The things I’ll do for MedLemon and a ladder…

The image I’m going to try and project is one of a dutiful daughter, who sacrifices the sauvignon blanc clone tasting she was looking forward to for two weeks – failing which, Third Roommate had enticed her with the alternative plan of a heavenly Trabella avocado, salami and feta pizza back at the comfy, relaxed (and need I say, ever more spotless thanks to Pretty’s magic touch) flat – all to grace her parents (and her uncle and aunt, and her parents’ guests) with her presence. Yes, so dutiful even as to gloss over the fact that they’d chosen to “dine” at the Spur in Bryanston (contradiction in terms, perhaps?) What I didn’t think too hard about was why they’d chosen the Spur, but hey – free meal, and only a stone’s throw away from the parental abode, no doubt teeming with (free) flu medicine… and even more importantly, a ladder for Pretty to use today to reach the curtain rails (I’m positive these curtains have not been washed in over three years) and windows (likewise).

So, dramatically – to create the effect that I’d made a great sacrifice of time – I entered the Spur, the de rigeur 15 minutes late, with laptop in tow (this was legit, I had just left the office). “I’m looking for a really fat man with a lot of people,” I explained to the waiter. No need – a huge rowdy noise in the corner drew my glare, and naturally this was the table I was destined to sup at. In the kids corner. Which was exactly why the parentals had chosen the Spur, of course. Of course! I have little cousins I see so rarely, I forgot. Coupled with the guests’ kids. As I approached the table, I sighed with relief to see that there were two tables – one for the kids, one for the adults. Except the adult table looked a wee on the full side. “You’re sitting there, Ant” my Dad says, pointing me in the direction of the table with the sweeties (probably laden with fumaric acid, upon reflection) and ice cream and Coke and crayons and helium-filled balloons and hyperactive kiddiwinkles. Oh grief! Out of sheer sympathy, my Mother left the comfort of the post-40-somethings and joined me with the sugar crew.

Don’t get me wrong – I adore kiddiwinkles, but I have to be mentally prepared to see them, and if it can be in any context, a table in a restaurant is the last place I’d choose. They drive the waiters mad, other patrons nuts, and me utterly loony. I couldn’t have been like that when I was a kid, surely? I’d sit and diligently eat my meal – and I probably wasn’t given the luxury of choice as to what that meal might comprise – then colour in the picture thing this kind of restaurant always supplies.

But last night, the kids were crazy. For starters, I can see that my girl cousin (somewhere around 9 years old) is a Britney Spears in training, sporting a pair of candy floss pink furry knee-high boots that Britney would fight J Lo to death over in Celebrity Death Match, plastic jewellery that I’d probably find too expensive to buy, and the attitude of a tween star in training (she rolled her eyes at me 7 times in the evening – first time, cute; second onwards – appeal completely lost). Then, the boys with their PSP’s, whose mothers had to come shovel food into their mouths because they couldn’t be bothered to remove their eyes from the screens. FYI, this Spur also has a game room – by which I mean a room with free arcade games – so that any couple wanting to go to dinner without the kids could quite conveniently forget they own little monsters without having to find a child minder for the evening. Society’s gone a bit haywire, I think.

I took brief respite outside to call the Gilb, who spent the whole conversation laughing at my predicament, and trying to use my whinging as ammo for his argument against having children (despite my wailing and gnashing of teeth in my post here, I really do want some mini Ants of my own, except raised in a rather different fashion to what I was immersed in last night).

So, I sat in reflective reverie, made silly child talk with the kugels-in-waiting and monologues with the game-playing boys, gnawed on my ribs, then gratefully dashed over to the parental abode to steal MedLemon and a ladder.

The irony of it all is that I get to play lift club to a bunch on kids on Saturday morning… same shit different day, eh?