The Boy in the Bubble

We met up with old friends today - we hadn't seen 'em in quite a few years, and they came along with their prize possession - their proud little three year old nipper James. A cool kid, full of beans and full of smiles and mucking about.

It was really good to see that they had brought up such a smart little bugger, and it was good to see old friends again, playing house and having such a good time of it.

And right at the end of the night we went out to see 'em off. And you should have seen the thing they were driving the little mite around in.

It was the size of a bus! I kid you not. It was a Toyota Summatorother, a big feckoff Monster Truck the likes of which you usually see on Sky Sports in the small hours. It were a cartoon thing - bigger than our house! A Sequoia I think it was. Big petrol-guzzler 14 MPG job that's just one step removed from a Hum-V. Gawd knows where they got it form.

Sat in the middle of the back seat looking dwarfed by the whole thing was little James, a Lilliputian passenger inside this ridiculous gigantic steroid-packed vehicle.

I dropped off my nephew for a week at his local school the other day and witnessed first hand the madness that is 'The School Run'. It's a half an hour of bedlam.

I sat on the bench and watched a peaceful quiet street turn into Brands Hatch in a matter of minutes. Suddenly out of nowhere it was a crush of Land Rovers, RAV-4s, and Merc M-Classes driven by hard-faced bitches from hell.

They were bringing their pride and joy to school in style - because they could possibly walk. The streets are far too scary - not least because of the other mad mums in 4 wheel drive off-roaders with pasty faced mollycoddled terrified kids in the centre back seat.

Its so stupid. This kid is being taught that the outside world is not to be trusted, that you can't go anywhere without the spectre of real life stalking the land.

A kid that walks to school with friends, or parents is getting to know genuine danger on the streets. Like the school run harpies. The closer you get to a school gates the more you risk getting mown down by the Steel Mams. It takes alertness and skill to keep fully alert as these paranoid overprotective types barge up the street in their expensive tanks.

The poor pasty faced nipper inside will never know how to conduct himself in public, and know genuine danger from spooks and phantoms. If all he's got to go on are Mummy's prejudices ( dark skin, red hair, blokes with beards, saloon car drivers) then he's going to have a warped idea of what the outside world is like.

If a half mile journey to a rural school is equated with inner city depravity what is this teaching the mollycoddled. It's very commendable that you're prepared to sacrifice the ozone layer to drive your child to school in a well-armed tank. But all it's doing is depriving the kid of a valuable lesson. That the outside world in a place to live in and play in and grow up in, instead of something to be mortally freaked out by.

Blogga.