Tuesday, December 16, 2008
TAGLIATELLE
We're eating at an Italian restaurant which caters for what the London Metro would no doubt sneeringly describe as the "Alan and Debbie from Accounts" crowd. Yeah, I mean, writing about Kelly Osbourne's brat tantrums in a provincial rag is a really enviable career choice, after all ...
At this eaterie the age limit seems to be about thirty, which is depressing. Surely people of our age go out some of the time? It's not as if we're embarrassing ourselves at an underground East End club for godsakes.
"Is it because all of the people of our age are permanently stuck indoors with their children?" I ask Geoff.
"Well, if they're our age their kids are teenagers," he suggests.
"... which means that they should be able to look after themselves at home, or they're out partying or clubbing anyway," I interject.
Geoff: "No, the parents have to stay in so that they can pick up the phone when their kids ring up at three in the morning asking for a lift home. Parents are an unpaid chauffeuring service these days."
Me: "Yeah, then the kids vomit in the back of the car and they have to carry them indoors, ha ha."
Geoff: "Being a parent just gets better and better."
Me: "Well, maybe we should start seeing those people who we lost touch with when they became parents. Now their kids are older at least we could spend a couple of hours around at theirs and have a few drinks and listen to them moan about how their sprogs have really *changed* in the last couple of years and it's awful because all they do now is have moods and sulk off to their rooms or stay out 'til all hours."
Geoff: "There's nothing like being a parent for forgetting how you were yourself as a teenager."
Me: "Then they'll start on the bullshit about how they really envy us for not having children because we're free to do what we want, and if they had the chance they wouldn't have had kids but would have gone on loads of holidays and bought a bigger house, etc., etc. Except that when they see their *real* friends - y'know, the ones with kids - they'll say how *sorry* they feel for us because even though we have this freedom and can get up late in the morning and don't have to do school runs or spend piles of money on our kids and their bloody education, we're lacking a family, and that's the main thing in life, that's where happiness lies, yeah? If they could do it all again, they wouldn't change a thing! Except when their kids leave home they'll start to get empty nest syndrome and they'll have to get other interests or even start getting to know all their childless friends again so they have someone to go out with and ...
...
...
... ooh, look, outside, there are some old people, are they going to come in here?"
Geoff: "No. They've just come out of the bingo hall a couple of doors down."
Labels: Alan and Debbie from Accounts, bingo halls, friends, London Metro, smug parents, teenagers, the elderly, thirtysomethings
