18 January 2005
radio rage
I love Radio 3 more than most things, including food, but will they please cancel that truly terrible, unbelievably patronising, programme aimed at "young folk", Making Tracks - on about now, always comes on just when I've started concentrating on some work. Had to put Rammstein on instead, which'll certainly help with the reading). It has the most outdated theme music, which sounds like a baby crocodile running up and down a toy piano, and they keep SHOUTING about absolutely nothing, as if everyone under the age of 15 didn't actually have better hearing than their elders.
Actually, moaning about that has suddenly triggered in my mind a tidal wide of petty British resentments. If only I could write as well as Thomas Bernhard did about Austria...
Prams, for example. They currently infuriate me almost as much as people who cycle on the pavement and all cars. Where I live, the fake posh bit of Hackney, hundreds of rosy-faced, organic food-purchasing parents charge up and down the narrow pavements with ridiculously wide prams that look more like farm equipment than machines to carry newborn infants. A simple question: why don't you just carry your child? Having seen approximately no prams in Iran, where women in chador (absolutely impossible to keep straight, involves grasping it shut under your chin with at least one hand, or holding the two sides together in your mouth) not only carry their kid under one arm but also their shopping. If they can do it, why can't you? You should be fit enough with all that gym membership and healthy food, you big procreating pavement-stealers.
Wouldn't it also be better in other ways if you had your kid closer to you? Like inuits carrying their babies in fur-lined hoods (ok, so I saw that in Atanarjuat), mightn't you end up liking the little tyke a little bit more? (I do however realise this is not the main priority for middle-class parents, who seem to only like their children if they get twenty A-levels or grade 8 violin.) Prams do nothing but create demanding little ego-monsters, thrust out in front of their monied bearers, the first to see and whine about toys and sweets. Pram-pushers - you're not so civilized you can deny your monkey status! Think how warm you'd be with a small primate curled up in your hair! Furthermore, I'm sure if you try a bit you could work out a way for your kid to fall asleep comfortably on you as you walk about. Everyone will be happier this way, I swear, and we could even bring back the old Routemaster buses (which routinely drove off and left mothers behind, just as they'd put their kid-in-pram on board. Don't laugh).
Third complaint: why does no one use an apostrophe on 'let's' (as in 'let us') anymore? Was it cancelled in order to allow more 16-year-olds to pass their English GCSE?
I am a grumpy house-bound old man, oh yes, I am....
Actually, moaning about that has suddenly triggered in my mind a tidal wide of petty British resentments. If only I could write as well as Thomas Bernhard did about Austria...
Prams, for example. They currently infuriate me almost as much as people who cycle on the pavement and all cars. Where I live, the fake posh bit of Hackney, hundreds of rosy-faced, organic food-purchasing parents charge up and down the narrow pavements with ridiculously wide prams that look more like farm equipment than machines to carry newborn infants. A simple question: why don't you just carry your child? Having seen approximately no prams in Iran, where women in chador (absolutely impossible to keep straight, involves grasping it shut under your chin with at least one hand, or holding the two sides together in your mouth) not only carry their kid under one arm but also their shopping. If they can do it, why can't you? You should be fit enough with all that gym membership and healthy food, you big procreating pavement-stealers.
Wouldn't it also be better in other ways if you had your kid closer to you? Like inuits carrying their babies in fur-lined hoods (ok, so I saw that in Atanarjuat), mightn't you end up liking the little tyke a little bit more? (I do however realise this is not the main priority for middle-class parents, who seem to only like their children if they get twenty A-levels or grade 8 violin.) Prams do nothing but create demanding little ego-monsters, thrust out in front of their monied bearers, the first to see and whine about toys and sweets. Pram-pushers - you're not so civilized you can deny your monkey status! Think how warm you'd be with a small primate curled up in your hair! Furthermore, I'm sure if you try a bit you could work out a way for your kid to fall asleep comfortably on you as you walk about. Everyone will be happier this way, I swear, and we could even bring back the old Routemaster buses (which routinely drove off and left mothers behind, just as they'd put their kid-in-pram on board. Don't laugh).
Third complaint: why does no one use an apostrophe on 'let's' (as in 'let us') anymore? Was it cancelled in order to allow more 16-year-olds to pass their English GCSE?
I am a grumpy house-bound old man, oh yes, I am....
