Kids are everywhere. They really are. Even though a lot of them, by now, have gone back to school...it means nothing; it still isn't safe to venture outside your own home if you're not attuned to the sound of childish shrieks (though I accept that, in my area, if you go out after dark on pretty much any given evening the shrieking you'll be most likely to hear will be more 'drunken adult' than 'bratty child', but there you go).
Wednesdays are usually 'business admin and novel-writing research' days for me, and in non-school-holiday periods I conduct these days at the library, just for a change of scenery. There's no point in going to the library during school holidays, because the noise from groups of schoolkids in the study area is always deafening. So this morning I was looking forward to going back to my regular routine, stopping in Starbucks first for a quick coffee.
Starbucks this morning was where the realisation first truly dawned on me; that the oft-quoted adage that in London you're never further than seven feet away from a rat also applies in general to your proximity to the younger members of our society.
The first load of kids were sitting behind me; the disinterested part of a group of dowdy mums (sorry sorry sorry - but they were dowdy!) in beige cardigans having a general 'catch-up' meeting during which loud witch-like cackles could occasionally be heard over their kids' iPhones (yes - one of the three-ish year-olds was brandishing an iPhone from which train sounds could be heard noisily chugging away as the mums slurped their coffee and talked about how "Stu just don't understand...he thinks it's all about 'im. He don't realise not everyone sees things how 'e does. Really pisses me off...")
Though I realise I've written that in a slightly disparaging manner regarding the people involved, they didn't really bother me. They were bothering the man sitting next to me though; his head buried in a copy of the Financial Times which every now and again he'd rustle, no doubt in a vain attempt to hide the simultaneous burst of irritated sigh emanating from behind the pages. All very amusing.
So I finished my coffee and headed over to the library with my paperwork; only to be confronted with a 'Happy Songtime Session' on the ground floor, which consisted of about fifty little kids singing things. I am the sort of person who is very easily distracted, and bursts of 'The Wheels on the Bus' while I'm trying to sort through my accounts doesn't do much to help my concentration. Not least because I couldn't stop myself from singing along...in my head.
As I've mentioned before on this blog, people are often fond of asking me when I'm going to have kids myself, or making allusions towards the fact that "you'll change your mind eventually!" - as though they were addressing a robot with the kind of dodgy programming it'll just take a swift kick to get functioning normally again. One man I worked with tried to sell parenthood to me as something that "makes you a lot less selfish!" But I fail to see how that's much of a plus in life, really. I'm quite happy being selfish, freaky, childless me...and anyway it's all moot, because I've come to the conclusion that I don't need kids of my own. If I want to see/hear/have things thrown at me by children, the opportunity is always there. All I have to do is leave the house.
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