Dodging the riots

I am not the sort of guy to ban kids from all restaurants; no just the ones I visit

We’ve all been there: we turn up at a pleasant local eatery, hoping to enjoy a lunch or dinner in comfortable and quiet surroundings; then what happens?

At a table, far too close to ours, a family with a toddler arrives. Forget the comfy and quiet meal, from here on it’s every man – and woman for him or herself.

As soon as they are seated the “fun” starts. At first it’s reasonably mild; just a blast of uncontrolled screaming from the brat, while its parents look on lovingly… occasionally flashing a proprietorial smirk in your direction, anticipating an indulgent smile of: “Isn’t he/she sweeeeet!” No he/she/it isn’t. It’s an undisciplined, bloody menace and if it continues in that vein I may well be spending the next 30 years banged-up in Corradino convicted of “bratricide”.

So you can imagine my delight when I heard recently that a restaurant in Mgarr was barring all kids under 18 years from entering its premises. At last, I thought, a caff with the balls to prevent one’s lunch/dinner being totally ruined by the disruptive behaviour of somebody’s cute little darling… from hell.

Some weeks back I was lunching at a restaurant in the St Julian’s area with a business colleague. The choice of venue was mine I’ll admit, since I had eaten there on a couple of previous occasions. The food had been excellent and the ambience quiet (no schmuzak) and no kids… on those occasions. Fast forward a month or so and everything changed. Most of the other 10 or so lunchers were quiet middleaged men. But… on one table sat four women and one male brat. When I say “sat”… the women were seated but the child, of around six, spent most of the time charging around the tables, occasionally screeching like a stuck pig.

At no time did the mother attempt to control the little sod – and her only response to its onechild insurrection was to infrequently reward it with an adoring leer in its direction. We did try to draw the waiters to the disruption, but they merely grinned back at the ghastly little horror and mumbled something about it being “only a kiddie”.

Obviously we were unable to talk business or indeed have any sort of conversation, so we cancelled our food and left. As we approached the exit the chef-patron approached us and angrily berated us thus: “But you’ve ordered your food now; so what do you expect me to do with it?” I could have told him but restrained myself to saying simply: “When you can control infants like that, then we’ll be back.” I think that date will be long delayed… if ever.

We have a strange attitude to children (under 10) here in Malta. In general we act as though none of them can do any wrong. And kids from middle class families often behave far worse than the children of working-class parents. There is a feeling, particularly among the middle class, that their kids are perfect, in all respects – and anyone who gainsays this are wrong and should be told so. They are, of course, the begetters of the snowflake generation. The ones that say: “My kids will not have to work as hard as I or my parents did.” So their offspring turn into the worst kind of ghastly entitled brats.