WTF is it with people and their kids. Last night in the shop we had a woman with a three(ish) year old boy on the shop floor and she let him run riot around the shop to the point where it was all I could do to stop myself telling her to f*** off out of it. He took the baskets we use for people to put their shopping in, scattered them all over the shop, used them as a sled to ride around the shop, put them on his feet and did every thing but go for a crap in them. He knocked stuff of shelves ran around the shop screaming and shouted in rage if anyone so much as atttempted to restrain him. The woman for her part felt that all that was needed was to shout at his screaming voice (where ever it happened to be coming from) while she atempted to make the difficult decision as to whether to buy a pound of Galaxy chocolate, or a pound of Cadbury's. At no point did she see the need to heave her 24 stone bulk to whatever part of the shop he was destroying and actually restrain him by hand. When I attempted to take a basket from him that he was driving into the shelf displays she looked at me as though I was trying to cut his throat in an act of ritual slaughter. In the end the situation resolved itself when he left the shop under his own steam and I politely said to her "Is your child alright going out into the road on his own." At that point she developed the speed of a racing greyhound and dissapeared to be seen no more - hopefully for good.

This phenomena is not unusual. The idea that everybody else must be as indulgent with a child as it's besotted parents seems to be the order of the day and undoubtedly some parents even revel in the chaos their children are causing in public places. What they fail to realise is that shop enviroments can be dangerous. There is large amounts of heavy stock being shifted from place to place and a small child does not fare well with three hundred weight of stock on its head. And this is not the all of it. How many weak innefectual people have I seen come into that shop bawling and screaming at their poor cowed children just because they are the only thing on the planet that has to, or will, take it from them. They come to the till to spend £30 on scratch-cards, booze and fags and then rage when the child picks up a twenty pence chewee bar. They shout to the world "Look at me - I've got kids. I'm the one in controll here, and being a mother is sooo stressfull!" Never mind that the only work they ever did was to lie on their backs with their legs in the air for ten minutes and we've all been paying the bill for it ever since. The idea that a child has to be physically restrained untill it is old enough to understand verbal commands eg by 'reins' or holding it's hand, seems to be lost in the lazy vacuousness of modern parenting. 'Discipline' has become a dirty word and we have and continue to produce children who have no idea of what it means to exercise self-restraint on their own lives - and one day (if it is not already) society will pay the price for this.

In Tesco's ( I did a short stint working there as a shelf-stacker) I always remember a woman coming down the isle calling out "Byron! Byron! Behave yourself Byron!" I thought to myself that she clearly had no idea of whom she had named her wayward son after and would no doubt reap full 'Byronic' returns as the years went by. And snacking, What is that all about. Is that what used to be called 'eating between meals' and deeply frowned upon in my parents day. Again in Tesco's I remember hearing a 20 stone women turning to her porcine children and saying "Right - we've got the meals sorted out, now what do you want for snacking on." Tempted as I was to suggest a bag of lemons I kept a judicial silence. Day in and day out I witness obese parents feeding their children on nothing but a diet of coke, pizzas, pot noodles and pringles. And I'm talking barely more than infants. It is no suprise whatsoever to me that cases of 'malnutrition' in children recorded in hospitals are at a higher level than at any other time in the last eighty years. These parents cannot feed themselves let alone make the right dietary choices for their kids. What is going on in a house when someone has to come out at 10.45 pm to buy a tin of baby food. Is that, "Oh shit - I forgot to buy any food for the baby at all - better go get a tin" or something like that? Is that not frightening?

Haircuts and tatto's are another thing. Why do parents eem to need to make their children become little clones of them selves. Dad, shaven head and 'Engerland!' t-shirt; ditto ten year old son. They stand glaring beligerantly over the till side by side for all the world like those stupid 'nodding dogs' you see in the back of car windows. It seems to be the parents greatest desire to instill their own sense of anti-social irresponsibility into the child at the earliest possible instant. The latest craze is to have a v shaped block of hair extending from the nape of the neck up over the crown. It is all I can do to stop myself from saying "Excuse me mate - I think you've got a fanny crawling up the back of your head." Match magazine - a kids football magazine regularly comes with a fake 'tattoo sleve' for your kid to pull up over his arm to make him look lihe Vinnie Jones or Wayne Rooney. Why don't they throw in a couple of 50 yo hookers and a schoolgirl to 'roast' as well. Please learn parents - your kids will become anti-social parasites in their own good time without your encouragement, so let it be. In the meantime if I never clap eyes on one of the blighters again - it will be too soon!