9/30/2005 09:17:00 PM|||James O'Malley|||

As you might have read in previous updates (I can honestly say I'm not sure if I've written about the subject before), I hate children. They're horrible, and contribute nothing to society. Like dogs.

I mean, they both live in their own filth, make incomphrensible noises, wreck everything they go near- at least some dogs are guide dogs, which is a very noble use. At least parents don't try and get their dogs to do the transaction in shop, as part of a learning experience.

Anyway, I've got a point to make. Well, not really. It's just children have annoyed me again. On the train back from Leicester yesterday, I found a couple of seats to myself- I'd worked my way into public transport mode, that is to say: bag on the seat next to me, to prevent anyone from sitting there, MP3 player on loud, intelligent looking book open and being read.

The train tends to sit at Leicester station for a few minutes if it's early (!), so that everything stays in time- this unfortunately gave a young mother the opportunity to board the train. She parked her push chair and child on the opposite side of the isle to me and then proceeded to sit next to me.

Now, don't get me wrong, I could easily have coped with her sitting next to me, trapping me on my seat- if she was going to murder me, then she'd also have to murder the rest of the carriage, to eliminate eye witnesses (unless she was a nutter who'd turn the gun on herself afterwards), it was her child that was the problem.

I like to listen to music loudly- I work under the assumption that by the time I lose my hearing, bionic-ears will exist, and will replace my current, broken ears, and even have say, a built in MP3 player. (No jokes about where the USB cable connects, please).

My point is, not much can overcome this sound- I can walk through town and hear nothing but straight, white men ranting about how bad homophobia, racism and sexism are. (ie: Punk music).

This child, managed to cry for the entire god-damn journey. I mean, the phrase "STFU" was invented for this situation. It's not even as if the mother tried to help - she sat there, texting away on her phone.

She did eventually do something of course- but I think this was only when the train reached the point where getting a phone signal is impossible. First of all, she just tried talking to it- and then gave up on that. She got the baby's crap-covered things, like some sort of drinks container, and other stuff out onto the fold-down tray, and I mean, how can people go near stuff like that? It looks revolting, you can tell just by looking at it that a child has been near it.

This shut it up for a bit. And by "a bit", I mean, "approximately one minute". Things got worse- it started crying again. By this time, reading was near impossible- imagine trying to read John Simpson describe the gassing of the Kurds at Hallabjah- I don't want the fucking sound effects! It's horrible enough as it is!

Back in the day when I worked in a well known hardware store (ie: until six days ago), it was truly horrible if someone put their child on the counter whilst they mucked about in their purse, or whatever- this woman sitting next to me decided the best course of action was to pick the child out of the push chair and stand it on her knee.

I was trapped. There was nowhere I could move to, and I was in very close proximity to this mother and child. This baby would only have to be sick, and my book (which cost £3.99 from a publishers outlet store) would be ruined! It was awful.

If you'll allow me to put my Daily Mail hat on for a second, I think that children should be banned from public transport.

Over a year ago now, when I'd just turned seventeen, I went to Portugal with my family for a week. I'm not the biggest fan of flying, probably because I don't fly enough to get used to it.

Oh, alright, I'm a big wimp.

We were flying with "Flyjet"- an airline that hopefully does what it's name suggests. At the time, they owned, I think, two aircraft, and clearly, the pilots did not get much of a chance to practice. When landing in portugal, rather than doing a nice, smooth landing, it was like rolling down some stairs. In other words, it was "fly straight for a bit" then "drop a few hundred feet". It also landed at an angle making the plane bounce around a bit. But this is irrelevant.

The thing was, there was children on the flight. As we were landed, they shouted things like "we're going down!"- even though I knew the chances of them being trained pilots, or experts in aviation, it wasn't very reassuring. Flying is horrible enough in itself, I don't need children who could be easily ended making it even worse.

Children are small- can't Parcel Force transport them around?

|||112811537521455831|||Children on public transport