Journalists and their fabulous offspring

An article in the New Statesman this week reminded me of why I stopped reading The Guardian a few months back. The rot started about a year ago after I read an astounding piece in the almost unreadable Saturday magazine about a journalist’s delightful teenage son and his bad breath (predictably it was a holiday in Sardinia that cured the problem). This wasn’t one off either, read it yourself and it won’t be long before you get to a witty restaurant reviewer quoting little Barnaby not being overly impressed with the wild mushroom souffle, or 5 year old charlotte using the coat hooks to do hilarious monkey impressions.

Back to the New Statesman, Lauren Booth’s toddlers can speak fluent French and already have the ability to astound others with their deconstruction of 18th century art. Amazing. French schools are of course much better that our own (Oh really!), but she is a little concerned that they will grow up wanting to be Opticians assistants or farmers wives.

Can’t have that can we!

So to prevent them turning into an embarrassment they’re whisked off to an art gallery for what she describes as ‘Cultcha’, for some reason. Basically a snob, I’d cross a busy dual carriageway in the poring rain to avoid people like that.

She attempts to bring a sense of humour to the stargazing by calling herself “A competitive London mum”, but you know that self-deprecating style of writing is all about throwing you off the scent. Taking the piss out of yourself seems less like the blatant showing off that it is, whilst still getting the message across about how clever one must be to produce such a lovely offspring.

Lauren I’m sure your kids are wonderful and maybe my life is missing that element of self satisfaction on which you thrive. But you know I’m not really interested in their precious learning curve and more importantly it’s not really relevant to anyone that doesn’t already know about the joys of parenthood. Maybe you should write to The Guardian or Woman’s Own and keep it out of harms way.

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