‘Experts’ are those same bastard dorks who tell us to drink wine one minute and that you’ll die from seven different cancers if you do in the next minute; the ones who advocate no sugar, then heaps of sugar, then no proteins, followed by ‘proteins are the food of life’. You know, the ever-changing merry-go-round of advice backed by ‘studies’ that show how fashions in anything health/beauty/development/anything related change with the fucking wind and should never be believed.

Well they’re at it again. This time its babies and i-pads. Parents are using such devices to entertain and amuse their children for up to 30 minutes a day(!!!!) and children are becoming ‘addicted to technology’. Not children; babies. The same ones who, when fed up with said app, generally choose to hurl the i-thing across the room onto a tiled floor. So my reservations about such practices are purely pragmatic; no wet-nappied little fucker is going to break my i-pad!

Also, people generally lie in tests. No, they always lie in tests . ‘How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?’ is the best one. Whatever the answer, double it and you have something approaching the truth. So ’30 minutes’ on the i-pad really means 2 hours because if little Charlie/Vanessa/Ching-Mae/Obafemi is happy in the corner then mummy can hoover/cook/drink vodka/sleep or whatever she chooses to do with her allotted time. What do women do with their time? Spray themselves orange and put on make-up? Fondle themselves? (I would if I was a woman).

Anyway, ipads, iphones, addictive to kids.

Unlike the previous decades’ kids who are all addicted to tv, thrown in front of telly tubbies from 2 months old so that by the time they’re 4 they actually think Power Rangers is quality entertainment. And thereafter can’t miss an episode of the Wives of Orange County, The Only Way is Essex or X-factor without going into total withdrawal.

And in my era (dinosaurs, ice ages, mud huts and sword fights) it was sugar. You want to keep little Andrew happy; give the noisy little bugger a bag of sugar and he’ll be happy as (Fat) Larry. All we ever wanted was sweets. Sherbet. Chocolate. Pear Drops, Flying Saucers, Foam Shrimps, lollypops, anything sugar-laden and you wouldn’t hear a peep. Then we just have a lifetime’s dentistry bills to get over and we’re fine.

Parents do what they have to in order to cope with the immense strain, frustration and tedium of raising children, for the 85% of the time when those kids aren’t just being ‘wonderful’. Its not getting them addicted that changes but only what you get them addicted to.

I’m still addicted to sugar, but it now shares my time with watching sport. And the rugby’s about to start.

Happy saturday

A xxxx