I lived in working class Dublin for about eight years and
quite often woke up on Sunday mornings feeling a little dusty. I would hobble
around the house for a few hours and then head out like a hungry bear in search
of food. On one memorable occasion I stumbled into a suburban pub that was
advertising carvery.
It was about 3pm when I opened the door and stared into its
murky interior. This being the days before the smoking ban, the air was thick
with nicotine and the odour of over boiled potatoes. As I stood in the doorway
trying to focus I was suddenly whacked on the shin by a kid on a skateboard. As
I regained balance and turned to watch him skate past me I was hit again by his
two siblings who were chasing after him, screaming their young heads off in a
sugar fuelled frenzy.
I grew accustomed to the light and gazed at the Babylonian scene
within. Each table consisted of three and sometimes four generations of a family,
with granny nursing a gin and tonic while her daughter and son in law got stuck
into pints and vodka as though the Government was going to bring in prohibition
at midnight. At their feet were buggies containing children too young to walk,
while the ones who could were racing around the pub like football hooligans
rampaging through a City Centre.
The tables were littered with the detritus of a hundred
unfinished dinners.
I turned on my heels and headed home. Swearing to myself
that I would never again darken the door of an establishment that let minors
consume Coca Cola. I was the sort of curmudgeonly old git who would write to
airlines requesting that they create a separate space, preferably in the hold,
for families travelling with infants. Despite a rumoured policy of never
seating a single male traveller beside kids, it always seemed to happen to me.
I grew to avoid places were small kids would be found, like
the Zoo and the sweet section in Supermarkets.
That was of course, until I had a kid myself. I am a poacher
who has become a gamekeeper. A former addict who has come clean and I speak
with the sort of certainty that only comes from the recently converted.
I realise of course, that children are like farts. You only
really like your own. But that doesn’t stop me from getting offended when a café
owner or publican fails to see my daughter for the sweet little angel she is.
This is ironic, because I knew she’s a strong willed little general who often exasperates
me with her behaviour at home. Yet when we take her out we have this naïve belief
that she will sit at the table and behave like a child from a Dickens novel,
who is seen and not heard, or better still like an adult.
This was never a problem in Melbourne. Pubs there always
sell food and are set up with high chairs and children’s food options while
cafes offer baby chinos and mini croissants. We took it for granted at the time
but Australia in general is a very child friendly place.
I wish I could say the same for Edinburgh. It is a much
older city of course, filled with cobble stoned laneways and basement cafes.
This makes it very awkward when you’re pushing a buggy, which if nothing else,
has given me an indication of the difficulties that people in wheel chairs must
face on a daily basis.
But they don’t just make physical access difficult. Many
places are openly hostile to our small friends.
On our first weekend here, we
were turned away from three restaurants and stumbled around our neighbourhood
like Joseph and Mary in search of a manger. Finally, we were welcomed into the
arms of Pizza Express who have cornered the family market. They openly welcome
prams and offer cheap children’s menus, which has the amazing effect of
stopping the parents from realising that they have just paid eight quid for a
bottle of beer.
We have expanded our knowledge of child friendly establishments
and I have to admit that I prefer taking our daughter to places where her
antics will be matched and bettered by a hundred other kids. When you are
nervous about your child’s potential behaviour it is best to bathe yourself in
the comforting blanket of others in the same situation.
I am fairly sanguine about all of this, having previously been,
as a said, a purveyor of adult only eating establishments. But one thing does
annoy about the places here that won’t let kids in. They are quite happy to
have dogs on their premises. In Australia, as I’m sure it is in all civilised
countries, dogs are not allowed in places that serve food, for reasons I would have
thought were obvious. That doesn’t apply in Scotland. Pubs in particular allow
dogs but ban children. I was in a local establishment one night when I noticed
two of the largest hounds on the planet ambling around as though they owned the
place. One of them came over and sniffed me contemptibly as though I’d brought
in something foul on my shoe.
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m nervous around dogs but I
also don’t like them sticking their noses into my dinner and scrambling around
my legs to pick up the crumbs that fall from my table.
Last week, I visited my local pub to watch football. I asked
the barman if it would be OK if I brought my puppy in next time I visited. He
said, “of course, why do you ask”. I mentioned that he had a sign in the window
saying No Children Allowed and wanted to know if the policy applied to all
species or just humans. He looked at me with narrowed eyes and moved on. We
live in a strange world were people think more of dogs than children.
