Snotty kids ruining my hols – now that’s a REAL injustice
YOU may have heard of a father named Jon Platt (Pratt, more like) who lost his case in the Supreme Court last week. He had refused to pay a fine imposed for taking his daughter out of school on a trip to, ooh, let’s guess, shall we? Machu Picchu in Peru? The temples at Angkor Wat, Cambodia? Paris, at the very least? No. He took her to Disney World.
Parents have long used the spurious argument that travel is educational, but surely gazing at wasp-waisted princesses and giant mice while ingesting sugar doesn’t qualify.
How could such a trip expand the brain of any child? No, Mr Platt, like many parents, was simply trying to bag a cheaper term-time holiday, probably to compensate for wheeling a trolley out of Tesco every Saturday laden with £400-worth of e-numbers for his offspring.
He probably spied me, a singleton who is gloriously childfree, saunter to the basket-only aisle with my bottle of champagne, fizzy water, good coffee and thought: ‘I know. I will go on holiday off-peak. It will save a few quid and annoy the hell out of anyone like her seeking child-free peace and quiet.’
Parents already enjoy many rights, such as child benefit, free schooling, maternity leave, and first dibs at Christmas and Easter for time off. They are also regularly name-checked in all those ‘hard-working families’ manifesto promises.
Still not happy, however, they now want to muscle in on my right to bask in the sun without a screaming toddler leaving a bright yellow stream of wee in the lagoon pool right in front of me.
I simply cannot understand parents who take babies abroad. They don’t know where their nose is yet! They won’t appreciate that posh hotel! All they do is make travelling hellish for the rest of us. At Gatwick last week, leaving for an off-season mini-break, I kept getting my ankles bashed by small children with their own pink and heavily appliquéd wheelie suitcases.
There are very few places left in the world that are adultsonly. I remember childhood pub visits when I used to sit in my dad’s car with a bottle of pop and a packet of crisps. I certainly wasn’t allowed inside.
I was never taken on a plane, merely squished into the car and driven to Sidmouth in Devon to eat buttered rolls in a howling wind. In August.
I was never taken out of school. My parents couldn’t afford exotic holidays, so we went on day trips to Frinton-onSea with our own Kit Kats.
THE Platt case highlights another modern illness. People think they have a ‘right’ to take long-haul holidays, even if they can’t afford them. If you don’t want the baggage and expense of children to interfere with your globe-trotting plans, here’s an idea: don’t have any! Children are a lifestyle choice, with all the commitment that comes with them. No-smoking zones have worked – maybe it’s time to try no-children zones.
The worst thing about them being able to invade my minibreak is that, while there are no fetters on what they’re allowed to get up to – the weeping, the screaming, the running around – I am forced by glum-looking dads and over-tired mums to modify MY behaviour.
I was at a smart hotel once, trying to enjoy a detox regime, and had been regaling a friend with tales of the fashion world. I was telling her which model was on heroin, which had been beaten up by her boyfriend and so on, when the father at the next table turned to me and said my conversation wasn’t suitable in front of his baby! It didn’t have the power of speech! I could have been speaking Hindi!
I think these parents, forced to lug the equivalent of a giant meatloaf around in hot weather, are just jealous of those of us who can travel without the need to ask for a carry cot to be put in our rooms.
Which reminds me. I once rented a palazzo in Tuscany, in high season, and invited a female guest and her toddler.
She warned me her son couldn’t eat eggs, milk or nuts, so I had to speed-learn Italian so I could ask, ‘dove si trova la farmacia? (where is the pharmacy?) in case of an allergy crisis.
I had to hire a car seat, which she said was the wrong size, and went to the trouble of ordering a cot at the cost of €20 a day. ‘Oh no,’ she said, upon spying it. ‘He always sleeps in the bed with me.’ Gaaaah!