Walk

I went for a long walk yesterday: 45 miniutes one way to get to my nearest town. There was no particular reason for why I wanted to walk. Martin offered to go with me, but I said I preferred to be alone and he didn't argue. [During the walk, I wondered to myself if I'd wanted him to argue, but that's another story.]

"Are you taking your phone with you?" was all he asked.

I nodded, kissed his forehead, whispered, "See you in a bit," and walked out the back door.

I think, at first, I was slightly annoyed by the fact that it was a nice day. It wasn't as cold as it could have been, although I had wrapped myself very well in a thick, knee-length coat, leather gloves and a long scarf wound round my neck several times. There were barely a few wisps of cloud in the sky, which was bright and blue. The air smelt fresh. The roads were fairly quiet. The whole atmosphere felt too... too conspicuous at first, as though it demanded me to notice it and admire it. But I put on my dark sunglasses, pulled up the collar of my coat and decided to concentrate on the paving stones under my feet. After a while, I felt comfortable enough to raise my head a little and notice some of the things I was walking past.

I tried to think about nothing in particular. In fact, as I said, most of the time, I preferred to count the paving stones. I'd look up and choose a marker in the distance, like a pillar box or a particular house. And then I'd guess how many paving stones stood between me and this marker. And then I counted them all the way.

At first, my guesses were way off. But they got better and better as I went along. I had no idea how many thousands of paving stones marked the path between my house and town.

Eventually, I got to the small shopping precinct. Some of the bigger shops were open and I went into the large Waitrose.

Until recently, I'd never really noticed other people with prams or toddlers, but of course, now that I make a conscious effort to look away from them, I see them everywhere. After a few seconds spent walking down a Waitrose aisle, I realised that maybe my Sunday walk hadn't been such a clever idea after all.

What is it about some parents who feel they need to do their Parenting at full volume? It seems like such a blatant appeal for some kind of external validation or affirmation. It also seems like the height of arrogance to me. So many parents seem to think that the best way to discipline your child is to let every single person around you hear that you're doing it, almost as though the effectiveness of the discipline is proportional to the volume at which it's being delivered... which would also be proportional - as Martin would no doubt point out - to the child's embarrassment.

This one Waitrose Mum was a case in point. Actually, I say she was a Waitrose Mum, but she looked and sounded like anything but. Yes, this is incredibly snobby of me, but then I am a snob about these things. It felt as though she'd been looking for an Asda, but hadn't found it, so she decided to nip into the nearest supermarket she could find.

She was dragging some poor child behind her, a little boy who couldn't have been more than 5. He had the remains of some red sweet smeared all around his lips and on his hands and his threadbare white T-shirt. Even though he was young, his eyes and skin already seemed to have the same rustic poor look that set his Mum apart from everybody else in the place. And I couldn't hear exactly what the boy was saying, but he was clearly trying to whine his Mum into submissions, constantly attempting to pull her back to the aisle they'd just left.

And then suddenly, as though the boy had been annoying his mother for nigh on three months of the most incessant, insufferable brat behaviour imaginable, she wheeled around, loomed over him, jabbed a finger towards his face and in a voice so loud that plenty of the customers at the nearby checkouts turned around to look, barked, "Now, look here Jordan. I've fuckin' had enough of this. You are NOT gettin' no fuckin' sweets no more. Not today. You had yours and you ate 'em. And you ate some of Marley's too. So fuckin' pack it in, all right?" And with this she turned around and began walking towards another aisle.

Not surprisingly, little Jordan, left standing there by a mother who, to all intents and purposes, was walking away from him, began bawling even more loudly... except that his outburst went along the lines of, "Get me some fuckin' sweets NOW!"

If I'd seen a similar scene on television, I would've dismissed it as some hopelessly misguided attempt on the part of a scriptwriter to show an awareness of the reality of the life of this country's working classes. Even though I saw and heard it all happening in front of me, I couldn't quite believe it.

And on the way back home - with the weather taking a turn for the worse - I also realised that no-one seemed interested in doing anything to deal with what was going on. I presume none of the customers complained, which allowed the management not to have to do anything about it.

And then I asked myself why I didn't complain. And if I had complained, what would I have complained about? The mother's behaviour or the child's?