
Yesterday on the way home from work on the train I encountered one of those horrors of children, recalcitrant and cruelly joined to an ineffectual mother. The child could possibly have been quite cute in a pleasanter alternative reality but his screwed up childish pout put paid to any notion of that. Said child had one of the biggest helium balloons I had ever seen tied onto his wrist which was battering into everyone within the radius of half the carriage. Mother, as you’ve probably already guessed, did absolutely nothing. Our balloon misery experience was intensified by an open window which gave the balloons trajectory more force as it thwacked into faces and rendered the reading of newspapers impossible. Grown men grew apoplectic with rage but, as is the British way, said nothing. At one point the boy whined that he wanted the balloon untied from his wrist, and when Mother said no in a rare moment of activity, he then proceeded to wave the balloon about even more maniacally. Everyone in the carriage was giving the boy and the mother dirty looks but she appeared to be oblivious and continued to do absolutely nothing as the balloon whipped into the faces of all the nearby passengers with gay abandon. The mother did say something about cutting it off his wrist when they got home. I was very tempted to find a pair of scissors and not only cut the thing off his wrist but also to burst his blessed balloon there and then. That would have shown them both.
When ah were a lass I wouldn’t have been allowed a helium balloon, never mind been allowed to take it on a train. Come to think about it, it is very possible that when ah were a lass they hadn’t yet been invented. Ooh, in my day it were a crust of bread before bed if you were lucky. Kids these days eh!
Yesterday on the way home from work on the train I encountered one of those horrors of children, recalcitrant and cruelly joined to an ineffectual mother. The child could possibly have been quite cute in a pleasanter alternative reality but his screwed up childish pout put paid to any notion of that. Said child had one of the biggest helium balloons I had ever seen tied onto his wrist which was battering into everyone within the radius of half the carriage. Mother, as you’ve probably already guessed, did absolutely nothing. Our balloon misery experience was intensified by an open window which gave the balloons trajectory more force as it thwacked into faces and rendered the reading of newspapers impossible. Grown men grew apoplectic with rage but, as is the British way, said nothing. At one point the boy whined that he wanted the balloon untied from his wrist, and when Mother said no in a rare moment of activity, he then proceeded to wave the balloon about even more maniacally. Everyone in the carriage was giving the boy and the mother dirty looks but she appeared to be oblivious and continued to do absolutely nothing as the balloon whipped into the faces of all the nearby passengers with gay abandon. The mother did say something about cutting it off his wrist when they got home. I was very tempted to find a pair of scissors and not only cut the thing off his wrist but also to burst his blessed balloon there and then. That would have shown them both.
When ah were a lass I wouldn’t have been allowed a helium balloon, never mind been allowed to take it on a train. Come to think about it, it is very possible that when ah were a lass they hadn’t yet been invented. Ooh, in my day it were a crust of bread before bed if you were lucky. Kids these days eh!
