Our children urgently need less self-esteem

I had a sort of Tottenham High Street moment just after lunch on Tuesday. I was passing a sandwich shop near the Spectator offices and happened to see the slogan beneath its name: ‘Live your life, love our food.’ The urge came, right there and then, to torch the place and maybe rough up the counter staff but — maybe this is an age thing — the feeling quickly passed. It was the impudence of the imperative that most annoyed me, although the general fatuity of it grated too. Why would I not live my life? What’s the alternative? And what has it got to do with your food, you presumptuous idiots?

As it happened, I had just bought a sandwich at another one of these sorts of shops, a few yards down the street (you will have noticed that almost every shop everywhere sells sandwiches. Even Boots sells sandwiches. Quite probably Halfords are selling sandwiches now. Everywhere sells food, fast food, where previously they used to sell things). Anyway, the sandwich I bought was described on the label as being ‘classic’. It comprised white bread, cheddar cheese and sliced tomato. That is what it takes to be ‘classic’ today, a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. I noticed on the typically over-chilled counter next to it a chicken-and-bacon sandwich; this was also described as being ‘classic’. We are living through an era of insane hyperbole, of exponential aggrandising, a kind of constant reassurance to us all that everything we do is alive with purpose and import entirely befitting our inherent brilliance, even when it is just a haggard and bereft 50-year-old twat buying a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. We are treated as if we are toddlers, our ludicrous expectations of ourselves indulged over and over again; we are perpetually lovin’ it and livin’ the dream.