Allow me to paraphrase Lionel Hutz in The Simpsons. I don't use the word "hero" lightly, but you, Jodie Morris, are the greatest hero in world history.
Morris, proprietor of the Little French Cafe in Broadmeadow, New South Wales, attracted headlines last week after posting a Facebook message warning parents of badly behaved children to stay away.
Oh dear. Furious opponents began blathering about an "attack on parents" as Morris found herself embroiled in a cause célèbre. She eventually took the post down, but claims the publicity caused a surge in trade. "Everyone's said: 'Oh you're going to lose so much business.' But we're the busiest we've ever been," she said.
Let us take a deep breath here. Morris was not banning all children from her café. She was merely banning those who run madly between tables, ram breadsticks up their noses and otherwise behave like miniature Visigoths at the first sacking of Rome. Of course, such people should be banned from restaurants.
Were I to smear tomato ketchup on my face while wailing in teary despair I would fully expect to be escorted to the door and forbidden from ever returning.
Children have enough advantages. They don’t have to go to work. They are allowed to eat delicious liquidised fruit pulp. They are, on average, significantly further from death than the rest of us.
I suppose the bleeding-heart, PC mob won’t allow us to forbid them from entering all eating establishments and places of entertainment. But it is, surely, not asking too much that they observe decorum in such spots.
This is how things used to be. On the rare occasions the young Donald was brought to restaurants he was expected to sit calmly and eat his chips in relative quiet. This did me no harm. Indeed, it helped form the reasonable human being who sits figuratively before you now.
Apocalypse anyone?
It has become an accepted truth that the continuance of the human species is preferable to the apocalyptic alternative. Those of us who think otherwise remain in a fairly cosy minority. Therefore we must (I suppose) allow people to have children if they really insist. Nobody wants a repeat of that King Herod misunderstanding.
Does this mean that we are required to endure endless irritation in planes, trains and Antipodean French-themed cafés? As I understand it, no airline allows its passengers to operate cement mixers from their seats. Yet restless babies – somewhat messier and occasionally louder – are permitted on all flights and, it seems, must be placed next to the childless man with the least patience for infantile regurgitation.
Apartheid anyone?
Perhaps the best plan would be to institute a sort of benign apartheid. All couples with children could be confined . . . Sorry, no I don’t mean “confined”. Let me start again.
All couples with children could be, erm, housed in securely constructed camps some distance from civilisation. Such facilities, profiting from economies of scale, could provide daytime childcare much more efficiently than is the case under the current regime.
Every day, both parents – or one – could journey from the stockade to the city beyond, carry out their work duties and, refreshed from eight hours in adult company, return home to their developing brood.
After 18 years in Happy Acres, the young people could be released . . . No, not “released”. After 18 years in Happy Acres, the young people could be, erm, transported to a happier, quieter, less Fanta-soaked society than we currently endure.
The English upper classes have already experimented with a successful variation on this system.
Lord Bucket-Tucket is shown his son a few minutes after birth. Some four years later, he sees him again, just before the heir is dispatched to a windswept pile staffed by caring lunatics. From that point until the day he sets off to be decapitated in the Orange Free State there is no need for the future Lieutenant Bucket-Tucket to meet any adult outside the teaching profession.
What’s wrong with that?
It won’t wash, of course. There are downsides to our current indulgence of children.
Restaurants are a little noisier. Aeroplanes seem a little more like afternoon screenings of Harry Potter. Teenagers dare to call adults by their first name.
The upside to the decline in decorum is a greater confidence to question authority when it really needs to be questioned. Without wishing to deflate the facetious tone, we have, in recent years, all seen what happens when children feel unable to speak out about outrages perpetrated by priests, teachers and television personalities.
So, we’ll ditch the otherwise impeccably thought-through scheme for generational apartheid. Life is, on average, better for kids than it ever was. It’s probably better for adults too. But I’m still going to scowl whenever a highchair arrives at the neighbouring table.