As a bit of additional background to the story on the YouTube ban I posted on 2 January, I was reminded of a skiing holiday I went on in France some years ago.
You have to remember that mothers who have just had a kid are not a full shilling. Indeed, some of them remain a few pennies short for much of the rest of their lives. And these days, thanks to successive governments trying to warp nature, a lot of men appear to be more likely to opt for a frontal lobotomy before they start thinking about vasectomies once they get their first kid – in this way they can behave irrationally and inconsiderately in front of everyone else.
At work this doesn’t usually amount to anything other than minor irritations. I suppose the worst is the preamble to the start of any meeting – all the mummies and daddies exchanging details of their sprogs’ latest antics. Then, after a few years, you start getting the ‘paintings’ – swashes of colour stuck up on filing cabinets (“Jake – 3½”) – followed by the coloured egg-boxes and other constructions. Or the framed photos.
But a million times worse than this is the combined result of the genetic (women) and deliberate (new-age men) stupidifying – I made that word up – when out in public. It doesn’t matter how old someone’s kids are, they allow them to get away with murder – and the parents are oblivious to the effect it has on everyone else around them.
But anyway, back to that skiing holiday. A bunch of us were in a plush restaurant and we’d just started eating our main course. At the table next to us there was a family with a kid in a high chair (I remember they were eating a raclette). All of a sudden there was the most God-awful smell – you knew immediately what it was the smell of, and I nearly vomited there and then. I said to my friends “I think that baby has crapped itself”.
It had. They went and changed it, but the smell hung around for the rest of the meal.
Why should anyone have to put up with that? Changing a nappy is a lot more involved than cleaning yourself after you’ve been to the loo, so there’s no telling how well people clean themselves after they’ve changed junior. And because of the stupidifying they have undergone, being covered in baby poo is not seen as a problem to most parents…
You just have to hope the restaurant doesn’t use those open salt cellars, or hand the same bread basket around…
Hey, and don’t even think about the salad bar at Pizza Hut…