Smug's game

[j4]

I know I only read the Guardian's Family supplement to get annoyed, really, but this Saturday's front page article is even more teeth-grindingly aggravating than most... to the extent where I'm starting to suspect (or should that be "hope"?) that it's actually a spoof. Some of it is almost too easy a target:

"I work out what's going to happen when Saffron's rounders game at one end of the county clashes with Aspen's cricket match in the other direction, and they both need picking up at the exact same time that the nanny finishes."

Oh noes! How will they cope?

But it was this bit that really made me want to punch them:

What Tony's fed up with, he says, is the assumption that because they are well-off everything is easy. They do have a nanny from 8am to 6pm weekdays. "But at 6pm she goes home and then it's just us. So on a Friday night I'll get in from work and it's literally straight into looking after the babies. There's no respite: the weekend is heavy domestic duty and then on Monday morning I'm back into work from first thing."

Wait, what? You have to literally look after the children that you paid £millions to have? That's so unfair! And, after all that, they still expect you to go into work on Monday? O cruel world! "We loved the idea of a big family," says one of these spoilt kids (the parents, that is). Evidently the reality of a big family is slightly harder to deal with.

What he would most like, he says, is for people to realise how normal their lives are. "It's not about spoilt children and designer shoes, the way some people seem to think. We're just an ordinary family, with an ordinary kitchen, an ordinary garden and ordinary goings-on."

Yeah. "Ordinary," that was just the word I was looking for.

Comments

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Remember, trolling, not just for the Internet.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I just wish I was 100% sure it was trolling. Some kind of upper-middle-class-smugness version of Poe's Law (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law) probably applies here.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

It is hard to know with Teh Graun. I am not sure to what extent they put these things in to provoke a reaction. I assume these people exist, I know some people who drift in that direction, but I think they would have too much self knowledge / common sense not to whine about it in a newspaper.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I've met plenty of people who have nowhere near enough self-awareness or common sense about this sort of thing... :-/ But you're right, they surely publish it to get a reaction, & I hate myself for rising to it. (There are often bits I enjoy in the Family supplement, so it's not like I'm just reading something that I know I'll hate!)

[k425.livejournal.com]

Yes, an ordinary family, with an ordinary kitchen, an ordinary garden and ordinary goings-on. And mink coats.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Really? I wouldn't even know what a mink coat looked like! :-}

[k425.livejournal.com]

Yes, but you're not normal!

[j4.livejournal.com]

If that bunch of smug overprivileged fvckwits are "normal" then I'm quite glad I'm not.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Bah! Pretend I wrote 'ordinary', okay?!

[monkeyhands.livejournal.com]

I feel their pain. This one time, I had to drive the slightly smaller car when I would rather have been driving the slightly bigger car.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Oh DARLING, how FRIGHTFUL! I hope when you have your 8 children (Sebastian, Viola, Orianna, Jasper, Persephone, Hunstanton, Pentangle, and Kyrie) you'll remember to buy each of them a proper car. It's just so easy to damage a child's fragile self-esteem with a moment's thoughtlessness, as I was reminding Nanny just the other day.

[simont]

I think the single scariest thing I ever saw on the road was (about ten years ago) a brand new expensive-looking BMW with an L-plate on it.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I dunno, it's quite refreshing to hear of a BMW driver admitting that they don't know how to drive. ;)

the children

[http://the.earth.li/~alex/halley/ (from livejournal.com)]

Just wait until you meet their children...

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Broadsheet journalists do seem to think that you're not middle class if you don't make at least £50k.