It’s always a bit risky, hanging out with a seven year old, as I found out to my peril when I took my niece to the Lake District last week.  First off there was the constant need to tell her to hold my hand and not run around on pavements near busy roads.  Then there was my pleading with her: “Please don’t touch A SINGLE THING in this gallery!” where the pieces ranged in price from ninety to several hundred pounds.  Of course, she was impeccably behaved in the establishment until the time came for us to leave when that certain thing inside all seven year olds compelled her to almost put her index finger through a canvas.

I’d buy her food, which she wouldn’t eat.  Then she’d ask for crisps and sweets.

In another shop, I had to give 80% of my attention to her while I was trying to make a purchase.  The woman at the till had that air of resignation that betrayed six weeks of children messing up the display of items on the shelves.  “They’re back at school next week”, she sighed to me, eyes and soul looking to a distant happy place.

It was Little Con’s clumsiness and total lack of social awareness that was both simultaneously charming and infuriating.  In Grasmere, the duck food dregs were, despite warnings from myself and “Auntie April” emptied out over the river, where the dusty fishiness was caught by a breeze and blown into the faces of the people sitting at the table adjoining ours.  What can you do except apologise?

Her piece de resistance came in Keswick, our destination for our stay in that most beautiful of English regions.  Walking down the high-street, I’d noticed a beautiful Giant Schnauzer.  His coat was black and silky and he walked with his companion human with the air of a young dog; slightly excitable, very interested in all the smells and sights of his surroundings.  Among the group was a an adolescent on a push scooter.  He had dwarfism.  As we walked past, my niece did a double take, spun round and started pointing.

“YES! Ha ha ha ha ha!!!” I said, trying to drown her out as she was shouting “There’s a dwarf on a scooter there!”

“Yes, Connie, he’s a GIANT schnauzer, that’s what Rocky wants to be when he grows up! Isn’t he lovely?”, I said with false joy in my voice. “Ha ha ha!”

“But it’s a DWARF on a scooter!”

Jesus.

My embarrassment was my fault.  A grown up would’ve spoken to the guy and just explained that she’d never seen somebody with dwarfism before and, her being little, got a bit excited.  You know, struck up a conversation so that Con could talk to him and realise that he was normal, just with reduced height potential.

That’s the thing about being a grown up: the awkwardness that comes from being around others for fear of being judged or causing offence due to a slip of the tongue, or just being ourselves? So long as being ourselves doesn’t mean that we can deliberately be complete arseholes of course.

We lose that joy from skipping down the street, or just bursting into a run (no matter how ridiculous we look) just for the sake of it.  The extent of my silliness is limited to pulling faces at other motorists in traffic queues, or complimenting them on their choice of headwear.

Dinner for one

Being single can be pretty OK, but the disadvantages far outweigh the positives.  As a frexample: beetroots.  I wanted to cook roasted veggies with some sausages for my tea.  For this, I needed carrots, parsnips, red onions, sweet potato, garlic and beetroot.  With the carrots, onions and garlic already at home, I needed parsnips, sweet potato and beetroot.  But you know what?  You can’t buy individual beetroot at Sainsbury’s, they only come in massive bunches.  It’s the same at all the supermarkets. Everything is set up for families, with us singles being pushed to the bottom of the pile as per with everything else in life.

You live on your own, you pay 25% less Council Tax than the family of five next door, despite them using so many more services than you.  You pay the same for water as those who use so much more than you. And now you find yourself paying for the school meals of kids whose parents who earn multiples of your own salary.  As a single person on a modest salary, I find myself being a net contributor to the tax system to the sum of £12,000 per year (there was a calculator on the BBC website a couple of months ago, so I doubt this figure is correct).

It would be nice, therefore, for the fucking supermarkets, restaurants and cafes to cater for us singles by allowing us to not buy a bunch of twenty fucking beetroot, or enough runner beans to feed a family of four, etc, etc, etc.

Still, I really do appreciate the concept of boxed wine.