'Oh yes oh yes oh yes, Mummy'

Currently sitting in a coffee shop feeling slightly weary of the world in general (as is usual for a grey Tuesday morning) when I overhear (and see) something that the 'modern man' side of my brain tells me shouldn't bother me, but the adolescent emotionally fatigued side tells me to freak out at. Anyway, I think at 9am (ish. Shut up, it is. Oh, ok then 10.45. That's still early for a student. Like 6am for normal people. Ish.) it is worth noting.

Picture the scene, woman walks in with baby and toddler. Nothing unusual about that, particularly, both children seem to have the correct number of heads etc... What is a bit weird is when said woman sits down to breastfeed her child (again, not particularly troubling, even to me, the man who never gets past the 'o' in 'perio...' before running away) the one-headed toddler (just to be clear) starts screaming "oh yes oh yes oh yes Mummy, me too, please" before grabbing at the remaining available teet. This continues for a while.

Is this ok to be a little bit weirded-out by? Or should I - at the age of 24 - really be able to deal with this particular part of life's natural progression? Answers on a postcard, please (or, failing that, below)...

I think i'll keep my coffee black today.

'Can you land a plane on it?', 'Nnnyaaaar, but you could probably land a helicopter'...

Oh dear god, sometimes to be in a Clifton coffee-shop is to be in Eton tuck shop just after supper time. Today’s highlight was ‘Rotund Man in Abercrombie Jumper and Scruffy Blonde Hair’ (RMAJSBH) invite ‘Skinny Man in Maroon Gillet with Slick Dark Hair’ (SMMGSDH) to his island for a ‘study break’. They were talking Ions, so i’m assuming they were physical scientists of some sort. Either that or they have an unnaturally large knowledge of the physical properties of Bosch crease-eliminating devices. Nonetheless, the conversation ran thusly (over a vanilla latte and a skinny macchiato – i’ll let you deduce who had what...):

RMAJSBH: So, how’s it going?

SMMGSDH: Well, pretty busy. My supervisor is practically up my arse over these Ions (Irons?)!

RMAJSBH: yar yar. Shame. Well, we could go to My Island for a study break.

SMMGSDH: Oh yar. Where is that then?

RMAJSBH: Oh it’s just some place of the South of France, it’s ours whenever we want it. I mean we have staff living there but they know we own it so they just have to clear off whenever we fancy caviar and Champers in a slightly more sunny setting. Fwnyar fnyar fnyaaaaaaaaaaaaar (the inbred version of ‘ha ha’). 

SMMGSDH: Hmmm, well I would but sadly my life is not my own at the moment. The university has this absurd rule that final years need to go to at least eighty percent of their required classes. Fwnuff (the inbred equivalent of ‘tsch’).

RMAJSBH: Yar yar I thought so. Well Easter maybe, yar? You have been working pretty hard, after all. Like a whole two or three hours a week.

SMMGSDH: Hmmmmmm, I do deserve a short break I suppose. A week or two probably wouldn’t hurt. After all, I’m working on this in a team and they’re all poor so they’ll probably just spend a couple of days in Lanzarote or something for their Easter shally-do (I think this is inbred for ‘holiday’?). Sure they won’t mind picking up some slack. Probably best not leave too long though, being the only one from Eton I am sort of the self-appointed Emperor of the group after all. If i’m not around they’ll probably have eaten the fat one by the time I come back, like in that book Nanny read me.

RMAJSBH: What, Charlie and Lola Go to Market?

SMMGSDH: Something like that, yar. It had pigs in it somewhere, and I think someone in SPAIS sponges off the author’s daughter to maintain his bourgeois lifestyle while maintaining some claim to being an independent thinker within the social (fwnar fwnar) sciences. Or something. Anyway, like I said, best not be gone too long; otherwise it’ll be Rhodesia all over again. Is the land big enough to land a plane?

RMAJSBH: nnnyaaaaaaaaaar (the sound posh people make when they mean ‘no’ but are afraid saying so diminishes their social status so they make it sound as much like ‘yes’ as possible). But you could probably land a helicopter.

SMMGSDH: Pity, I could have borrowed Harry’s for the weekend. I’ve played flight simulator, how hard can it be?

Thus follows much talk of Mungo, Mindy and Mandy’s luuuuuuuuuuuuvely ‘ethnic’ do in Ceylon last year. God, I hope he tries to fly that plane...