Monday 29 December 2008

Adrian Mole - The Updated Edition...

Over in the ‘Times’, poor Daisy Goodwin laments her role as mother to a teenage zealot:
I wonder how many parents of idealistic children shuddered over their mince pies when they heard the story of 20-year-old Gerrah Selby, the attractive middle-class girl who fell in with Greg Avery, evangelical leader of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
Not many, I suspect. At least, not those that had brought up children the correct way, i.e not spoiling them, bribing them to behave, fawning over them and treating them as little adults.

I can see why Daisy is concerned though:
Selby is now awaiting sentence for blackmail and, whatever you think of the ALF and its methods, it seems a terrible waste of a life that had just begun. Her mother has said that she was always against her daughter joining the ALF, “because life had so much more to offer”.
Not because they were a gang of ragbag criminals then? Nice family...

But back to Daisy’s offspring, and the reason for this paean:
... I have a 17-year-old daughter who has been a vegan since the age of 12 in a family of carnivores, a child who likes to turn the water off to save the planet while you are brushing your teeth. Her idea of a good Saturday afternoon is not browsing the rails of Top-shop but protesting against the building of Siena airport.

She thinks my generation has been incredibly selfish in the way it has squandered the world’s resources: “The polar bears are dying, Mum, and it’s all your fault.” For Christmas she asked for notebooks made from recycled rubber tyres and membership of the Green party.
She’d have been lucky to get anything if she’d tried that one on my mother...!
She won’t learn to drive because she thinks cars are wrong and she would rather stuff her shopping into her pants than accept a convenient plastic bag. She spends half an hour every night turning off all the appliances at the socket.

She would rather starve than eat at McDonald’s and while she doesn't believe in God she knows that Jeremy Clarkson is the devil incarnate.
Daisy, sweetie, have you considered, ummm, ensuring that she realises she isn’t the centre of the family, nay, the universe?

Not that I’m saying you may have made a rod for your own back (raising irate adolescents ) here, but still....
None of this is particularly easy to live with; it’s no fun having your carbon footprint ruthlessly dissected by a girl who doesn’t understand the word compromise. And yet I have to admire her unflinching stance: I can’t help feeling that this kind of passionate, unswerving, pigheaded commitment is what teenagers are for.
Ahhhh, bless...! The little madam sounds like she needs a lesson in economic reality to me.
So I’m rather hoping my teen rebel with a cause will get past the point where she is easy fodder for charlatans such as Avery and will arrive safely in the more prosaic world of letters to The Times, Radio 5 Live phone-ins and Facebook groups.
Of course she will. When she grows up.

And when she does, she’ll be able to Google Mum’s little piece here. Won’t that be fun...?
As a child of the 1980s I protested fairly feebly against racism and the poll tax and for Nelson Mandela’s release and the miners. And today we live in an officially multi-cultural society with a black American president-elect, local taxes based on property owned and Mandela is the official Global National Treasure. I am sure that when my daughter has her own two-up two-down slice of negative equity, we will be driving solar-powered cars, sending meat eaters outside to scoff their carcinogenic sausage rolls under the wind-powered patio heaters, protesting against the culling of the rampant polar bear population and regarding clips of Top Gear with the horrified awe that we now reserve for the smoking advertisements of the 1940s that said things such as: “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette”.
Ah, the Brave New World. Somehow, I can’t help but think it isn’t going to look one bit like that...

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope you are right. It sounds like hell on Earth.

Stan said...

I rather think we'll be driving our internal combustion engined, petrol driven cars, enjoying a pork pie with our pint and cigarette IN the pub and looking back at people like Daisy and her offspring and wondering "who gave you the right to try and destroy our nation?",

Letters From A Tory said...

Most people would be bloody mortified to get a Green Party membership for Xmas!

Anonymous said...

Articles like that are one reason I have stopped buying newspapers. What on earth is she dribbling on about, it is complete bollocks. trouble is, and this is the main reason such things do my head in, that illustrates the thought processes and views of a substantial number of well off meeja / arty types. They have no idea of life in the real world. God help us!

Anonymous said...

O/T just in case he comes past here: I've been trying to read Longrider to see how he's getting on in France but the blog address longrider.co.uk is giving me server not found.

I have read his 23 Dec piece via the google cache - I found it by doing a name and subject search - and wish him season's greetings etc. However, it won't let me reach the comments either, so I can't send them direct. The blogroll here is updating - but the link won't let me through.

Anonymous said...

"...looking back at people like Daisy and her offspring and wondering "who gave you the right to try and destroy our nation?""

I certainly will!

Oh, WOAR, Longrider had that problem just before Christmas as well - something to do with his ISP screwing up, as it did whern he first moved, I presume. It came back up a few days ago, but I noticed it was down again yesterday.

Hopefully it'll get resolved quickly.

Longrider said...

WOAR and Julia - my host deactivated my account. This is, it seems, because people have been visiting it and the servers can't cope. My conversation with their "technical support" will feature in a blog posting once I'm back online. The Devil's Kitchen is sorting out a temporary home for me. We are waiting for the domain redirection to kick in - so down, but not out and thanks for the thoughts.

North Northwester said...

"As a child of the 1980s I protested fairly feebly against racism and the poll tax and for Nelson Mandela’s release and the miners."

So she sided with the Far Left -which owned 'anti-racism', irresponsible, buildings-only local taxation, for the release of a convicted Marxist terrorist and for the nationwide campaign of violence and intimidation intended to topple a democratically-elected government.

As she sowed - now she reaps.