Poor Man About Town

I was in one of those large bookshops in Central London on Saturday. It was one of those places where armchairs are supplied for the comfort of people who want to mooch around through the shop and flick through books which take their interest. A serene and adult activity; the bookshop, a refuge from bratdom. How wrong I was, I was barely five minutes in the shop when the shop flooded with parents and quite young and their yowling sprogs! One couple came in with a small a contraption which looked a cross between a stretcher trolley and a supermarket trolley(I guess that it was one of those designer efforts which cost the price of a small car), it occupied an awful lot of space for the tiny brat that contained. The parents of said brat saw fit to empty the contents of said trolley into the bookshop. The brat immediately started to run amok, parents thought it was quite cute; there was no consideration for others. The driver of stretcher-cum-supermarket-trolley was so oblivious to my polite "excuse-me" that I had to squeeze my large bulk between a shelf and the trolley. Quite soon, the sofas filled with older brats, doing what older brats do apart from read - namely playing with game boys and indulging with horseplay and/or rivalry with their siblings. A crescendo of yowling started to build up. What was really interesting was that the parents of these brats did not appear to touch any books, rather they just came into the bookshop to pose at whom they considered to be the sad gits who did not have any children. When I grew up, my parents took me to the park, seaside and child-friendly places. When my children were growing up, I did the same. What the hell is the matter with matter with these bozos? Don't they care that their fellow adults need quiet places to go? No, what we have now, is the Now Model Parent, who is out to tryannise those without small children.