A sample of the electorate

I just had an “interesting” experience, sitting in a branch of Caffe Nero. There was some kind of family group in and they were worshipping a child. They shouted and the child shouted. The more noise they all made the happier they all were. The child could speak but they all spoke baby language and the child joined in to ingratiate itself

I had been concentrating on what I was doing, but at the time it was fairly routine. However, it came to a point where the noise the child was making, and it was a child and not a baby, were painful – what is sometimes called ear-splitting. It was way beyond not being able to work. (Caffe Nero say they think one can work in their cafes.)

I called out to them to keep it down and they gestured at me in a sort of 2001 opening scene sort of way and went on encouraging their child to join them in making pre-verbal noise.

This repeated several times and the more that they refuted my arguments with their detailed analysis and rhetoric, the more self-righteous their grunting gestures became.

No one else complained. They just got up and left. People are coming in now. Now there are 6.

You might think the staff would tell them off. Three or four of them were occupying about 1/5^th of the entire place. One of the staff has just spent some time returning the furniture to its place where the adults and child had displaced it by running up and down. They were disruptive.

But I infer that the staff are not allowed to tell people off. If they have money, take it off them. That's the policy

There came a moment when the child uttered a really painful scream and I flipped - shouted at them to bloody shut up. The squattest of these early primates loped over and uttered various phonemes. I found it a little bit frightening that someone who might just be human was so incoherent. I asked him what he was saying and eventually pieced together his propositions.

1 That's a child.

It is a fundamental tenet of all bad parenting that children make an unbearable noise and cannot be stopped, that to dispute that is to be stupid and that any child who does not make an unbearable noise is probably exhibiting signs of disease. Furthermore, parents who discourage their children from making an unbearable noise are bad parents.

2 This is a public space and I can make whatever amount of noise I want.

I disputed that and he refuted my opinion before I had finished it with “course I can”. I told him he was anti-social and he said fuck off which he seemed to think was a clincher.

It reminded me even then of a woman who responded here “it doesn't affect you”. When I disputed that, she said “No it doesnt because it's my child and not yours.” Some weeks later I had said to an acquaintance, someone who was becoming a friend, that I wasn't sure I'd be able to spend time in their home because of their smoking. They said “It doesnt affect you” When I said it did, no matter how hard we both tried, she said “It doesnt affect you because it's my choice”

At such times I wonder if there is any point in learning any logic, in learning anything, if we are subject to this sort of crap. Anyway that was the beginning of the end of that friendship.

3 If you want to play, go to the library.

Now I did find that impenetrable for some time; but in my quest to communicate with alien species, I persisted in saying, I confess, what are you burbling about? and eventually noticed that as the creature was saying this sentence it was gesturing with one of its forelimbs at my laptop

To the creature, the noise he and his fellow creatures was making was serious and anything done on a computer is playing. I think that's it. Such play is to be conducted in the library. I think that's it.

And I think that was when I first used the word “moron”. I am not proud of it. I do not condemn slugs for being themselves; but I do remain outraged that someone with such an aggressive and selfish and stupid attitude help to elect the government.

It seemed the noisy one was incapable of understanding that the objection was to its noise regardless of what one was doing

I do not think they are morons. I think they are culpable. I think they have never bothered to think. Before I realised that they only spoke proto Modern British, I asked them “Where do you get your sense of entitlement from?” and one replied “We are entitled”

This is the reality of the electorate

14 people in here now.

Funny way to run a business. But if you have seen some of the regional managers or whatever they call themselves, you'd understand. Up themselves smartarses