A ballad to a Brockley yummy mummy

So, before I worked writing copy for at home magazine, I worked in a cafe. An up market one, thank you very much. The kind of place frequented by hordes of mothers with nothing better to do than nurse lattes, and chatter away to other mothers with time to kill. The kind of mothers who think that their kids would love nothing more than a scone. At three years old, what child would ask for a scone with jam and clotted cream? A clever parental ploy to gobble down the whole thing solo, in an ecstasy of afternoon greed. The child, meanwhile, is given the excess currants as a form of ample entertainment for them, and a hideous cleaning task for the staff. 

If I sound bitter, that's because I was. Back then. But anyway, this little ditty is what came out of my frustrated head after a typically mundane day in the cafe, all those months ago.

Toast man came in today.  Toast man, followed by yummy mummies one, four, five and seven.  The 4x4 powerhouse buggy marauding as the ultimate super mum symbol.  For the skinny latte brigade, I imagine the mission to the caffeine vendor parallels that of a Charlie’s Angels quest.  Each wife pram pushing side-by-side, navigating pavements and swerving lamp posts.  Until that overpriced tank fails to glide through the doorframe.  Latte to go then, is it? 

Three o’clock shows yummy mummies four and six.  Decaf this time.  A strand of housewife politics to discuss and deal with, no doubt.  Each mother must prep her engine for a tea-time dual on the park; the only rational explanation for those oversized child-bearing vehicles. 

‘I just laaaarve this café culture’, soup man swoons.  What ‘culture’ would that be then?  Soup and a tap water, day in day out.  Wireless internet on a table with a menu, rather than at home.  Squeal after squeal.  Crumb after crumb.  The inventor of the boiled egg as a child’s favourite breakfast treat can now only be, in my eyes, some sardonic wise crack, who envisaged the effect that teaspoons would have on already cracked shells.  And I now know how many currants were in that teacake that you ordered, before you decided against those squidgy pellets.  But 29 equate to zero pence in the tip jar. Even as you watched me wield that dustpan on my hands and knees.  And your Samuel ran around me, embedding each morsel further into the floor.  Excuse me for degrading myself, further, to kitchen sink level where the soap suds don’t have the nerve to ask for a no foam, wet latte.

Maybe, it's because I could never quite manage the pretty patterns on top of the coffee foam, that I begrudged those mothers. I'm sure they were just trying to escape the monotony of housewifery in a cosy, not too costly, establishment. I promise that I am a suitably well-behaved cafe dweller, am partial to a coffee myself, and was actually very pleasant to the customers of said caffeine vendor. 

Future posts will not be so scathing of women and children.