Not literally, of course. I was observing this abject spectacle from the air-conditioned “comfort” of Sophie’s Porsche (the Bentley’s back in the garage). But you get the general idea. Why on earth was I there? Actually, it was all to do with my daughter Polly’s spring term project, “Could I live like a tramp for a day?” No she bloody well could not!
No wonder we’re breeding a nation of couch potatoes. When I was my daughter’s age “fieldwork” really meant something. Like the time we herded 25,000 flamingos into an oil drum in Natal; or the time we got a herd of stampeding giraffes to flush out a family of Zulu squatters from a Portaloo toilet. Growing up in South Africa really brought home to me the importance of animal husbandry and environmental protection.
Nowadays our education system is stuck in cloud cuckoo land. These loony leftwing teachers would rather take our kids on a joy ride through the sess pit of the urban bazaar, peopled by all manner of pimps and social misfits, than they would teach them how to rescue their photography equipment from a pile of elephant dung in the event that their Land Rover crashes on a Kenyan safari.
Anyway, driving round in circles in that north London ghetto, desperate for an Earl Grey, the penny finally dropped: Sending us out on some pointless school run at the crack of dawn was a joke deliberately perpetrated by the teaching profession in order to put out rich and successful parents like myself. And with that, as we turned down another needle-strewn cul-de-sac in search of yet more exotic local “wildlife”, who did we see? That’s right: Polly’s classmate Alexandria Penhalligon no less, and the family chauffeur, in her father’s Aston Martin. Suspicions confirmed!
Polo-axed
I see Prince Charles has been reading McDonald’s the riot act, and lamenting the place of the greasy burger in our national cuisine. I’m with you all the way Chaz!
Actually, if truth be told, Charles is batting on a sticky wicket there. The last time he invited me along to one of his charity Polo gigs, I spent three hours with my head down the pan of an executive turdis, blowing chunks for England when I should have been scoring goals for the Gordonstoun Old Boys. The culprit was a dodgy Cornish Pasty, courtesy of the Duchy of Cornwall. There were more noxious chemicals in that thing than in a bucket of napalm. I’d never dream of alleging foul play, especially since Charles was captaining our team, but it hardly escaped my notice that with me and my trusty pony King Abdullah (a present from the Saudi monarch) out of action, Gordonstoun were trounced 8-1.
I’m behind the Prince on the big constitutional questions (of course Harry should sow his wild oats in Iraq), but when it comes to commerce there are nuances. By all means Your Highness, build your own private villages but don’t stand in the way of popular brands – that way lies tyranny.
So what about Mackee D’s? To what extent should we indulge the mammoth expansion plans of this former Scottish whelk fisherman (how menus move on!)? Basically, there is no one size fits all solution. The working class wants to munch on fat, so let them eat burgers; while the more discerning upmarket neighbourhoods and transitional pockets of petit-bourgeois affluence hanker after a more exclusive menu, so let them quaff burgundy. Where plans to build a new McDonald’s restaurant encounter fierce opposition from the local landed gentry, a village fete should be organised, in order that the great and the good can thrash it out over a jam scone, and a traditional game of Find the Lady.
The days of big, centralised government are a distant memory. These days, people are mature enough to make their own choices without being nannied into submission by some Big Whig with a whiff of power. If the proles keep eating chips and turkey twizzlers at the current rate, then soon they’ll be too big to defecate in a straight line. But then you can't expect pleasure without a bit of pain!
(Originally published 12 March 2007)
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