Why don't the English like their children?

12 April 2012

It is a cliché of parenthood that it enables you to see the world with fresh eyes. However, I didn't bargain on seeing England so starkly through the eyes of my seven-month-old daughter.

Whenever we return to England the contrast is startling, if not downright dismaying. She is greeted by sullen faces in supermarkets and on public transport. No joy unconfined, just tense, nervy glances.

She smiles at passers-by and looks nonplussed when nobody reciprocates. A visit to the local coffee shop elicited genuine puzzlement. It transpired that every punter whose face she tried to engage with was on a laptop. You might have thought climate change would give the British a sunnier disposition. But no. It seems to make us more surly and uncommunicative than ever. Maybe a young blobby face is just another cause for concern in this overcrowded island.

The English, we are repeatedly told, are said to be more emotionally out-going in this post-Diana age. But I'm not so sure. There is a steely reserve in the English which can never be dissolved and nowhere is it more evident than in our stuffiness about children. If children are to be seen and not heard and tolerated like defective adults, babies are to be stifled with dummies and ignored.

We may not beat our offspring any more but the upper middle-classes would all still bundle them off to boarding school at the earliest possible inhumane age if they could afford it. The fact that most of them can't gives them even more cause for resentment.

It is one of the paradoxes of the modern era that we make such a song and dance about paedophiles yet so many of us seem to care little about our children. It was Auberon Waugh who said the violence we feel against paedophiles is a cover for the guilt we feel for disliking children so much. And I think he was right.

The English just don't like children. Perhaps there is no better illustration of this than in our appalling state education system. If we really loved them that much, surely we would offer them the best education in the world?

The Kate way to start nesting

Farewell Kate, Hello Mrs Hince. The supermodel is finally to tie the knot this weekend at the age of 37 and put all her carefree days behind her.

Unlike the uncomfortable looking Charlene Wittstock, who denies trying to run away from her groom, Prince Albert of Monaco, our Kate is embracing her union with rocker Jamie Hince with alacrity. Her daughter, eight-year-old Lila, will be the chief bridesmaid at a three-day wedding bash dubbed in the Cotswolds "Mossstock". After
20 years of drinks, drugs and partying, Kate has the perfect excuse now to turn in early every night. As the Edwardian actress Mrs Patrick Campbell said, marriage is the deep deep peace of the double bed after the hurly burly of the chaise longue. And Kate still won't need to get out of her double bed for less than £10,000 a day.

A book prize that's well worth saving

I have always subscribed to the view that there are far too many literary prizes. They are only nominally about literature and are really more to do with brand consolidation for mobile phone companies (Orange), coffee shops (Costa) and even frozen food businesses.

However, one exception to this rule has always been the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, founded in 1942 by the young wife of the author and RAF pilot who was killed in the Second World War. Britain's second oldest literary prize, awarded to the best work of literature by a writer under 35, has now been suspended by its current sponsor, Booktrust, due to a lack of funding.

Any writer worth his or her salt has wanted to win this prize. Perhaps past recipients, who include William Boyd, Jeanette Winterson and VS Naipaul, should club together and keep
it going.

The dinkiest way to get out of town

This week I used London City Airport for the first time. It was a revelation. A dinky airport where you can check in with hand luggage 15 minutes before departure. And where you can race through passport control and security in a matter of seconds.

Then there are the dinky planes, which feel a little bit flimsy and are more susceptible to turbulence but get you back to earth in one piece.

Roll on Boris Johnson's Thames Estuary airport. So long as it remains dinky.

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