Status Anxiety

Tuesday, 7th April 2009

A day trip to Heathrow unexpectedly alerts me to a profound philosophical truth

If April is the cruellest month, it must be because it contains the Easter holidays. At least, it seems that way if you have four young children, expecting to be entertained. I invited my ‘followers’ on Twitter to come up with some suggestions and they weren’t helpful.

‘Why don’t you lend your kids to Nike?’ said one. ‘They’ll get a free trip to Indonesia and learn how to make trainers at the same time.’

‘Stuff them full of chocolates and then eat them,’ said another.

In the end, it was Ludo, my four-year-old son, who came up with the winning idea: a trip to the airport on the Heathrow Express. Now, I know that doesn’t sound promising, but it had a number of things going for it. For one, Ludo loves all forms of transport and this combined planes, trains and automobiles. For another, you don’t have to pay for kids under five on trains, so the youngest three would go free. Finally, I was curious to see how empty it would be. Fewer people are taking holidays abroad, thanks to the credit crunch.

The outbound leg of the trip passed without incident, unless you count 22-month-old Freddie wetting himself. At my insistence, we have taken him out of nappies. This has nothing to do with the environment, obviously. Its sole purpose is so that I can lord it over other parents who have not started potty-training their toddlers yet. You’d be amazed by how much competitive satisfaction can be derived from pointing at a friend’s four-year-old and saying, ‘Still in nappies, is he?’

On arrival at Heathrow, we decided to go straight to T5. Neither my wife nor I had seen it yet and there’s supposed to be a Gordon Ramsay restaurant there. In fact, we could only find a Carluccio’s in the departures area — and that’s when things started to go wrong. We had to leave our two prams by the entrance, there being no room for them in the restaurant, and my wife’s overcoat was draped over one of them. An hour later, it was gone.

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David Short

April 9th, 2009 12:52pm Report this comment

Move out of London is your best bet.

Lucia

April 10th, 2009 10:12am Report this comment

What a sad affairs! Frankly, these things happen almost all the time and that's I find London extremely difficult city for leisure. What about the food in Carluccio's? I bet it was overpriced and average. On top of it customer services is poor. It is typical of London.
Share great sympathy with you but that's why I do not gave kids. And you did not mention Education. I do not know what are you doing with them but I am teacher and the situation of the State Schools are pretty bad. Faith schools are not the answer either. Prepare your pockets or slice 50% of your kids chances to be successful in this society.
Enjoy Modern Britain or next time get the plane ;-)
Best Regards

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