Restaurants | 26 November 2005

It’s a Sunday and as our son doesn’t have any sporting engagements for the first time in 657 years my partner proposes a Family Day Out, a simple enough phrase always promoted in newspapers — The Best Family Days Out; Great Days Out For The Family — but one which always strikes terror in my heart. What amuses one family member often does not amuse another. The one who is not amused sulks. The one who would otherwise be amused sulks at the one who sulks. The one who was initially indifferent sulks because everyone else is sulking and in no time at all the Family Falls Out and the drive home is of the utterly silent type bar the odd pinch and consequent shriek (and that’s just the parents). Some friends of ours recently took their kids on the Eye, but their eldest daughter was so miffed at having been cruelly robbed of time that could otherwise be spent flirting with boys in Costa Coffee that she would only look at the floor.